He rolled her over and parried like a fencer. Nicely done, she thought and pulled his face toward hers so she could suck his lips. She scraped his back with her nails, she moaned loudly, she thrust back at him. The hell with that bastard in Atlanta and his stupid wife, the hell with her ex-husband, Lyle, and his stupid girlfriend. She was getting royally serviced by a beautiful boy who had made a good solid B. He leaned down and sucked hard on her nipple. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change that to an A.
**
Morning. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, her body heavy as a camel’s. She opened her eyes and saw Gary sitting naked beside her with a cup of coffee.
“Coffee? You made coffee? Who sent you? God?” she asked.
Gary smiled at her.
“My head hurts,” she said, pushing herself to a seated position. She was grateful the blinds were closed, and it was dim in the room. At least they’d come to her apartment and she wouldn’t have to pee in the bathroom of a 21-year-old male.
“We drank a lot,” he said.
“Yes, but you’re young and you have a nice, fresh liver,” she said, taking the cup from his hands. She knew what she really needed was water to get rehydrated, but caffeine wouldn’t hurt right now—open up the capillaries, get the blood flowing. She could hear it whooshing inside her head.
“Are you teaching this summer?” he asked.
“No, I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I need to figure out something. The worst thing is . . .” and she stopped to laugh bleakly. “The worst thing is I lost my driver’s license. I got a DUI last month and they suspended it. Bastards.”
“But you drove your Blazer to the party last night.”
“Oops,” she said, shrugging.
He lay down on his side and propped his head with his hand. “That was funny what you said last night.”
“What did I say?”
“We were talking about that bulimic girl in class, and you said you knew the difference between bulimic and anorexic because the word ‘bulimic’ had that barfy-bile-burping connotation. And that led you to wondering why ‘bucolic’ meant something beautiful and peaceful when it sounded like a combination of bubonic and cholera.”
“Did I say that? I thought you said it, and it made you seem funny and so fuckable that I had to take you home.”
He ran a finger over her thigh in circles. She was sitting up in the bed, looking down at the bristles on his scalp.
“No, you said it, but I’m glad you brought me home anyway,” he said, glancing up at her with a question in his eyes. She felt him growing hard, nudging her knee. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound, she thought and placed the coffee cup on the end table.
**
He was easing his way into her, both of them a little tender from the night before when the phone started ringing. Jen closed her eyes tighter. Gary stopped mid-stroke and asked if she had to answer it. She shook her head, and they continued onward. But the rhythm had been broken, and she was unable to have a climax. His orgasm seemed perfunctory, the B student doing his best.
When he rolled off her, he asked if she was feeling all right.
“Oh, fine. Just cut off my head and impale it on a lamp post in front of the bar where we went last night, will you? As a warning to others,” she said, turning on to her side. She reached over and picked up her phone to check her voicemail in case the call had been important—someone offering her money or a job. She heard Lolly’s voice and deleted the message without listening to it.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“My sister, the biggest pain in the ass who ever lived.” She placed the phone back in its cradle.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” he said.
“Why should you know that? You’re my student for God’s sake. Why should you know anything about my personal life?”
“Well, I know that you have a rather large freckle on your ass. That’s pretty personal.”
Jen laughed and buried her face in her down pillow.
“So tell me about your sister.”
“Oh, God. Do I have to?” She rolled over, reached for the coffee cup and drank even though it was no longer hot.
“No,” he answered.
“She had cancer.”
“Is she okay?”
“It was bone cancer. They wound up cutting off her leg just above the knee.” She gazed at the line of light at the bottom of the blinds and remembered being left at home alone during the operation. She had refused to go to the hospital.
“Yikes.”
“She was fourteen years old. I was sixteen. I remember thinking, that was so like her to do something like that. Get cancer. I mean, she was already Momma’s little darling. Then when she got sick it was like I just disappeared. Everything went to her. We had no money left for anything else. I had to quit my acting classes. I couldn’t get new clothes. We sold our car and had to take the bus everywhere.”
“But she lost her leg,” Gary said hesitantly.
“Exactly. So how could I complain? I mean, I looked like a total and complete asshole. Even now, you’re thinking, ‘well . . .’ but you don’t know what it’s like. When we were little I always had to take care of her because Mom had to work all the damn time. Our father thought child support was a jock strap for little boys. Then when we finally got a little older, Lolly’s cancer turned our lives upside down. And you know what? When Momma died, she left the house to Lolly because she thought I was married and would have my husband to help me. I hadn’t told her that I was divorcing him because he was off fucking someone else whenever my back was turned. She figured it out before she died, but she never changed the will.”
“You sound bitter.” His eyes were narrow, peering curiously at her, but his voice was soft, not judgmental.
“I’m not bitter. I’m hung over. Listen, I’m gonna take a shower. You should probably go home.” She kissed him, then stood up, opened her closet door and pulled on a cotton robe.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. He sat up and slid on his jeans. “I’m going back home to Tampa tomorrow. So I guess I won’t see you again till the fall.”
“Gary, I’m not like one of your little girlfriends. I’m not going to be offended if I don’t hear from you again. I mean, it was fun, but let’s be real, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, awkwardly. “I really enjoyed working with you though. You’re really talented and all. I thought the play went great, and you did a great job with those teenagers.”
She managed to smile. Anything to get him out of her apartment so she could get cleaned up. She wondered if she’d be able to get anything accomplished at all today.
For one thing she had to figure out how to make some money to keep her rent paid up for the summer. She hadn’t gotten any summer classes, but someone had called her from the hippie school nearby and asked if she’d be interested in directing the plays for the summer camp. The pay wasn’t much, but if she could scrape up one or two extra odd jobs, maybe act in some instructional videos for the state, she could get by. That was what life was all about, right? Get by. Just survive one day to the next.
The phone rang as Gary was leaving. Jen walked past it and went to take her shower. Her bathroom was small and old-fashioned with little white hexagonal tiles on the floor. The shower faucet had big white porcelain handles. She thought that even if she were rich, she would want a bathroom just like this. She ignored her bleary-eyed reflection in the mirror on the medicine cabinet and turned the water on very hot.