“I have news for you,” she said, her cheek still pressed to the lid of the washing machine. “You’re a romantic.” The magazine lay in a crumpled heap on the floor.
“You must be mistaken,” he said. “Have you checked your math?”
“Check it yourself,” she said. “Beauty doesn’t lie.”
The blonde woman returned, holding a large cup of coffee. They folded the laundry in silence. He walked her to the door. Outside, the freezing air bit at their faces with sharp teeth. “Which way are you going?” he asked.
“IHOP,” she said. “The coffee smelled good.”
“It did,” he agreed. “I’m heading in the same direction.” They headed north, crossing Lexington and turning left on Baker.
“Have you ever had sex in an IHOP” she asked him, her breath frosty.
“I can’t say that I have,” he answered. “Although…with both of our baskets I might be able to work something out.” They walked together in the freezing night, each holding the other’s basket of clean, neatly folded laundry.
Selections from a Bedroom Closet
By Thomas S. Roche
“Know what would be hot?” She breathed warmth against the back of my neck. “If you picked my clothes for tonight.”
I had been working, focused on the task at hand, a document that required my intense scrutiny—so much so that I had not even noticed her coming up behind me. naked, steamy, smelling of shower.
But I noticed her breath on my neck.
My office is in the living room; city living has its drawbacks. She was forever scaring the shit out of me by sneaking up on me and saying things in my ear while I worked. This time I wasn’t scared, not even startled—just perplexed.
I reached back and took the hand she’d started trailing up my neck; I drew deep and smelled more glorious freshly-showered girl.
“Tonight?”
She made a disgusted noise. “Don’t you ever remember a social engagement?”
“I try not to.”
She spun my office chair around and sat in my lap facing me. I caught my breath, eyes roving up and down her naked body.
“Have you been working out?” I asked, equal parts snide and horny.
“Fuck you,” she said. She grabbed my hair and pulled. She shook my head violently. “Anne and Julian? China? Going away forever?”
I nodded fervently. “Right, right, right! It’s not forever, just for two years. Is that tonight?”
“In half an hour, Calendar Boy.”
“Fuck,” I said. “We’d better get moving.”
“As I was saying,” she frowned. “Wanna be my Slut Eye?”
“What are you talking about?”
She leaned in close. I smelled her more deeply: soap, shampoo and hot girl’s body. With her legs spread like that and me hunkered down in the chair from her weight, I could almost smell her sex—or , rather, I fancied that maybe I could.
She put her lips against my ear and said it more softly this time, her voice like a fondue-dipped purr.
She breathed, “Pick…out…my…clothes.”
She leaned back slightly, just enough so I could see her big bright eyes as she faked innocence.
“I’ll wear anything,” she said. “Anything you say.”
My eyes got narrow. I gave her the down-up.
“How ’bout that?”
She got that look on her face—that fucking look. No, not that one. Not the playful/played with, teasing/teased, sarcastic/skeptical eye-rolling what-the-fuck-ever that would have been perfectly appropriate—not that one. The other one. The one that says take me, and means it.
“If you like,” she purred. “I promise. Anything.”
I was hard inside of a second, two seconds, five at the outside. I smelled her, lifted her, put her on her feet like a china doll. I would have carried her to the bedroom Tarzan-style, but I’d done that once and left a bump on her head the size of a softball—now all trips from living room to bedroom were accomplished under individual power and navigation, whether upright or on all fours. We opted for upright this time.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
She sprawled out loose on the bed, which I’d cheerfully made with fresh white sheets and the newly-laundered white comforter around noon, working at home while she labored at the office. She liked it made; she loved the bed freshly made when she was naked. Liked it neat and clean and unsullied, our bed an innocent expanse of white comforter and carefully placed expensive pillows, a clean white virgin on the outside with a firm pillow-top whore keeping filthy secrets underneath.
She liked to spread out on it and let me see her body. I did that, trying not to look too hard, because to give her that kind of encouragement at this late hour would mean a tardy arrival for sure. So I just grazed my eyes across her casually spread thighs, and her belly, taut with the arch of her back, and her high tight breasts, perky with the closeness of her shoulders pressed together as she leaned up on her arms—as if she’d just happened to land in the exact position assumed by half the centerfolds from Marilyn on down. As if she’d just happened to shave fifteen minutes ago, with such caution that her perfect pussy showed not a hint of burn. As if she’d just, well, “felt” like pouting, panting, pursing her lips as she looked at me.
My girl: the short-con sex artist of the century. Take a chance that I’d pick a “nice” dress? Not her. Not in a million. Tonight’s soiree was for friends and acquaintances with whom she could be herself—which is to say, a sex fiend.
Our bedroom has a good-sized walk-in closet that had become hers, because I was a three-pairs-of-pants, seven-polo-shirts and one-fairly-decent-suit kind of guy. Her closet was crammed full. It had begun with two tiers of bars; I’d been cajoled into adding two more bars. The result was that it was packed tight with daily wear in front, and more obscure, strangely girly and/or historic concoctions in its dark, chaotic rear.
When asked to dress one’s girlfriend like a slut a man has several options, each of which is a competitive sport. I pleasantly went through all three options, as if I were competing for the gold medal at the boyfriend Olympics.
First came the obligatory. We had not been together all that long; there had not yet been time for a total rotation of wardrobe. In fact, I had seen it not too long ago, tucked at the back of the closet. Did she keep it for sentimental reasons? Fuck if I know. One thing was certain: she didn’t make it easy for me. She didn’t keep it near the front. But not to plunge into the closet and mine for the thing would have been to settle, I think, for the bronze.
“What the fuck are you looking for?” she asked peevishly, as I leaned half-in to the mess that was our closet. I ignored her. “Hel-looooo!” she cried sarcastically when I did not respond.
Then I found it, grasped it, and brought it out, dusting it off. I smoothed my hair back as I stumbled out of the mess of the back closet and held up the dress.
Her