Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [155]
“But here’s the hope,” Alice said. “You know what it’s like to change. Look at yourselves. Look at me! We’ve changed. We’ve changed radically! We got from there to here somehow, though how we did is no longer important. Just look at us. Look at each other right now! Turn to your neighbor! We ourselves are examples of the possibility of transformation. We are arguments against despair. Don’t tell me people can’t change! I, my friend, have changed something awful. And so of course I can change again, but not back.
“Here’s the challenge, my hungry caterpillars: To think of your own skin as a chrysalis. To hatch the chick in this adipose shell. You, me, all of us, we can’t get back to what we once were. Those people are gone. Which means underneath all of this is someone new! There’s a matryoshka doll in this matryoshka!
“But how do we get to her? That’s easy: It’s the same as the first rule of writing. We start with what we know. Let me tell you about the children I lost,” Alice said. “That way I can explain to you not just why I eat, the void I’ve been trying to fill, but also what’s been eating me … ”
But David left. He didn’t want to hear that. He was done with that story. He was done.
He took himself to the party. It was one long beeline, cab to office to Georgine, who saw him the minute he got there. She looked like she was waiting for him, and she was. He walked right up to her. “Remember what you said about being direct?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Show me where you live.”
By the time he got home, it was well past Alice’s bedtime. He’d turned off his cell phone at Georgine’s, but now, when he powered on, he saw that his wife hadn’t called once. Not a shred of curiosity about when he’d be coming home. Her indifference killed both his anxiety and his regret. He considered taking a shower, washing Georgine’s dusty evidence off Mr. Penis, but what was the point? His wife was fast asleep.
The moment David got under the covers, Alice ran her hand down his stomach. “Make love to me,” she said.
Terrified, he grabbed her wrist and held it.
Naked, she pressed her breasts against his back, the nipples hard as marble, and ran the end of her tongue from his scapula to his neck. “Come on, David,” she moaned. “It’s been forever.” She pinned his arm behind him with both of hers, like a police hold, then arched her crotch agilely to where she clasped him, sliding herself up and down the banister of his thumb. “Squeeze me,” she whispered. “Hold me as hard as you can.”
What was with the licking and squeezing? This was new. And the dirty talk? New too. David, fresh off his own transgression, became paranoid again. Was she having an affair? Had she learned all this somewhere else? Was she trying out new moves in their bed?
He flipped over as commanded and, in spite of his suspicions, was tremendously aroused, growing an erection so fast he could feel Georgine’s sex flaking off him like brick shedding mortar in an earthquake.
“Kiss me,” she said. He went to kiss her. But instead of lips he found her tongue, extended toward him in the dark. He stuck out his own and touched hers with it, the two fighting for position and rolling round each other like a pair of seals. They Frenched like this for so long that David could feel their spit getting cold. All brand-new, he thought.
He stopped.
“Come on,” she said. “Kiss me.”
“I am kissing you.” He went to kiss her again but there was that tongue, stuck out from her mouth like a kid catching raindrops. “What’s with all this?” he said.
“What’s with what?”
“This?” He opened his mouth and went, “Ahhhhhh,” like she was his doctor.
She laughed. “Come on,” she insisted. “Kiss me.”
“Kiss regular,” he said.
“Kiss unregular,” she said.
He could see the whites of her eyes staring at him in the dark.
“All right,” she said, then got out of bed, put on her robe, and went to the kitchen.
“What did I do?” he called. He could hear her filling the kettle with water.
“Nothing,” she said exhaustedly.
For weeks it