The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [82]
She said, “Sully? I don’t have to do it anymore.”
“You could just stop.”
“Yeah.”
“You had a need, Melanie. The first time wasn’t to turn me on. It was for you.”
“So?”
“So why should you stop scratching if the itch don’t go away?”
“Maybe it went away.”
“Even if you think so—”
“How could I know for sure?”
“There’s no way.”
“I know I could stop if you want me to.”
“The question’s what you want to do.”
“I want what you want.”
“No good. Suppose you could have it either way. The Good Fairy comes and gives you a wish. You can go on doing it with me wanting you to or you can stop with me wanting you to stop. See what I mean? That’s the question you got to answer.”
He was right, it was the question she had to answer, but she had to think about it first.
“I would go on,” she said finally.
“Uh-huh.”
“Because I like the things it’s doing for us. Sully, I never really knew you till tonight.”
“You mean all this talking.”
“Yeah, all this talking. You never talked to a woman like that, did you?”
“To anybody. No, I never did.”
“So nobody ever knew you. And nobody ever knew me. And all the girls you’ve had, none of them ever got to you the way I do. That’s not a question either because I know it’s true. The past few nights. You never had that with anybody else.”
“You’re right.” He looked at her. “You know something? Another thing that scares me. All my life I see a girl, and I want her. Like you turn a faucet and water comes out. Lately nothing. The other night Markarian’s in with his daughter, and thinking about her and the coon and about how Markarian was with you it occurs to me it would be like turning the tables if I got to his daughter. He screws my wife so I screw his daughter. Poetic license. No, that’s not it. Justice. Poetic justice.”
“So.”
“So you saw her, you know what she looks like. And here I’m having this thought and I look at her and it comes to me that I don’t want to. Poetic or not, I got no urge at all for the little bitch.”
“You wouldn’t want to have her?”
“Not in the slightest. You would want me to have her?”
She licked her lips. “I would want me to have her.”
“Did you ever—”
“No. I never even wanted to until just now. I never even thought about it until just now. Lately I’ve been having all kinds of new thoughts.”
“Welcome to the club.”
“The thought excites you, doesn’t it? Me with her.”
“Yeah, it does. Why the hell is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You with her excites me. Me with her doesn’t. Why the hell is that?”
“Well, me with Markarian does, as far as that goes, and—”
“That’s something else worries me.”
“That you’re—”
“Not that I am. Not exactly. I mean I never felt anything that way. For another man. I can’t imagine it. But the idea that this business of being turned on by what you do with someone else, that it’s a fag thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, skip it. I don’t understand it myself, it’s just a feeling. Just something for when there’s nothing else to worry about, and there always is. Melanie? This I got to say because I can’t talk myself out of it. You could meet somebody you like better.”
“No.”
“It could happen.”
“It could never happen.”
“Again, even if you believe this, how can you know?”
She said. “Jesus, I’m so tired.”
“Yeah, we’re wearing ourselves out. Let’s go to sleep, huh?”
“It’s necking,” she said.
“Huh?”
“How I know it could never happen.”
“You lost me.”
“Remember with Markarian? Necking in the living room, going through a long buildup? The whole thing was necking. Fucking him was necking.”
“I don’t—”
“Even having an orgasm, part of me wasn’t there. It was in the future.” She shook her head, impatient with herself. “Jesus, I’m so exhausted I can’t put words together. What made me hot with him was thinking how I would tell you about it. And what we would do afterward. If I’d of come home and we didn’t do anything, I’d of been ten times as frustrated as if I never left the house in the first place. Oh I want to do things, baby.