Threesome - Lawrence Block [16]
I sit here, I smoke cigarettes, I get up and pace this brick-textured kitchen floor, doing my caged lion number to perfection and trying to figure out just how and where and when sex began to put in an appearance. But I cannot nail it down. It began for me as the newness of being here began to wear off and as I began to feel myself reacting—to Harry, to Priss, and to my particular role in their lives.
Growing awareness, hints, allusions, glances, intimations, speculation rising to become desire. I would look at Harry during a conversational interlude in which Priss was doing her Mrs. Malaprop routine, scattering her brain around for all to see, the shameless wench, and I would think how much alike he and I were, how our minds worked in not dissimilar ways. The next mental step was not so awfully hard to take. One did not even have to break stride.
And at other times, in much the same sort of conversation, I would catch Prissy’s eye and remember the splendid self-sufficiency of the room we shared, where the male animal did not intrude and was not missed. And recognized that, although there had been no other girl for me since Priss (except for a feeling session at a drunken California party, a pushy butchy young lady who insisted on groping me) that I still, God help me, wanted her in precisely the same way I always had.
But I am explaining too much and showing too little. So, if you will, a scene or two—
Scene: the Kapp living room at minutes past twelve of a weekday evening. Priss has been in the bathroom washing her hair, reappeared in a terry cloth robe (looking unpardonably desirable) and then asked if anyone was coming to bed. (I nearly accepted.) Harry said he thought he would have another drink or three. I grunted something along those lines. Priss said goodnight and went off to beddie-bye, a not uncommon occurrence at that hour. We remained in our chairs. On the record player, the food of love played on.
HARRY (getting to feet): You about ready for a refill, Rho?
RHODA: Oh. Yes, I guess so. Thanks.
HARRY: Sort of a lazy evening.
RHODA: Uh-huh.
HARRY: This must be getting pretty boring for you.
RHODA: What must?
HARRY: The way we live. One day the same as the next. I keep feeling we ought to be entertaining you in some way—
RHODA: Oh, God, no! I just like being with the two of you, that’s all.
HARRY: We’d have some people in, but—
RHODA: You don’t have much to do with other people, do you?
HARRY: We never see anyone.
RHODA: That’s—I’m sorry, what were you going to say?
HARRY: No, go ahead.
RHODA: I was just going to say that it was unusual, and I was just thinking in terms of my own marriage, may it rest in peace. And the marriages of people I knew. We weren’t as wonderfully self-sufficient as you two.
HARRY: If that’s what it is.
RHODA: Isn’t it?
HARRY: I don’t know. When we lived in the city we always had other people around. You know, other people are very necessary. They’re stimulating, you feed off them. That makes it sound parasitic. I mean everybody feeds off everybody else—
RHODA: Symbiotic.
HARRY: That’s the one. And after we moved out here we would still see our New York friends. They would come here for an overnight or a weekend, or we would drive into the city and stay over. But gradually, and I don’t know how exactly, all of this dropped off in frequency and those relationships faded to an annual exchange of Christmas cards.
RHODA: I guess that has to happen, doesn’t it? It’s too hard to maintain a close relationship at a distance.
HARRY: It seems that way. Hell, you expect that. But you also expect new friendships to develop in a new location, and that hasn’t happened. I think we