Threesome - Lawrence Block [24]
“Uh-huh. Maybe a year or two ago.”
“You told him the whole story?”
“I didn’t tell him any story, really. Just that you and I had been lovers. I think I probably gave him the impression that we were less important to each other than we really were.”
“How did he feel about it?”
“I don’t know. You know, it was history. It was before I met him. He knows I screwed other guys before I met him and that never seemed to bother him.”
“But it might bother him having them over to the house.”
“Oh, he would never stand for that.”
“Whereas here I am—”
“Yes, that’s different. If you were a former male lover of mine he couldn’t stand it, but he’s very keen on having you here. Keen—there’s another word we don’t get to hear much from these days. Time has really turned inside out, hasn’t it? Today, I mean. I just know we’re going to get out of bed and find out that Eisenhower is President of the United States again.”
“Then let’s not get out of bed. But to get back to what you were saying.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you think he has any idea—”
“That we’ve still got it for each other?”
“And that we’re doing something about it.”
“I don’t really know. I think, this may sound weird—”
“Go on.”
“Just that I think it turns him on. The idea of us. From what I’ve read, it’s not exactly rare for men to react that way to female homosexuality.”
“You know who you just sounded exactly like? Dr. Joyce Brothers.”
“That’s been my lifelong ambition. An inarticulate Dr. Joyce Brothers, that’s me.”
“But I can’t see why this would turn a man on. I mean, if you turn it around and imagine yourself watching two guys making it together—”
“Ugh.”
“Right. I’d rather watch ice melt. I’d rather watch flies fuck.”
“Do you want to finish that coffee?”
“No, it’s cold.”
“Want another cup?”
“Not now. I want a cigarette, though. Priss?”
“What?”
“I wonder if—no, nothing. Come here, Priss.”
I wonder what I thought. About our future. Even about our present.
I suppose I thought, among other things, that this could be how we would spend Wednesdays. Once a week Harry had a day to go into New York and do whatever it was that he did there, and that could be my day to be a lesbian.
I am positive the world is full of housewives who send their kids to school and their husbands to the city and then get together and suck each other silly. I suppose this is healthier than mah-jong and less wearying than bowling and more satisfying than charity work.
But did I really think that this could go on undiscovered for any length of time?
I guess it maybe comes down to this—that I was at that time in that bed so present-oriented that I couldn’t take the future seriously. I was living in present time, and the present was time enough.
HARRY
Life holds fewer surprises for the man with a penchant for fantasy. While he may not have actually expected its less likely developments to come to pass, he’s probably imagined most of them, just as he’s imagined no end of developments which never happened. If you’ve already conceived of something, you can’t call it inconceivable.
Harry’s thought for the day.
A thought which derived from some musing just now on the question of just when I knew Priss and Rhoda were going to make it together, and when I knew I was going to make it with Rhoda, and when it came to me that we were all going to get rather more involved with each other than, say, your average two gals and a guy.
Did I know, as I coaxed that broken-down car down our winding forty-degree slope of a driveway, that even as I went down the driveway Prissy was preparing to go down on Rhoda? Did I know, as my train entered a tunnel, that other trains were spelunking in other tunnels? Did I know, as I gave Marcia Goldsmith a quickie while she bent accommodatingly over her kitchen table (upon which was strewn artwork for Chicken Little Was Right and last week’s copy of Screw, the cover showing a girl with three breasts) that to our north at that very moment—
Ehhh.
No, of course I didn’t know all this crap, dummie. But I did envision it. And wanted it to happen. That little living