Page 1 of Lucky Night

Part One

The Orgasm Gong

One

Do you hear something?

Hmm?

Nick.

Hmm.

There. She turns her head toward the door. What is that?

He turns too, buries his nose in her hair and inhales.

Not too deeply. He doesn’t want to be weird aboutit.

It’s an alarm, she says.

What’s that scent, grapefruit? Verbena? It’s delicious.

Nick?

What is verbena, anyway? An herb. No. A flower.

Something to do with tea?

Do you hear it? she says. Sort of a faraway ringing?

Away. Far, far away. Like her voice, drifting toward him, looping and weaving through the glow, the fuzzy-edged haze of animal contentment that descends on him in these moments, sprawled on this bed, any bed, various beds at various times, always with her, breathing hard, limbs splayed, the glow hovering over him like a…like a what?

Never mind. This isn’t the time to strain for comparisons. A question has been posed, his attention sought on a vital point ofacoustic interpretation. He rouses his wits. Come on, boys! Look alive! Letsgoletsgoletsgoletsgolets—

He raises his head. Listens.

The alarm stops.

He drops back on the pillow.

It’s nothing, he says. And now it’s over.

Stand down, men. The troops trudge back to their barracks, their card games, buffing their boots. His hand comes to life—just one, the rest of him still flattened, demolished by that astonishing, that really unbelievable—

He searches the folds of the duvet.

But what was it, do you think?

He finds her hand, lifts it to his line of sight. Nice hand. Lovely hand.My roving hands.

One of this joint’s exclusive amenities, he says. An orgasm gong.

An orgasm gong, she says.

He feels the joints of her fingers. The rounded edges of her nails. It’s the newest thing, he says. The staff ring it whenever two guests come simultaneously.

She laughs, her low, throaty chuckle, and the glow, which had thinned perilously as he was called upon to react, to think and speak, rolls over him again, thick and orangey-pink. Why orangey-pink? He doesn’t know. He’s just reporting here, okay? Just telling it like it is. Like how she’s turning to him now, resting on her side so that her beautiful breasts stack vertically, decline beautifully, breastily bedward—thank you, oh thank you gravity, all hail the Earth’s rotations!—and her face hoves into view, smiling at him. Jenny. It’s been too long.

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