Page 35 of Lucky Night

He’s already rolling off her.

Just to confirm that everything’s squared away, he says. I’m sure it is, but why not double-check?

He picks up the receiver. He’s calling down now, after refusing for so long? Is he teasing her? They can have each other again, so he’s making her wait? What a contrarian.

But you know what? Fine. They’ve waited this long. She smiles up at the smoke detector. Good smoke detector, noble smoke detector. Bearer of glad tidings. Of good joy.

Let him call. She knows how to tease him, too.

Hi, he says. This is…sure.

She turns her head so she can see him. They put you on hold again?

Yes, damn them. He switches the receiver to his other hand and reaches for his cell phone. She watches him flick through his email.

Don’t they know who they’re dealing with? Nobody keeps Slick Nick waiting.

He glances up from his screen.

No, sir, she says. The King of the Street Corner doesn’t take this kind of crap from anyone.

You better be careful, he says.

What are you going to do? Sell me a fake Rolex?

No, I’m going to drag you into the stairwell, tie you to the railing and fuck the living oh, hi! Yes, I’m here. We heard the announcement, and…go ahead.

She shakes with supressed laughter, watching him listen, his eyes on her like,You are in such big trouble.

So it was a false alarm after all, he says. Good. And the specific floor where the alarm…okay.

His robe is hanging open. She slides across the bed and reaches inside and takes his cock in her mouth. He inhales sharply, pushing himself toward her. She tastes herself on him, that odd metallic tang he claims to love. He’s only half hard, so she can take all of him into her mouth.

Oh myfucking…no, he says, sorry, I wasn’t…go ahead.

The person on the other end of the line keeps talking, and she keeps sucking his cock. A thing she loves to do. Of course she does! She denied it because, well, she has to deny him sometimes. Him and his certainties, his proclamations on human nature, on women. He’s fully hard now. His hand grips the back of her head, his fingers tangled in her hair. How could she not get turned on by this? By how he responds, how he comes all undone.

She’s wasted so much time tonight! Fretting and jabbering, tapping and swiping, when she could have simply wrapped her lips around his cock and blown her fears away. All her thoughts of punishment and mortality, God and Jewish mothers, she could have let it all go and—

So the alarm was…ahhh, he says. That’s why…mm-hmm. And so the elevators oh goddamn, that’s…no, I, I’m fine, I just…I have to go thanks bye.

He drops the phone and pulls her to her knees and they’re kissing. Her hair is in his mouth. Her mouth tastes like champagne. They fall onto the bed, they’re struggling and somehow she’s on top of him, which suits him just fine. He slips his hands under her robe, reaching around for, yes, thank you Jesus, thank you fire safety director and all relevant saints, thank you for these two heaping palmfuls of splendid buttockry.

Have you ever been disappointed?She hasno idea.Never mind, though, because this ass. He grazes the cleft with his fingers as they kiss. If only, if only. Here he goes, once again plotting his conquest of her mythic asshole. He won’t suggest it now. Unless she seems game. She might be, flush as she is with a sense of reprieve.

And it comes upon him, all in a rush. The glow, the glow is back! Early this time, a premature glowification, but he’ll take it. This is what they’re meant for, made for, not conversations about disappointment, or humanity’s capacity for—oh her skin, her teeth. Her tongue. Jenny! Lovely funny warm real, a flesh and blood woman who fucks him with abandon, who snorts when she laughs sometimes, who does dirty things willingly. Most of them, anyway. A woman ofinfinite variety. Age cannotwhat?Wither her, nor—

Here we go again with the goddamn poetry.

Forget it. The point, the bottom line:

She.

Wants.

Him.

Him! A man no longer young, not falling apart but let’s face it, no Adonis either. Him, with his body that has begun to complain, to creak and pop, foreshadowing the inevitable: age decay decline decrepitude loss death the end goodbye. Fewer tomorrows than yesterdays. But there’s still today. Tonight. He opened the door, and his arms, and she was there. What was it she’d said when she camein?

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