Page 39 of Callan

She chuckles.

“Why not? I’d be sore for days.”

“I’d be sore for days after having one man, but I’d forget about the pain if I got that kind of raw passion from him.”

“Mmm… Tell me about it.”

Another thud shakes the wall against my ear.I pull back as if bitten by a snake.

“I don’t know about this,” I say, baffled. “It’s a combination of muffled noises and a weird pace. What about the other guy? What is he doing? Is he a voyeur?”

Kayla goes silent.

“Kayla?”

“I’m lost for words. I know nothing about this. No one has fucked me up against the wall or with someone watching like they’re doing it to this poor woman.”

I laugh.

“Poor woman? It must be nice,” I murmur, sunk in thought.

“If you don’t mind the cold hard wall against your back and the dips and bruises on your thighs.”

I smile to myself.

“I think we’re overthinking the whole thing,” I say.

She breathes a soft laugh.

“I think we are,” she admits when her mother’s voice rings in the background.

“Hey,” Kayla quickly says to me. “I need to go now. We’re having guests for dinner.”

“Cool. We’ll talk.”

We end our call, and I slide my phone into my pocket before leaning into the wall again.

No more sounds drift from upstairs, and their place is quiet, as if they’ve left the building.

Rattled by this new possibility, I dash to the window as the weirdest and darkest scenarios spin in my head.

This story no longer feels like a joke. It’s no longer a silly story about some woman having fun.

Why would Callan be concerned with her seeing other men?

He wasn’t jealous when he talked about it. I didn’t notice a hint of jealousy in his voice.

He didn’t care about her husband.

So why would he be interested in whether she’s seeing other men?

Did he know that men like the ones upstairs might show up?

It looked that way.

The street seems frozen in time.

There are no people, and the area is as quiet as Carmen’s place.

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