How to Talk to a Widower

contrary to what you see in the movies, floors bruise and rugs burn, and there’s just no substitute for a good bed. Going up to my and Hailey’s bedroom is out of the question, so I take Laney down to the guest room off the basement, where she shimmies out of her clothing and spreads her long, toned body invitingly across the comforter, gazing doe-eyed at me, her mouth open like a nested chick waiting for its mother’s beak. “Hurry,” she says, her voice thick with sex as I get momentarily stuck in my T-shirt. It’s the only word either of us will say for the duration.
    And it’s beyond strange, to be kissing these lips that aren’t Hailey’s, to be tracing the alien landscape of these unfamiliar breasts, first with my fingers and then my tongue, to be hearing someone else’s most private sounds, to be adjusting to the innate rhythm of someone else’s rocking hips. I don’t know what she likes, and I have no reason to look into her eyes, which must be why I’m avoiding them. Laney is voluptuous, and I mean that in a good way, not the way people will sometimes use it as a euphemism. But still, she’s bigger than Hailey in every way, and at first there’s something intimidating about her melon-sized breasts, her broad, powerful shoulders, her wider hips. When, after a while, she rolls over to straddle me, I actually experience a passing instant of claustrophobic panic as she lowers her body onto mine. But regardless of the peripherals, the hardware remains the same, and as soon as I slide into her, everything clicks into place. She keeps her open mouth locked on mine the whole time, her tongue darting in and out continuously as she moans to the beat of our rocking bodies, biting down on my lower lip so hard that I can briefly taste my own blood before she licks it away.
    And I try not to think of Hailey, I really do, I try to lose myself in the unmitigated exuberance of Laney’s undulations, in how alive and uncomplicated she is in her lust, but even as she cries out loudly, I find myself floating above us, dispassionately observing it all, and trust me, the last thing you want to do is watch yourself having sex. I don’t care how attractive you are, you’ll still feel like an idiot when you see that stupid expression on your face, eyelids at half-mast, jaw set determinedly, urgently humping away like the fate of the civilized world hangs in the balance. Women close their eyes during sex, not to picture Brad Pitt, but just because they don’t want to see your stupid-looking mug. The Brad Pitt thing is just a bonus.
    When I was sixteen, Claire decided that my virginity was holding me back, so she convinced her friend Nora Barton to sleep with me. Nora was skinny and flat-chested, but willing to do me for “shits and giggles,” which made her a perfect ten in my book. We did it in my bedroom, while she was supposedly sleeping over to study with Claire, and for the entire time, all six or seven minutes of it, I remember thinking,
So this is sex, I’m having sex,
over and over again, and wishing that I could stop thinking for just one minute and lose myself in the sensation of it all. And then it was over, and Nora tiptoed back to Claire’s room so they could laugh themselves to sleep talking about me, and a half hour later I was sitting in bed mournfully handling my resurgent erection, wondering why I hadn’t felt anything.
    Hailey is dead, and I’m having sex.
And maybe it’s the strangeness of the situation—I’m screwing the neighbor’s wife in my basement—or maybe it’s Hailey, whose naked body suddenly fills my eyes like tears, but it’s Nora Barton all over again, and I could swear that I don’t feel a thing, like my groin was injected with Novocain, even as I hear my own moans growing louder and more frequent.
    Afterwards, we lie side by side and she runs two fingers up and down my slick back, kissing my face softly as I taste the light sweat on her neck. “Doug,” she whispers tentatively, after a long, long while.
    “Laney,” I say, and the air around us grows heavy.
    “Nothing,” she says after a pause, which is perfect because, really, that’s all there is to say. And because she said that, and only that, I feel a surge of warmth and gratitude toward her, so I kiss her. And because I kissed her, she kisses me back, those impossibly full lips absorbing my thinner ones, her teeth gripping, her tongue probing. And because of that, I move my fingers between her damp