Lexicon

and he grinned and returned to the real estate woman. She felt unsettled. She watched him walk away. What was that? Did he just try to pick her up? That was outrageous. She picked up her Coke and looked after him again. Her heart was jumping. She thought,
Ah, fuck
.
    • • •
    She decided to sleep with him and get it over with. It was the only way. He had become an annoying jingle, striking in the shower, or at work, or just as she was falling asleep. She had to at least kiss him deeply and completely, in a way that left nothing behind. So she could move on. So she could stop imagining it. She couldn’t keep losing herself to the jingle. It was impairing her ability to function. Once she turned him into a toy, like those boys in Tangled Threads, it would be all right. She would be back in control.
    She bought a dress, a little black scrap from Tangled Threads that she’d talked away from three potential customers in case of an occasion like this. She did her hair, going for volume—not the kind of hair girls liked; the kind for boys. She detonated mascara. Friday night, she pushed into a smoke-filled sweat tank in the main bar, the
pub
, and looked for him. The place was full of bright-eyed teenagers and crusted-on miners, opposing demographics, normally, united by their passion for beer and angry guitars. A boy screamed, “
Vince!
” in her ear. These were reasons she did not normally come here. She negotiated a lap and began to feel discouraged. Then she spied him at the bar with a few other young men in collared shirts. She walked up and yelled, “Hi!”
    Harry smiled at her.
    “Buy me a drink!” she said.
    • • •
    Four hours later, her head buzzing, she was in the passenger seat of his paramedic van, being driven home. Not to her home. To his. She had unsnapped her seat belt and draped herself across him, kissing his neck, nibbling his ear, which was an excellent way to die in a car accident, if she’d thought about that. But she hadn’t. She thought only of getting him alone in a room and doing terrible things. He drove and drove and finally stopped. A dog slobbered on her legs and she screamed and he picked her up. She liked that. It reminded her of how they’d met. His house was dark but there was a bed and a moon outside. She tried to unbutton his pants and he said no, and she said,
Yes
, putting some emphasis behind it, a little lower frequency that sounded commanding, but it didn’t work. On the bed he touched her neck and this was what she had been missing, she realized: All of her predatory behavior had included no reciprocity. And that was important. She had forgotten. She went after him again and this time he took her wrists in one hand and trapped them on the pillow above her head. “I want you,” she said. “Let me touch you.”
    “No,” he said, and she found this even more arousing, for some reason. She did enjoy a challenge. But his hands moved down her body and she lost the will to argue. “Yes,” she said, “yes, yes.” She saw glittering eyes in the darkness outside, his dog, watching them, but she didn’t care. She was going someplace else. His touch was careful and she hadn’t really known what it was like to be cared for. It was a night of newness. He held her and his fingers moved inside her and then her climax moved through her like a thunderclap, like a force of nature, something she could not control at all, and she had to lie still until she could find herself. He let go of her wrists. He was still wearing pants. She needed to address that. “Now,” she said, and finally he nodded, and said, “Now,” and she basically attacked him.
    • • •
    In the morning she woke and he was not there. She sat up. The bedroom had no curtains. Beyond the window was flat earth as far as the horizon. The bedroom was a crime scene of twisted sheets and scattered clothes. Aside from the bed, there was no furniture. No paintings. No photos.
    On the kitchen table she found a note:
    Gone for a ride. Help yourself to brekky.
    A ride
, she thought. He had gone for a ride. He had departed on some mode of transport to an unnamed destination for unknown reasons for an indeterminate length of time. She was glad he had explained that. She investigated the room. There was a photo of the dog on the TV. It was the only really personal thing she could see, so she picked it up. A big dog. A man’s dog. She put the photo back. She was not so desperate for insight into Harry that she