May We Be Forgiven

you up? Some people can’t relax unless they’re restrained.”
    “Thanks, I’m okay,” I say. “I prefer to be free.”
    Upstairs, she asks if I want a dough job; I’m thinking money, but then she’s got both hands greased up and on either side of my cock and she’s telling me that she’s going to knead it like dough. It’s vaguely medical at first but not unpleasant and then she’s got my cock in her mouth and honestly I never thought it could be this easy. Claire never wanted to suck my cock, she said my balls smelled damp.
    And then—the front door slams. “Hi, Mom.”
    Her mouth comes off my cock, but her hand clutches me firmly, as if refusing to let the blood recede.
    “Tad?” she calls out.
    “Brad,” the kid answers, slightly put out.
    “Hi there, kiddo, everything okay?” she calls downstairs.
    “Yeah, I forgot my hockey stick.”
    “Okay, see you later,” she says. “I made brownies—they’re on the counter, help yourself.”
    “Bye, Mom.”
    And the door slams closed.
    For a moment I think I may have a heart attack, but when her good work resumes, the feeling quickly passes.

    I go home, take a long nap, and start thinking about tomorrow. I finally have a calling, a way to spend my time. I am going to do this every day. I’ll get up early, work on Nixon from 6 a.m. until noon, go out for lunch with a different woman each day, get home, take Tessie for a walk, and get a good night’s sleep.
    A single session, once a day. I contemplate trying for two times a day, a lunch and a dinner, on the days I’m not teaching, but it seems too much—better to pace myself, to manage it like an athlete in training.
    “How far will you go?” a woman asks.
    “In what way?”
    “Mileage,” she writes.
    It’s a delicate balance—on the one hand, I don’t want to stay too close to the house, in case I run into someone; on the other, I am suddenly mindful of time—I have things to do and don’t want to spend the day driving. It’s fascinating, everything from the real estate involved to the women themselves, the variations in décor and desire. Twenty-five miles at most; that seems reasonable. As I’m leaving, one woman tries to pay me. “Oh no,” I say. “It was my pleasure.”
    “I insist,” she says.
    “I can’t. That makes it like a work for hire, like …”
    “Prostitution,” she says. “That’s what I’m looking for, a man who can accept money for it, who can feel both the pleasure and the degradation.”
    “I can’t,” I say. “I did it for myself, for my pleasure.”
    “Yes,” she says, “but for my pleasure I need to pay you.”
    Twenty bucks is forced on me. Twenty bucks—is that all I’m worth? I would have thought more. Maybe that’s her point?

    A fter that, from each house, each woman, I take something. Nothing big, nothing of value, but like a trinket, something as small as a single sock, a little something that catches my eye.

    O n one particular Wednesday, I am especially looking forward to an early lunch because my pen pal is so spirited and funny. “What is this all about? Why do you do these things?” she writes.
    “God knows,” I write back. “But I’m looking forward to meeting you.”

    I arrive at the house, a modern glass-walled structure from the early 1960s nestled in the curve of a cul-de-sac. I can see into the house—highly stylized, like a film set, a place that people pass through, more along the lines of an airport or a museum than a cozy family home. I ring the doorbell and watch as a young girl of about nine or ten unexpectedly appears at the far end of the house and then crosses from room to room, window to window, carpet to carpet, until she reaches the front door.
    “Is your mother home?” I ask as she opens the door.
    “What’s it to you?” she asks.
    “She and I were going to have an early lunch?”
    “Oh, you’re the guy. Come in.”
    I step into the house. “Everything okay—shouldn’t you be in school or something?”
    “I should be but I’m not.”
    The foyer is a cube within the cube—I can see into the kitchen, the living room, dining room, and out into the backyard.
    “So is your mom here? Maybe I should leave; tell her John came by, John Mitchell.”
    “I can make you lunch,” the girl says, “like a grilled cheese or something.”
    “No offense, but I don’t think you should be using the stove if your mom’s not home.”
    The girl puts her hands on her hips. “You want the