Shallow Graves

helpful.
    Beside her, Keith stirred slightly. His breathing was slow.
    She glanced at him, closed her eyes.
    Thinking about nothing.
    A bird trilled in the distance, a truck shifted gears on the grade of Lampton Road.
    Nothing, nothing, nothing.
    An instant before the alarm rang, she sensed it in her mind. An electronic Bzzzzt. Meg opened her eyes and just as the Seiko went off, reached over to tap the off button. She patted Keith on his solid shoulders. He was ten years older than Meg and had some serious businessman fat on him. But she didn’t mind that. His legs and butt were thin; you could get away with a lot of belly if everything else stayed in line. He had a broad, handsome face, the face of an actor who played kindly merchants and railroad owners. His hair was dense and unruly and he forced it into shape with spray and split it with a ruler-straight part. Meg regularly talked him out of dye; she thought salt-and-pepper was sexy.
    Keith reached up and squeezed her hand, muttering something. She moved closer to him, smelling the warm body sleep scent puff out from under the bellows of the sheet and comforter.
    The tip-off was his wristwatch.
    Keith groggily pulled the Rolex off his wrist and dropped it heavily on the bedside table. When he took off the watch she knew what was coming.
    His hands began to wander.
    “Honey. . . .” she said, something of a protest. But let herself be pulled over to him.
    They kissed. She pulled off the violet Victoria’s Secret teddy he’d bought for her several months ago, offering the box shyly, as if he was worried she’d be offended.
    The familiar routine began. He kissed her long, on her mouth, her chin, working downward. He lingered at her neck, taking her S-link chain in his mouth. He often did this and she wondered if the gold had a taste that he liked. Then his lips found her collarbone and he moved down toward her breasts and, slowly, slowly, to her contracted nipples.
    When they made love Keith was energetic, simple, effective.
    Meg was ready for him. Although from time to time she let her hands explore herself when she was taking a shower she hadn’t done so since the last time they’d made love, a week ago. So now, even though it was morning, even though she wanted to bathe first, to brush her teeth, even though she didn’t feel beautiful, even though she had to wake Sam soon to get him moving in time for his school bus—despite all that, she felt the low kick inside her.
    Meg smiled, kissed his chest and nipples, rolled him over on his back. She stroked him then moved down his belly. She felt her own passion swell when he began to grow inside her mouth.
    This is what their romantic life had become—usually mornings, usually spontaneous. And Meg Torrens had no real complaints about it. True, they weren’t youthfully passionate. But who is, after ten years of marriage? The compensation was that neither of themdemanded too much from the other. Sex was comfortable, like browsing through antique stores or trying out new recipes. Diverting pleasures. Silent and a little anonymous. They’d learned not to intrude on each other’s fantasies.
    He nearly came and he held her head still. Then he sat up, rolled her over and kissed her breasts again, moved down. Licked her navel. He moved further down her trim body.
    After five minutes she shuddered violently under the clever effort of his tongue and fingers. She lay gasping and smiling in the near darkness, trying to cement the moment.
    Keith waited a gallant minute or two before mounting her. She held him fiercely and she moaned the way she knew he liked but was too shy to ask her for. She bit his ear. She dug nails into his back. She pressed her face against his soft, gray hair, through which a residue of sweat was building.
    She curled her legs around him, she moaned again. Then, suddenly, her eyes snapped open.
    The intrusion was like a slap. A spray of cold water.
    No!
    The memory of the sound wouldn’t go away.
    Bzzzzt.
    She couldn’t place it, but it intruded unrelentingly. It was spoiling the entire moment. She hated it.
    No, no, go away, please.
    Then, she remembered. At the same instant Keith gripped her furiously and squeezed the air from her lungs. She felt the contractions and the fierce tensing of his hips.
    That was the intrusion—a sound.
    Playing in her mind, over and over, was the satisfying whir of the film as it shot out of the man’s Polaroid camera. She pictured his narrow face, she