The Book of Joe

teenager.
    “I heard you were here,” she says, stepping back to look at me. “I thought I’d pay you a quick visit.”
    “I’m glad you did,” I say, although the jury’s still out on that. I let her into the house, jingling my keys loudly in case Jared and his friend are at it again, but no one is home. I wonder what the hell I’m going to talk to Lucy about. “Would you like a drink?” I offer.
    “I’m fine,” she says, looking around the foyer with mild curiosity.
    “You sure?”
    “Yes.” She steps into the living room and peers closely at the family pictures on the coffee table. Lucy Haber in my childhood home is like a rare astrological phenomenon, the convergence of planets with unforeseeable aftereffects.
    “How’s your father?”
    “Not too good,” I say, sitting down on the couch. After a moment she joins me there, the cushion beneath me shifting as it registers her weight. The love seat that sits perpendicular to the couch would have been the more logical and appropriate destination, I think, and I’m confused, maybe somewhat concerned, and, let’s not deny it, aroused by her choice.
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” Lucy says. “Were you in some sort of accident?”
    “What?”
    Her fingers graze my face as she traces the gash near my temple. Maternal? Sexual? Oedipal? The options run through my head like a quiz show. I’d like to poll the audience, Regis.
    Lucy’s touch instantly sets off the low hum of internal machinery in my lower belly, generating waves of heat that spread quickly downward. I hope to god the trembling in my thighs isn’t as noticeable as it feels. “I got into a fight,” I say.
    “One of my more expressive critics.”
    She nods, her fingers lingering for another moment before leaving my face. “I would imagine you have no shortage of those here.”
    “Are you one of them?” I ask nervously. It is this exact moment I’d envisioned when I tried to convince Owen to let me remove the lustier pages concerning Lucy from the novel. Now here we are, transplanted into my nightmare/fantasy, and I am utterly exposed, my obsession no longer a secret from her. This knowledge alone wouldn’t be so bad, but she knows that I know, and I know that she knows I know, and this extra loop of awareness causes my bowels to clench with terror.
    “I was really moved by your novel,” she says, her lower lip trembling. “You showed me a whole new side of my son, one that as his mother I never got to see.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I can’t tell you what a precious gift that was.”
    I am flabbergasted. It’s a testament to my prodigious egotism that I’ve never even considered how Lucy might feel about the characterization of Sammy in the book. I’ve only ever been concerned with my own salacious confessions.
    “I’m glad,” I stammer.
    She nods and then laughs softly as she stops her tears neatly with the edge of her finger. Her nails are buffed and polished in ivory. “Sometimes, when I’m feeling lonely, I read parts of your book and it soothes me.”
    Which parts? I wonder. I study her face, still impossibly flawless and composed, her plump lips, so full of sensual promise, pressed outward in just the slightest pout, as if already anticipating the delicious, wet suction they can impart at will to your various parts. She sits back on the couch and smiles warmly at me, her teeth gleaming white, the beneficiaries of constant buffing from those phenomenal lips. I rack my brain for something to say, but my mind is a blank as the blood in my head, true to its liquid form, absconds to seek out the lowest possible point. “It’s very good to see you, Lucy,” I finally say.
    She nods, smiling, and gets up to leave. “It’s good to see you too. It brings back a lot of memories.” I follow her back into the foyer, trying in vain not to stare at her ass. At the door, she turns around and takes my hand in both of hers.
    “You were a good friend to Sammy, Joe. That meant a lot to him. And to me.”
    “I tried to be,” I say lamely, feeling every bit the horny hypocrite.
    Lucy hugs me again, this time tightly, with the full length of her body pressed up against me. It is most definitely a different kind of hug from the first one, a loaded embrace. She does it suddenly, giving me no opportunity to contort my anatomy and create a discreet pocket for my arousal, which presses against her thigh like a red herring. She knows, I know she knows, and she