She responded to his love-making with a bored kind of awe, an honest and spontaneous emotion secretly calculated, he knew, to satisfy and enrage him. It was only at that moment when he felt her completely beyond his reach, when the emptiness of her face reached doll-like authenticity, as her gasps and Gods and Oh, daddies transcended their ordinary rote quality to attain a flat, mechanical passion, when he knew she felt he brought her great pleasure, not for any reason having to do with her, but simply to prove that he could, that his member was able to return, via its brief hidden moment of triumph, to its regular inert state.
He began to dress quickly. “No,” she protested, holding her arms out to him: “cuddle.”
“You know I only have twenty minutes before I fall asleep,” he told her. “I have to drive home.”
“Yes, before your wife gets home,” she muttered. “No, don’t show me her picture again — why do you always want to show me her picture afterwards?”
“Do I?” he asked, putting his wallet back into his pants pocket and snatching up his keys.
“Turn the light out,” she called — but either she spoke too late, or he pretended not to hear her as he walked out the door.
*** Continue reading
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