We were post-coital. Actually, I was post-coital first, it happens.
We’ve been to this room before, total mirrors: four walls & ceiling.
It’s lonely being the first to be post-coital.
Janine looks up and gets an old idea. “Okay, I’m Hitler’s doped-up manicurist,
and you are. . . . .?”
“The simple-minded boot black.”
We try to find a private corner in the bunker.
We really weren’t here or there. My wife, Betty, thought I was spending the morning with Eric, riding our bicycles on the path to the beach. No, really, angel, the rain wasn’t that bad. And Janine wasn’t here either; she was interviewing interns, all morning, at the campus extension. It took some time for Janine to hang up her serious outfit; there were only wire hangers in the little closet behind the mirrored-door.
That was earlier, before I was so quick getting post-coital.
She tries again. “I’m the Concierge in the lobby of Hell. Front! Front! Oh, where is that boy?”
Naturally, the mirrors are dirty, and the lights low. The bourbon/damage to my face isn’t that bad, and there is no gravity/damage to her breasts.
Janine defies science.
Forty-seven years ago. Earth Science. High School. The glaciers advanced and retreated at a speed of three feet per year. How lazy could those mammoths have been? Didn’t they see a wall of ice a quarter mile high coming their way? They stood there waiting, why didn’t they run away? How the hell did they get trapped?
The room had piped-in-porn. I called ahead to have the kid set up the tub. We found it ready when we checked-in. Today was somebody’s birthday; I knew not to ask.
Janine neither denied nor railed against the fact that her relationship with the two daughters, from her second marriage, had gone from strained to a violent and volcanic, open hatred. I can’t remember the last time I saw my son. And I’m sure I’ll never see my son’s son.
Son’s son?
We had the three-hour rate. I knew I hadn’t overpaid by two-and-half hours.
We never turn the porn on.
Her current husband was typically male; visually stimulated, eye contact during oral sex, that type of thing.
The mirrored-room was a joke; we knew I kept my eyes closed.
Janine looks up, and gets an old idea. She brings her lips to my ear.
“Rigmarole.”
“What?” I couldn’t visualize what her lips and tongue were doing while she mouthed and spoke the word.
“Rigmarole. Rigmarole. That’s all, that’s all there is. Rigmarole.”
I know there are miracles in the Old Testament.
We go to the edge of the bed and sit, two friends waiting for a bus.
“Rigmarole”
I know there are miracles in the New Testament.
We slip to the floor.
“Rigmarole!”
And suddenly I’m pre-coital again.