One Plus Two Minus One

by Tess Mackenzie

  He did. Then lay there on top of her while they both panted.

  She was confused and a bit revolted by herself. Apparently she only wanted sex with Robert if he made her, and she really wasn’t sure she was okay with that.

  “I didn’t like that,” she said after a while.

  “You seemed to.”

  “Go fuck yourself.” She wriggled out from underneath him and sat up. He’d had a condom so she didn’t need to run off to the bathroom straight away.

  “I told you not to,” she said.

  He looked at her and didn’t answer. She was right. She’d told him not to, and he kept going anyway, and to Robert, at least in theory, that was an unforgiveable sin.

  “I don’t like doing that,” she said. “Not in my ass.”

  “You never minded before,” he said.

  “And now I do.”

  She sat there for a moment.

  “Back then I did too,” she said. “I just didn’t tell you.”

  He seemed a bit hurt. “You should have said something.”

  “I am.”

  He nodded.

  “Has it ever occurred to you,” she said. “That we’re both professors now. I’m a professor. And you’re still trying to stick your cock up my bum like we were kids.”

  “I don’t think our jobs have got anything to do with this.”

  “Yours doesn’t. Mine does. I have a proof. People write about my work. In a few years I’m going to be tenured. And you want to ass-fuck me like I’m sixteen.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Me either. Just don’t do that, okay. I never liked it. It hurts.”

  He nodded.

  He still seemed upset, and she felt bad.

  “I don’t mind doing things with you,” she said. “Sometimes I like it. But I get sick of you just doing it without asking me.”

  “Yeah, I understand.”

  “Okay.”

  She sat. She wasn’t sure why, until she suddenly realized she was expecting more. She’d been around Ethan too long. A guy came inside her, and she just hovered, waiting for him to start again.

  That wasn’t going to happen with Robert.

  “I didn’t come,” she said.

  “I know. Sorry.”

  She looked at him for a while, and decided he really wasn’t getting the hint.

  “Could you do something about that?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”

  He still didn’t move.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Aren’t you going to have a shower?”

  She sat there for a while and wondered what to say. He stuck his cock up her ass without asking, and she ended up dirty and needing a shower before he’d put his tongue on a completely different part of her.

  “Never mind,” she said, and stood up.

  “Beth…”

  “Never mind.”

  She got herself off in the shower and by the time she’d finished, the whole sex thing seemed to have been forgotten.

  *

  Beth was missing Ethan. She wanted to see Ethan. There were other ways she could have organized it, but they would be complicated and take time out of her research and it was about to be poker night anyway. She wanted him at poker night. She wanted him to meet her friends, and pretend everything in her life was normal and Robert just wasn’t here, and that the way things should have been evolving with Ethan by now would keep evolving anyway.

  Sometimes she didn’t make sense even to herself.

  She phoned Amanda and said, “Can Ethan come to poker night?”

  “Is he a girl?”

  “Not really.”

  “Only girls at poker night.”

  “Please. Just this time?”

  “Just go fuck him, then come find us.”

  “I want him to meet you all.”

  “Aw, that’s kind of sweet.”

  “I know. So yes?”

  “So maybe.”

  “We can have it at my place.” They smoked cigars, so whoever’s house it was stunk for a week. Everyone wanted poker night and no-one wanted to host it.

  “Yep,” Amanda said. “Deal. If no-one else minds.”

  “I’ll ask.”

  “You will. And hey, Beth, remember he’s poor and we’re not. You might need to lend him money or something.”

  They played for fairly large amounts of money. Because when Amanda started it, she’d said that it wasn’t fun unless you were playing for more than you wanted to lose. And they all had disposable income and no commitments and that wouldn’t be the case forever, so they had. Getting your first academic job meant doubling your income at least. For Beth it had meant tripling it.

  Beth phoned everyone, and pleaded and blackmailed, and in the end they all said yes. All were scientists, all early career over-achievers who needed an outlet. Keri in chemistry, Anna in mathematical physics, Sofia in computer science. Beth warned Sofia that Ethan might be one of her students, but she didn’t seem to care. She seemed more interested in meeting him.

  Then she phoned Robert and said he needed to go to a hotel tonight, that she had girls’ poker night and she’d forgotten, sorry. It would go late so not to bother coming back.

  Then she phoned Ethan and said, “What are you doing tonight?”

  “You, I assume.”

  Ha ha, she thought, but was glad he was free. She hadn’t thought to check first.

  “Yep,” she said. “Hope so. Want to meet my friends too?”

  “Sure. Are you okay with that?”

  “These friends, yeah. Do you play poker?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you know how?”

  “Kind of.”

  She thought for a moment, suspicious. “Like don’t right up until you hustle me, or really don’t?”

  “Really don’t. I get lost with the seven card draw and all that shit.”

  “Yeah, that’s okay. It’s just basic poker. You sure?”

  “Yeah. I’d like to meet your people.”

  “Come to my place. After seven. Be a bit late, I’ll text when it’s clear.”

  *

  Poker night happened once a month and was loud and rude and they all got very drunk. Beth didn’t text Ethan until she was sure Robert had gone for the night, so the others were there, drinking, teasing her, making her wonder if this was a terrible idea.

  When Ethan knocked she got up and met him at the door. She was holding a cigar. She handed him whiskey, and kissed him like she’d been wanting to for a week, all open and needy and desperate.

  He pulled a face when he tasted her mouth.

  “Man up,” she said, grinning. “That’s the taste of testosterone.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just what I always wanted in a girlfriend.”

  “More,” she said, and kissed him again, and he didn’t seem to really mind her smoky mouth.

  He was touching her back, sliding his hand around. He reached up her front and put his hand on her tit.

  “Yep,” she said into his mouth. “Poker night. No girly shit. This is a night to be men and do manly things.”

  He thought about that for a moment, then said, “That’s just creepy.”

  So she flashed him, and he stared, and got interested in kissing her again.

  “Nope,” she said. “Come and meet everyone.”

  She pulled him backwards towards the lounge.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “By the way. You perve, we all kill you. Just so you know.”

  “Perve at what?”

  “Ah, dude. A night to be men, manly things?”

  He looked blank.

  “No-one’s got a bra on, you dick, and some of them are your professors. So you perve, and first I kill you, and then they all do too.”

  He grinned, and nodded. “Okay.”

  They were sitting around the kitchen table filling her lounge with vile smoke. She had the ranch sliders open and the kitchen extractor fans on in the hope it w
ould help, but it didn’t really. It never did.

  Beth pulled Ethan over and told him everyone’s name, and felt like she was fourteen and introducing her first boyfriend. They said hi, and Amanda said they knew about him, but he didn’t seem too worried.

  “Hi Doctor Dimitrova,” he said to Sofia.

  “You know each other?” Beth said. Sofia was looking blank too.

  “Last year,” Ethan said. “Information theory.”

  “Right,” Sofia said. “How did you do?”

  “Shit,” Ethan said. “Not you as well.”

  Everyone looked at him.

  “Yeah,” Beth said. “Her too. I asked him that.”

  A few smiles.

  “So how did you do?” Anna said.

  “An A. In both.”

  “Good,” Anna said. “Can’t let Beth have a sub-standard toyboy.”

  For a horrible moment Beth thought this was going to come unstuck. Ethan stood where he was, surprised. The others looked at him, wondering what to do.

  Beth grabbed his hand, and squeezed, a bit worried.

  “Fair enough,” Ethan said, and kissed Beth. “I’ll try not to be.”

  Anna grinned. Sofia looked annoyed, like she was jealous. Ethan seemed to be okay. Beth decided she’d had enough, and pushed Ethan into a chair, the one next to hers. “Sit,” she said. “Play. You know the rules?”

  “I’ll remember.”

  Beth got him beer, poured him a whisky, stuck a cigar in his mouth and lit it. Then sat down, and pushed a stack of chips towards him.

  He looked at the cash in the chip box. “Are we playing for money?”

  “I paid yours,” Beth said.

  He took out his wallet, and she wondered if she should have warned him about that. She leaned over and whispered, “Don’t be a fucking asshole in front my friends.”

  “I should pay.”

  “We all earn a lot. A lot more than you. And we’re playing for a fair bit of money.”

  “How much?”

  She held up a chip. It had a ten printed on it.

  “Dollars?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  He looked at the rest. Some fifties, one or two a hundred. “How much is on the table?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She kissed him. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  He didn’t seem sure, but let her talk him into it. They started playing, and played fast. Ethan was the slowest one to make decisions for the first few hands. Beth wondered if she should have warned him. About the money, and that they did this a lot, and were all quite good. Part of her wanted to see how he’d react. The others had brought guys to poker night before, despite Amanda making a fuss. Most of the guys got sulky being beaten by a bunch of girls, even the sensitive academic ones. Robert wouldn’t take it very well, Beth was pretty sure. The couple of times they’d played strip poker she’d got him naked while she was still mostly dressed.

  Ethan lost money for a few hands, and people folded a lot. Then Beth beat Amanda, bluffed Amanda while Amanda tried to bluff her back.

  Ethan was watching, and thinking. Beth could see him out the corner of her eye, and it was a bit distracting.

  “What?” she said.

  “You’re good.”

  She was pleased, but didn’t let it show. She sucked on the cigar. “Yep.”

  “How? Why?”

  “What do I do?”

  He looked at her for a moment and didn’t understand. She liked when people didn’t think this through. Everyone know probability theory was invented by eighteenth-century card hustlers looking for an edge. They knew it, and they never thought about it when it really mattered.

  Beth looked at Amanda and smirked.

  “Hey Beth,” Amanda said. “What’s the odds of getting dealt a full house in five-card poker?”

  “Six hundred and ninety to one. Roughly. Hey Amanda, what’s the odds of getting dealt two pairs?”

  “Twenty to one, about.”

  They both looked at Ethan and grinned.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said.

  Beth liked that. She liked it a lot.

  “I thought you hated statistics?” Ethan said.

  “This is combinatorial maths, that’s completely different.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Beth kept grinning.

  “It’s much worse,” Amanda said. “Hey Beth, seven-card draw. What’s the odds of completing an inside straight draw on the turn?”

  Beth sat there for a moment and worked it out. It was a pretty basic binomial calculation, n choose k where n was the outcomes you wanted and k was the cards left in the hand. She’d expect any of her grad students to be able to do it, but she was the only mathematician in the room so she could impress. “Ten and a half to one,” she said. “Ten point seven, maybe?”

  “Is that right?” Ethan said to Amanda.

  “No fucking idea.”

  “It’s right,” Beth said.

  “Which is why we play five-card draw,” Amanda said. “We can all memorize these odds. Otherwise, she wins all the time, just sits there looking expressionless so you can’t even bluff. Because she knows she’s the only one at the table who can work out the odds as she goes.”

  “Shit,” Ethan said. “That’s awful.”

  “Isn’t it?” Beth said. “Play cards.”

  Anna shuffled and dealt.

  “I thought you didn’t like real numbers,” Ethan said to Beth.

  “This is probability. One minus some shit. It’s a fraction.”

  “I really don’t think it is.”

  “That one multiplies out to eight hundred and fifty-one over a thousand. That’s a fraction, not a fucking real number.”

  He looked at her. Just sat there and stared. There was something in his face, like there had been the first few days.

  “What?” she said.

  “I really fucking like you, you know that? I really do.”

  “Get a fucking room,” Amanda said.

  “Stop trying to distract me,” Beth said. “Play the fucking cards.”

  They were loud. They swore too much. They drank a lot. Anna sat there and blew smoke rings and looked smug while everyone else tried. They were all themselves here, with each other, and Beth watched Ethan out the corner of her eye and hoped he liked them. It almost mattered more than if he liked her.

  It was hard being them. It shouldn’t be, and it was easier than it used to be, but it was still a little hard. They were all pushing into places that some people assumed they didn’t belong, and the little irritations grated sometimes. When people asked about Beth having children and how long she’d be around, as if her career didn’t actually matter to her. When she was asked why she’d chosen the field she had, as if it was something unusual, but no-one ever thought to ask the guy standing next to her. They were tiny irritations, nothing more, but they became a burden when it was day after day. She pushed back. Everyone had their own way of pushing back. Beth was rude and bad-tempered, to show she was an unstable genius, and it actually worked, people treated her as if she was. The others all had their tricks too. They all kept up a pretence a lot of the time, and then they came here, and had their monthly game, and were loud and themselves, and it was fun.

  The strange thing was, Beth had noticed, the average woman in science was always slightly smarter than the average guy. You didn’t do this if you were a girl and only average, you didn’t even try.

  She watched the game, and decided Ethan was able to deal with them. She liked him a lot more for that. She poured another round of shots and put her feet up on his lap, and smiled when he looked over.

  Ethan seemed to be able to cope. He could cope with fucking his maths professor, and he seemed to be coping with drunken high-stakes bra-less poker with his compsci professor too. He was trying to blow smoke rings while Anna told him what to do, and as far as Beth could tell he hadn’t glanced down once.

  Robert wouldn’t have managed. He wouldn’t have been able t
o fit in. Ethan was younger and a student, and that might have made a difference, but it was probably mostly because he was him. He didn’t have to control the room, like some guys did. He just went along with everyone else.

  Beth looked at him and wondered if she’d found the only smart guy who could stand her in the whole world. The only one without an ego so big it got in the way.

  They played more cards. Ethan was slowly losing but didn’t seem to mind. They reached a hand in which everyone folded except Beth and Ethan. Beth kept bidding, pushed out a couple of hundred dollars in chips, all the time looking at Ethan and pressing her foot against his leg. He got the hint and kept going, right up until she folded.

  “You bitch,” Sofia said. “That’s cheating.”

  The others seemed to think so too.

  “What? I decided I was wrong about what he had.”

  “You never fold.”

  “I did that time.”

  “Because you’re fucking him.”

  “Maybe because I know him better.”

  Anna tried to grab Beth’s cards, turn them over, but Beth snatched them up and shuffled them into the deck.

  Two hands later, Beth and Ethan ended up in another bidding contest and this time, because Beth had given Ethan a stack of chips, it was her who was running low.

  “You’re out of chips,” Ethan said.

  “You’re playing with my money.”

  “So?”

  The others laughed.

  “How do you guys do this?” Ethan said. “Do you go all in or something?”

  “Nope,” Amanda said. “You can take an IOU if you want.”

  Ethan grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Low,” Anna said “Really low.”

  “I want to call,” Beth said.

  “You don’t have enough,” Amanda said.

  “I know. I call with me.”

  Everyone looked at her. “How do you mean you?” Ethan said.

  “You win, you get me.”

  “Don’t I anyway?”

  “Probably not if you’re going to be a dickhead playing cards,” she said, but grinned.

  He looked at her.

  “Shit,” Beth said. “You get me anyway, just in less of a trophy kind of way.”