Gage stopped, an expectant look on his face. I doubted he really wanted to know the little story. More likely, he didn’t want to leave.
“My brother, the stoner one, dropped a stack of the wedding china we never use except at Christmas,” James said. “Eight plates that would’ve cost about three hundred bucks to replace. He doesn’t have that kind of money. We told him to forget about it. Now he makes a point of giving us one incredibly ugly plate every Christmas, a gag gift.”
“Oh. Well, I can afford a bed. Just let me know how much. Ah, good night, then. And I’m sorry.”
“We know,” I said. Was it just going to end like this? I caught my husband’s eye: do something!
James reached for Gage’s hand. “Come to bed.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Really?” Gage’s expression lit like a child’s. “I’ll try. I can’t promise, but I’ll try, I really will.” His Adam’s apple bobbed twice.
James shooed away the offer. “It’s not always about sex. Let’s just get some sleep, take a fresh look at things in the morning.” He unzipped his Levi’s on the way to the bathroom.
“Me next,” I said to the door he’d closed for once.
“Natalie, help me out. Am I supposed to sleep naked when it’s not sex, or what?”
“We both do, when it’s hot, but if it doesn’t feel right, keep your underwear.” I intended to keep the sheet that wrapped me until full darkness once again prevailed.
The toilet flushed; then water ran in the sink. Tired or not, James had to wash his scraped knuckle and deal with his contact lenses.
“If you’re both undressed, I guess I can be. Who’s in the middle?”
“We don’t have a protocol all worked out. This is a first for us too.”
“You take the middle.”
“Fine.” It might be more comfortable for James too, to have me sleeping with unaccustomed closeness rather than Gage.
James emerged, and I too closed the bathroom door for a change. I could hear his and Gage’s voices while I got ready for bed, but not what they said. When I was done, the room was dark, two pale forms at the edges of the bed. I turned off the bathroom light.
“Nat-a-lie!” James cried in a falsetto. “We’re so cold. We need our covers.”
“Please, Natalie, we’re cold.” Gage’s high voice was childlike, convincing. It was easy to forget he was an actor until he turned it on. “So cold, so cold.”
So silly! Oddly endearing too. “It must be seventy-five in here.”
“Still doesn’t mean we don’t want the sheet,” James said.
I unfurled the big sheet from the lumpy sarong I’d made, then flung it as flat as I could, like Aunt Lottie with a tablecloth.
It settled down over them both, completely straight. Which, I thought with amusement, was more than could be said for them.
I crawled over James, easy with the bed on the floor, and found my place between them, not touching either one but too close to both.
James started the brief go-to-sleep ritual we’d begun years ago, at the end of a day filled with bickering and short tempers. “Good night, Nat. I love you.”
“Night, James. I love you too. Good night, Gage.”
“Good night,” he said. “And thank you. Both.”
“You’re welcome,” James said. “Good night.”
The air stood thickly silent despite the fan. Lying between two men instead of next to one proved uncomfortable, although Gage hugged one edge of the mattress. He was still too close for a pocket of cooler air between us.
James already breathed noisily, not quite snoring. As my eyes adjusted, I could see Gage relax, his shoulder dropping, his arm probably dangling, asleep or close to it.
Lying awake, I oozed perspiration. Who could sleep so insufferably warm? Especially when her husband’s knee repeatedly pushed her thigh, and she couldn’t resent it because he was sound asleep.
Finally I recognized the glassy unreality of my thoughts as almost sleep. I let myself drift.
The dream could have been a commercial for hair coloring or a feminine hygiene product. In a filmy white gown laughably unlike me, I stood in a broad, slow river, the sun-warmed water burbling theatrically. The watching me knew what the dream-me didn’t as the water flowed faster, climbing slowly to my knees, then my thighs, the current so powerful it threatened to sweep me away, and warm, so urgently warm.
I woke needing to pee, of course. There was no doubt that both the men were soundly asleep, their breathing slow and steady and a little loud. I couldn’t get up without waking somebody.
James had to work tomorrow; decision made. Still, I tried to climb over Gage without touching him. He stirred but didn’t seem to wake fully. I used the bathroom in the dark, knowing the light under the closed door would beam right at his face.
I debated, then didn’t flush. I ran a near-silent trickle of cool water into the little bathroom glass, drained it, and drank two more, then dampened a washcloth and ran it over my face, chest, and as much of my back as I could reach. I felt a little cooler.
Gage was awake when I returned.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“I have to go too. A flush wakes him?”
“No. I was afraid it would wake you. Let me go flush before you use it.”
“Don’t bother.”
He returned quickly, to find me sitting on the edge of the mattress instead of lying on it. He sat next to me and whispered, “You okay?”
“Yes. I just wanted to swap places. I’ll probably have to get up again, and he’s sound asleep.”
“Fine. Good night.” He eased onto the mattress carefully, making sure not to touch James.
Now I clung to the edge of the mattress like he had, grateful to have a place to extend a bare arm, then a foot, a calf, finally an entire leg, into the cooling air. The night sounds few Tucsonans ever heard soothed me, crickets and soft wind and distant traffic.
“Natalie?” Gage touched my shoulder.
I snapped awake. “What?” I rolled over. Gage lay on his side, his face anxious in the dimness.
“Can we trade back? James is, you know, poking something he thinks is yours.”
I smothered my laugh with one hand.
James said, “I know whose ass my cock’s poking. Not sure about the welcome, though.”
“I’m pretty sure I owe you,” Gage said.
“Oh, are we keeping a scorecard?” I asked. “I must owe him hundreds.”
“Thousands,” James said. “Natalie, where’s that stuff I bought?”
“Um, everywhere? What stuff?”
“I bought some lube, remember?”
No. He’d probably hoped to use it on Gage, then, when he disappeared, on me. “I’ll check the drawer.” Reaching upward to open the little drawer in the nightstand was odd. I groped blindly among the coins, capless pens and pointless pencils, extra buttons, matches from restaurants, and the vibrator Jamie had bought me years ago as a gag when he accepted a job in Yuma, even though he came home every weekend. Finally, I felt a tube, way at the back. “Got it, I think.”
Under Gage’s gaze, I set the lube within James’s reach. He peered close enough to read the logo, then flipped open the cap and squeezed some onto his fingers. His hand disappeared under the top sheet.
I moved back, my dark-adapted eyes aligned with Gage’s. He smiled at me.
I didn’t need to see under the sheets to know what happened there. Gage’s eyebrows rose the moment James touched the cool gel to him, and he opened his eyes wide when my husband slipped a finger inside. Thirty seconds later they eased nearly closed.
“That’s good,” James murmured into the darkness, “nice and easy, get you all slippery and loose, no rushing either one of us.”
Was I even there? Not for them.
Gage’s breathing quickened, and he rocked his hips forward and back, aiding in his own lubricated fingering. His expression flitted from one mode to another: a faint smile, a disapproving frow
n, a slack-mouthed blank, a scowl of concentration. All were quite handsome, supplemented by the heavy-lidded look of a man intent on sensation.
James was taking his time with the foreplay, the way he had early in our marriage, when he’d had to make me want it desperately before he dared enter my body. I reminded myself I didn’t need long, slow foreplay these days, and that my point of entry was elastic and didn’t need stretching or relaxation, whatever James was doing back there.
Gage let his eyes drift closed and stay that way, although his expressions still changed. I don’t think he noticed when the head of his erect penis touched warm moisture to my thigh.
Twice in such rapid succession was unusual for James, who needed a few hours in between, and often a nap too. Not Gage. He was ready to go again, so long as it was with James.
Of course, I wasn’t as exciting. I certainly wasn’t as beautiful, and I lacked the genitalia to do what Gage seemed to want most.
“Ah, let’s try this,” James said softly. “Yeah, two fingers. You can take two now, yeah. That’s good, isn’t it, two? Right, you control it, back onto them however slow you need to. That’s good, so good; feel how you’re opening up for the cock that’s coming.”
Gage worked himself on James’s hand, apparently lost in the sensation and his anticipation, for a few minutes. His penis traced loops of goo on my leg, slipping across the fresh deposits and hanging up on those already drying.
Part of me acknowledged that in a good threesome, the woman would be handling him, not analyzing his precum pattern. But I didn’t. Instead I felt left out, overlooked. This wasn’t us; it was them.
“Now, James, I’m ready now.”
“Just a second.” I heard a tiny ripping sound, then smelled the unmistakable condom scent. Our box springs creaked as James shifted his position. “How’s that?” His voice was breathy. “It’s really tight for me, but is it too tight for you? God.”
“No, just go slow.”
I watched Gage bite his lip over a small sound. No one moved or spoke for a minute or more. I guessed James could tell when whatever hurt had eased enough to proceed.
After that, each time James evidently introduced another half inch of himself Gage wore the smallest not quite wince. He would squeeze his closed eyelids a little tighter, and they’d gradually relax to the calm closure of sleep. James must have been able to feel when it was time to go in a little more.
“That’s all I got,” James announced several minutes later. “Are you okay with it?”
Gage opened those dark eyes, looking at me while he talked to James. “Yeah. Feels like a foot.”
“When I stick my steel-toed boot up your ass, you’ll know,” James said. “We good to go?”
“God, yes. Easy, okay?”
“Of course.”
Something odd happened while James worked himself in Gage’s body. Gage and I locked eyes, intimate in the same way as when we’d had sex earlier, although he wasn’t touching me.
The bed shook rhythmically, gently at first but working toward a frenzied, spring-squealing rocking that made the mattress shift off its box spring, until my edge sagged and I risked falling off. I moved a little closer to Gage.
“Natalie.” James used the sex-hoarse voice I knew so well. “Give the guy a hand up front, would you?”
“Don’t. I’m too close already.”
So I didn’t. James’s thrusts slowed, shaking the whole bed and driving Gage toward me a quarter inch, then another. Combined with the shifting mattress, he was so near I could feel his breath.
Gage’s expression approached a grimace. Was James hurting him?
No. That little mew reached a tomcat low before it was over and Gage’s semen spattered my belly.
“Oh, man, Jamie,” he said. “Goddamn, that was good.”
“Not yet it isn’t. Turn over, on your stomach.”
They threw the sheet off all of us, although I’d been comfortable with its cover. The men gleamed white in the semi-darkness, like sculpture at twilight. James backed away, one hand on his penis, while Gage rolled forward to lie flat. He raised his rump so high my lower back ached in sympathy. James replanted himself without difficulty.
Now James went at him in earnest. He pulled well back, slowly, so far his shaft must be nearly free, then slammed it in, his belly meeting upturned buttocks with a muted clap. Again. And again, and yet again. Gage put his arms up, bracing himself against the wall.
He didn’t look like he was enjoying it, but he didn’t look uncomfortable—at first. His head drooped lower than his tensed arms. He looked at me, but I could not read the mouth he set a little, nor the eyes tightening at each thrust.
As Jamie pounded him, gaining speed, Gage’s mouth pursed in a pucker synchronized with eyes winced shut. Gage must have seen the concern on my face, because he shook his head no, then turned away, as if my not seeing the hurt meant it didn’t happen.
Still, when James gave the airless bellow that meant he was coming, Gage turned my way again as he pushed his butt up and back, giving James the most access and giving me a face contorted in pain.
“Oh, yeah,” James said a minute later and pulled himself free. “Worth the wait. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Gage said. “Excuse me a minute?” He stumbled past me and closed the bathroom door before turning on the light, the fan, and the water.
“The man needs his privacy,” James said. “Maybe now I’ll be able to sleep.”
He was already gone by the time Gage came back to bed. “Take the middle,” I said quietly.
He didn’t argue. When he slipped past me, I smelled soap; he’d given himself a whore’s bath at the sink.
I wished James had. The room smelled of sweaty men and cum and dust and unwashed butt crack and maybe a trace of bathroom. Better to lie next to Gage and the masking scent of the cucumber-melon soap in the pump bottle.
He slept soon enough. I lay awake, mildly resentful of their sated slumber, long enough that it was silly of me. Finally I rose, grabbed a robe from the hook in the closet without caring whose it was, and crept from the room.
Chapter Fifteen
Cooling muffins and the flat plastic boxes I packed them in waited on the counter.
“Couldn’t sleep?” James selected a misshapen muffin while I poured his coffee, and pecked my cheek when he accepted the mug.
Gage stumbled into the room and sat at the table. “Morning,” he said. He’d put his shirt on inside out again.
I found another clean mug, the dinosaur one James deemed too silly, and poured Gage a cup.
“Someone’s not a morning person,” James said.
“I am when I have to be. If these are the hours you two keep, then these are my hours when I’m here. Natalie, is there any sugar? Don’t wait on me. Just tell me where to get it.”
“Canister’s out,” James said. “It’s the one that says ‘SUGAR.’”
I handed Gage a spoon. “Did you sleep?” I set muffins in boxes, twelve each. The crews would work out who got how many.
He stirred two spoons of sugar into his coffee and smiled even sweeter. “Yeah. Looks like you didn’t, though.”
“My crews love it when Nat can’t sleep.”
“It must happen a lot, if you’ve got boxes to transport them. Are there enough that I can have one?”
“Sure. As many as you want.”
“Ugly ones first,” James added.
The phone rang. James tilted back in his chair to pick it up. “Hello? No, we’re up. What’s going on?” He listened, the lightning bolt appearing between his brows. “I thought so. Get some rest, and call your doctor’s office when they open. I need you well more than I need you fast. Uh-huh. Listen, give me a call tonight so I can shuffle people around before tomorrow if I need to. Okay, take care of yourself. Tell Maria not to take any of your shit too.” He hung up.
“Manny’s sick?” I asked.
“I told him he didn’t look good enough to be back. He wasn
’t.” James filled his big thermos, emptying the pot. “I could pull Ray off the steps rebuild, but if he shared a ride out with Carlos, I’ll have to drive him. And pick him up, I guess, in time to get him back by quitting time. There goes a man-hour. Fuck. Or pull Carlos too. If Manny’s not there and Carlos isn’t either, we’ll be behind in two days, maybe only one. Fuck! I need this Rincon thing to go perfect and on time.”
“Here, these are ready.” I followed him to the carport, clutching my robe so it couldn’t blow open before I could set the muffin boxes in the truck’s cab.
“I’m sorry to run out like this. Are you okay with Gage?”
“I guess.”
“Just tell him to go home when you’ve had enough.” James grinned, then kissed me, feeling me up right in the carport. I batted his hands away. What if the neighbors saw?
Only Mrs. Webb’s lights were on this early, and she often left everything ablaze overnight.
“Not enough of that.” James grinned, cocking one eyebrow. “That’s only for when I’m there too.”
“Of course. I love you, handsome.”
He smiled. He really was as handsome to me as Gage was to everyone. “Love you too.” He got into the truck, which coughed but started on the second try, backed down the gravel driveway a few feet, and stopped, cranking his window down.
I walked down the driveway so his raised voice wouldn’t wake our sleeping neighbors. “What?”
“I’m getting low on sunscreen. I have enough for today, but I’ll need it for tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’ll get some. Bye, babe.”
Inside, Gage stood at the kitchen window overlooking the carport.
“He didn’t even say good-bye,” he said.
“He has a lot on his mind.”
“I know. But still. No. Never mind. I’m making something out of nothing. Is it okay if I make more coffee?”
* * * *
Two cups of coffee and a shower later, I felt fine, although I knew I’d pay for my sleeplessness later with a bad mood, possibly a headache.
Gage had turned a chair backward at the dining room table and sat astride it like a junior high student, his Levi’ed bottom not touching it. He waved at me as he talked on a cell phone. “Uh-huh, but you know they’ll go for it. I know, I know; I was there. Listen, it’s not whether you’re uncomfortable with it; it’s whether you even fucking try. You want to keep your client happy, that’s what you’ll do. Yeah, tell the Don it was business, ha-ha. We’re good, but I gotta go. I’ll call tomorrow or the next day, see how it went. Later.”
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