The Stud Book (12 page)

Conception was a harsh business. Slam two gametes together hard enough, you get a zygote. You could potentially get other things too—chlamydia, AIDS, the rage of human entanglements, the big-time energy suck of courtship and nesting, the credit card charge of IKEA baby furniture making everybody a slave to work.

That was the cost of copulation.

Ben put his arms around Sarah, one hand over her stomach. Under his hand, under her skin, their child was made up of cells dividing and multiplying, creating enough of all the right pieces to build a human. The reproductive act is an unacknowledged death in the face of life: an egg and a sperm had committed their tiny double suicide to create the zygote of the next generation. Sarah and Ben would give up their old lives to make a new one.

This destruction of the self in the name of creation is a dead-serious bonding.

“I love you so much,” she said, and reached for a stainless steel bowl on her nightstand. Her words were cut short as she spit into the bowl, put the bowl on the floor, and hung her head over the edge, waiting to see if she’d hurl. Morning sickness sometimes ran into the night.

She stretched her arm to touch Shadow’s fur, where the dog slept on his dog bed. Ben rubbed her back. He whispered, “I love you.” His hand found its way to her shoulder blades, beneath the thin, worn spaghetti straps of her cotton nightgown.

She said, “We want this more than anything. It’ll be wonderful. Besides, we’re already on our way.”

H
umble let himself into the dark house, peeled off his coat, and draped it over a chair that sat near the front door. The floorboards creaked under his feet. The only other sound in the house, a mechanical heartbeat, pounded through the ceiling from upstairs. Georgie played a white noise machine to help Bella sleep. The heartbeat, complete with the ragged murmur of blood flowing in and out of ventricles, was meant to reproduce the sounds of the womb.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump
.

She turned it up so damn loud, it sounded like they lived in a womb.

That heartbeat was the sound track for a murder scene. Humble felt guilty entering his own house—creeping; that heartbeat’s thump was an accusation, and turned his careful tiptoe into creeping.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump
.

He saw the glow of a night-light down the hall, in the kitchen, and walked toward it—crept toward it, quietly.
Thump-thump
. Then he saw Georgie, naked from her head to her painted toenails, standing next to a cold chicken on a plate on the counter. She held a glass of red wine. Her pubic hair was a dark patch just below food level.
Her C-section scar was angry, though healing, at cutting-board level. She peeled white meat off the carcass and put it to her lips. Her eyes flickered toward Humble.

Her skin was powder white, white as cocaine where the night-light hit her curves, paler than roast chicken. She said, “Look, I put the baby down, right? She’s asleep upstairs. Proud of me?”

Thump-thump
.

He moved around her and pulled himself against her from behind, up against her tattoo, where it read, just above the curve of her ass,
THE SECOND SEX
. The French feminist philosopher was honored in that sweet spot, which was so wrong and exactly right.

“What can I say? I have abandonment issues. I don’t want to leave her alone.”

He said, “You’re a goddess,” and moved in closer, his clothed body warm against her naked skin.

She wiped the back of her hand against her mouth. He’d called her a goddess back before they were married, when they first met, at a smoky party in Sarah’s apartment. Goddess of Jägermeister.

When they met she had a pint of Jäger tucked into her cleavage, a cold bottle growing warm, a dark green dress cut low. She pulled out the bottle and made him beg. He was willing. She poured it into his mouth, a big joke, and sticky liquor spilled onto his Social Distortion T-shirt.
MOMMY’S LITTLE MONSTER
, the shirt said. Where’d that shirt go, anyway?

Now she picked up a drumstick, took a bite, and then held it over her shoulder. He bit the meat she offered. Her pale ass rubbed against his worn jeans.

He ran a hand over one of her breasts, and felt her heartbeat below, under the cage of her ribs. Her heart was faster than the electronic beat, a quick dance step. Her breasts were huge, milk-filled, white, and marked with the darkened nipples of pregnancy, the thin lines of blue veins. He loved her body, extra pounds and all. His cock rose to the occasion, a show of appreciation.

And the electronic heartbeat thumped through the floor, muffled. He whispered, “Do we need the horror flick sound track?” He rubbed his hard cock, trapped under his clothes, against her naked skin.

She said, “It helps.” She turned in Humble’s arms, soft and
warm and naked, and moved against him with a comfortable frankness, more woman than girl.

Humble said, “She’s already sleeping, right?”

She dropped the chicken leg back on the platter. Humble took her hand. Her fingers were greasy. He said, “I miss you.” He missed seeing her alone, without Bella in her arms. He pulled her toward the living room, toward the couch. “What happened to that green dress?”

She said, “Green dress?”

“Goddess of Jägermeister?” he said.

“Ah. Goodwill, I think. Or Freecycle. Maybe I put it out at the curb.” She moved into his arms.

He unbuckled his pants. His belt dropped to the floor, and they flinched at the clatter. That’d wake their light-sleeping angel. He said, “Shit.”

“Shush. She’ll be fine.” Babies were supposed to sleep like babies, right? Theirs, though, slept on the alert.

Georgie and Humble moved down together, onto the couch. One of them knocked a book off a coffee table. It hit the ground with a loud smack. They froze, Georgie on her back, Humble still in his shirt, otherwise naked, leaning over her.

The house was quiet except for the heartbeat.
Thump-thump
. “It’s okay,” Georgie said. She reached for Hum’s shoulder.

Then Bella’s siren wail cut through the sound of the muffled, pounding heart. It was the howl of a baby crying as though newly arrived, already late to the party.

B
en worked in a cube farm on the fourth floor of the old Standard Premiums Life Assurance building. Life assurance was along the lines of life insurance, only with a British parent company, and they offered investment advice as well as insurance. He loved that set of words, “Life Assurance”—like they sold a solid pat on the back. These days the building was divided. The mortgage company where he worked occupied a floor and a half. When Ben needed to camp out in
el baño
he’d take the back stairs to somebody else’s floor, to a place where his big shoes wouldn’t immediately be recognized under a stall door. He’d find one of the few bathrooms located in a hallway, not embedded in the offices of a bank, a real estate broker, or a skin rejuvenation clinic.

If he used the toilet on his own floor it was a parade of feet outside the stall, a waterfall of piss and shoptalk, a chorus of
Hey, how’s it going?
He didn’t want to mix his stink with the guy who, for the rest of the day, sat on the other side of his cubicle, shared his lunch break, and swapped turns at the microwave.

He carried his newspaper folded in quarters and tucked inside a mortgage file, alongside somebody’s credit history, a borrower’s
lifeline drawn in financial choices. Then he marched down the hall, nodded at coworkers, and checked his watch like he had a meeting.

A meeting with his bowels and his newspaper.

Ben didn’t take smoke breaks. He cruised through a week’s worth of files before Wednesday. He helped other underwriters with the mess they made out of VA loans. He deserved time away from his cube.

He found a bathroom with two urinals, one stall, and nobody in it.

He settled in, pants around his ankles and a cup of coffee on the flat square space afforded by the metal box of a toilet paper holder, then dropped the ruse mortgage file to the floor. Overhead an automated room deodorizer gave off a hiss and released the scent of sweet oranges. Ben unfolded his paper to the front page. He turned to the page behind that—world news and politics—and there she was: his college girlfriend. Hannah. His stomach lurched and gurgled, instantly sour. He recognized her smile even before he saw the headline—before he saw that she’d just been elected senator.

Well, state senator.

He’d known she was in the running. He’d seen a glimpse of her on TV at night. Mostly, he hadn’t let himself think about it. In the black-and-white AP photo, Hannah stood at the top of a short flight of metal stairs. A photographer had snapped the picture as she twisted back to wave, her head slightly ducked to accommodate the short airplane doorway. Who was she waving to? Maybe she waved to her not-so-new-anymore husband, her fans, the world. Somebody outside the picture. She wasn’t waving to Ben, where he warmed his throne. Ben was out of that picture for good.

He leaned forward in a slouch and the automatic sensor on the toilet sent a silent message; the toilet flushed, swirled, and sprayed atomized toilet water on Ben’s cold flanks.

He folded his paper back, keeping Hannah’s photo on top. He pulled the paper closer. If she’d aged, the details were lost in cheap ink. She was a natural beauty, unfettered and makeup free. Ben ran a hand over his own forehead then through his thinning-but-still-thick (as the fifteen-year-old at Kuts-R-Us assured him) head of hair.

Hannah had one of those lady politician cuts now—between short and long, girlish and womanly, conservative and liberal—but
it didn’t look bad, and it wasn’t molded into a helmet of hair spray. Her skirt was square and plain. Her jacket matched. She was pretending to be a Kennedy. But her calf, above a dull shoe, raised up in a sculpted muscle, and in the line of that muscle, Ben saw she was still there, the girl he’d once screwed, hidden under the costume. She was radiant.

As far as he could surmise, she’d never had children.

He ran a finger over a shadow that hinted at the curve of her ass.

In the old days she’d cut her hair herself. She’d sit cross-legged on her bed in her dorm room and cut her pubic hair, too, with these big, cheap black-handled schoolteacher scissors. She’d cut, make a face, and say, “Yikes!” Then she’d laugh and throw a clump of pubes in the general direction of the wastebasket.

Her roommate hated her.

Ben knew a few things about Hannah. If there was one person who could stir up a sex scandal as she climbed her way into office, it was him. Maybe. It was a powerful feeling, to be in on a shared secret past.

The thought lasted one second. What did he have? He had old news about straight, white, single college kids getting it on, and one of the kids was him, back when he was skinny and sustained by the world of big ideas. He didn’t party in college. He studied, and then he fell in love.

That was all before he met Sarah, before his life found its shape.

What was the worst thing they’d done, he and Hannah, and the best—the hottest, sketchiest sex they had? She had these sheets, these stupid Holly Hobby sheets from St. Vincent de Paul, a church thrift store, and he remembered the way she’d wake up warm and naked next to him on a bed of pink and blue, and right away he hated himself for being such a sap.
Hot sex, hot sex, hot sex
, he drilled the words in his head and tried to remember.

Outside the stall door a faucet turned on. Ben listened, scanned the floor. There were no feet. Nobody had come in. It was automated, triggered by a ghost, a fly, a blip in the mechanism.

In college, if his life was set to run like a machine, he hadn’t noticed it yet.

Hannah, a star on the swim team, had the X of a Speedo permanently tanned into her back. Her ass was pale and plump. She wore
earrings only when she wanted to impress somebody. Ben pulled the paper closer. She had earrings on.

His cock lifted between his legs. He shifted the paper to his left hand, to reach down with his right and tug his balls. He listened for the door. He’d stop if he heard footsteps. He could stop. Yes, he was a freak, getting hard while he sat on the shitter like a woman, but it felt good, that heat and rise. His scrotum contracted under his fingers.