Through the Hole — Part 2

I slept in pieces. Every time I woke up my hand was already between my legs, like my body had made a decision my mouth hadn’t signed. The shower from Wednesday night hadn’t done what I needed it to do. I could still feel the floor in my knees. I made coffee at 6:50 and drank it standing at the sink looking at his mug from Sunday, the one with the chipped handle he refuses to throw away.

Thursday I wore the navy dress Rohan bought me in Goa last year. Not because I wanted him on my skin. Because the zipper is on the side and the skirt is loose enough to hike without a fight. I stood in the bathroom at 7:40 and put on the same small gold earrings I wear every weekday so nothing would look different when I walked into the office. My wedding ring was already on. I left it on.

I told myself that meant I was still the person who leaves it on. I don’t know if I believed it. I just needed a sentence that would get me out the door.

At work I made coffee I didn’t drink. I answered three emails about a vendor invoice and one about a birthday collection for someone in accounts I have never spoken to. Priya leaned on my cubicle wall at 11:20 and asked if I wanted to go downstairs for lunch. I said I had a dentist thing. The lie came out clean. That scared me more than what I was going to do.

Rohan texted at 10:12. A photo of a lanyard and a sad plate of hotel fruit. Miss you. Wish I was home.

I looked at it until the screen dimmed. Then I typed miss you too and set the phone face down next to a stack of printouts I was not reading.

I left at 12:05. I told the front desk I had a personal appointment. Nobody asked what. In the elevator I caught my reflection in the brushed metal and practiced a normal face. It looked like my face. That was the problem.

The drive was shorter than Wednesday. I sat in the car eight minutes instead of twenty. I almost left once, not twice. I chewed a piece of mint gum until it had no taste and spit it into a tissue and put the tissue in the cup holder like evidence I would deal with later. I thought about the last time Rohan and I had sex. March. Lights off. He came and rolled over and was asleep before I had decided whether I was going to finish. I used that memory the way some people use a drink. Then I got out of the car.

The industrial park is uglier in noon light. Same plain door. Same smell when it opened — bleach, old carpet, and that other thing I still don’t want to name. The man at the counter took the cash without lifting his eyes. My hands were steadier than Wednesday. I hated that.

I walked the row of black curtains. One of them shivered. A woman came out of a booth near the front and fixed her hair with the flat of her palm, and we did not look at each other. I took the far booth again because I already knew where the lock sat.

Chair. Silent porn on a screen the size of a laptop. The hole in the wall at waist height, rubber worn dull around the edge.

I had said oral only. Out loud, in the car, like a rule gets stronger if you hear it. I locked the door and put my phone on silent. A calendar alert sat there for a 2:00 standup. Fifty minutes if I wanted to be back without anyone doing math.

Nothing happened long enough that I almost used it as permission to leave. Then the rubber moved and a cock came through, already hard, darker than the first one yesterday, a vein standing along the top. I looked at it the way you look at a door you’ve already opened.

I didn’t touch it right away. I looked at my own hand first. The ring. I thought about sliding it off and dropping it in my bag and I didn’t. I closed my fingers around him with the gold still on and felt him twitch in my palm.

He was clean. They all seem to be, or I need them to be so I can keep doing this. I put my mouth on him because waiting made the decision worse. He made a sound through the wall — not a word, just air leaving a body. I used my hand and my mouth and I was already wet, which made me angry in a small useless way. I had not come here to arrive like this.

I pulled off to breathe and a string of spit hung between my lip and him. I wiped it with the back of my wrist and went back down. He came faster than I expected. I swallowed because yesterday I had, and because there was nowhere else for it to go that wouldn’t show on navy fabric. Some still caught the corner of my mouth. I sat on my heels and used one of those brown paper towels that come apart the second they’re wet.

I had twenty-something minutes before I needed to be good.

The second one was pushing through before I had stood up. Thicker. My jaw still ached from Wednesday and I took him anyway. Same rhythm. One hand under the dress, same as last time, and I came quieter, biting the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t make the sound I made before. He finished on my tongue. I swallowed most of it and the rest I caught with the towel.

12:41 on the phone.

I told myself to stand up and unlock the door.

I turned around instead.

I pulled the dress up around my waist. I wasn’t wearing anything under it. I had taken the underwear off in the parking lot and folded it into the glove box like that was a thing a married woman does between a standup and a vendor email. I put my palms on the opposite wall. The hole is the right height if you bend your knees. I backed up until I felt him — a third one; I hadn’t even looked — and he pushed in without the slow care of yesterday. I was ready enough that it didn’t matter.

The partition was cool against my forehead. My ring clicked against the wood when I shifted my weight. That small sound, gold on cheap laminate, stayed in my head longer than his breathing did. I thought about taking the ring off then, mid-stroke, and I didn’t. I wanted it there. I wanted the ugly little click. I don’t have a better explanation than that.

He fucked me like he had someplace to be. Maybe he did. I came with my mouth open and no voice. For a second I pictured Rohan’s face the way it looks when he’s trying to be gentle, and the picture didn’t survive contact with this. When he finished I felt it the same way I felt it Wednesday, that specific heat that makes you clench around nothing after they pull out.

I should have left then.

A fourth one came through while I was still bent over, still wet from the last man. I reached back and put him where he needed to be. I don’t remember deciding that. He was longer and he found something that made my knee slip on the floor. I caught myself on the wall. He held my hip through the hole, fingers digging in above the fabric, and when he came he stayed inside an extra few seconds like he wanted me to take all of it.

I stayed like that after he left. Just breathing. The silent porn on the screen was two people who would get to look at each other when they were done. I laughed once, under my breath, and it sounded wrong in a room that small.

12:54. Six minutes if I didn’t clean up.

I cleaned up anyway. The towels again. They stuck. I pulled the dress down and it clung to the back of my thighs. I checked my face in the black mirror of my phone. Mouth a little swollen. I put on the lipstick I keep in my bag for late meetings and it helped less than I wanted.

I unlocked the door. The corridor was empty. The man at the counter was looking at his phone. I walked out into the heat and felt it hit the wet on my skin and thought I might be sick, and then I wasn’t.

In the car I sat with the windows up for one full minute. The smell was in the seat now, or in me. I opened the glove box, put the underwear back on even though it was pointless, and drove with the air on high and the radio off.

I made the 2:00 standup. I said two sentences about the vendor and nodded at a slide I didn’t see. Priya messaged under the table, are you okay you look flushed, and I wrote long walk. She sent a thumbs-up.

After the meeting I went to the bathroom, locked the stall, and sat down and felt them still leaving me. I wiped again. I washed my hands three times at the sink. Under the white light my ring looked like itself. I had left it on on purpose and I still didn’t have a clean sentence for why.

Rohan called at 4:17. I almost let it go. Then I picked up, because not picking up would be a thing, and I am still a person who doesn’t do things.

“Hey.” Airport noise behind him. “They moved my return. Saturday morning now, not Friday night. I’m sorry.”

I said it was fine. I asked about the meetings. He talked for two minutes about a client who wouldn’t sign and a dinner he couldn’t get out of. I held the phone to my ear and looked at the navy dress hanging a little wrong on my body and thought: I have one more day.

“I miss you,” he said.

“I miss you too.”

After we hung up I sat at my desk and opened a blank note on my phone. I titled it dentist. I typed the address. I copied the hours from the website I had bookmarked and not deleted. Thursday I had gone at lunch. Friday I could go in the morning if I said I had a filling.

I closed everything at six and drove home to the empty apartment. His coffee mug was still in the sink from Sunday. I washed it and set it in the rack the way I always do. I stood in the shower until the water went lukewarm and used the soap he likes, the cedar one, and I could still feel the other smell under it no matter how hard I scrubbed.

I ate toast standing at the counter. I opened the laptop and did not watch anything. I just sat with the note open and the cursor blinking like it was waiting for me to be honest.

At eleven I got into our bed. The sheets were clean. I had changed them Monday like a good wife. I put my hand between my legs because my body does not care about the story I keep trying to tell, and I came thinking about the ring clicking on the wall, which is not a thing I ever wanted to know about myself.

I checked the phone one more time. Rohan had sent a heart. I sent one back. I almost wrote I need to tell you something and I deleted it letter by letter until the box was empty again.

I keep telling myself I can stop before he lands.

I already put Friday morning in the calendar. I titled the block dentist. I set it for 9:30 so I would have to leave the house before I could talk myself out of it.

I still can’t believe I did it.

I already know I’m going to do it again.