When My Heart Joins the Thousand(19)

For a long moment, he says nothing. I don’t know what he’s thinking. He closes his eyes and breathes in slowly. “Then . . . yes.”

Vertigo swims over me. Yes. He said yes. I’m going to have sex with Stanley Finkel. Tonight.

“Do you still want to know about my turn-ons?” he asks.

“I would appreciate the information, yes.” Remembering his reaction, I add, “But you don’t have to tell me.”

He chews his lower lip. He keeps doing that. He’s going to make himself bleed if he’s not careful. “How about I answer one question?”

I consider. “All right. Tell me one thing you like, then. One thing you find attractive.”

“About you, or . . .”

“Anything.”

“I guess . . .” He fiddles with his silverware. “Ilikethosestockingsyou’rewearing.”

The words come out in a rush. I have to pause to untangle them. “My stockings.” I frown and glance down at them—black-and-white striped and a bit too large so they bunch in folds around my ankles. There’s a hole in the left knee. I never thought of them as sexy. “Really.”

“I just think they’re cute.”

I nod. “I’ll keep them on, in that case.”

He’s blushing again. He crosses his arms over his chest, and his fingers press into his biceps hard enough to whiten the skin around his nails. “The thing is . . . I’m . . .”

I wait.

“Never mind.” He smiles, a quick tightening of his facial muscles. “Is this the part where I say ‘my place or yours?’”

I haven’t actually considered where we’re going to do this.

I think about my apartment: the piles of clothes on the floor, the naked walls and balding carpet, the barren refrigerator with the moldy lump in the corner that was once a ham sandwich and which I haven’t thrown out yet because I’m afraid to touch it. I decide I don’t want him to see my apartment. But the idea of being in someone else’s place is even more overwhelming, like being in a foreign land where I don’t know the laws or the language. “Neither.”

“Where, then?”

“There’s a motel nearby. I can drive us there.”

“We’re doing this like a real one-night stand, huh?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know how one-night stands usually happen. But I think a motel would work better.”

He lowers his gaze. His smile has faded. “If you say so.”

I wonder what he was about to say earlier, before he stopped. It must have been something. I think about asking. But then, if he didn’t bother to finish his sentence, it can’t have been that important.





CHAPTER TEN


Last night, in preparation for my time with Stanley, I downloaded about ten gigabytes of pornography. I already knew the biology of sex, but not the technique, the various positions and angles.

In large doses, hard-core porn becomes boring very quickly. Once you fast-forward through the dialogue and mute the music, it comes down to watching two sweaty strangers endlessly pumping, thrusting, and sucking. There’s something mechanical about it.

Through my viewing, I discovered that, with enough lubricant, you can fit almost anything anywhere, and apparently some women enjoy being spanked by a man in uniform. But in the end, I came away from it feeling like I hadn’t learned much at all.

In the motel room, there are blue carnations on the wallpaper in bunches of twos and threes. Two-three. In ancient China, it was believed that certain numbers held sexual significance. Prime numbers were masculine, and twenty-three was considered especially potent because it’s the sum of three consecutive prime numbers. My age, seventeen, is also a prime number, and the sum of the first four primes.

“Alvie?”

My gaze jerks toward Stanley. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, fiddling with his crutch. He clears his throat. “I, uh. I’m not sure how I’m going to do this without touching you. I mean, I’ll try not to. I’ll keep my hands on the bed. But—”

“If it happens by accident, I’ll deal with it.” I trust him not to do it on purpose, which is more than I usually trust anyone. “Just be careful.”

“I will.” His voice turns softer. “I promise.” He’s still fully dressed. Maybe he’s waiting for me.

I start to peel off my shirt.

“Wait,” he says. I stop.

A flush creeps into his cheeks. “People usually kiss before they start taking off their clothes.”

I tilt my head. “You want to kiss me.”

His blush grows brighter. “I, uh—was that a question?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry. It’s hard to tell with you.” A pause. “Do you want to?”

I think about this for a moment. When I see people kissing on TV, they always look like they’re trying to eat each other’s faces, and they make wet slurping sounds that remind me of a plunger sucking a blockage from a toilet. “I’m okay with just getting undressed.”

He fidgets. “You know, maybe we should turn up the heat. It’s pretty cold in h—”

I remove my shirt. Stanley clutches the edge of the bed like he’s about to fall off.