John Lutz - The Ex

“Ah, damn it, Deirdre, don’t.” His gaze darted to the door.

A minute later she stood up, laughing. “Apparently you don’t think this is such a bad idea at that, David.” She stroked his erect penis.

He knew she was determined and the smartest thing now was to get it over with, to let her satisfy herself. As she backed him against a wall, he offered no resistance.

In her spike high heels she was the right height to move in on him, raise herself slightly, then envelope him warmly. He felt a thrill he hadn’t expected as she plunged along the length of his erection, groaning sensuously. She was still for a few seconds, then began to grind her hips.

“You’re harder than I can ever remember, David. It’s sex and death. They go together, don’t they? Bernice is laid out there on her back in her coffin, so beautiful. Almost like a doll. Did you ever have sex with Bernice, David?”

“That’s sick, Deirdre!” He groped with his fingers at the flocked wallpaper behind him, strained against the handcuffs, then gave it up.

“Sex is the opposite of death,” she said, increasing the pumping motion of her hips. “But then heads is the opposite of tails. Sex and death are opposite faces of the same coin.”

“Deirdre!”

She slapped him. Hard. “Quiet, David! You don’t want someone to hear us and come in here, do you? Remember, I left the door unlocked.”

The grinding and thrusting of her hips became harder, violent. The handcuffs were clinking against the wall behind David. A stack of plastic foam cups next to the coffeemaker vibrated to the edge of the table then fell to the floor and rolled in a tight semicircle.

David looked away from the white cups, at the white ceiling, and was suddenly lost in everything but sensation. Deirdre’s hands clutched his upper arms as she lay her cheek against his, expelling short, hard and hot breaths, moaning.

He reached orgasm but she didn’t stop.

“Deirdre…”

“Quiet, quiet!” she whispered, and rested her forefinger across his lips. Its sharp fingernail cut into the tip of his nose.

He felt himself go soft inside her, and finally she pulled away and stepped back, smoothing her dress. She glanced in an oval mirror hanging on a wall and cocked her head to the side, touched a hand to her hair. She might have been alone in the room.

“Deirdre,” David said breathlessly, “unlock the cuffs.” He was desperately afraid again that someone would walk in on them.

Maybe even Molly! Come looking for him!

“The cuffs!”

Deirdre smiled at him in the mirror, then turned around. “I didn’t bring a key, David.”

“Oh, my God!”

Then she came to him and kissed his cheek. “I’m only joking. Do you really think I’d leave you here like this?”

“Yes,” David said.

She frowned and shook a finger at him. “David?”

“All right, no, you wouldn’t leave me like this. Unlock these, Deirdre, please!”

She moved around behind him and he heard the key enter the handcuffs, felt the sudden release of pressure as they clicked open.

He pulled his arms around in front of him and stared at his hands. They were quivering. Guilt tore at him. In a way, he knew, he’d aided her in what had just happened. He didn’t want to do this to himself or to Molly, but he couldn’t help himself.

Deirdre was standing by the door. “Zip your pants, David. And clean yourself up. This is kind of a place of worship, and cleanliness is the next best thing to Godliness.”

Without looking back at him, she walked from the room, leaving the door standing open behind her.

He rushed to the door and closed it.

Then he zipped his fly, straightened his shirt and tie, and opened the door again, slowly.

Deirdre was gone. The entrance area outside the consolation rooms was still deserted.

He managed to make his way to the restroom and followed her advice.

At Glory and Resurrection Cemetery, the morning sun was beginning to make the mourners uncomfortable despite the fact that they were gathered in the shade of a temporary canopy. Molly felt a rivulet of perspiration trickle down her ribs beneath the same navy blue dress she’d worn the previous night to the visitation. She didn’t like the idea of wearing the same dress, but it was the only dark outfit she owned that wouldn’t have been stiflingly hot.

Only a few dozen mourners had made the journey from the mortuary to attend the funeral. A short, gray-haired woman with puffy eyes had introduced herself near the coffin the night before as Bernice’s mother. She seemed to be benefiting from physical as well as psychological support from a lean, dark man with sunglasses, standing next to her and supporting her. Bernice’s uncle, if Molly remembered correctly.

The pallbearers had rested Bernice’s burnished steel casket on a bier. The grave was dug but covered with sagging, impossibly green artificial turf to spare those gathered the trauma of seeing into the yawning cavity in the earth that was about to receive Bernice’s body and claim it for the rest of time.

Molly wiped her eyes and leaned on David as the minister, a young, prematurely bald man with acne, finished the service with a prayer: “…shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

She didn’t remember anything else about the prayer. “Forever,” was all she could think about. Forever.

David hadn’t spoken at all during the drive to the cemetery and was standing motionless, as if lost in his own thoughts. Maybe Bernice’s death had affected him more than Molly had thought. Men were that way, keeping their feelings bottled and corked and then breaking down in private, as if grief and loneliness had to be synonymous. He’d missed the first part of the service in the mortuary chapel, and when he’d returned to sit beside her again in the pew, his face was pale and thoughtful.

The minister tossed a handful of earth onto the artificial turf, then nodded to the mourners as a signal that the funeral was over. With a sad smile, he moved toward Bernice’s mother to give final consolation.

David started to leave, but Molly gripped his arm and stopped him. He seemed startled for a second, which surprised her. Then he smiled down at her and looked all around him, as if coming out of a dream.

When the minister had walked away, she went to where Bernice’s mother was still standing with the slim, dark man.

“If you need any help,” Molly said to her. “I mean, with Bernice’s things. We live right downstairs from her apartment and we’ll be glad to do what we can.”

“That’s nice of you,” the mother-Iris, Molly remembered now-said. She might have had a slight accent, though Molly hadn’t noticed it the night before. Molly wrote their phone number on a slip of paper from her purse and gave it to her.

“She was on her swim team in high school,” Iris said. “Did you know that?”

“No,” Molly heard David say. He had joined them and now seemed himself again, free of his thoughts of death.

“We could have had an autopsy, but I couldn’t bear to think of that being done to her. She’s dead. She’ll stay dead forever, no matter why she died.”

“I understand,” Molly said. “I think you made the right decision.”

“In the water,” Iris Clark said, “she was a natural. Like a beautiful and graceful dolphin.”

“I’m sorry,” Molly said again, not knowing what else to say. The lean man might have been looking at her. She could see only her own twin reflections in his glasses.

He took Iris Clark’s arm, nodded to both Molly and David, then turned and led Iris to one of the waiting black limousines.

Molly felt David’s arm encircle her waist as they walked toward the last of the three limos.