Lawrence Block - Threesome

I honestly believe God meant for people to sleep in threes. If He didn’t, it’s just because He didn’t think things through logically. It wouldn’t absolutely have to be our sort of trio. It could be the other sort, two men and a girl, and that would be nice, although not as nice for me, I don’t think, as this. But nicer than sleeping with just one person. Definitely nicer than that.

More than three would not be good.

More than three…

There were other things wrong with that afternoon. It was the end of June, when our weather is usually particularly good, but for the past week we had been having chilly air and more rain than we had any use for, and at the moment we were having both. I might have just tried walking around in the garden to shake my mood but the garden was only fit for walking if you had webbed feet, and I didn’t. (It’s just my two heads that made me odd.) So I said something about going shopping, dashed for the car, navigated the length of the driveway, and then drove aimlessly along.

I didn’t plan on going to any particular supermarket, but that’s one of the comforting things about life in America. If you drive in any distance for a little while you will come to a supermarket, indistinguishable to all intents and purposes from any other supermarket, and then you can buy something and take it home with you, whether you need it or not. So I didn’t have to drive toward a supermarket, or rather there was no way I could drive that wasn’t toward at least one of them, so all I had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride. It would have been more enjoyable if the windshield wipers had worked better, or if I hadn’t kept crying like an idiot for no good reason at all.

I never pick up hitchhikers.

Never in my life. Not because I’ve been afraid-most of the time around here the kids who try to hitch rides are around twelve years old, and don’t particularly scare me. But because it just never occurred to me, it never seemed to me to be the sort of thing I would be inclined to do.

Then why did I stop for these kids?

God alone knows. I certainly don’t. There’s a certain temptation that makes me want to say that I had the final outcome in mind, somewhere in mind, when I first took my foot off the gas pedal and eased it onto the brake. But I’ve been over it in my mind a thousand times since then and I just can’t believe it was the case. I saw them out there at the roadside getting wet, and there was something youthful and appealing about them as a group, the way they stood, their casual attitudes.

Let’s make a scene out of it. I want to get my own mind out of the way and put it down the way it happened. That should be easier.

Anything should be easier.

I saw them, five boys at the roadside, two of them thumbing valiantly at passing traffic, another bending over cupped hands to light a cigarette, two others reeling back playfully as if sideswiped by a passing car. I took my foot at once from the accelerator and applied the brake, thinking as I did so that the pavement was slippery, that today of all days was a bad time to risk stopping. But the car braked smoothly to a stop and the five of them ran up and pulled open the doors on the passenger side.

“How far are you going, ma’am?”

“Up the road a few miles. I don’t know exactly.”

An inane response, but it didn’t seem to bother them.

“Anything’s drier than out there,” one said, and they began to pile into the car. I watched them and was surprised to discover that one of them was a girl. They were all dressed alike in jeans and sweatshirts, and at a distance she had just looked like one of the boys. Now, with her long silky hair (soaked by the rain) and her pretty face, there was no mistaking her sex.

The girl and two of the boys got into the back seat. The other two boys sat in front.

“Certainly appreciate this, ma’am.”

“Nice car.”

“A lot drier in here than it is out there.”

“Hey, close the door, Mike.”

And off we went. How far were they going? As far as I was, they assured me. They went to college in New Hampshire and were on their way back to homes in Connecticut and Westchester County. They waited for me to pursue this conversationally, and I didn’t, not being overwhelmingly interested, and then their conversation started up again on its own, between them and excluding me, and I preferred it that way. I could listen to them talk about people and incidents that meant nothing to me, could let my ears take a bath in their conversation, absorbing the feel and texture of it as if it were being conducted in a foreign language, its meaning of no interest to me at all.

I found myself watching them.

In the rear-view mirror, first of all. The girl sat between the two boys, and seemed to be close to the one on her left; he had an arm around her, and periodically drew her over for a kiss. She kissed him in front of the others with no apparent embarrassment, which I thought was nice, and rather sweet and open.

Then the boy on her right said, “My turn, now, Glory,” and she giggled and leaned over and kissed him. It was not a little puppy kiss, either; I could see them in the mirror, and their mouths were open and it looked as though he had his hands on her breasts. They held the kiss for a few moments and then she relaxed again in the first boy’s embrace.

I looked at the two boys on the seat beside me. The one sitting next to the door had a long dark face with sharp features. His hair was dark and moderately shaggy, and he had a beard about two inches wide that swept down from his sideburns to his chin. His neck, cheekbones, and moustache were clean-shaven. The boy next to me had straight blonde hair halfway to his shoulders and no beard. His face was very open and he was cute rather than handsome; he looked like a hip version of David Eisenhower.

I glanced at them in the mirror, and at the boy beside me, and then with as little will and forethought as I had shown in stopping for them in the first place, and even less in the way of good judgment, I took my right hand from the steering wheel and put it in his lap.

He started as if an electric current had passed through his body. Perhaps it had. I put my hand right on his groin and watched him out of the corner of my eye. He turned his head and his eyes met mine. At first his expression was guarded, unsure, and then I turned slightly toward him and let a smile bloom on my lips, and his features relaxed and he smiled in return.

In the rear-view mirror I saw one of the boys petting with the girl while the other was idly patting her thighs and talking about his finals.

I let my fingers play on my new friend’s crotch. He began to rise to the occasion, and when I felt his penis growing in his pants I experienced an overpowering wave of excitement, almost driving the car off the road. He squirmed in his seat, and the next moment the boy on his right, next to the door, looked over and saw what was going on.

“Christ,” he said, quietly.

From the rear: “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“What are you Christing about?”

“Jimmie’s got himself a girlfriend, that’s all.”

JIMMIE: “Will you for the love of God shut up?”

THE GIRL: “Oh, really? Oh, wow!”

I wanted to take my hand away. I wanted to think of a light way to pass all this off as a joke.

I kept my hand where it was.

The mood grew sexy in the extreme. The girl had gotten up from the back seat and was leaning over the front, commenting with interest on my manipulation of Jimmie. One of the boys had his arms around her from the back and was handling her breasts, and she kept giggling and telling the rest of us just what he was doing and just how it made her feel. I opened Jimmie’s zipper and put my hand inside, and he let me fumble around for a while and then extricated himself from his underwear and let me take hold of him. He had a good-sized penis, long and very slender, and I stroked him and moved my hand up and down on the shaft and was rewarded with an intake of breath from the back seat and a moan from Jimmie.