Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

“We have obligations,” she was saying. “It’s probably not even legal for us to date. We could get fired.”

“What?” he asked. “Do I have a job? I feel like I’m one-minute old.”

“You need to understand something.” Irene put her hands up to her face, covering her eyes. George remembered that her mother had just died. And here he was, being the asshole. How could he make her cry?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop. I’ll go away.”

“No,” she said, and she took her hands down and showed him that she was laughing.

“What is going on?” he said, almost laughing, too. “Are you going nuts on me?”

“I want to have sex with you,” she said, laughing to the point she was crying, and then wiping away the tears. She punched him in the chest. “Sex! I want to have sex!”

“Good!” said George. “That is super good because I want to do that, too!”

“No, you don’t understand,” she said, sniffing and pulling herself together, wiping her eyes. “I mean I want to have sex like in my vagina.” She pointed at his zipper. “That going in there,” and she pointed at her crotch. This sent her off into another gale of laughter.

“That’s great, because that’s exactly how sex is done. Exactly that way.” He was confused a little by her behavior, but in his mind the fact that she was talking and pointing at his crotch was enough to distract him from analysis.

“This is going to be OK, Irene,” he said. “This is going to be great.”

“I don’t normally feel like this,” said Irene. “I don’t. This is weird.”

George put his arms around her again, so in love with the feeling of her against him, as if they were two pieces of a two-piece puzzle, and they just wanted to make the picture work.

“We need to go to a place,” said George. “I know the place.”

“What kind of place?” she said.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s a good kind of place. It’s a nightclub for astronomers. You’ll feel right at home.”

They decided to do it at Bernice’s house. That way she would be the most comfortable, Sally pointed out.

“I’ll need at least a shot,” said Bernice. “I don’t think anyone here would begrudge me a shot. Would they?”

The girls sat in the living room on the wood-frame love seat that was hung, charmingly, from the ceiling. A thick braided rug took up half the floor in a room stuffed with antiques and furniture that Bernice’s father had made long ago. Her mother had wanted a porch swing she could use all year. So this was it. It hadn’t worked out for her father, making that porch swing. He had still ended up alone.

“Maybe we should do it on the kitchen table,” said Bernice. There was a large wasp’s nest there currently, defunct and used as a centerpiece, augmented visually with several tiny quilted muslin rabbits.

“This is not an operation,” said Sally. “We do not need a table.”

“It’s an insemination. Same thing,” said Bernice.

Bernice made a show of retrieving two ice cubes from the fridge and placing them in a short glass, going to her father’s bar, which was now her bar. She pulled out the whiskey and poured it into the glass. She took a swig, grimaced, lifted the wasp’s nest with the other hand and set it on the counter.

“Right here,” she said, patting the table. She swept the quilted rabbits onto the floor.

The table was the kind made from a crosscut of a tree. Its surface was irregular.

“No,” said Sally. “Come on, don’t be so nervous. It’s just sex. We’ll do it in your bed.”

“Not in my bed. Not upstairs,” said Bernice, draining her glass. “I don’t want that thing going upstairs.”

“What, Ray’s dick?” She teased. “His love wand? His trouser pickle?”

“Ray’s anything. Ray.”

Bernice refilled her glass.

“Don’t get drunk,” said Sally. “Probably inhibits—”

“What, inhibits the egg from opening its legs for a suitable sperm? I would think the opposite would be true.”

Sally began to move around the downstairs, pushing her hands into chairs and the cushions of the small sofa, testing surfaces. She moved into the dining room.

“After tonight you can’t drink anyway,” she called. “Pregnant, and all. I don’t drink.”

“Bullshit, I’m drinking right up until I see that positive test. If I even see it. Which I probably won’t.”

Sally stopped. “This is perfect,” she said. She was standing in the office, and when Bernice came through the foyer to see what she was talking about, she saw that Sally was sitting on the Victorian fainting couch, which had once been one of her mother’s prize possessions. When acquired, it had been upholstered in horsehair, but her mother had redone it in red corduroy, with gold upholstery tacks.

“It squeaks,” said Bernice.

“I didn’t think you drank that much anyway, that it would be such a big deal to give it up,” said Sally.

“I don’t,” said Bernice. “But why is this perfect? This of all things?”

“Because of the elevation,” Sally explained. She lay down with her head at the foot of the fainting couch and her feet on the headrest. It was a gentle slope up, and when she scooted up until her ass was just at the edge of the top, it was about waist high.

“This is the best way to get knocked up,” Sally said. “Because of gravity!”

She demonstrated by holding her knees, and her jeans stretched tight over her crotch. She pointed to the X where the seams met. “See, the sperm just sinks happily down right into the egg; it’s not even work! It’s just falling—that’s not even hard.”

Bernice raised her eyebrows.

“You don’t want him sweating away on top of you, do you?” Sally asked. “This way, he can just stand up.”

There was a knock at the side door. On the way through to let her caller in, Bernice did another quick shot of whiskey. Then just one more for safety.

Though Sally’s arrangement was scientifically sound, Bernice was too short. With her ass scooted to the high end of the fainting couch, her head was upside down, and it was hard to stay up there, hard to smile with the blood all rushing to her head.

“This is stupid,” Ray said. “Let’s flip her around.”

Ray had been presented by Dean and selected by Sally based on his astrological pedigree, his willingness to have sex with a girl casually, forsaking any resulting child, and his geographical accessibility. Basically, Ray was chosen because his driver’s license said he was born on the right day, he was kind of an asshole, and he was around. While this made the perfect sperm donor for Sally’s agenda, it made a rather lousy sex partner for Bernice’s first foray into heterosexual intercourse. By the time he had been at the seduction for five minutes, Bernice was in tears, Ray was sulking, and nothing had even come close to being inserted into anything else.

Bernice lay on the fainting couch, head on the headrest. She was wearing a short skirt with an elastic waist, which was pushed up over her hips, and her dingy pubic triangle was huddled there between her pale legs, exposed. She was also wearing a turtleneck, a cardigan, and a linen scarf. It’s chilly in Toledo in March.

“I think I know what’s wrong,” said Sally suddenly. “Ray, can you give us a minute? Like, go smoke on the back porch or something. OK?”

Ray sighed and rolled his eyes and pulled his jeans back up, snapped them shut, and slouched off to have a cigarette outside.

“I’m sorry,” said Bernice. “I’m sorry that I can’t do it.”

“Wait,” said Sally, tugging Bernice’s skirt back down and patting it into place. She sat down on the edge of the couch and took Bernice’s hand. It was almost like being in a hospital bed. Bernice had almost died of being penetrated by a stranger. Sally was visiting her.