Free Empty Mile by Matthew Stokoe Page B

me about your job.”
    She shrugged. “The admin side’s okay. I take minutes. I organize filing, make appointments, set up meetings, that kind of thing. But I also get to research stuff and that can be cool. Like I’ll have to find out the history of a particular building, or some old fact about the Gold Rush. That’s the part I like most. If I hadn’t gotten this job I honestly don’t know how healthy I’d be now. Mentally, I mean. I have to take a piss.”
    She stood and walked quickly away toward the parking area and the small cinder-block set of public toilets. I watched her as she went. The day was not going quite as I’d hoped. I’d pictured us sunbathing in each other’s arms by now. I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes.
    Marla came back after a while and sat down beside me full of jittery energy and comic disbelief. She jerked her head toward the parking area. Bill Prentice was still there, but now he was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking straight at us.
    “You know what he asked me?”
    “Bill Prentice?”
    “Yeah.” She laughed like it was the biggest joke, but it was a brittle sound and I could tell that she was nervous. “He wanted to—” She stopped herself and shook her head. “It’s too ridiculous.”
    “What?”
    “He wants to pay to watch us have sex.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “That’s what he said.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “You know about him, don’t you?”
    “I’ve seen him in action.”
    “What?”
    “Stan and I saved him from a bear at an Elephant Society picnic the other day. He was getting blown by a cheerleader at the time.”
    “A bear? Wow.”
    Marla made me tell her about the episode, but before I was halfway through she interrupted me.
    “You think doing something like that would be gross?”
    “Having someone watch? I don’t know. Right place, right time, right person to do it with. Might be interesting.”
    We’d been treating it as a joke but when I said this things suddenly became serious. Marla looked at me and I held my breath. After a long moment she shrugged.
    “I guess we’ve got to start somewhere.”
    And I, of course, figured that all my Christmases had come at once.
    “Where would we do it?”
    “He knows a place back in the forest. He wants it to be outdoors.”
    “What did you say to him?”
    “I said I’d ask you. He said he’d pay two hundred dollars. But you know we totally don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
    “Yeah, well, I’m afraid I need the money too badly. Absolutely. In fact there’s no way I could possibly turn down two hundred dollars right now. Not at all. No sir.”
    Marla nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
    The air in the forest was so humid it seemed to push back at me and the buzzing of cicadas made my head swim. What we were doing was crazy but I couldn’t stop myself. The heat and the insect noise and the throb of sexual desire had combined within me to a kind of fever that made me want to race through the trees, to be wherever it was we were going, to be inside Marla right then, that second.
    The place Bill led us to wasn’t far into the forest, but it was well screened and it was unlikely any nature-loving hiker would stumble across us. Behind a large boulder on which some delinquent teenager had splashed red paint there was a shallow dish-shaped hollow that was shielded around three-quarters of its circumference by a wall of trees and shrubs. As we entered it I was aware we were probably only a few minutes away from the place Marla and I had first made love.
    Marla avoided looking at Bill or me. We had brought our things from the lake and she rolled out a towel in the center of the hollow. Bill sat a few feet away. I did my best to pretend he wasn’t there.
    When Marla had finished with the towel she stood beside it, her arms straight at her sides as though she had no desire to make any further movement. I realized that she was scared.
    Bill watched us like nothing else