Free Three Women by Marge Piercy

pleasure from the pain, the sharpness from the urgency. He settled into a steady rhythm and she bounded up to meet him, thrust for thrust. He was waiting for her and she concentrated. As excited as she was, she did not think she could come. She was too nervous with him. After several minutes, she faked an orgasm, as she had remembered doing with Sam. He moved then into a harder rhythm, building toward his own climax, and as he pounded into her, the almost forgotten rush of warmth and power and pleasure began building in her until she exploded just before he did. Afterward she felt like laughing, because shehad made much less noise during her real orgasm than she had when she mimicked pleasure.
    They lay for a while loosely holding each other. Then they showered and she began his tour of neighborhoods. It was clear they would make love again later. Have sex, at any rate. Although she felt close to him, she did not trust the intimacy. Nor did she fear it. Some women went on spa vacations to feel better. She was having a one-day affair.

7
    Beverly
    Beverly got Elena when she called. “So how come the only beauty in the whole family is answering the phone? How come I’m so lucky?”
    “Only you’d say so, Grandma. It’s my good luck to get you. So how are you doing? Did you get it on with that writer guy you were interested in?”
    “I’m bumping along, what else can I do? I haven’t had any luck with him yet, but I haven’t given him up for dead. So how’s the restaurant?”
    “I was fired.”
    “Those kind of jobs, they’d just as soon get rid of you as exploit you. Hang around too long and they figure maybe you’ll get something on them. The fish is rotten. The kitchen is full of roaches.”
    “All of that!” Elena laughed. “I got evicted and so I moved home. I’m looking for work. You know, Mother doesn’t really like having me around. I’m always in the way. I always was.”
    “Elena, nobody can not love you! You and your mother, you just never understand each other. You’re more like me, you’re spontaneous and you get into trouble and you have a big mouth and men are always wanting things from you. She never does anything off-the-cuff. She’d have liked you to make a reservation six months ago. Mother, I plan to be fired next February and then I plan to be evicted, so you can expect me around the first of March.”
    “Grandma, you have the wickedest tongue. So how come you called?”
    “I’m raising money for some tenants fighting eviction—”
    “Ah, you want to put the bite on Mother.”
    “Well, she can afford it. She makes more money than the rest of the family combined. Look, I’ll call back tomorrow evening. Where is she?”
    “Taking some guy to the airport. I don’t know where she met him, maybe at some conference?”
    “Suzanne has got herself a boyfriend?”
    “I been trying to figure that one. He didn’t sleep here. Frankly I think he’s just a friend of a friend, whatever. But she got decked out to see him.”
    “Let me know. How about yourself, my beauty girl?”
    “Nobody I give a shit about, frankly. Just guys.”
    “Wait till you get to my age to be disillusioned. By now either I already did a thing with every old geezer I meet, or I might as well have, because I know his whole story from his ex-wives and ex-girlfriends. Or I had one just like him in ’fifty-five.”
    “I want something more special, something purer, something more intense. Something that matters, Grandma. Not a guy like a Diet Coke, not a guy like a hamburger. I want to be moved. I want to be forced to care. I want to love, really love, again. Do you think I’m too burned out?”
    “No, precious. You’re full of fire. You just need someone strong and right for you.”
    The next afternoon, Beverly went up to the Bronx to walk the picket line with her friends in the union. They were good kids. They worked so hard and they got so little. Her heart went out to them. She talked with dozens of them,