Free Madonna of the Apes by Nicholas Kilmer Page A

be Anonymous. It could be fun.”
    “Then when we’ve finished our laundry, we’ll eat,” Fred said.
    “How about Charlie’s?”
    “That’s your name? Charlise?”
    “God no. To eat. Three blocks away. You know it? I’ll show you. No, my name I’ll keep under advisement.”
    Fred strung out his operation as long as he could, but still there was waiting time before her drying cycle was done. When it came time for her to fold the sheets, Fred gave her a hand.
    “I like a fresh bed,” she said, “don’t you?”
    Side by side they carried their laundry to the antique and whatnot shop over which she lived. She balanced the blue plastic basket while she fished for her keys in the pocket of her jeans. Leading the way up the stairs she suggested, “And if you want, before dinner—after, I’m busy—we can have anonymous sex. At least you can.”
    Her apartment was no bigger than it had been, and no more comfortable. The only way there was room in it for two people was if at least one of them was in the bed.
    “I can’t keep calling you Anon,” Fred said.
    “I like it. It’s like being in New York. Everyone knows your business but nobody knows you.” She put her basket down and Fred dropped his bag next to the door. “But I see what you mean. It doesn’t sound like a girl’s name. Call me Amnesia.
    “First we’ll have coffee,” she said, taking off the big green sweater and throwing it onto one of the stuffed chairs. The snake tattoo had slid easily, head first, from under the sweater, though its head itself remained under the shoulder of the pink T-shirt she was wearing underneath, above jeans that had seen a better day. “When I get to this outfit, I know it’s time to do laundry,” she said. “You like yours black I hope. I’m out of milk.”
    “Black’s fine.” Fred sat in the available chair and watched her work.
    “We’ll have coffee. Then we’ll take off our clothes and make my bed.” She kicked off her shoes and, busy with mugs, without looking, shoved them backward under the chair Fred was sitting in. She curled onto the foot of the bed, a lanky woman, needing a lot of bed. The instant coffee steamed well, but it was not good. “From previous conversations, although our name has slipped our mind, we know that I teach Math,” she said. “Maybe you told me, but I didn’t listen: What do you do, Fred, while you’re not picking girls up in the Nite-Rite Wash–n-Dry?”
    “Security,” Fred told her.
    “What, like in a store?”
    “In a store you sit there and wait for it to happen,” Fred said. “You’d have to say I’m more active than that.”
    “So, private,” she concluded. She sipped from her mug. “You carry a gun?”
    Fred nodded. “Not now.”
    “You’ve killed someone?”
    Fred took another drink of indifferent coffee. She looked at him speculatively and bit her lower lip, shaking her head. “Given your size,” she said, “and given how hard you look, I guess when it comes to making people pay attention, you don’t need the gun. In class I sometimes think I could use a gun. Some of the kids we get…”

Chapter Sixteen
    She stood, put the mug onto the table, and slipped the T-shirt over her head. The action roiled her hair, which she shook consciously. Her generous breasts swung, but more slowly, less consciously, and in a narrower arc.
    “You don’t need a gun either,” Fred said, standing to put his mug down next to hers.
    “Wait.” She held up her hands to keep his distance. “We do this in order. First we make the bed. And before we do that, we take our clothes off. In the light this time. It was dark last time. I haven’t really seen you. You first, Fred.”
    She gasped as his shirt hit the floor. He’d forget, sometimes, the number and complexity of the scars visible on his body, until someone reminded him. Her consternation gave him cover while he went through the routine of stepping out of his loafers and, more clumsily, getting the sequence