Free The Old Turk's Load by Gregory Gibson Page A

watching her, smiling, listening. And by the time she got to the part about realizing that Kevin was manipulating her, Gloria realized she did feel better, except for one confusing thing.
    “I just don’t understand myself. Why couldn’t I call Kevin out in front of the others? He’s such a rat. But I just froze. And my father . . . first I couldn’t stand him, and now I don’t care. I don’t have any feelings for him at all. It freaks me out.”
    “Gloria, I wish you could hear yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“What you’re talking about is the way people expect you to
    react. It’s like a big signal getting broadcasted all the time. Not in a paranoid way, it’s just what happens in society, in the world. You’re freaking out because you don’t think or feel the way the world expects you to think or feel. But that’s not a bad thing. It means you have your own thoughts and feelings. You have to trust them. You’ve probably got Kevin and your father and . . . everything figured out already and you don’t even realize it. Just relax. Trust yourself.”
    They talked on in this manner, and Gloria was surprised and happy to discover the dreadful weight lifting from her shoulders. Could it be this simple? Was it possible that Irene was able to dispel her misery with just a few words? “How did you do that?”
“It’s not me, honey. It’s you.”
    Gloria looked at her friend’s lovely face, trusted it, trusted herself, kissed it.
Irene returned the kiss. Gloria kissed her again. Irene’s tongue sought her lips, parted them. Her long gentle hand had come around to the side of Gloria’s breast. All tongues then, tender hands, soft breasts, slick dark moistness, tang of Irene’s perspiration. Slow stroking, pressure and yielding, and Irene’s vast, deep rush, right there on the couch in her office, as if it were any other business they’d transacted over the past two years.
Their lovemaking had exactly that likeness, with Irene’s fingers working her just so, tongue on nipple completing the circuit that slid her so far into orgasm that she lost track of everything except the awareness that they were simply getting something done between them, as they always had, something fun and exciting and good for the world.
She could tell it was exactly that because when it was over— though it would never really be over, would it?—and Irene was splayed there on the couch, slender arms and legs in every direction, saying “Whew!” again and again—when it was over it wasn’t like after Kevin or any man she’d ever been with, because even the best carried a vibe of possession or conquest, no matter how sweet or gentle. But not Irene, whom she loved, and would happily fuck again, anytime—or not—and with whom she would never have an affair, or be the partner of, because that wasn’t what it was about.
It was the culmination of an evolving transaction during which, somehow, Irene had given Gloria her self, and in so doing had opened the world to her. The way Gloria would repay Irene would be to give that same thing to someone else, someday, not necessarily in Irene’s way, but in her own. She saw all that in one instant, as if the world had opened up before her, and she was the first woman upon it, to see what she could make of it herself.That’s what she saw. All at once.
And she said, “Whew.”
Take the E Train
T
    wo of Mundi’s crisp C-notes settled Harry Jarkey’s doubts, temporarily. Kelly, riding his hunch, had convinced him that the first thing to do was dig up background on Agnes Mundi. So Jarkey called Genzlinger at the Times and spent several hours that night in their morgue assembling a detailed report on Mundi’s dead wife.The next day he handed the stack of photostatted clippings to Kelly, who accepted them with a serious, distracted air, undoubtedly hungover again. It was just about perfect, Jarkey thought. I go after the girl and her boyfriend while he stakes out a dead woman. Kelly