Free Femme Fatale and other stories by Laura Lippman Page B

for someone assumed to be inexperienced. Thoughtful of him.
    Brian lived out Essex way, in some new apartments advertising move-in specials and a swimming pool. She hoped it wouldn’t take too long because she had only so much time, but she was surprised at just how fast it happened. One minute they were kissing, and it wasn’t too bad. She almost liked it. Then all of a sudden he was hovering above her, asking if she was fixed up, a question she didn’t understand right away. When she did, she shook her head, and he said, “Shit,” but pulled a rubber over himself, rammed into her and yelled at her to come, as if he were a coach or a gym teacher, exhorting her to do something difficult but not impossible.
    “I … don’t … do that,” she panted out.
    He took that as permission to do what he needed. Once finished, he pulled away quickly, if apologetically.
    “Sorry, but if you’re not on the Pill, I can’t afford to hang around, you know? One little sperm gets out and my life is over. I’ve already got one kid to pay for.”
    That detail had not come up in their rides around the block.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “You ready to go back?”
    “Can’t we watch some television, maybe try again?”
    “Didn’t get the feeling that you cared for it.”
    “I’m just … quiet. I liked it.” She placed a tentative hand on his chest, which was narrow and a little sunken once out of the leather jacket. “I liked it a lot.”
    He chose the wrestling matches on channel 45, then arranged the covers over them and put his arm around her.
    “You know, wrestling’s fixed,” she said.
    “Who says?”
    “Everybody.” She didn’t want to mention her father.
    “So? It’s the only decent thing on.”
    “Just seems like cheating,” she said. “I don’t like games like that. Like, for example … poker.”
    “Poker? I hardly knew her.” He gave her rump a friendly pat and laughed. She tried to laugh, too.
    “Still,” she said, gesturing at the television. “It doesn’t seem right. Pretending.”
    “Well, I guess that’s why you don’t do it.”
    “Wrestle?”
    “Fake it. You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to act like you liked it, just a little. If you’re frigid, you’re frigid, but why should a guy be left feeling like he didn’t do right by you?”
    “I’ll try,” she said. “I can do better. Maybe if there could be more kissing first.”
    He tried, she had to give him that. He slowed down, kissed her a lot, and she could see how it might be better. She still didn’t feel moved, but she took his advice, shuddering and moaning like the women in the movies, the R-rated ones she and Joe had been sneaking into this spring. At any rate, whatever she did wore him out, and he fell asleep.
    She didn’t bother to put on her clothes, although she did carry her purse with her as she moved from room to room. When she didn’t find the velvet box right away, she found herself taking other things in her panic and anger—a Baltimore Orioles ashtray, a pair of purple candles, a set of coasters, a Bachman-Turner Overdrive eight-track, an unused bar of Ivory soap in the bathroom. Her clunky sandals off, she was quiet and light on her feet, and he didn’t stir at all until she tried a small drawer in his dresser. The drawer stuck a little and Sofia gave it a wrenching pull to force it open. He whimpered in his sleep and she froze, certain she was about to be caught, but he didn’t do anything but roll over. It was the velvet box that had made the drawer stick, wedged against the top like peanut butter on the roof of someone’s mouth. But when snapped it open, the box was empty. In her grief and frustration, she gave a little cry.
    “What the—”
    He was out of bed in an instant, grabbing her wrist and pushing her face into the pea-green carpet, crunchy with dirt and food and other things.
    “Put it back, you thievin’ whore, or I’ll—”
    She grabbed one of her shoes and hit him with it, landing a solid blow on