Thomas waited at an intersection, giving way to oncoming traffic.
He had heard there was a time, once, when doctors swore that it was unhealthy for ladies to read novels – that the stories unnaturally heated up their suggestible constitutions. Elsie had been bored, Thomas told himself, not as settled into married life as he had believed, and had taken up a flight of fancy. Read one too many of those paperbacks about distressed damsels with heaving bosoms.
Except, Elsie didn’t read romance novels. Or did she? It occurred to him that perhaps he didn’t know his wife quite at all.
Thomas raked his fingers through his hair in agitation. The car swerved and he cursed, waved apologetically to the driver of the car on the other side of the road whom he’d narrowly missed, and drove to work with an odd, radio-static sound in his ears.
*
His customer had two children tugging at her skirt and one on her hip. She wore her glasses low on her nose and looked over them at Thomas with barely concealed disdain. Even when he pointed out the machine’s fantastic self-sealing bag she gave an indifferent sniff and tossed her head.
The lady set the toddler on the ground, firmly instructed him to stay, and bent over the vacuum cleaner. Her rump swelled into her skirt and the curves of her calves gleamed in sheer hose.
Thomas found himself staring at her curvatures and wondering whether this was why Elsie was . . . doing what she was doing, with the young woman next door. Like the stirring Thomas himself felt at the sight of a woman’s curves – any woman, no matter whether or not he actually liked that woman personally – was this unintentional, unconscious physical attraction inherent across both the sexes? Into his mind popped an image of the fullness of Aida’s breast, released into his vision when she’d sat up on the couch. It had swung at Elsie’s nose. Her extraordinary green eyes as she’d buttoned her shirt, looking at him.
If Aida were a man, Thomas would feel betrayed and angry. He would go over there and probably knock the fellow about a bit. (Or, he would ask one of his brother’s brawny mates to do it. Yes, that was more likely.) But because Aida wasn’t a man – was that a betrayal? What had they actually been doing together, he wondered now. Seeing them together in their underwear he’d assumed . . . but hang about, without a man’s bodily equipment, who did what? What went where? And . . . what happened when it got there?
Thomas wasn’t wet behind the ears. He had seen his share of lad’s magazines and playing cards. Hell, only this morning Bert Watson had displayed the latest cards from his shirt pocket, photographs of naked ladies that he flashed to the other men – he’d even shown them to Heidi, the new receptionist, who, upon having the images thrust into her vision, had looked as though she wished a meteorite would crash through the roof. Sometimes there had been two ladies in the pictures Thomas had seen, or in the stories he had read in the magazines his school mates used to stash under their mattresses. Thomas had been around the block enough times to be able to picture what two ladies might do if they got together and felt that way inclined.
Between the woman’s rump swaying before his eyes and the mental image of what his wife and the woman next door might have been doing together, Thomas was appalled by a pressing need to excuse himself. He hastened to the bathroom, where he found his woody far too progressed to do anything but whack the damn thing into submission. He wiped up and washed his hands, rested his hot forehead on the cool wall tiles and clawed at some semblance of stability.
At least, in the end, the lady bought the vacuum cleaner.