They were married to different people but she got wet talking to him and he said, “Okay but afterward I won’t be able to see you again.”
No, that wasn’t acceptable.
He said, “That’s the way it is.”
She said she didn’t think so, but she was willing to take her chances with that.
He said, “No, I mean it,” and he stopped it.
The next time they meet, it is by chance. Eight years have passed. They meet on a street in a larger town. She looks the same. He immediately thinks of that night. It excites him to think of it. He has remarried and so has she. She says, “We have some unfinished business.” He can’t believe it. “We do,” he says, and he loves her for saying it, but as he stands there he starts remembering more of it, remembering bringing her inside, her lying down on the living room floor, her body literally going out of control on her, cramping on her, her moans embarrassing the hell out of him, him in the bedroom talking to his wife, the moans coming through the walls, him saying, No, no, nothing happened, she’s just weird, is all, his wife saying, You did, didn’t you, I know you did, if you didn’t why would you even be in here saying anything, you’d be out there trying to help! Why don’t you, you bastard, can’t you finish what you’ve started, you can’t, can you?
“But no,” he says, “I’m flattered,” he says, “but I really can’t.”
She smiles as he says this.
“I thought you’d say that,” she says, “I could see it in your face, and I think that’s amusing,” she says, “because what you are is a male chauvinist pig, you realize that, and what’s more this whole fucking town is full of men like you who think they’re men, but they’re not.”
“A male chauvinist pig!” he says. “No,” he laughs, “you’re certainly wrong there.”
She laughs too.
They stand there for a moment looking at each other.
Then she smiles at him and suddenly kisses him on the cheek.
“So long, John Wayne,” she says, walking past him, “I’ve got to run.”
“Hey!” he says to her, starting to go after her.
“No,” she says back over her shoulder, “I really do have to run. Bye-bye.”