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Kate
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“BEHOLD, LADIES. THE Bluejay.” Anita raises her wildest Private Pleasures offering so far—the grand finale.
This sex toy resembles a blue and white tie-dyed letter J and isn’t as rigid as the other cutesy, animal-named contraptions. It wobbles slightly in the air, alluding to a surly personality.
“Now,” Anita says, serious as a preacher, “there are certain times when a man likes his wife to drive stick.”
The women pass the Bluejay around over skirts of Burberry tan, black and red plaid cashmere (that ready-made badge of taste), past conservative twin sets, and eyelids fluttering best they can under the weight of mascara and falsies, through moisturized hands and expensive manicures. As the Bluejay bounces from one giggler to the next, so begins a discussion about the prostate gland and the lengths the brave and the few have gone to ferret it out. As if truffle hunting.
Kate chortles along with the others. Erik would endure it if she asked, maybe even come to enjoy it. He’d asked her to use her finger before. So when Felice hands her the Bluejay, dangling it as if it were a dead rodent, Kate does not immediately fling it to the next woman in the game of hot potato some have played. She observes the double-ended dildo clinically. She runs a thumb over the split underneath of the head, the glans being the only realistic feature on the silicon sculpture. Past the wide middle (a sort of flange) is the smaller end, the curve of the J. As Anita has all too thoroughly explained, this is for the wearer’s enjoyment.
Felice mutters to her left, “I think Keith would laugh me right out of the bedroom.”
“Well, Jerry wouldn’t,” Brandy says to her right. “That’s right up his alley.” She clowns a face and her head wobbles. “So to speak.”
The gals screech. Jerry!
“Kate,” Anita says with a wicked simper, “you should have brought Lucy. She could have shown us how it works.” The women titter again. Anita straightens. “I’m serious.”
“Ha. Ha.” Kate rolls her eyes, sighs. But the thought of Lucy doing the honors to her husband is tucked in a mental drawer for later consideration. “Here you go, stud.” She sets The Bluejay on Brandy’s lap and rises quickly for another sangria. She smacks her lips. No. Coffee, black. She’s sinking in a quicksand of sugar, alcohol, and the scent of raspberry lube.
Anita jumps up and follows her to the kitchen pass through. “Guess what, kid. I’m in love all over again.”
“Congratulations.” Kate reaches for the coffee decanter. “I hope it takes rechargeables.”
“Kate,” Anita whispers with such force she spritzes Kate’s cheek. “This is not about product. This is burning. A real want, need, shake-you-to-the-core-and-make-you-want-to-rip-your-hair-out kind of burning.”
“Oh, I’m happy for you two.” Kate nods and sips bitter over-cooked coffee. It scorches her tongue. Great. She’s going to get one of those painful, little bumps she can’t stop scraping across her teeth.
“Well, don’t be.” Anita looks out over her now fully eroticized customers. “He’s only twenty-one.”
“Wait. Who.” Kate sets down the coffee. “Anita.”
“Shhh.”
“Oh my God. You are married.”
“Wellll. Actually. Rob has a cuckold fetish. He’s thinking about being okay with it. Christophe teaches grade school. He’s very non-threatening.”
I need to get out of this sex cult and start another quilt.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Kate says. “Without one of you getting mad.”
Anita shrugs. “I dunno, we make each other laugh. Doesn’t Erik make you laugh?”
Kate thinks of Erik’s red belt in a local offshoot of Kung Fu that seems to mostly consist of clawing rapidly at the air.
“Not intentionally,” Kate mumbles. “Listen, ’Nita, about our other boys.”
Anita huddles in. “Yeah? What’s up?”
“Apparently there’s some friction between Maddox and Brace.”
“No way.”
“Yeah. I guess Maddox was trolling Brace in front of the UW hockey scout, throwing him off his game.”
“Well, Maddox is an all-around better player.”
“Ha, very funny. No, he was specifically joking about Jamie’s transition and my past with Lucy right in front of the scout. Apparently even Zev turned three shades of pink.”
“Oh, gawd. I’m sorry. I’ll say something to him. That little shit. He’s harder and harder to talk to these days. And Rob only eggs him on.” Anita gazes through the pass through. “The school called the other day about a girl he’s been hazing.”
“Seriously?”
“Mmm.” Anita looks again to her customers. “Oooch, the natives are restless. We still on for the riot?”
Kate lurches. “The what?”
“The Civil Diss protest. Hello.” She backs out of the kitchen. “Already got my sign made.” She marquees the air. “I’M THE BIGGEST THREAT TO MY MARRIAGE.”
“Oh, yeh. ‘Course.”
Anita cha-chas back to the front room. “All right, ladies, let’s see how we strap this baby on. Then we’ll draw for the free Brazilian wax.”
Kate flinches. She has no desire to have her hair ripped out from Virginia City to Astoria. Why is all of this so easy for Anita? It’s like she hasn’t a qualm about anything. Qualms are a good thing. Do I have enough qualms? Or too many? What the hell kind of word is qualm, anyway? Sounds religious. Some couples loved to test the elasticity of their marriage, had to create drama for it to work. And that sneaking voice in Kate, the same inference she heard during gossip about the Funk-Abels, had always said that the two didn’t love one another enough, respect one another enough.
Tonight, the opposite possibility breezes through Kate like straight-line winds crossing the prairies and pouring down the cliffs.
What if they’re doing it right?