red nails. “No nannies here. A child-free zone, this.” Even when she
hands Vero the package, she does not meet her eyes. “And thank
heaven for that.”
Over dinner, in her new dress, Vero tells The Group that it’s her
birthday. As soon as she says it, she already doesn’t even remember
why. Perhaps she’s grown addicted to the flutter that buzzes behind
her pelvic bone with each new lie.
Shane’s a dentist!
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We’re from Seattle!
It’s my birthday!
They pile one lie on top of the last—another and another and (can
they do it?!) still one more—like Jamal with his wooden building
blocks. How high can they go before the tower of lies comes toppling
down?
Shane takes the blindfold first. “A birthday game for Vero’s
birthday!” SwissMan and SwissWoman fill their voices with joy as
if they’re leading a group of five-year-olds in Pin the Tail on the
Donkey. SwissMan guides Shane over to the row of naked women:
SwissWoman, FrenchWoman, VeroWoman. They stand on a bridge
between the wild tub and the main pool. Suspecting a show, bathers
reposition themselves so they can watch from the hot tub. They’re lazy
about it, though, their movements slow. If they’re going to make the
effort to adjust their view, this show had better be good.
Shane can touch the naked women wherever he wants—that’s
the game. His goal is to guess which one is Vero. Vero knows he’l
keep his hands away from midriffs. He won’t want to think about
SwissWoman’s belly.
Shane pinches Vero’s ass on the first run-through—almost at first
touch—a quick tweak followed by a playful swat. The gesture lets her
know he could pick her out of any line, instantly, but then he plays
dumb and goes through the line three more times petting and stroking
and squeezing. “Just to make sure,” he whispers in her ear afterward,
the blindfold looped around his neck. Vero keeps an eye over Shane’s
shoulder on the crowd of spectators in hot tub. DogCouple stretches
out on the far edge in bathing suits made of leather and chains.
DogWoman lies with her curly hair fanned across DogMan’s crotch.
He loops his hand around a collar at her neck. They watch intently. He
meets Vero’s gaze and holds it with his icy blue eyes. Danielle giggles,
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swinging an arm around Vero’s waist. “Be careful of them,” she whis-
pers. “For them it is not for only pleasure. They are not like us.”
When Vero dons the blindfold and starts stroking her way through
the men’s line, she has a moment of panic. She had been sure that
Shane would stand out from the others in many ways. But the three
men all feel the same. Skin and hair. Legs and arms. Torsos. The asses
rising up in round humps off the thighs, the hip bones jutting out
sharp and angling down to the pelvis. She can’t tell one from the
other. On the first go-through, she jogs the line, hand at navel level.
Shane’s taller than the other men—she’ll get him immediately. Isn’t
blindness supposed to improve the senses? Instead she closes in on
herself, her senses shut down. On her fourth try, she bends at an awk-
ward angle and strokes their thighs. The women giggle. They know.
SwissWoman whispers, “Ah, she look for her man’s strong legs.” She
hopes Danielle’s laugh is not aimed at her. She knows how ridiculous
she must look—nude but for a blindfold, crouched and pawing her
way through a line of men’s legs.
But there in the middle—there is no mistaking them—are Shane’s
cyclist’s quads, bulging and hard. The relief punches a hole in her sen-
sory deprivation. Hedonism is back. The smell of sunscreen, stale sex,
and cheap rum. And under that, the hint of skunky pot and sunbaked
sweat. Vero pictures hungry tourist faces all around her and wishes
she could leave the blindfold on. She puts her hands on Shane’s
cheeks and kisses him hard on the mouth before pulling the cover
off her eyes.
“I could tell you right away,” she lies to Shane, her own blindfold
hanging at her chest like a string of pearls. “I just wanted to take a
turn at my fun too.”
FrenchMan winks. He does not believe her. That’s what his wink
says.
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Vero thinks about following Joss’s advice: picture the man as a
child, see his vulnerability, show him that kind of compassion. But
Vero cannot. Vero very much dislikes the particular tone of this
man’s disbelief.
◊◊◊
Danielle and Vero slide through the pool toward each other in
the moonlight as “If You Asked Me To” by Celine Dion plays on
the stereo. This is it, Vero thinks, show time! She bends her knees,
scrapes them along the pool bottom, so that only a hint of cleavage
and occasional peek of nipple show above the waterline. Danielle
mimics her pose and stride. Vero could be walking into a mirror.
When they reach each other, Danielle’s smile verges on a laugh.
“It’s fine,” Danielle whispers in Vero’s ear, palming Vero’s shoulders.
“They think it’s for them. These men. We will let them think that.
But in truth it is for us. Women always know what feels best.” She
glances Vero’s earlobe with her teeth, slides her hands down to sit
at her hips, her thumbs circling at Vero’s waist.
Vero squeezes a plump breast below the waterline. She wonders
if she can tell if they’re fake, as Shane claims. “Gravity,” Shane says,
“Does not allow for that.” He’s the scientist. Vero does not argue.
But she’s curious. Danielle squeaks in response. Vero squeezes.
Danielle squeaks. Like Jamal’s old teething ring:
Squeeze.
Squeak.
Squeeze.
Squeak.
But when Vero lowers her head to suck at a hard brown nipple,
Danielle pushes her away and she tugs on Vero’s hair, bringing
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Vero’s lips up to meet her own. Vero wonders if the pulling sensa-
tion on Danielle’s nipple reminds her of nursing, if Danielle too has
versions of herself she’s trying to forget.
Kissing hasn’t felt this new since elementary school. The thrill
of the forbidden, that’s what excites. Vero pokes her tongue past
Danielle’s lips, feels those sharp little teeth, and puts her attention
into the woman’s small fingers at the base of her spine.
Everything about Danielle is softer than Shane.
“Your lips are so soft,” she whispers to Danielle because she feels
she should say something.
Other thoughts spin in Vero’s head, breaking off and crashing into
each other, circling like flotsam in a current. Danielle’s fingers are now
in the hair at the back of Vero’s neck and Vero wants to say, I loved
nursing E
liot and Jamal—it’s the only time they rested, the only time I
could look on them with pure honest feelings. With nothing but love. Is
that what my mouth reminded you of? Nursing? Danielle breathes into
her ear and spins her around so the men can see their profiles, their
breasts pressing into each other.
I don’t know, Vero wants to say, if my nanny LiLi will ever have her
own children to nurse. Danielle’s teeth clench Vero’s bottom lip, draw-
ing her back to the moment, back to the flesh.
“So soft,” Vero says again. Hedonism is about flesh. Flesh alone.
“We should get them to kiss. We could watch. Is that sexy?” Vero
throws her head back as Danielle nibbles on her collar bone. Her
words don’t match her actions and she doesn’t know why she says
them. Danielle only laughs. To Danielle, everything is funny.
“Do not speak,” Danielle giggles, pulling Vero to the side of the
pool, pushing her up onto the rough cement ledge. Danielle’s mouth
works its way down Vero’s body without hesitation, as if she’s been
doing this all her life, a steady and systematic march toward her goal.
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Danielle’s hands are small, half the size of Shane’s. On Vero’s hips.
On Vero’s torso. Fingers pressing hard into Vero’s shoulders. The
illicitness is in their smallness, as if a man with small hands would
give Vero the same transgressive thrill. It’s an absurd thought. But it
belongs to Vero.
The pool edge presses roughly against the dip where Vero’s ass
meets her legs. To keep her balance, she stretches her legs and toes,
reaching for the underwater bench against the pool wall. Danielle
interprets Vero’s arched back as encouragement, and her tongue
works faster, her small fingers squeeze tighter into Vero’s hip bones.
Danielle knows the spot. All the spots. Shane was right about that: a
woman knows what a woman likes.
Vero pushes her awareness away from the gritty cement deck under
her ass and into the hot hold of Danielle’s mouth. Hedonism Hal
lurks in a far corner of the hot tub. His browned chest hovers above
the steamy water, the giant gold cross nearly buried in grey curly hair.
His eyes could be open or closed under his steamed-up glasses.
Vero thinks of Imena at the dance bar, little men pointing their
tongues at her diamond-studded nipples. Imena is never at the wild
tub. The wild tub doesn’t need her.
Shane and FrenchMan sit apart from each other. An onlooker
would assume they’d never met and were only at the same pool by
an uninteresting coincidence. Vero will not study FrenchMan’s face.
She fears even a glance could be interpreted as acknowledgment of
something she has no wish to acknowledge, agreement to some act to
which she has no wish to agree.
Shane smiles, encouraging, as if he might shout: Go, Vero Baby!
You’re doing great!
Vero must smile back. She tries for seductive and seduced. Puts it
all into her smile: It’s okay. It’s great. This is good fun.
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She thinks of LiLi’s okay. Yes, ma’am, it okay. This is okay.
The Swiss couple has disappeared, angry that they were not invited
to participate in this game. Shane, put off by SwissWoman’s preg-
nancy, insisted that she be left out. Vero wonders what it would be like
to have her here. Could Vero have resisted letting her hand linger on
the midriff, feeling for the kick?
“I guess we don’t make the cut,” SwissMan said, his laugh not fool-
ing anyone. “We’re not on the A-list.” He laughed again, steering his
pregnant wife away from the group. She did not even pretend to laugh.
When Vero comes, her whole body quivering in clenching spasms,
circling and sinking and sucking into that one spot marked by
Danielle’s soft and fleshy mouth, she forgets everyone. Even, for a
moment, Danielle. She wants to curl into fetal position afterward, as
she does with Shane at home, him stroking her back while she rides
the final waves—but she’s too aware of her audience, knows she’s not
done.
When her body stops waving and spinning, she slides into the
water, wanting to go right under, to sit at the bottom with her nose
plugged and her eyes clenched tight. Looking at anyone now would
be to own what has just happened. She would rather disappear.
But then she remembers: Danielle gets a turn too. She must.
Nothing, as Vero keeps telling Shane, is free. Here or anywhere.
Woozy, she gives Danielle a hand up onto the pool’s ledge. Your
turn. Vero tries her best to smile before she puts her tongue to work,
imitating the confident march of Danielle’s mouth.
◊◊◊
For each fantasy Shane ticks off his list, he adds another. He gets what
he desires; he wants more. Vero wishes she could draw a deep black
X through the remaining days, like she does on the family calendar at
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home. She wants to see herself and Shane, recognizable, on the other
side of those X’s.
“It’s our last night,” he says, clasping her fingers too tight across the
bar table, whirlpools of desperation where his eyes used to be. “There’s
something I never thought could happen…two women to…you
blanks. His laughter punctuates the sentence, tinny and nervous. Vero
thinks of Danielle’s Merlot lips forming the words All men love the
mouth. Vero can’t even pretend to feign ignorance. What, Shane? What
could you possibly want from two women? She thinks of the mystery in
LiLi’s ellipses and holds tight to Shane’s fingers, saying nothing.
“We’ll never do anything like this again. It’s our last night.” He
pauses and waits for her to speak before continuing. “Danielle has
more or less offered.”
Vero wonders if Danielle has children. Chances are good. Most
people their age do. Are hers at home with a nanny too, one who
thinks her employers are on a second honeymoon? Or are the children
with a mother-in-law who imagines the couple relaxing in luxury at
Beaches Resort? Or maybe Danielle has a sister, one who said “Go!
Hedonism did wonders for our marriage! Live your fantasy.”
Vero wiggles her empty glass at Mike, or someone who looks just
like him, over behind the bar. He drops his head, focusses his attention
on the task of chopping pineapple. No table service here. Vero chews
on the plastic rim of her cup. Sighs. “It’s a barter system, Shane.” This
warning sounds old to Vero, but again he doesn’t hear her.
Hedonism pulls them forward, into the promise of all desired ful-
filled. As if such a thing might be possible. As if such a thing might
not turn sordid.
You’re shocked by that? That’s so midnight.
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◊◊◊
“You taste like Danielle’s lipstick,” Vero says afterward, when it’s her
turn, her chin propped on Shane’s knee. “Mmm, Merlot,” she giggles
at Danielle whose forehead still rests against Shane’s hip. “Your lips
taste like Merlot.”
They’re so high that this observation strikes them as hilarious. They
say it over and over all night—“just like Danielle’s lipstick”—Danielle
and Vero kissing to celebrate the hilarity of it all. “Shane tastes like
Danielle’s lipstick.” Mike the bartender fills Vero’s glass but won’t meet
her gaze.
“You have a mark of my lipstick on your tooth,” Danielle says, hold-
ing Vero’s chin firm for a moment before she leans forward to lick it off.
In the midst of it all, Vero thinks of Roger, his leg stretched out
before him, his short shorts pulled so high that Vero could see a hint
of groin. “Precision! Precision! Precision!” He bellowed the words from
his stage at the front of the Bikram studio. “Don’t let the body get
sloppy!”
◊◊◊
FrenchMan looks. He lurks and looks. Whispers angrily to Danielle.
Looks again. Vero tries to ignore him, but feels his eyes on her when
she turns away. His mouth is set at an odd angle, an angry snarl crossed
with a sullen pout. Danielle whispers back to him, strokes his arm. She
tries to smile over to Vero reassuringly, but her eyes are fast and restless,
her smile pasted on.
“I told you,” Vero says to Shane.
“What?” Shane slumps happily in the water, arms spread out on the
ledge above him. He’s the King of Hedonism tonight. Vero slides into
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his side, sitting close to him on the underwater bench. She picks up his
arm and wraps it around her. It’s not about intimacy. It’s about block-
ing herself off from FrenchMan. I’m with him. Quit staring.
“He wants his turn, Shane.”
Shane makes a half-hearted effort to turn in FrenchMan’s direction
but changes his mind before he gets very far. He pulls his arm tighter
around Vero. “We never promised him anything. It’s not happening.”
“We took and therefore we’ll give. It’s implied.”
She watches Danielle as she speaks. Danielle nods quickly at her
husband, stroking his arm again. She kisses him on the lips, resting a
flat palm across his concave chest, and then makes her way to Shane