There had been a time when he could barely stand to brush his teeth and thus wash the taste of her out of his mouth and after lunches like this he'd go back to work wrapped in the scents of her body and revel in them and surely she still did it all for him physically but now as much as he was conscious of trying to appear to be staring at her body as she moved above him he was also quite sure that he was tracking a Nile delta pattern of hairline cracks that spread south-east to north-by-northwest across the plaster ceiling. 

A shallow river carved through the dry parts of his brain, lubricating lost sensations, letting a riot of life loose in still pools that gathered on newly black mud, his sight now having rushed beyond her stomach, breasts, neck, face, arms, hair, and found its way to safer places, the way he had driven discretely imagined cars down glorious boulevards that ran in the lines between classroom floor tiles in order to escape life as a student.

She moaned in completion and the combination of her muscle contractions and his decision to relax and run let him go off as well. As he lay there beneath her sprawled body he thought about the old joke about the statue of the famous Russian-Roulette champion: On the pedestal, underneath his name, was his record, "73-1."

Was that really a joke?

On his way back to work he stopped at a bookstore. Went into the bathroom. Washed his hands and face with antiseptic smelling liquid soap. Bought some kind of scone, a container of frighteningly bitter coffee, a two-dollar discount book about Egypt.

She took a fast shower, as she always did. Got dressed. Went back to the school she worked in. Spent much of the afternoon flirting with the math teacher who also coached wrestling.

Ira Socol