A Life in Men: A Novel by Gina Frangello Page A

that Joshua and Nicole, who were supposed to be the first to take off come January, will ironically end up the last ones standing upstairs at Arthog House.
    Now he says simply, “Joshua already ask you to go with him on his big world tour? ’Cause he’s gonna, girl, so you better get your answer ready.”
    She shakes her head slowly no, but says, “Yeah, I thought he might.”
    “There’s worse ways I can think of to kill a year. Who knows—” The music from above has heightened—something big must be going on. “I think you two have more in common than either of you was banking on. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but maybe you oughta give it a roll and find out.”
    She smiles. It is the kind of smile his mother used to give, the kind only women know how to dole out: sad and generous at once. She puts her hand over his, which is still around her neck, and her fingers are soft, as if she’s never worked a day, never known pain, though he knows that isn’t true and wishes he could still think it was.
    “I bought a ticket on British Air the morning after all that blood. I wanted to see Joshua’s opening night, but I leave tomorrow.” She is still smiling. “My parents, my doctors, are waiting for me. Joshua’s sweet, but we both know he doesn’t even know me—we both know I’m not what he bargained for. I’m heading to Heathrow so early no one will even be awake to hear the door.”
    It’s not clear what he feels. A roiling in his gut, insides jumping from the touch of her fingers. And under that a powerful wash of relief through his veins, numbing him like he just shot up.
She’s gone.
It doesn’t matter anymore. After tonight, she’s gone. Now that he knows this, he could do it. Push her against the pole again, grab her under the thighs to hoist her in the air, shoving her girlie underwear out of his way, and slide her down on his cock, ramming into her until those “fuck me” things she screams would all be for him. She’s leaving; he’s safe. All the better then if she throws some “fuck you” things in as a parting shot—hey, he likes it that way, too.
    A stampede of footsteps shakes the stairs above their heads. Yank drops his hand, feeling her heartbeat still strumming on his palm. Without warning, his head fills—like lining up a shot in the lens of his mind’s eye—with the image, again, of the coach’s maid, the star gymnast’s lover, that girl he will never see, never know. Just another girl in the body count of men, like the many he himself has stepped over to get to nowhere. Where are those women now? Instead there is only one girl in front of him, only Nicole, who is not even really
Nicole,
but though she’s not what he thought, she is still whole enough that she would never sneak out on her lover under cover of night if she understood the full weight of Joshua’s stake—of their goddamn shared stake and how much holding fast to each other might matter to both of them, in a way so little in the world matters to anybody. With every electric fiber of his body, Yank believes that he
needs
this girl to disappear—that he wants never, ever to see her again way more than he wants to help Joshua—yet still he finds his body leaning in close one last time. Her eyes transform at his approach, her lips parting slightly, this time anticipating the kiss. But the circus is over, they’ve missed the finale, the house lights are on, and instead Yank finds his lips grazing only her ear as he whispers, “It ain’t morning yet, darlin’. Let me tell you a story.”

Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been?
    (GREECE: ZORG)
    T he girls wake up hung over from sweet wine. Even with the shutters drawn, Nix notices Mary’s lips, swollen and red from kissing her movie star, an airline pilot named Zorg. Zorg isn’t Greek after all, as Nix originally assumed amid boisterous bar noises that drowned out the nuances of his accent, but a Spaniard, here on holiday, too,