Only Children by Rafael Yglesias

unpleasant residue; somehow just seeing her, even necking with her, didn’t make him feel he had betrayed Diane), but she had never made a move for his penis. He wished she would. He wanted to dam up her mouth with his hard-on, to live inside her words, to be kissed and sucked by their manufacturer.
    Actually, their lovemaking was a disappointment, a tedious anticlimax to their feverish, hungry talks—sluggish digestion following a delicious meal. Rachel, for all her lively wit and energetic body, seemed frightened to death when he made love to her. She looked pale, her eyes were solemn and earnest, she made no sounds, her body was in constant retreat from exploratory kisses; even after penetration, her hands lit on his back reluctantly, as if the gesture might be too bold. He liked her thin body, flattened pillows that hinted at real breasts, a puff of jet black hair covering her hard pubis, slight thighs meeting muscled calves with big, quizzical kneecaps joining them. She wasn’t a beauty; but she was distinctive, and if she would only bring the wit, energy, and fearlessness of her conversation to bed, she would be a great lover. Partly, he was grateful she wasn’t. He wasn’t terrific in bed either, a fact he had long ago resigned himself to. And he found her personality, her talk, her being, so interesting, so addictive that if she were also sexually thrilling, he’d have no control, no brake to stop from utterly surrendering his will to her.
    That was being in love, he supposed. It had happened to him once and he hoped it would never happen again. Things were better this way, Diane and Rachel satisfying different longings. Rachel enlivened the mind, warmed the spirit; Diane kept order and regularly exercised his sex. At least, the last was true until Diane got pregnant. In the beginning he hadn’t minded the physical changes, the breasts gelling, Diane’s belly swelling into womanhood, her olive skin ripening, but then things got out of hand: the breasts laden, the belly explosive, the skin strained and exhausted. He found himself fearing the sight of Diane’s body. Toward the end, a glimpse of her nakedness could almost stop his heart with fright. And the fantastic growth within seemed to have taken its energy from her brain, drained her of the light in her eyes, of the desire to talk or even the capacity to think. Her personality became nothing but complaints, yearnings, and moody silences. When she moved to embrace him, he instinctively shied away from her size and awkwardness, as though a city bus had come too close to his position on the curb.
    It was then he first slept with Rachel and converted their friendship into an affair. He knew now that had been a mistake, but he didn’t regret it. In human relations, Peter believed, error and failure were unavoidable.
    I won’t sleep with her tonight, he decided.
    “T HIS IS … ”—an unintelligible name followed—“the anesthesiologist.”
    The narrow face of an Asian woman loomed in Eric’s way. Her eyes had a lifelessness that seemed hostile. “When did the patient last eat?”
    Eric looked down at Nina, her skin bleached by the bright operating-room lights. Although her eyes were closed, she gripped his hand with unrelenting force and her legs shifted uneasily from side to side. When did she last eat? That soup.
    “Soup,” he said. His mouth worked slowly pronouncing the word.
    “ When? ”
    “Oh,” he said. He tried to look backwards through the night, rewind to their arrival at the hospital, but the tape got stuck and froze the images. He looked at the wall clock. Six-fifty. In the morning? No, night.
    “Was that more than twenty-four hours ago?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    All around the room there was activity. They had been wheeled from the labor room to the operating room so rapidly that Eric had no memory of the move, except that with each step they were joined by someone else, dressed, as he was, in a gown and mask.
    “Another one’s