The Best American Short Stories 2015 by T.C. Boyle Page A

not to.
    She was shorter than he remembered, but prettier.
    â€œThat girl out front,” he said. “I don’t think she likes me.”
    â€œShe’s a bitch,” Tracy said. “She doesn’t like anybody.”
    This time McHenry let himself watch her, at least at first. Tracy was brisk, professional, exact in her movements, the way she cupped her hand to take the oil from the bottle, for instance. She held it there to warm before she let it rain onto his back. Beneath the cloth skirt—was it a sarong?—she wore lime-green striped underpants, like a kid would wear. She was clothed and he was naked. She was at work, in charge, she knew where she was and what she was doing. While McHenry was way out past the safe shallows. This made no sense to him, the fact that he was here.
    And then it didn’t need to make sense, he was just all body again, all goo and drool. At least at first. He went down again into and then back up with the nearness of her, the body. When she rolled him over this time, she didn’t bother with the towel. In fact she touched him there, a little, just lightly, then went on with the massage. When she went from his face to his feet, she touched him again, as if she were befriending it; and when she had worked her way up his thighs, when it was time for the happy ending, she moved so easily and automatically from one thing to the other that it was not like they were two things at all but just one movement.
    She left. He lay empty and adrift, on his back on the bed. They must change the sheets, he thought, between each one of us.
    What if this was not wrong? He turned the thought around on the drive home in the dark, a white crust of ice at the edge of the headlights. He knew he’d never do a thing like Tracy if he had to explain it to anybody. If Marnie were alive, if Carolyn were around. He wasn’t a cheater. But just in himself, he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. He wasn’t stealing tenderness from anybody or spending someone else’s money. On the other hand, he knew he wouldn’t want to get caught doing this. So that was something. But he couldn’t figure out who was being hurt. Tracy herself seemed cheerful enough.
    Then came this other thought, which McHenry didn’t want in his head but which wouldn’t leave. That thought was this: What if this was something beautiful that he had shut himself off from his whole life? What if they were wrong, the watchers? Maybe there was really nothing bad with this. Had he been mistaken his whole life? Until now, near the end. Something sad here. Even with Marnie there was something furtive, always in the dark. That one time they went to Mexico, just the two of them. It was a glimpse of something. But they could never quite bring it home.
Fucking
, he thought. He had been using the word his whole life as a curse. What if it instead turned out to be a blessing?
    Not a thought he wanted to have. But McHenry could not put it away.
    Â 
    He wound up in a Christian Singles group, run by the church where they used to spend Christmas and Easter. He could not be trusted by himself. This was McHenry’s conclusion. He needed minding.
    The Christian Singles mixed in the lobby of the Graves Hotel on the first Friday evening of each month. Although this month was May, it was still cold out; men and women both arrived in Carhartt brown. The Graves had a coffee shop off one side of the lobby and a bar off the other so you could go one way or the other. McHenry opted for drink. It was looking like a long night.
    â€œLook at you,” said Tom LaFrance. “Come to meet us on a Friday night. I was wondering if you might join the group.”
    â€œJust putting a toe in,” said McHenry.
    â€œNice bunch. Good to get some new blood in, though, I’ll tell you.” He leaned closer to McHenry, inside the bloom of his whiskey breath. “The same old faces. After a while you’ve