The Seven Year Bitch by Jennifer Belle Page A

completely bewildered. I didn’t know if by “New York City asshole” he meant me, a native New Yorker, but after that we had no choice but to buy our own house. Still, our house was too close to Marlon’s and we always ended up doing favors for him. He had cancer and the doctors had given him one summer to live, three summers ago.
    We drove in silence most of the way over the George Washington Bridge and up the highway. When we turned off on 18, Russell said, “I’m going to stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts. We should pick up something for Marlon.”
    Every time I heard the words “Dunkin’ Donuts” I thought of a time when, nine months pregnant, I’d been forced to go to La Goulue for lunch alone with Russell’s mother. She was interrogating me on the subject of names. What, she had insisted, was wrong with her father’s name, Gene?
    â€œWe like Duncan,” I had said.
    â€œDuncan!” she said. “You have to be kidding. You can’t do that.”
    â€œWhy not?” I asked.
    â€œDunkin’ Donuts! You can’t call him Dunkin’ Donuts. I never thought I’d have a grandson named Dunkin’ Donuts.”
    I hadn’t even thought of that.
    â€œI guess he can always change his name when he’s of majority,” Russell’s mother said. “He only has to be saddled with the name Duncan for eighteen years. That’s not so bad. You can lie and tell people Duncan is your maiden name.”
    Waiting for Russell in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, I looked out the car window at two men standing near the entrance talking. They were both gorgeous in different ways. Which one would I want, I thought, if I could choose, as if I were catalogue shopping. One was tall with gray hair. He looked like an academic, replete with faded jeans and sport jacket and leather bag presumably filled with books and students’ papers. I pick him, I thought, despite the fact that his thighs were just a little thin in his jeans. The other man was also tall, exactly equally tall, sportier, and had a more boring or familiar look. But then I wondered if he might be the better man. Maybe he was funnier or great in bed. I went back and forth between the two, trying to choose, in a mild panic because they were both so great-looking and it was hard to tell, from such a distance, without even hearing them speak, who was the better man for me. I imagined myself fucking each of them, underneath the brownhaired man, on top of the gray-haired one, having breakfast with them afterward.
    I watched as the gray-haired man took out a cigarette and lit it, which should have ruled him out but didn’t for some reason. I stared at his just slightly too-skinny legs and then brought my gaze back up to his face. I had looked at his lips and then at the other’s and that’s when I realized that their lips were very close together and that they were in fact kissing.
    Then I watched Russell, through the plate-glass window, carefully pouring what I knew was whole milk into my Earl Grey tea even though I had asked for skim, his face frozen in concentration, a wax bag of chocolate doughnuts for Marlon tucked under his arm.
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    When we pulled up in front of Marlon’s house, I saw something hanging from the eaves. “What is that?” I asked Russell.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œIt looks like a dead bird.”
    â€œIt can’t be,” Russell said. “It must be a clump of leaves or a branch or something.”
    I got out of the car and moved toward it. I looked up at it and gasped. Its talons were sharp and knotted and shockingly red. Its black wings were spread. It was headless, yet it seemed to be suspended at the neck. When I looked closely I saw that its head must be stuck inside the eaves, but it seemed impossible, as if the only way that could have happened was if they’d built the house around the bird.
    â€œHow could