Zeroing In (Kit Tolliver #11) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block

 

     
    “K immie, a threesome!”
    “I was just looking to go home with a girl,” she said, “but she was there with her husband, and he was kind of cute.”
    “You’ve got to tell me everything.”
    Well, not exactly everything. She gave Rita the Reader’s Digest version, abbreviated and toned down. Even so, with Rita’s questions and exclamations, she used up a chunk of the new cell phone’s prepaid minutes.
    “It added something,” she said of the husband’s presence. “But at the same time it took something away.”
    “’Cause it wasn’t just the two of you.”
    “Right.”
    “Kimmie, I really wish you were here.”
    “Me too.”
    “I won’t even ask where you are.”
    “Actually, I’m out west again. Not as far west as you are, though.”
    “Oh?”
    “A place I’ve never been before. Provo, Utah?”
    “I’ve never been there either. When I was a kid we took a family trip to a national park, and I think it may have been in Utah. Arches?”
    “I never heard of it.”
    “It was pretty neat. There were these great natural rock formations, sandstone eroded by the wind, and there was this one huge freestanding stone arch and you could stand under it and get your picture taken. And it fell down.”
    “While you were standing under it?”
    “No, silly! I was there fifteen or twenty years ago, and just last year it fell down. It was on the TV news.”
    “Oh.”
    “I’m pretty sure it’s in Utah. Hang on. Thank you, Google. It’s in Utah, and the nearest town is Moab, and I remember now because that’s where we stayed. In a motel with fake wood paneling on the walls. Now why do I remember that?”
    “Maybe the wood grain looked like a cunt.”
    “Kimmie, you are just terrible! ”
    “I know.”
    “Where did you say? Provo? Hang on. Okay, you’re a hundred and ninety-one miles away if you take Route Six. Oh, you know what? That’s where he’s from.”
    “That’s where who’s from?”
    “That crazy Mormon. What was his name? Not Kelly. Damn, why can’t I—Kellen!”
    “The one who wouldn’t go down on you?”
    “Yeah, the pig. Saving his tongue for his fiancée. Asshole.”
    “Probably saving his asshole for Brigham Young.”
    “Ha! You know what? You should look him up.”
    “You think?”
    “Sure, why not? He was pretty hot, except for what he wouldn’t do.”
    “Well—”
    “And wouldn’t you want the experience of screwing a hundred and fifty guys at once?”
    A hundred fifty-two, she thought. And said, “What are you—oh, right, you told me. Proxy baptism?”
    “That’s it.”
    “But you wouldn’t mind, Rita?”
    “Me? Why should I mind? I’m not the one who’s engaged to him.”
    “Well, still. I mean, you saw him first.”
    “And when am I gonna see him again, and why would I even want to? I don’t have to go all the way to Utah to find a guy who won’t go down on me. As a matter of fact . . .”
    “What?”
    “Well, I have to admit I kind of like the idea of us having him in common. It’d be a new kind of threesome, the kind with an interval.”
    “Kellen,” she said. “It’d help if I knew his last name. Still, how many Kellens can there be? Unless it’s the Mormon equivalent of Jason.”
    “He told me his last name. But I can’t possibly—Kimball!”
    “You can’t possibly Kimball?”
    “That’s it, it just popped into my mind. Kellen Kimball. Just think what your name would be if you married him.”
    “Yeah, right. I probably won’t look for him, and nothing’s likely to happen even if I do.”
    “But if it does,” Rita said, “I want to hear all about it.”

    He remembered Rita. Vividly, it would seem, because the recollection brought a blush to his pink cheeks.
    “Outside of Seattle,” he said. “I can’t recall just where.”
    “Kirkland.”
    “That’d be it, Kirkland. A friend and I, we saw her as part of our missionary work. She’d expressed some interest in LDS, so we paid her a home visit to discuss it with