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: : : FLETCHER DISAPPEARS INTO THE WARMTH of a taxicab. Clark takes a pull on her cigarette as his taillights recede, waves goodbye. Smoke rolls through her barreled lungs. She exhales a long sliver into the wind.
There are hardly any cars out: the season seems to have hit that point where most people, once home, decide to be in for the night. She cuts across the street. The grid of bulbs outside the bank spells out the temperature. Fourteen. She grits her teeth at the sight. But it's only a two-cigarette walk from here to her apartment. And she's dressed warmly: layers of wool and synthetic polymer and FTC standard goose down cut her body off from the air.
The bank display now reads 11:20. She wonders if Oliver's still up. They've spent a couple of evenings lately talking on the phone until late. Nice evenings. She likes being curled up in bed with the phone, warm, talking to him; she likes the feeling of murmuring words into the darkness, and having a voice come back to her, his voice, so gentle, murmuring back.
But where is this going? And where does she want it to go? She's smart enough to know that all this business—this whispering histories into the phone late at night stuff—is all courtship. And she's not all that certain that she wants to be courted.
Let's just cut it down to the core question, she says to herself, as she's cutting through the frozen park. Would you fuck him? That's basically what Fletcher was asking her, back at the bar, that's the question she couldn't answer. She still can't answer it.
She hasn't had sex with anyone since Janine, and that was—what? Almost two years ago now. And she can't say that she really even misses it. She doesn't mind spending her nights alone (in fact she prefers it: she's always found it kind of awkward to have another body in bed with her, she's always like rolling over and finding her face rubbed up against the hairy nape of someone else's neck, ugh). If she feels horny (which happens less and less often, these days), it's not too much trouble to masturbate. Bam. Problem solved. So it's almost like—when she thinks about adding a sexual dimension to an existing relationship she's almost just like what's the hell's the point? Having sex with Janine certainly doesn't seem like that good of an idea in retrospect. They had lots of fun hanging out together until sex entered the picture, and then everything went to shit.
But wait. Think back. She flips through her mental scrapbook of memories from that first weekend, that first time that she and Janine hooked up, and in review she has to admit that there were some pretty great moments in there. She bites down on her lower lip.
So what would it be like, with Oliver? Would it be good? Good enough to make it worth the risk of changing the relationship? Things are working, right now, between them. Maybe she shouldn't change anything.
But, she realizes, as she hurries up the steps to her door, wanting to get inside to call him, things between them are already in the process of changing. They have been changing this entire time. Maybe she needs to just let herself find out what they're changing into.
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