Unconscious Man

"I learned a valuable lesson not long ago. Well, it's been nearly a year now. Like I told you I'm an art teacher in the public school system back in the city. I travel from school to school in kind of an ambassadorial role. I'm more or less a supervisor these days."

"You don't look old enough, hon." our host said. I laughed.

"Oh believe me, I am. Teaching in the public school system ages you quickly. I discovered my first grey hair the other day."

My dark-brown hair, though still damp, hung behind and well below my shoulders. The man stroked his goatee. "I discovered mine some time ago."

We both laughed. The fire was raging now in the fireplace, the cabin warm to a point where I no longer needed the men's size long-sleeved wool shirt he'd loaned me. And the red jug wine he kept filling my glass with was warm going down. I thought about unbuttoning the shirt but stopped at fingering the top button as I told my story.

"Anyway, about a year ago they sent me to this weekend seminar upstate in Syracuse. I went alone. I got in late in the afternoon on a Friday and once I'd checked into my hotel room—the seminar was being held at the hotel—and after I called Derrick—"

"Why did you call Derrick?" the man asked, glancing over at him on the couch, unconscious.

"To let him know I got in safely."

"Oh. Right. I've forgotten all these little marital niceties. It's been a long time for me..."

"Anyway, after I checked into my room I went downstairs to the hotel bar to unwind and have a couple of glasses of white wine. Flying makes me nervous and they hadn't served any alcohol on the little shuttle plane I flew up in. It wasn't even a jet, can you believe it?"

The man, whose dark-brown eyes rarely left my flushed face, was looking at me over the rim of his glass of red. It was jug wine and we were drinking it out of former jelly jars, the kind that have pop-off lids. All of which suggested, it seemed to me, a certain frugality. Like my grandmother's.

"Sorry, I only have red," he said, his smile refreshing.

"That's OK."

"Big drinker are we?"

I swallowed some more of the cloyingly sweet "Red Burgundy."

"Can you believe it? Before I met Derrick, right out of college, I'd never had a sip of alcohol before."

"Marriage'll do that to you. Go on. I didn't mean to interrupt your story."

"I'm really hot," I said, squirming on the uncushioned wood chair. It was a wood table for four, with Derrick's compromised, nearly-empty wine glass left behind at his place to my right. "Do you maybe have a tee shirt or something I could...?"

"No. But I know one thing, dear. I love it when you wrinkle your cute little nose."

Feminist or not, I blushed, undid the top two buttons of the man's plaid shirt and began rolling up the sleeves. I could feel myself perspiring underneath. The sweat trickling down my sides, my ribs.

"It's a fireplace not central heating," the man added, looking at my shirt's open vee. "It's not like I can turn it down."

"No, I'm grateful for it," I said, one sleeve now rolled up to my elbow. "An hour ago we were freezing cold out there."

"Lost."

"But found now," I smiled. It all sounded so...Biblical to a lapsed Catholic.

"Indeed. So you went down to this bar..."

"And it was almost completely empty. It was still pretty early. And I'm sitting there sipping my wine, minding my own business and this guy comes up—he was about your age—comes up and asks if he can sit down and we start talking and it turns out he's conducting tomorrow's seminar, he's some kind of art critic or something, he judges shows, and he starts buying me drinks and we're talking and he puts his hand on my thigh and—"

"Did you push it away?"

The feminist in me hesitated. "No," I admitted.

"So you liked it."

"I liked the attention. He was a lot older and he wasn't my type or anything but—"

"Sort of like me," the man grinned.

"No," I said, looking down at the drying brown smears made by the bread I'd cleaned my bowl of stew with, greedily, beef stew. "I wouldn't say that. I do have a daddy thing going, but..."

"So there's hope for me?"

"Hope?"

"I'm joking. Go on."

"So we were pretty drunk by then and at one point I got up to go to the ladies' and when I returned this guy pulled me close to him, held me by the wrists, and said, whispered in my ear, 'I'll give you a hundred dollars to go up to my room with me right now.'"

At which point our host burst out laughing. "Did you ask him what for?"

"Guess."

"Oh I thought he just wanted a companion to discuss art in an intimate setting."

"Yeah, right. Although that's kind of the way it went at first."

"You went up with him?"

"No. Not at first. I told him I wasn't a...I told him I was just here for the seminar. He said he knew that but the offer still stood. We'd have to make a stop at the hotel ATM, that's all."

I paused at this point, glancing over at my husband Derrick asleep on the couch. A drugged sleep. I'd wondered why the man, our host, had insisted, each time we emptied our wine glasses, that he collect them and take them back to the kitchen counter and top them up there, rather than just bringing the jug to the table. At the time I assumed he was embarrassed to be serving such swill to, well, sophisticates from the city. Brooklyn anyway.

Even when Derrick stood up suddenly, bumping his knees against table's underside in the process, even when he stood up and staggered, and our concerned host had jumped up and run over to him, leading Derrick by the elbow to the couch...even then I had not yet put two and two together. Derrick sank down at first, a blank look on his face, mouth open, before tilting to his right, his head nearly hitting the couch arm as he toppled over. The man had lifted Derrick's legs up onto the sofa's other half. And put a couch pillow under his head. Then he did something curious. Letting out a grunt he went to the trouble of rotating Derrick's limp body onto its left side, meaning his back was to the room. To us. The man insisted this was so Derrick didn't wake up with a "fire burn" on his face; but now I wondered if he hadn't done it so my husband, even though unconscious, wasn't "looking" at us while we went back to sitting at the table, drinking and talking and laughing.

"So you ended up going to his room with him but...you said, 'not at first.'"

I squirmed on my chair again. Undid another button. They were plastic, pearly-white. Like semen in color, come to think of it.

"He did something really crazy next. We had another drink and then he leaned over and he said to me... 'Two hundred and fifty. For the whole night.'"

"And you said," the man laughed, "take me to the ATM?"

"No. I said something stupid—and way too loud—like..., "Spend the whole night with you?"

"And he said 'yeah. We'll get up early, you can go back to your room...I have to conduct that seminar in the morning. Keep your voice down please.'"

I looked across the rustic table at our host, a man I'd never laid eyes on before an hour and a half ago. A man who now knew my—our—darkest secret. Well, the first part of it. The beginning. I emptied my glass and he, smiling inwardly at some private thought, brought the half-empty jug of wine over.

"Good," I sighed. "Because I don't want you putting anything in MY glass."

The man jerked a thumb at Derrick. "What, you don't think he just got overwhelmed with relief after being lost in the woods all afternoon."

"The prick," I muttered.

"What?"

"He's such a loser sometimes. The worst sense of direction of anybody I've ever known." I clucked my tongue. "The dumbass can't even read a compass."

"Can I tell you something? He's—you're—not the first person to ever get turned around on these trails, and wind up on my doorstep."

"Did you drug them as well?"

Our host found this amusing for some reason. "Usually it's a guy, alone. And I don't do guys. I leave that to you city slickers."

These comments made no sense to me, no logical sense, so I skirted past them and said, "So that's why I say I learned a valuable lesson that night."

"Which was?"

Derrick had taught me how to play chess. He still always won but I was getting better and better, closer and closer to him in skill. And I was seven years his junior. I felt, now, like I was playing a long-drawn-out game of chess with this stranger at the edge of the woods, our putative savior. Pawn to...

"Sometimes on weekends now, Saturday nights usually or on holidays, I'll head up to one of the touristy bullshit hotels in midtown where they have a lot of conventions. I'll hang out in the bar..."

"And pick up men?"

"No. GET picked up by men. I can score two-fifty easy, like that!" I said, with a finger snap. "And that's not for a night like with the third rate art critic in buttfuck Syracuse...That's for one fuck. Wham, bam and I'm out of there."

"Back to the bar."

"No. Done. Two hundred and fifty in my bra. That's upward to...twelve, fifteen hundred a year in free money? Cash? Teachers don't make shit, you know. It's like an extra twenty thou a year in gross income. For a few one-hour fucks? Rolls in the high-classed hay? Simple. Easy. No-brainer."

I shrugged. The man across from me had lost his smile. "You don't look the type, hon."

I leaned forward. "That's just it. I'm a specialist. Not every guy is looking for the glitzy big-boobs Las Vegas hooker type. Stormy whatshername. Some—most—want the girl next door. The pretty woman they passed on the sidewalk today on their way to work. School teacher. Hookers are easy to come by. But women like me? I could quit my day job and do this five, six days a week?" I cleared my throat. "But who wants THAT many cocks in their mouth, their vagina...up their ass?

"Besides," I continued. "I'll be thirty pretty soon. I just found my first grey hair. I still look young but—"

"You look great, baby."

"—but being a call-girl is even worse than being an actress I think. You reach a certain age and...then what? No," I said in conclusion, all my secrets on the rough-hewn table now, every one of them now, "once a week is plenty enough for this girl."

The man swirled a quarter-inch of red wine in his glass. He was looking into it. He set the glass down, the wine still in it, settling, and gestured at my husband again. Had I just referred to my feminist self as a "girl"?

"What...what does he think about all this?"

"This?"

"Your side job. Does he know?"

I waved a hand, dismissively. "Of course he knows!"

"And he's OK with it?"

"Derrick loves it. There's one thing you have to understand about my husband. He's bisexual. He doesn't admit it to the outside world but he is, believe me. You should hear our...pillow talk. Foreplay. He lives his desire for other men through me. He loves the thought of me taking other men's cocks in my mouth, my vagina...I told you: my ass even—for extra money naturally. He loves it. He lives for it. He rides the subway up to midtown with me when I'm turning tricks. He's so sweet. While I'm in the hotel he waits for me in a midtown bar. When we get back home, our apartment, he likes to lick me. Either hole. He kneels down like my servant and I put my feet on his shoulders and he licks and licks me. He loves it.

"Then he runs me a warm bath. Since I started fucking other guys for money it's an amazing thing. He's become like the ideal husband. Unbelievably solicitous, caring. He even does all the housework."

The man studied my face, my pretty, unmarked face. He was plotting his next move...

"Well, that's a great story but I'm...I'm a simple country bumpkin up here in the woods. I don't know about all these city things. Bisexual...part-time call-girl school teachers..."

"But you know about drugging women's husbands so you can take advantage of them while...?"

"That's merely a supposition on your part, dear. I say he just got overwhelmed by the...the salvation he found here in my modest cabin following...following your recent trauma. Either that or, like he said, he's not a carnivore and the beef stew...my beef stew got to him. I plead innocent," holding his hands up as if in surrender.

"Something got to him." I'd finished unbuttoning my shirt. I didn't show him my tits, my perky little B-cups, but I did open the plaid wings wide enough that he could see my bony cleavage and, down below, if he looked, the silver pin piercing my navel, a gift from Derrick last Christmas. "And that's why I was going to say a while ago, getting back to it, that there's no need to tie my husband up over there. He would be perfectly content to sleep on the couch the next two nights while I sleep with you and you fuck me."

"Next two?" The man sounded surprised.

I shrugged. "When we arrived you said your truck was in the shop, your cousin's place, and you probably wouldn't get it back until Monday morning. It's Saturday evening. Monday's a holiday. Come Monday you drive us back to our car way over wherever we left it...you showed us on the map...and we'll be our of your hair."

"At the moment, dear, I'm more interested in being IN your hair."

I smiled my confident, flirty, call-girl's smile. "What if I don't have any?"

"Hair?"

"That's for you to find out. Maybe Derrick shaves it for me. Who knows?"

Our host leaned back in his chair, held out two palms again. Stop. "You're too much, babe. But there's just one thing you gotta know, sweet little lady."

"I'm not sweet."

"It was an observation."

"I'm not—"

"You LOOK sweet, hon. OK? Relax."

"I'm quite relaxed, dear."

I looked down at the table, the wine glasses, such as they were, the empty stew bowls, the bare wood inbetween. I looked down at our metaphorical chess board. I sensed a draw was in the works.

"Just one thing..."

"You said that."

"You have a wonderful smile, dear. Half honey, half vinegar."

"I try."

"You working girls..."

"You rustic nobodies in the middle of nowhere with brilliant abstract art on your walls?"

"I would call it figurative. You should see the bedroom."

"I intend to, dear. Do you ever show?"

"I gave up."

"That's a shame. Do you still...paint?"

"What are you doing?" the unknown artist asked, instead.

"I'm burning up. I'm taking these...clunky sweatpants off you loaned me...and this shirt..."

"You're beautiful."

"I'm cute, pretty. Girl next door, remember? Small tits. Helen Mirren...now SHE'S beautiful."

"Who? I'm just saying I love having a pretty young woman in her panties sitting at my dinner table. But I'm a poor starving artist and I don't have...two hundred fifty dollars to spare on a..."

I made a bad move. Intentionally. Exposed my queen. Which in term would doom my king. I was three moves from checkmate. I poured myself some more objectionable red from the jug.

"Are you kidding?" I said. "You take two people in, you don't even know them? They're lost. It's raining. Cold out. A front moving in. They've been wandering around the woods since nine a.m...?" pointing at dickhead asleep on the couch. "You take us in, warm us up, lend us your clothes, feed us...offer us your wine? Offer me your bed, offer to fuck me?"

"Seems the least I could do," the man said, pouring more wine into his own glass. At least it isn't tannic, I thought, this socalled "Bed Gurgundy." Had it been my mouth would by now have been so puckered I couldn't speak intelligibly. And I was a teacher by trade.

"No. You got it backwards," I said. "It's the yeast I can do," emphasis on the "I."

"Even so, darling. Love of my life. I'd feel more comfortable if...," looking over his left shoulder at the couch, the unconscious man.

"Fine then," I conceded. "Get the fucking rope."