you at all? Is there nothing I can do to make you want me? When was the last time you even kissed me? Look at me! Look at this! THIS is going to waste, rotting! Do you know how many men would kill to fuck me! How many would want nothing more than to take me and throw me across the room and split me open! I'm dying for it and all you can do is stand there. Say something!” As she stands before him, vulnerable and quivering ,she hopes that her tirade will inspire him to take a cue from the porno and pull her hair and tell her how she needs to be disciplined and then go from there.
But no again.
Something flashes in Kevin's eyes that Allie registers as terror. He retreats to his bedroom and locks the door. Allie apologizes when she settles down. “You didn't deserve that. I'm sorry,” she says.
“Let's not talk about it,” he says when he comes out. He gives her a long kiss and sits down to the bowl of French onion soup she has put on the table. “We'll make love soon. I promise,” he says. “I want to give you what you're after.”
“You do?”
“I swear.”
“Will you do anything? I mean to get yourself to that point?”
Kevin nods. “Even that.”
She is having second thoughts. So many unanswered questions. Yes, there was the matter of her very disturbing and vivid nightmare but this is the least of her concerns. She hasn't had one like it since and chalked it up to a necessary sexual exorcism.
It was still a drug unknown to the world at large and it was stuffed inside the battery compartment of a calculator given to her by a world-class creeper. And even if it will have the same effect on him that it had on her with the only downside being a shiny monster truck of a libido, the dynamic of their relationship would be changed. Forever. His asexuality insulated her from some of the darker aspects of marriage...
What if Gina's theory was true- that men were only as faithful as their options? Or what if she and Kevin were sexually incompatible? Of course, we can't get any more sexually incompatible than we are right now , she thinks as she feels along the particle board of the underside of her bathroom cabinet for the remaining pill.
Allie's hands shake so much she drops the pill on the floor and spills some of the water meant to help it go down Kevin's throat. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” She asks after disclosing everything she knows about the drug once more.
“Gimme,” he says, motioning for the water and pill.
“I love you,” Allie says as she watches him swallow. She kisses him on the forehead. “So much.”
“Yo a tí también,” he says.
Ah, Esteban, Allie thinks. “Esteban” is a Latin alter ego Kevin often affects when Allie tries to be emotionally intimate. At first, Allie thought it was cute and playful but soon understood that “Esteban” was nothing more than a romantic proxy- a convenient stereotype he employs to shield his psyche from a deeper connection with her.
“Now if this works, I want Kevin, not Esteban,” she says. “Comprende?”
“Que lastima!”
“I'm going to go away so you can try to go to sleep. I'll be checking in on you though. If it does what I think it will, I have your permission to take advantage of you, yes?”
“Si, mi vida,” he says.
She paces in the living room. The third time she checks on him, he is asleep and seems to be almost glowing. So far, so good. Allie smiles, then lifts the covers. He has a massive erection. The first she'd ever seen him have. It is like spotting a specimen of a species thought to have gone extinct. She is so excited she goes back to the living room to call Gina.
“ Any last second advice for the girl who hasn't gotten any in forever?”
“Be careful. There's probably a lot of pressure built up in his balls. Enough to blast the enamel off your teeth. And old semen is
Learning to Kill: Stories