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fingertips. Her hand had reached for him, his urinous and rain-soaked lap, before he’d even dared to touch and lift the hem of her skirt. She wanted him, or somebody, at once. It wasn’t long before she was in charge. She imagined she’d started this herself and was delighted and blushing. She liked herself when she was powerful. This was the way cousin Freda must behave with men.
    Mouetta was unstoppable, but she was shocked as well, shocked by the suddenness. And possibly she recognized her own opportunity, subconsciously. The chance of pregnancy. She drove her husband forward, hardly wanting him to think. Although Lix was normally the most careful and responsible of men, “with good cause” he always said, given his already proven fertility, he would not on this occasion give much thought to condoms, although he had a packet in his trousers’ back pocket, although there was a single Lubricated Shadow in Freda’s shoulder bag that surely, on this night of incarceration, she could spare. So when Mouetta said, “It’s safe. It’s safe,” he hurtled on. He took the risk. He gambled on the moon and on her honesty.
    We are not animals—not simple monkeys, certainly—although, of all the apes, we are the luckiest, if it is good fortune and not a calamity to take such pleasure in the passions of the
flesh. We fornicate in private (if we want), and that’s a blessing, isn’t it? We can simply mate for fun, at any time and any season we choose, no matter if the woman’s already pregnant, menstruating, ovulating, or in the middle of her lunch. The lesser apes, of course, don’t suffer from the jealousy and pain or lose control.
    Now they were truly clumsy in the car. She had to get her underpants off, his trousers down, the two front seats reclined, while still attending to his kisses and his urgencies and still accommodating seat belts, steering wheels, and the gear shift. Sex in a car is never dignified or comfortable. The cinematic shot would edit out the jump and jerk of it, the gracelessness. There’d be a gently rhythmic car, the rain, the night, the shifting latticework of shadows from the branches of the trees, the heartfelt throbbing of the sound track symphony fast turning music into light, fast turning tear gas smoke (for let us not forget what brought them to the park) into unoffending mist, fast turning darkness into a grainy dawn.
    The truth of Lix and Mouetta, this night of riots and anniversaries, was even grainier. Their lovemaking, if that is what it was, was speedy and uncomfortable and somewhat disappointing for them both, though mostly for Mouetta. Human biology is unequal in its distributions and rewards. Haste cannot often satisfy any more than it can dodge the rain. It can impregnate, though. The sperm do not require sincerity before they can proceed. The eggs are not judgmental. They do not even favor love.
    A dangerous ejaculation, then, for Lix. Deep in the park. Deliverance Park. Three hundred million tempest-tossed sperm, the wretched refuse of his teeming shore—and no contraception to
impede them. Three hundred million! More than the total population of the United States of America, as the Planned Parenthood posters with their Statue of Liberty photograph so often remind us. There has to be a god of mischief to overcater so dramatically. That’s why, of course, an ejaculation is known in this City of Kisses as “a huddled mass.” A tribute to America, the land of opportunity and sex. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” the torch-bearing lady says as she succumbs to suitors. Three hundred million. Oh, what a prospect, all those newcomers, each time a man dares lift his lamp beside her golden door.
    It was not long before Mou (as Lix had called her in his throes, rather than the more usual diminutive, ’Etta) and her husband were left to disunite their limbs and clothing, to clean