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careful not to seem too desperate for work—and friends we had in common from journalism school. After dinner we took the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building and pushed our noses into the grooves of the tall, metal fences, looking down on the lighted buildings of Manhattan as the sticky breezes blew Tropic-of-Cancer waves beneath the bucketing sky. I was feeling a little tipsy, Ethan said he was sober. I got vertigo, he didn’t. I practically fell into his arms up there on top of the world, and, though it seemed as sappy as Camille the dental assistant singing the Carpenters, I let Ethan take me home.
    Blame the makeshift romance, blame the wine. Or blame it on Shade as I would the next day, but that night I was to break my sixteen months and three weeks—give or take a few days—of celibacy. It wasn’t the sex I’d missed, it was that I was beginning to forget my own body. I needed to be touched. And Ethan was there.
    I liked kissing him more than I remembered. He’d become aggressive, his tongue running along the surface of my gums, his lips sucking mine as if through me he could finally breathe.
    Soon enough, our clothes were flying overhead, and we were naked with his head planted between my legs, for a long, long time. Ethan was not one to give up easily—this I remembered. But what first felt good soon turned cold and my mind started wandering…don’t forget to call Aunt Lorraine…and where was Shade, goddammit?…I wanted a cigarette, but would have to hit the deli on the corner and buy a pack of Marlboros, no, something lighter, if I was going to buy a pack.…This was pathetic. Woody Allen had done so many of these scenes it was hard not to imagine myself a split-screen vision, and with Ethan going at it like a lawnmower. It was a shame, because one of the things about being with someone you haven’t been with in a few years is you want to show them how much you’ve improved and on that score I hadn’t made much progress. I thought about throwing in an oooh here, an aaah there, but couldn’t. Beyond comprehension was the fact that I often faked being drunk, pretended more than once to be a lawyer to get my hands on legal documents, frequently lied my way into interviews, yet I couldn’t fudge an orgasm! This had to stop. I grabbed Ethan’s hair and lifted up his head, which for all I knew he’d mistaken as my climax. Then again, he would know better. But he was breathing canine-hot like the weather, and I was just ready to be done with it.
    He tore open a condom package, rolled over his dick with latex smelling like the gloves that earlier had covered Dr. Janis’ fingers, and I climbed on top of him, rocking him hard and fast enough that I thought I might have felt something myself, if I had anything left of myself to feel. “Slow down,” he said and I went faster, almost amused that I could have this penis diving mechanically in and out of my body and not feel a goddamn thing. My vagina was on Novocain, making me tense, hyperaware of the action, yet unable to register any sensation. But I had to feel something, so I swung violently up and down ignoring Ethan when he said, “It’s too much, I’m going to come,” and instead kept up my pace as we went back and forth, him huffing, “I’m going to come,” and me heaving, “Come,” until he said he didn’t want to come, not yet, because it had been so long, and I said not as long as it was for me, and we were suddenly having a conversation in the middle of our thrusts, which made me angry, and wishing I had weight enough to crush him, I slammed my body down on top of him, and he screamed, “Fran’s pregnant!” The room went quiet. I looked down at his red face…his black hair…his white teeth…black and white and red all over, like a cow in a blender…fucking Cow Week! I laughed maniacally, but only for a breath or two, until I felt a sharp pain pound up into me, and I didn’t know whether to scream or be thankful that I