Read Married Sex for Free Online

tour, they were sweating acceptance to kindergarten.
    And now, at forty-six, we were empty nesters. Impossible to accept. Just the two of us? For decades and decades? How crazy was that?
    But okay. Change, the law of life. Saturday now meant sushi in the neighborhood followed by a movie.
    Blair had gone to snag seats, so I was the one in the popcorn line. Just ahead of me was a woman in her early thirties. It was a warm night, and she was wearing a sleeveless blouse with no sweater, tight black jeans, and black boots.
    Standing behind her, I couldn’t help but notice that her bra was too tight; in back of the armholes, it forced tabs of flesh into public view. Worse, it announced that there was no one in her life who saw her from behind before she went out.
    The line was moving slowly. There were twenty people ahead of us. She wasn’t checking her phone. On weekends, I never do. So it was boredom or chat.
    â€œThis is like being in a bank line,” I said.
    â€œI wouldn’t know. I’m unemployed.”
    â€œOh. Who did you used to be?”
    â€œHR for an investment bank—the first to go. You?”
    â€œLawyer.”
    â€œWall Street?”
    â€œMatrimonial. What are you seeing?”
    â€œThe vampire movie.”
    â€œAren’t you a little old for that?”
    â€œMy friends said that. So I’m here by myself.”
    We were moving steadily along, almost at the front of the line.
    â€œI don’t get it,” I said. “What’s the attraction of having a guy suck your blood?”
    â€œIt’s not the blood. It’s the neck.”
    A clerk called out: “Next.”
    â€œWomen also like to have their necks licked ,” she said, and she gave me a fifty-watt smile as she walked away.
    How do you read an encounter like that?
    As a New York moment: two people, a brisk exchange, happens all the time, on to the next.
    Or—and the thought sent my pulse redlining—this unemployed woman who used to work in HR at an investment bank was alone and up for anything on a warm Saturday night in mid-September.

Chapter 8
    I don’t remember his name, and I doubt his book outlived him, but I sometimes think of a man who’s been dead for more than a century. He was French. Titled. Rich in a time when that meant going out four nights a week. It took him only minutes to put on a dinner jacket; his wife required an hour to dress. Rather than seethe, he decided to write a novel while he waited for her to appear. In less than a year, he’d finished it.
    My situation is just the reverse. After a night out, I’m waiting for my wife to undress. To wash the day away. And then put on an outfit only I’ll see.
    I’m quick—I shower between the drops, Blair says—so I go first.
    Then, while Blair disappears, I have tasks.
    I have performed them two or three nights a week—for years.
    They never get old.
    Pour two shots of tequila or single malt and two glasses of water. Roll a thin joint. Light a candle. Choose music that can take us elsewhere.
    Sometimes I hear Blair singing. Saturday night she was silent. Until, through the bathroom door, she announced what she’d been thinking about.
    â€œThat line in the movie—do you think that’s true?”
    â€œWhich one?” I asked, though I knew the line she meant.
    The door opened. Blair was wearing a thick white terry­cloth robe. And spiked heels. I hoped for a short conversation­.
    She quoted: “Making love to your wife is like striking out the pitcher.”
    â€œYou were offended?”
    â€œYou weren’t?”
    â€œRight after he said that, she slugged him—and the audience laughed.”
    â€œFirst they laughed at his line,” she said.
    â€œBut she got the last laugh.”
    I handed Blair a shot glass. She drained it and then took the second glass—my glass—and knocked it back.
    â€œSomething for him, something for her,” she