“So,” I croaked, ignoring her wince at my raspy voice, “you’re worried that your dead husband is haunting you when you fuck other men?”
I inhaled a long drag of the cigarette, then took care to blow the smoke just far enough from her face to avoid being rude. She didn’t flinch, which meant she thought I had a lot to offer.
Pretty little thing, she was. Nearly thirty years old, though I’d estimate the age of her modified chest to be about three. Her good looks stemmed mainly from the fact that she’d clearly avoided a lifetime of hard work. I probably would have been equally attractive twenty-five years ago had my twin passions been vanity and stupidity.
This gal was taken care of.
Her expression glazed for just a moment. I noticed.
“No,” she offered timidly, “it’s nothing like that.” She looked up at me with wide eyes that had been conditioned to elicit sympathy. I noticed.
“It’s just…” she bit her lip. “It’s just that Raymond’s been gone a month – but I don’t think that he’s gone gone, you know? I want to know if I should put him behind me, or…” She shed a tear. “It started out small. His favorite sweater would be hanging in the closet, but the next morning, it was lying on the bedroom floor. Not a big deal, you know?” She looked around conspiratorially, despite the fact that no one was in the brightly lit sun porch besides the two of us.
As if sensing my thought, Sophocles rubbed up against my skirt. I reached down and scratched his ear without turning away from my client. She stared right back at me, looking over the swirling vapor dancing from the teapot’s spout.
“But then,” she breathed, flushing slightly pink, “I would be, ah, in an intimate moment-”
“Masturbating, or fucking?” I asked bluntly.
Her pink face quickly turned crimson. “Um, the first one. I’d hear a sudden banging on my bedroom door. It would go away whenever I stopped… what I was doing.”
“What makes you think it’s your dead husband?” I pressed her, crushing my cigarette and lighting a new one.
She gazed down at the table. “He would always interrupt me. Even if it wasn’t… about anything naughty.” She looked up at me in desperation. “It just feels like him. Does that make any sense?” She bit her lip again. I noticed. “But the worst thing was last night. That’s what made me decide that it was time to talk with a… professional.”
God, her little pauses and cute blushing were irritating. I really wanted to slap her.
“Explain,” I ordered cavalierly before taking in that first drag.
A long pull of the cigarette really makes people like her worth it. What was her name? Cindy? She seemed like a Cindy. But the Cindys of the world always scatter from my mind for just a few seconds during that first sensual puff. In those moments, I feel so capable.
“Last night-”
I coughed. Reality set back in. “Listen, Cindy-”
“It’s Anne-Samantha.”
“You must have jilled off thousands of times in your life-”
“I’m sorry… ‘jilled’?”
“Well, are you a Jack from the waist down?”
She laid a dainty little hand right on her mouth. “Oh… my, no. I’m all Jill, I suppose.”
I grunted. “So what’s so different about jilling off now?”
Her eyes got wide again, but I had learned long ago to suppress the slap-urge. “When I’m alone in bed, I hear breathing. Only when I’m alone. It’s unmistakable.”
