“Bill,” Ruth said, 'let's go to bed now.”

“I'll need one of the blankets. I can use the pillows on the couch,” I said.

“You're acting like-Do you have to be such a prick to me?”

“I know. I'm acting like a child. Let's not fight about it. I don't feel like fighting about anything.”

“I didn't expect punishment from you.”

“I have the clap,” I said.

“If it were really that…” Ruth said. She came to the bed where I was sitting and sat down alongside me. She put her hand on my thigh and sat there with her legs crossed at the ankles and looked at me. “Let's not be silly, Bill. I want you to fuck me.”

Her legs were flattened and spread at the thighs, and the whole side of her body felt warm even through the robe I had on. I looked at her belly and the spreading hair that ran to a sharp V between her legs. A few scattering black hairs were on the inner sides of her thighs, and you could find them almost halfway to her knees. My guts burned, I wanted so much to screw her, and I couldn't kid even myself about that. I remembered Toby, the pansy, and I wondered what it had been like with them; if he had fucked her if he had even tried to fuck her, or what had happened. When I thought of that and thought of all she had been wasting on that crummy fake, I wanted more than before to fuck her myself. It might have been because he was a pansy, and it might have been because he was a fake; whichever it was, when she went off with him it had left me feeling the way you feel when music you like is stopped right in the middle. If something isn't done about it you don't feel right for a long time.