When Bill made no moves for up there, Lily shifted as she stood. She shifted so that her legs spread a little further and her dress rode up a little further, well over the knee on the leg that was up on the lettuce cases. They were talking, not about anything important, not about anything at all really.
Maybe if he didn’t know anything about their bet, Bill wouldn’t have thought much about this. Maybe he would’ve turned so that he wasn’t looking directly at her. Maybe he would have gotten up and gone to the door, opened it and flicked his cigarette out into the woody area off to the side away from the parking lot. Maybe if he weren’t married, he would’ve taken her out to the parking lot, or downstairs for sure.
But he knew about the bet. He knew that he could have her in a flash and that she would win. So that started him thinking about if he were going to do something with either one of them, and his choice would have probably been to do something with both of them. Then he started to consider which one he would want to win the bet. They were different, physically and spiritually, neither one better or worse than the other, simply different.
Brooklyn, he thought. He would have wanted Brooklyn to win the bet. It wasn’t that Lily was unappealing, because quite to the contrary she was quite appealing. But, he thought, he would want to get with Brooklyn first because, he didn’t know exactly why except that she inspired some outrageous thoughts within him. Maybe it was simply that she was from Brooklyn, that she was dark-haired and darker skinned and her colors were more toward what aesthetically pleased him.
No matter because he wasn’t doing anything with either one of them. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t have some fun and after all he was human and male and young and sometimes crazy, well maybe crazy a lot of the time. So out of the blue, with no regard for where they were or who was looking, he simply leaned forward and reached up there.
Lily did not flinch. Lily did not move except to make it easier for him to cop the feels he was copping. In fact, if anything, she leaned in toward him and helped him find precisely what he was looking for, and maybe precisely what she was wanting to please her too.
Bill did not hurry. He took a long, protracted feel of her. Lily smiled and asked him if he liked what he was feeling. He said he sure did, but that it wasn’t going any further than this because, after all, he was a married man, and a newly married man at that.
He never did let on to either one of them that he knew about the bet. But that brief exchange with Lily left him quite agitated, or aroused, yes, he was aroused, and he really wanted to take care of that itch she had started. God did he want to scratch that itch.
Then along came Arlene. Jesus Christ. Lily went back out into the dining room. Bill did go to the door and throw away his cigarette and as soon as he did that, he sat back down on his milk cases and lit another one. That’s when Arlene happened out into the hall.
“Slow as shit out there,” she said.
Bill didn’t say anything. He grabbed her by the hand and led her down the stairs. He didn’t have to drag her. She went quite willingly on her own.
They ended up in the ladies bathroom together. They ended up finding yet another unique solution to their problem, which was really the problem of everything-but.
“Damn,” Arlene said when they were both finished.
“Ain’t no fun in this world,” Bill said echoing a line from a famous short story.
