Thirteen Crucifixions, 110

This would be Persimmon’s second? No, third, day at Sheila’s.  She hadn’t done much of anything, all her deadlines had been met, her daughter was coping well without her—which, she with a mixture of relief and regret, knew she would—and Bill, so far as she could tell, was out of the picture.  He’d left a message on her voice-mail—Persimmon called him back, stating emphatically that he must leave her alone for at least a week.  So far he was respecting her wishes.  This was rather like being on holiday.  There wasn’t really a lot for Persimmon to do, except sleep in, stay up late watching TV with Lazarus, who never had anything to say, or laze around all day reading.  Twice she’d been out for drinks with Sheila.  This was luxury, this was freedom.  This was heaven.  It was ten, and she still lay in bed.  She could tell by the opulent light in the window that the sky was overcast.  Now she hadn’t a care in the world.  She could lie here in bed all day if she wanted.  She could get up and take a bath, a long one.  She had gone over a week without sex.  She didn’t miss it, neither could she figure out why she’d ever wanted it.  Though for a while she had.  And for those first critical weeks of courtship, to the exclusion of almost anything else.  Had she been that deprived?  Well….

            But what if it hadn’t been Bill smiling at her in the West Wind, but some other man?  Would she have wanted sex with as much intensity and as much longing? For it seemed to Persimmon that Bill had unlocked in her a hunger, a particular appetite for sex that no previous man had ever been quite able to accomplish with her.  And now she was sure that Bill himself had had very little to do with it.  He was the instrument, a tool of Eros, so to speak.  She had ended up wanting, not Bill, but sex?  She supposed that, in a way, she had been using him.  Like he was a prostitute.  Which she eventually learned he had been for some years during his youth.  An escort for wealthy women.  And men?  But he was so blatantly homophobic that she dared not presume.  Then her interest really began to wane.  Some things you must never reveal to your beloved.

            She got up, ran her bath.  Persimmon did not want to go home, neither did she want Sheila to sell this house.  She seemed on the verge of changing her mind.