How to Tell Toledo From the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer

Author:Lydia Netzer [Netzer, Lydia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466847798
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

15

They decided to do it at Bernice’s house. That way she would be the most comfortable, Sally pointed out.

“I’ll need at least a shot,” said Bernice. “I don’t think anyone here would begrudge me a shot. Would they?”

The girls sat in the living room on the wood-frame love seat that was hung, charmingly, from the ceiling. A thick braided rug took up half the floor in a room stuffed with antiques and furniture that Bernice’s father had made long ago. Her mother had wanted a porch swing she could use all year. So this was it. It hadn’t worked out for her father, making that porch swing. He had still ended up alone.

“Maybe we should do it on the kitchen table,” said Bernice. There was a large wasp’s nest there currently, defunct and used as a centerpiece, augmented visually with several tiny quilted muslin rabbits.

“This is not an operation,” said Sally. “We do not need a table.”

“It’s an insemination. Same thing,” said Bernice.

Bernice made a show of retrieving two ice cubes from the fridge and placing them in a short glass, going to her father’s bar, which was now her bar. She pulled out the whiskey and poured it into the glass. She took a swig, grimaced, lifted the wasp’s nest with the other hand and set it on the counter.

“Right here,” she said, patting the table. She swept the quilted rabbits onto the floor.

The table was the kind made from a crosscut of a tree. Its surface was irregular.

“No,” said Sally. “Come on, don’t be so nervous. It’s just sex. We’ll do it in your bed.”

“Not in my bed. Not upstairs,” said Bernice, draining her glass. “I don’t want that thing going upstairs.”

“What, Ray’s dick?” She teased. “His love wand? His trouser pickle?”

“Ray’s anything. Ray.”

Bernice refilled her glass.

“Don’t get drunk,” said Sally. “Probably inhibits—”

“What, inhibits the egg from opening its legs for a suitable sperm? I would think the opposite would be true.”

Sally began to move around the downstairs, pushing her hands into chairs and the cushions of the small sofa, testing surfaces. She moved into the dining room.

“After tonight you can’t drink anyway,” she called. “Pregnant, and all. I don’t drink.”

“Bullshit, I’m drinking right up until I see that positive test. If I even see it. Which I probably won’t.”

Sally stopped. “This is perfect,” she said. She was standing in the office, and when Bernice came through the foyer to see what she was talking about, she saw that Sally was sitting on the Victorian fainting couch, which had once been one of her mother’s prize possessions. When acquired, it had been upholstered in horsehair, but her mother had redone it in red corduroy, with gold upholstery tacks.

“It squeaks,” said Bernice.

“I didn’t think you drank that much anyway, that it would be such a big deal to give it up,” said Sally.

“I don’t,” said Bernice. “But why is this perfect? This of all things?”

“Because of the elevation,” Sally explained. She lay down with her head at the foot of the fainting couch and her feet on the headrest.

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