Ms. Marsh: Chapter 17
Dinner for three. Then a suite at Greenfield, a canvas bag that has been waiting all day, and a basement she never got to see from his side.
Note: Ms. Marsh is a serialized story. If you’re joining us between courses, you can find Chapters 1–16 [here]. Take a seat. They saved you one.
The Greenfield dining room was two stories of pitched ceiling with exposed beams and a stone fireplace at the far end doing work a gas fireplace cannot do. Candles on every table. Lamps on the sideboards. The walls the kind of old plaster that absorbs sound the way good plaster is supposed to, so that a room of thirty people talking at once reads, to the ear, as the low steady murmur of a well-run evening and not as noise.
I came down the staircase in black silk. The hostess — a woman my age in a navy linen dress with reading glasses on a chain — looked up from her book and smiled.
“Ms. Marsh. Your party is at the window.”
“Thank you.”
“They ordered you a glass of something. It’s been breathing.”
“Wonderful.”
She led me across the room. The route took me past a couple in their sixties sharing a duck confit, past a four-top of women in their forties who had clearly been at the spa all day and were now three bottles in, past a man dining alone with a book he was actually reading, and then into the corner by the window where the table was.
Hannah and Tommy saw me at the same time.
Hannah had her back to the wall and Tommy had his back to the room, which was the seating a girl chooses for a boy she is guarding. Between them on the table was a bowl of olives, a plate of something that looked like a charcuterie the kitchen had made rather than bought, a bottle of red open and breathing in the center, two glasses in front of them already half gone, and a third glass in front of my place with an inch and a half of wine in it at exactly the right level for a pour that had been sitting for the exact right amount of time.
Hannah stood up when I came to the table. An old reflex, the one her mother had trained into her. Tommy followed her a second later, the reflex traveling across the table like a signal.
“Sit, both of you.”
They sat.
I took my chair — the third side of the triangle, at the window, facing the room — and Hannah poured the last of my pour into my glass from the bottle with a practiced hand I had not yet seen on her and said:
“The sommelier said you’d like it. He said it was almost all Nebbiolo with enough of something else to keep the edges off. I don’t know what that means but he said it with his eyes closed so I ordered two bottles.”
“Two.”
“Vivian. It’s an occasion.”
“It’s an occasion.”
“Is your small thing settled?”
“My small thing is settled.”
“Good.”
She did not ask what it was. She had not asked in the text and she was not asking now. She had sent me Take your time, Vivian and she had meant it, and now the small thing was off the table and the evening was on the table, and Hannah Wallace at nineteen already knew how to do that — which is a thing you cannot teach a woman. You can only watch her do it and know you are in the presence of something.
I lifted my glass.
“To the three of us.”
Hannah lifted hers. “To the three of us.”
Tommy lifted his. His hand was steady. His hair was still where Hannah had put it. The collar of the rose shirt sat on his throat the way rose had sat on the throats of boys in portraits for four hundred years.
“To the three of us.”
We drank.
The wine was — Hannah’s sommelier had not lied — the particular mid-weight red you want on an October night in a dining room with a stone fireplace. Tommy drank it carefully and without announcement. Hannah drank it with her eyes closed for the first sip and opened them afterward like a girl coming up from a dive. I drank mine slowly and was halfway through the first swallow when I had already read the table.
I set my glass down.
Hannah was a degree too bright. Her smile was on but her eyes were not quite in it — they kept going to Tommy and coming back, to Tommy and back, as though she were checking on him to see if he’d recovered from whatever had been said while I was upstairs. Tommy was quiet. Not the loose quiet he had been on the couch before dinner. The other quiet. He had a piece of food in front of him and was cutting it into small pieces because cutting was easier than eating.
They had been talking about something while I was gone. It had not finished well.
I took another swallow of wine. I did not ask yet. I let them have another minute.
“Hannah. Would you like to order us some food. I’ve been upstairs too long.”
The waiter materialized. Hannah ordered for the table.
This was also new. She did it without checking with either of us, in the same practiced voice she had used on the sommelier, reading the menu off her phone — she had been studying it for forty minutes, I realized, while waiting for me — and asking the waiter about the duck breast and the risotto and whether the trout was local, which it was. She ordered the trout for me because she had decided I would want it, which I did, and the risotto for herself and the duck for Tommy because, as she explained to Tommy in the same tone of voice a mother uses with a child who does not yet know his own palate, you like duck, Tommy, you told me in eleventh grade you had duck at your cousin’s wedding and you thought about it for two weeks.
“I remember that,” Tommy said.
“I know you do.”
“You remember that.”
“I remember everything you told me in eleventh grade, Keane. I have been sitting on three years of your ephemera. It is coming out tonight. Brace.”
The waiter, who was a man of about forty with a kind face and the practiced stillness of a professional who has seen many first-date tables and second-anniversary tables and is-this-the-last-dinner tables and knows not to disturb the geometry of any of them, wrote the order down without comment and disappeared. I set my fork parallel to my knife on the linen and I looked at the two of them.
“Sweetheart,” I said to Hannah, holding her eyes.
“Yes.”
“What happened while I was gone.”
Her thumb went to the stem of her glass. That small ticking movement, the first time I had seen it on her today.
“Oh. Um — “
“The shape of it. Not the speech.”
She took a breath.
“I told Tommy I was scared I was hurting him. That I have been — that I’ve been making all the choices today, and calling him sweetheart, and buying him lingerie, and I have a boyfriend, and I am going to drive home Sunday, and I am worried I have been — “ she shook her head, found it again, “ — taking something that I don’t have the right to take. Because I don’t know what I am going to do with him on Monday. And he said he was going to be okay, and that was the worst thing he could have said, and then the waiter came, and — “
“And now we are here.”
“And now we are here.”
I looked across at Tommy. He had set the knife down beside the fork. His hands were in his lap. His eyes were on his plate.
He was not going to look at me until I told him it was all right to.
“Tommy.”
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“Look up, sweetheart.”
He looked up. His face looked like it had been bracing for something for the last eight minutes and was not sure whether the thing had arrived yet.
“I am going to take this conversation from you. Is that all right.”
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“Good.”
I watched his shoulders drop half an inch. I had handed him a chair to sit down in and he had taken it and was now relieved to be sitting in it.
I turned back to Hannah.
Choose the first sentence, I told myself. Choose as you would choose a dress out of a closet if the dress mattered.
And then I thought — because the thought arrived with the choice of sentence, and because the arrival of the thought was one of those honest alarms a woman feels when she is about to do something she has not done before — I have never said these things out loud to anyone. I have described this architecture to myself in the shower and in the car and in my own bedroom at midnight for six weeks. I have never spoken it to another human being in the daylight with my voice. I am going to do it now, in a dining room at a country inn, to a nineteen-year-old girl I love, at a candle-lit table, with two other couples ten feet away eating duck confit.
Fine. Say it, Vivian.
Say it brave.
“Sweetheart. I am going to be a little direct. More direct than I have been with either of you before. I am going to be clinical in some places because clinical is the thing that is going to help you tonight. It is also going to be useful to Tommy. I am going to say things I have not said out loud at a table before. I want permission from both of you first. Hannah.”
“Yes. Yes. Please.”
“Tommy.”
“Yes.”
“Anything I say you can stop me on. You tell me Ms. Marsh, not that part, and I stop. Same for you, sweetheart.”
“Okay.”
“Good.” I picked up the wine. I did not drink yet. I held the glass. “Here is the first sentence. The word for what Tommy is, Hannah, is sissy. That is the word. I am going to use it and I want you to hear it and I want you to hold it for a second in your mouth before I give you the rest of what the word means.”
She blinked. She did not flinch. But I watched the word enter her — the visible settle of a phrase landing in a place it had not landed before, and a part of her face, the part that had been asking a question since Wednesday, going still as the question got answered.
“Sissy.”
“Sissy.”
“Okay.”
“Say it once more.”
“Sissy.”
“Thank you.”
I drank the wine, finally. Small sip. The wine was doing the work a good wine does at a candle-lit table when a difficult thing has been said. It was giving the sentence air.
“Now. Before I tell you what the word means, I want to tell you what the word does not mean. Because the version of this word you have heard is going to be the version you grew up with, and the version you grew up with is not the version I am handing you tonight. Are you listening.”
“Yes.”
“Tommy is not a girl.”
Her eyes moved to him and back to me.
“I know he’s not — “
“Let me say it. He is not a girl. He is not transitioning. He does not have dysphoria. He does not want the world to call him she. He is not in the wrong body. There would be nothing wrong if he did want those things but he doesn’t. He is a nineteen-year-old boy named Tommy Keane who goes to the store as Tommy and stands in line at the DMV as Tommy and will go to Thanksgiving dinner at his mother’s table as Tommy and will shake your father’s hand at the door of your parents’ house as Tommy. Do you understand me.”
“I understand you.”
“Tommy. Is that right?”
Tommy, quiet, his hand on the stem of his wine glass: “Yes, Ms. Marsh. I — I —”
“It’s alright. Keep going.”
“I — I like being a boy. In the world. I like that part. I don’t — I’ve never wanted to — to be a girl. That’s not — “
He stopped. His ears were past pink. The word was close to his mouth but the word was not one he had said at a table with people watching before, and I could see him walking up to it and backing away.
“Take your time, sweetheart.”
“I — it’s not that I want to be one. It’s that I want — “
His eyes flicked to Hannah.
And something happened on his face that I had been waiting for him to do all day, which was — he checked her. He had spent the whole afternoon letting himself be seen by her, and now, at the hardest moment of the evening so far, he looked at her like her reaction was the only reaction that mattered to him, and he let her face be his permission.
Hannah, to her enormous credit, held very still. She did not nod. She did not smile. She gave him the steady neutral attention of a person who was not going to decide what she thought about the sentence until he had said it. It was the most generous thing her face could have done for him in that moment and I do not know if she knew she was doing it.
Tommy breathed out.
“It’s not that I want to be a girl. It’s that I want — with Hannah — I want — with her — I — want to be like one. Just with her. I’ve — I’ve been trying to figure out the difference for a while. Between — between being and being like. And the difference is — is her. It’s her. When she’s in the room. That’s the whole — that’s the whole difference.”
“Good boy.”
The involuntary shudder at the word. His hand on the wine glass stopped. He did not look at Hannah for a full second — he was too scared, and he needed the second to himself — and then he looked back.
Hannah was still holding her face steady for him.
I watched her, and I thought: she doesn’t know yet how much work she just did. She will later. Not now.
“Hannah.”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear what he said.”
“I heard him.”
“Say it back so I know it landed.”
“He — he wants to be like a girl. With me. Not — not a girl. Like a girl. With me. When I’m in the room.”
“Yes.”
“Only with me.”
“Only with you. The frequency, sweetheart, is you. You are the signal. Nobody else turns this on. Not me — he is not my sissy, though I have been helping him find the shape of what he is, and the shape has been consistent with you as its destination since September when I first met him. Not his mother. Not some future girl. You. He has been Tommy for nineteen years in the world. He has been — what we are calling sissy — for you, and only for you, and only in rooms where the door closes. Do you hear me.”
“I hear you.”
“Tommy.”
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“Is that right.”
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“In your own words. Please.”
He swallowed. He looked down at his plate. Looked up. His voice came out smaller than before but steadier.
“I’m — I’m Tommy everywhere. Except with her.”
“And with her you are — “
“Hers.”
The word arrived with a surprise on his face, as if he had been going to say something else and a better word had arrived at his mouth a half-second before the expected word.
“Hers.“
“Yeah.”
Hannah’s hand came off the stem of the wine glass.
It moved — not toward Tommy, not toward me, but down, slow, into her own lap. And then, a beat later, I saw the angle of her shoulder change. Her hand had gone where it needed to go. She did not announce it. She did not look at either of us as she did it. She simply stopped fighting it.
I filed it. I did not look. I talked to her eyes.
“Good. Now. The next piece, sweetheart. Like a girl has two halves. I am going to give you both halves because you need both. They are related and they are different. Are you ready.”
“Yes.”
“The first half is social. The second half is sexual. I am going to take them in that order because the social half is the one that is going to answer your hurting him fear, and the sexual half is the one that I imagine is going to come back to us later tonight upstairs and I want the social half on the table first so that the sexual half lands into a shape that already makes sense.”
“Okay.”
“The social half. Hannah — Tommy is not just like a girl in your bed. Tommy is — and will be — in the hours of your life that are not sex, your girlfriend. And I do not mean girl-friend, two syllables, a girl who is your friend. I mean girlfriend, one word, the girl you have had since you were six. The one you shop with. The one who does your hair before a date. The one you text at eleven-thirty at night about something your mother said. The one whose apartment you drop by on a Tuesday afternoon because the bookshop was slow and you need to sit on someone’s couch. The one who sleeps over. The one who borrows your clothes. The one who is in your bed beside you, not because you are having sex, because it is cold and it is three a.m. and neither of you wants to drive home. That kind of girlfriend. The whole of the role.”
I picked up my wine. Put it down. I was not performing now, I was just holding.
“The reason I am telling you this, sweetheart, is that the word girlfriend in that sense is the larger half of what Tommy is asking for. The sex is a part of it. The sex is not most of it. Most of what Tommy wants is the Tuesday afternoon and the eleven-thirty text and the borrowed sweater. Most of what he has been waiting three years for is the chance to be in your life the way a woman’s best woman friend is in her life. The sleepover. The couch. The coffee on a Saturday morning. He wants to be inside your female life, Hannah, the way your closest girlfriends are already inside it.”
Hannah’s eyes were very still.
“Vivian.”
“Yes.”
“You are describing — you are describing the shape of a whole — “
“A whole life. Yes.”
“And he wants — Tommy wants — “
“Ask him.”
Hannah turned her face to Tommy.
Tommy’s face had gone through something while I was talking. He had been listening to me with a particular attention that I had not seen on him before — the attention of a boy who was hearing, out loud, a sentence-shape he had been assembling from fragments in his own head for longer than he could remember, and who was recognizing the assembly. Recognizing that someone else had assembled the same one.
Hannah’s voice, when it came, was small.
“Is that right, Keane.”
He opened his mouth. He closed it.
“Keane.”
“Yeah. Just — just give me a second.”
“Take a second.”
He took it. His hand came up to his own face — pressed the heel of his palm against his eye for a fraction of a second, an adjustment to stop himself from tearing up — and then came back down to the tablecloth, and he looked at her.
“Hannah. I — I’ve thought about this. A lot. I didn’t — I didn’t have the word Ms. Marsh just gave. The girlfriend word. I have been — in my head, walking places — I have been trying to describe it to myself for — for a long time. And it always came out — I want to be the friend. Or I want to be around her. Or — the word I used in Ms. Marsh’s kitchen was beside. And those were all — those were all closer than nothing but they were all missing a — a specific thing, which was — which was — “
He stopped. He was going to lose it. His voice had caught, and he was trying to talk past the catch.
Hannah did something beautiful. She didn’t rush to him. She didn’t say it’s okay or take your time, which would have reminded him that time was passing. She just put her forearm flat on the table and turned her hand palm-up on the linen, a few inches from his wine glass. An offer.
Tommy did not take the hand yet. He saw it and his eyes teared up for a second but he did not take it. He kept trying.
“The thing I was missing was — I wasn’t trying to say I wanted to be friends. I was trying to say I wanted to be the kind of friend. The — the specific — I wanted to be the friend you — you do girl things with. The one in the bed at three in the morning, like Ms. Marsh said. The one who comes over in — in my — pajamas. I wanted — “
He stopped again. He looked at her hand on the table. He reached out and put his hand on top of hers. Not laced. Just flat on the back of her hand, his fingers over hers.
“So, yes, I — I want — I want to be your girlfriend, Hannah.”
Hannah’s breath went.
“I’m sorry. I’m saying — I’m saying the word Ms. Marsh gave me. But I mean it. I have meant something like it for three years. I just didn’t — I didn’t know there was one word. I thought it was going to take me paragraphs. It turns out it’s one word. Ms. Marsh just — “
“Tommy.”
“Yeah.”
“Say it again.”
“I want to be your girlfriend.”
“Oh, Keane.”
“I’m sorry if it’s — I’m sorry if it’s a lot.”
“Don’t be sorry, sweetheart. Don’t you dare.”
The word sweetheart — from her, to him, with her hand under his on the table, with her eyes wet on the other side of the candle — did something to his face that I am going to have trouble describing. A settling. The whole weather system easing, the shoulders coming down. He breathed out.
I watched Hannah’s other hand, under the table, come up briefly to her thigh and then go back down to where it had been. The arousal was not competing with the love. The arousal was folding into the love. I had wondered earlier, when I saw her hand go, whether I was going to have to intervene to keep the two things compatible in her head. I did not have to. Her body was braiding them for her.
Good girl, Hannah. I did not say it out loud. I said it to myself, in my chest, like a mother might.
“Keep going, Vivian.”
Hannah said it without looking at me. Her hand was still under Tommy’s on the table.
“You said there was a second half.”
“I did.”
“Is now the time.”
“Now is the time, sweetheart. Are you holding up.”
“I am — Vivian, I am under the table.”
“I know.”
“You know.”
“I have known for about six minutes. I am not going to pretend I don’t. I am not going to embarrass you about it. It is the right response to what is being said. Keep your hand where it is.”
“Vivian.”
“It is a public room. It is also a very dim room and the tablecloth goes to your knees and the other tables are eating their own dinners and nobody is watching you. If your hand is helping you hear me, the hand stays. If the hand gets distracting, the hand comes up and takes a sip of water. Your call. I am not going to manage you down there, sweetheart. You are the manager of that hand.”
Hannah’s mouth opened. Closed. I watched her absorb the fact that a grown woman across a candle from her had just given her permission — plainly, without drama — to keep doing the thing she was doing while other people were finishing their trout ten feet away. The permission was itself a moment in her education. She clocked it and filed it.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Tommy’s thumb, on top of her other hand on the table, moved a quarter-inch against her knuckles. He had not looked down at her lap. He was tracking Hannah’s face only. But he had understood what I had just said, and he had loved the understanding of it, and he had put a physical acknowledgment of it into the pad of his thumb on the back of her hand.
Hannah closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, they were wet at the corners.
“Please Vivian. Please go on.”
“The second half, Hannah, is the sex. And the thing I am going to say about the sex is going to take a minute and you are going to need to hear me all the way through before you react, because the logic is cumulative and the first sentence will not make sense until the fifth sentence.”
“Okay.”
“Tommy.”
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“You all right to hear this at the table. Some of it is about you.”
Tommy swallowed. His thumb was still on the back of Hannah’s hand.
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“All right. The sex. Hannah, when you are in bed with a man — and I am going to use Brandon as the example for the shape, but the point is about the shape, not Brandon specifically — Tommy is not another man in the bed with you. He is not on the other side of you with the man. He is on your side of the bed. The same side as you. That is his role.”
She nodded slowly.
“He brings his mouth, not his penis. He sucks. He doesn’t fuck. He rubs himself with two fingers and a thumb — the girl’s motion, not the boy’s — he isn’t going to — to complete inside you. He does not penetrate. He is penetrated. When the man is inside you, he is beside you. When the man is done with you, he is the one who cleans you. When the man wants to go again, he is the one who helps. He participates from the girlfriend’s side of the bed, Hannah. That is the configuration. Same side as you. Not across.”
“Same side as me.”
“Same side. Say it back.”
“His mouth, not his — his — penis. Rub, not pull. Same side of the bed as me. My girlfriend in bed.”
“Good.”
I took a breath.
I did not drink the wine. The glass was shaking a little in my hand, and I did not want either of them to see it, so I put the glass down instead and wrapped my fingers around the stem and kept them there.
“Now. The piece that matters most. The piece that is going to make the rest of this make sense. Hannah, Tommy has needs too.”
“Needs.”
“Sexual ones. Real ones. In his own body. Independent of how much he loves you. I want to be very plain about this because I think you are carrying a version of Tommy in your head in which he is a boy who is grateful to be anywhere near you and whose own needs are vague. That is not the Tommy I have been getting to know on Saturdays. Tommy has specific needs in his body. I am going to tell you what they are because if I don’t tell you, Tommy will eventually tell you, and it will be less clean coming from him than it is coming from me, because I can be clinical about it and he cannot.”
Tommy’s ears. Still past pink.
“Tommy needs to be fucked.”
Hannah’s breath stopped.
“He needs a man inside him. He doesn’t need to penetrate. He needs to be penetrated. By a real man with a real cock. In his mouth and in — in — his body. And his body has been asking for that for a while now, and I have been watching the ask get clearer on Saturdays, and it is not going away, and his need is not a small thing for him, it is the same size as the need your own body has for a man inside you. The same size, Hannah. Equivalent. Do you hear me.”
Hannah was breathing through her mouth.
“I hear you.”
“So.” I picked up the wine. This time I drank. One slow swallow. Setting the next sentence up. “When I tell you that you and Tommy are not competing, sweetheart — that is not a soft claim. That is a structural one. You and Tommy are not competing for Brandon because Brandon is not food for one of you and scraps for the other one. Brandon is one man with one cock who can meet both your bodies’ needs at the same time, because your bodies need the same thing, and the same cock can give it to both of you. The configuration is not you and your sissy and a man in the middle. The configuration is two girls who share a man. One of them is you and the other one is Tommy. Do you hear the difference.”
“Two girls who share a man.”
“Yes.”
“I — “
“And the two girls, Hannah, are colleagues. Not rivals. They are colleagues in the matter of the man. One of the oldest arrangements in the species, sweetheart. The culture works very hard to convince you it doesn’t exist. It does. You have been living next to it your whole life without being told.”
Hannah’s face had gone through a thing while I spoke. She had started tracking it with her eyes on mine, and then halfway through her eyes had gone a little past me, a little unfocused, her eyes seeing the picture assemble in her head faster than I could describe it. The shape was landing. She was getting there on her own, and I was following behind her.
Under the table, her hand had gone still. Which told me — and I noted it, the data point of a teacher watching a student — that the idea itself was doing the arousing now, and her hand had stopped because it did not need to move for the moment, because the mind was carrying the load.
“You are telling me — you are telling me that Brandon — “
“I am telling you that the man who fucks you is the man who fucks Tommy. That is the configuration. Not Brandon for you and some other man for Tommy. One man, for both of you, because you both need the same thing, because the thing you both need is the thing only a man can give, and the economy of it is that a girl with a sissy and a boyfriend does not require two men. She requires one man, and she shares him. The sissy is not the third wheel. The sissy is the other girl. And the other girl, in bed with her boyfriend, does not need her own man. She enjoys the same man.”
I did not look at her hand. I kept talking.
“Which means, sweetheart, that the next time Brandon’s cock is in your mouth, Tommy’s mouth is on the same cock before you or after you or at the same time, because that is what sissies do and that is what girlfriends do when they share a man. The next time Brandon is inside you, Tommy is beside you on the bed watching, or Brandon has just finished inside you and Tommy is cleaning you with his mouth, or Brandon has just finished with you and is now inside Tommy, whose pussy — that’s my word for it, the mouth and the other opening, they’re both called pussy in my vocabulary — whose pussy is ready for him because Tommy needs it there just like you do. That is the configuration. That is the shape of the sex. All three of you in one bed, and one cock doing the work for all three of you, and nobody has been replaced because nobody was trying to occupy anyone else’s spot.”
Hannah was breathing through her mouth.
“Vivian.”
“Yes.”
“I am going to need a second.”
“Take it.”
She took it. Her eyes closed. Her hand stayed under the table. She breathed.
The trout and the duck and the risotto arrived in that exact moment — waiter, three plates, polite placement, the ceremony of napkins refolded — and I waited for him to go. Hannah did not open her eyes until his footsteps had gone back to the kitchen. Then she did open them, and she was — a little wrecked, a little settled — a girl who had been given a picture she had not known was the picture and who had now seen it.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“So — so Tommy is not — Tommy is not the small consolation prize in this.”
“Tommy is not a consolation, sweetheart. Tommy is one of two people with a need that a Brandon can meet. You are the other. Tommy is not jealous of Brandon because Brandon is not taking anything from him. Brandon is giving to him. The same thing Brandon gives to you. At the same time, in the same bed, from the same cock. You and Tommy are not competing for Brandon.”
“Oh my god.”
“Eat a bite. Keep me company.”
She picked up her fork with a hand that was not completely steady. She took a bite of risotto. She chewed it. She swallowed. The saffron did its kind work. Her shoulders dropped a quarter inch.
“Vivian.”
“Yes.”
“Tommy — Tommy needs to be fucked.“
“He does.”
“By a man.”
“By a man.”
“And the man would — would be the same man who — “
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“Oh my god, Vivian.”
“Eat, sweetheart.”
She ate another bite. She drank some wine. Then set her fork down. Tommy, across the table, had not touched his duck yet. He was watching Hannah with a quiet alert attention in his face. A boy who had just been named in front of the girl he loved and who was waiting, politely, to see what she was going to do with the naming.
I turned my face to him.
“Tommy.”
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“I want you to tell Hannah one more thing. The last thing. Tell her why the man is her pick.”
He looked at me. His eyes had cleared some. The shine was still in them but he had gotten ahead of it. His hand was still on top of Hannah’s on the table. His other hand was flat on his thigh.
I watched him take a second to assemble the sentence. His face did the thing Tommy’s face did when he was going to say a true thing and was trying to get the true thing into its right shape before he said it aloud. I did not help. This part he needed to do himself.
“Hannah.” His thumb moved on her knuckles again. “I — I want you to pick. For me. For us. Whoever you pick — “ and he hesitated, the hesitation I was watching for, “— Brandon, or — “ and then he did not finish the sentence. “I want your pick. Because your pick will be right. By — by definition. Because —”
“Tommy.”
“— whoever it turns out to be — I’m going to trust you. Because you picked. That’s the whole of it. I’m putting myself in your — I’m putting myself in your care, Hannah. That’s the sentence. I’m putting myself in your care and I’m asking you to — to take care of both of us. You and me. Because I can’t take care of him and I can’t take care of myself, not on this, not without you, and you are the — you are the one who knows. You’re the one I trust.”
He stopped.
Hannah was looking at him with her mouth slightly open.
“Keane.”
“Yeah.”
“You just said I am putting myself in your care.“
“Yeah.”
“Oh god.”
She closed her eyes. She kept his hand on hers. Her other hand — I had been tracking it since it went under the dress — came up again and she put it flat on the tablecloth. Out from under. In the open. As if to say, the instrument was a lot a minute ago and now the instrument was quiet, because the sentence he had just said was not one she could rub herself through, it was one she had to sit with clean.
“Tommy.”
“Yeah.”
“I am going to take very good care of you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know how yet. But I am going to.”
“I know.”
“The man — whoever that — whenever that — “
“Your pick.”
“My pick.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
I realized, watching them, that I had not breathed in a little while.
I breathed.
“Sweethearts.”
They both looked at me.
“The trout is getting cold.”
Hannah, a laugh coming up out of her that was half a laugh and half a sob: “Vivian.“
“Eat. Both of you. We have said the hard things. There is a thing about hard things said well, which is that the body needs food after. Eat.”
They ate.
Hannah ate her risotto. She closed her eyes after another bite — the oh of the saffron working again — and then she opened them and chewed and swallowed and she was a girl eating food at a dinner table, more or less, a girl whose hand had just been in her lap and was now on her fork, a girl who had been told she was a girlfriend and had been believed.
Tommy cut into the duck. He did not taste it for the first two bites. Then on the third bite he registered it, and he looked at Hannah, and he said — his first full unassisted sentence since the conversation started:
“This is really good duck.”
Hannah laughed — the wet one again — and reached across and cut herself a piece and ate it.
“It is really good duck, Keane.”
I watched them. The two of them, eating across a table from each other, hands no longer on each other but knowing where each other’s hands were, which was better than touching. The candle between them. The wine doing its work.
And I thought — and I let myself think it, at a candle, in black silk, at a country inn in October — I have never described the two-girls-sharing-a-man configuration aloud to anyone before. I have held it in my head since Nashville. I held it through twenty-two years with Robert, who would not have understood the first sentence. I held it through widowhood. I held it through five months with Chase, who might understand it but who I have not yet tested. Tonight I handed it, cleanly, to a nineteen-year-old girl who understood it in ten minutes.
I drank my wine.
The trout was, in fact, cold. It was still extraordinary.
Over coffee, Hannah set her cup down and looked at me.
“Vivian.”
“Yes.”
“One last thing. Just so I have it.”
“Tell me.”
“The — the specifics. About the sex. About how — about the mechanics. About what — about what Tommy has been practicing with you on Saturdays. The parts you didn’t say.”
“They’re not for down here, sweetheart.”
“Okay.”
“Those are for upstairs. Some of them are in Tommy’s bag. Some of them are in what he can tell you when you ask. Some of them are not for tonight at all — they are for some Saturday in November, or December, or February, when you and Tommy and I are in my kitchen and I am making something on the stove and you ask me a question. They will come when they come. Down here, at dinner, we have laid the frame. That is enough for a dining room.”
“Enough for a dining room.”
“Enough for a dining room.”
She nodded.
“And Brandon.”
“Brandon is next week, sweetheart.”
“I’m scared of that conversation.”
“Of course you are.”
“But you think it will be alright? That he will — he will — that Brandon will get it. He’ll understand?”
I took a long sip of wine. This was the piece I had been saving. This was the piece I had been carrying since Tommy first described the basement to me in September and I had filed it away under useful data someday without knowing when I would use it.
“Three years ago, sweetheart, your boyfriend made eye contact with your sissy-in-training in a basement doorway for most of twenty minutes. He did not tell him to leave. He did not close the door. He did not stop. He smiled at him. He kept the smile. He kept the eye contact. That is not the behavior of a man who is threatened by a smaller boy in the room. That is the behavior of a man who likes being watched by one. Men of Brandon’s particular size and self-assurance — the rugby boys, the confident ones, the ones who take the girls to prom and who sit in ice cream on a bus ride home — are almost never threatened by a sissy in their girlfriend’s orbit. They find it, after a short adjustment, flattering. Because a sissy is not a rival, Hannah. A sissy is an audience. And men like Brandon love an audience. It feeds something in them they did not know was hungry.”
Hannah blinked.
“Oh. You think —”
“That is one data point, sweetheart. Not a prediction. You will watch his face when you talk to him and you will know the rest. His mouth is going to say what society has trained him to say for the first ten minutes. His cock will tell you what is true. Trust his cock.”
“Trust his cock.”
“Exactly. And Wednesday, whatever happens — “
“I come over.”
“You come over. Both of you. My counter is open. It has been since September for him and since Wednesday for you. It is open now for both of you.”
“Both of us.”
“Both of you.”
She lifted her coffee. She held it in front of her. Her eyes were a little shiny but the shine had warmth in it now, not fear.
“I don’t know what to toast to.”
Tommy, softly, across the candle: “To girlfriends.”
Hannah looked at him. Her face did the thing. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. She lifted her cup a little higher.
“To girlfriends, Keane.”
“To girlfriends, sweethearts,” I said.
We drank.
At nine forty-five, Hannah looked at her phone and then at me and said, quietly:
“Vivian. I want to go upstairs now.”
She did not add anything.
“Okay, sweetheart.”
I signed the check. Hannah did not fight me. She stood up and settled her cardigan on her shoulders. Tommy rose after her. I rose after him. We walked out of the dining room in a loose diamond — Hannah first, Tommy a step behind her, me behind Tommy.
The woman in the navy linen dress at the hostess stand looked up from her book.
“Goodnight, Ms. Marsh.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Ms. Wallace. Mr. Keane.”
Tommy half-turned at the sound of his own name. Mr. Keane. Hannah took his arm at the elbow and steered him toward the stairs without breaking stride, and the hostess smiled the practiced smile of a woman who had seen many first Mr. Keanes at the ends of many evenings, and returned to her book.
We went up to our suite. Hannah swiped the key. The door opened onto the warm low light of the sitting room with the fire doing the late-fire work it had been doing all evening while we were downstairs.
Hannah went in first.
She did not drift this time. She walked straight through the sitting room and stopped between the couch and the armchair and turned around and looked at Tommy coming in behind her, then at me, and her face had a new quality — settled, clear, a girl given a framework at dinner and already using it.
I stepped in. I closed the door behind me. I set the clutch on the sideboard and kicked off the heels.
Hannah looked at the canvas bag at the foot of the couch. Then at Tommy.
“Keane. I want you to sit on the couch for me.”
“Okay, Hannah.”
“Vivian. Can you please sit in your chair.”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
Tommy sat. I sat.
Hannah took off her earrings.
She set them on the silver tray on the coffee table. She pulled the cardigan off her shoulders and folded it once and laid it over the arm of the couch. She unbuckled the thin gold bracelet on her wrist and set it on the tray with the earrings. Then she stood in the middle of the sitting room and looked at the two of us, settled in where she had put us, and she took a breath.
“Okay.”
She sat on the edge of the coffee table. Not on the couch with Tommy. On the table itself, facing him, her knees a few inches from his through the cream linen, her bare feet flat on the carpet.
She reached down and picked up the canvas bag and set it beside her hip on the table.
“Tommy.”
“Yeah.”
“I want to see what’s in this.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to take everything out. One thing at a time. Vivian told me at dinner that the specifics of your Saturdays are upstairs in this bag. She said you would tell me what I needed to know when I asked. I am asking. Show me.”
“Okay.”
She slid the bag off the table onto the floor at his feet and sat back.
Tommy slid off the couch and onto the carpet in front of the coffee table. He unbuckled the brass clasp — the tick of it in the quiet of the room — and folded back the canvas flap, and reached inside.
“The toothbrush first. So it doesn’t — I don’t want it mixed up with anything.”
He set a plain blue toothbrush on the coffee table.
“You packed a toothbrush.”
“Ms. Marsh told me to.”
“What else did Ms. Marsh tell you to pack.”
“Nothing. She said — she said you would want to pick some things out. She told me to pack a toothbrush and nothing else. So the rest of this — “
He gestured at the bag.
“ — I packed. Because it’s what I bring on Saturdays. And I didn’t know what tonight was going to be, but I thought — if it was going to be anything, I’d want it with me. So I packed it like I pack it for Saturdays.”
“Okay, Keane.”
“Okay.”
He reached back into the bag. A black zippered pouch.
“This is lube. Two bottles. Different kinds. One is — one is slippery and one is — “ he stopped. “The other kind is thicker. A gel. Ms. Marsh says different things need different lubes.”
“Okay.”
He set it down. Hannah looked at it. She did not touch it. The pouch had a worn spot at one corner where his thumb had rested a hundred times opening and closing it.
A plastic container next. “Wipes. For after.”
“Okay.”
A kitchen towel, white with a thin blue stripe, knotted at one end. Washed many times. He set it on the table beside the wipes.
He did not explain the towel. Hannah did not ask.
Then he reached back into the bag and his hand came out with a flannel bundle.
The flannel was red plaid, washed soft. Long and narrow. Wrapped around the thing inside it with the care of someone who had wrapped the same object the same way for weeks. Tommy set it on the table. He did not unwrap it.
“And this one.”
He reached in again. A second flannel wrap, shorter, smaller. He set it beside the first.
Two bundles on the table, side by side, the brass of the canvas-bag buckle catching the lamp light beside them.
Hannah looked at them.
She did not speak for a moment. She was looking at them like she would a closed box that she has been told contains a specific thing and is about to see for herself whether the thing matches the description.
“Tommy.”
“Yeah.”
“Unwrap them. Both of them. Small one first.”
He reached for the smaller bundle. The flannel came off in practiced turns, the way a man unwraps something he has unwrapped a hundred times. The first bundle unrolled onto the table and there it was — a six-inch silicone, flesh-toned, shaped. Ordinary. Clean.
Hannah looked at it.
Then Tommy unwrapped the second, larger bundle. Slower this time. The flannel came off in the same practiced turns and the second dildo emerged onto the flannel and he set it down beside the smaller one.
Seven and a half inches. Thick through the shaft. Veined along the underside. A realistic head. Two objects on flannel on a coffee table in a hotel suite in October, lit from above by the low lamp, lit from across the room by the fire.
Hannah leaned forward on the coffee table. She reached out and touched the smaller one first — the back of her index finger against the silicone, a test. Cool. She drew her finger back.
She did not touch the larger one.
She looked up at Tommy, still on the carpet in front of her.
“Tell me about them, sweetheart.”
Tommy took a breath. He looked at me — not for permission, just to check I was still in the chair — and I held his eye for a half-beat and then looked down at my wine, because the asking had been Hannah’s and the answering was his, and my job was to keep the room.
“We — Ms. Marsh and me — we went to a shop. In Ridgeway. Called Alchemy. She drove me. Small place, between a wine bar and a pilates studio. She took me to the back wall. They had the — the dildos on a shelf. Organized by size, left to right. Little on the left, big on the right.”
“Okay.”
“Ms. Marsh had me pick one up. Off the shelf. A seven-inch one. To — to hold it. Feel the weight. And then she asked me — she asked me if what I was holding was Brandon. Or if Brandon was more.”
“And.”
“And I — I reached up one size. To the seven-and-a-half. And I picked that one up. And I held them both. And I — I knew. Which one.”
“The seven-and-a-half.”
“Yes.”
“And the smaller one.”
“Ms. Marsh picked the smaller one. Off the shelf. The six-inch. She said it was the starter. She said — she said every girl who takes a cock like Brandon’s starts on a cock like the six-inch. That you work up to it. So she put the six-inch beside the seven-and-a-half on the counter. And we took them both home.”
“Both the same day.”
“Both the same day. She paid. We drove back. I practiced on the six-inch that afternoon. At her house. In her bedroom. On a chair with a — with a suction cup. And then I tried the seven-and-a-half the same afternoon. I got — I got the head in. And an inch. That was all I could do the first time.”
Hannah looked at me. Her eyes were calm. Not reproaching. She was cataloguing.
“Vivian.”
“Yes sweetheart.”
“Thank you for taking him.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I mean it. Whatever happens next. Thank you for taking him in September when nobody else was going to.”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart.”
She turned back to Tommy. He was still on the carpet. His hands were on his thighs. His ears were pink in the low light.
“Keane. How long before you could take the big one.”
“The — the big one in my mouth?”
“Yes.”
“Longer. A few weeks. I worked on the smaller one first. Until I could take it. The whole thing. In my mouth. Down to the base. And hold it there on the metronome for — for thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds.”
“Yeah.”
“And then.”
“And then — and then — “
He stopped.
His ears were past pink. The thing he was trying to say next was one he had not said out loud to anyone except me, and the words were not going to come out in the order he wanted them to come out in, and I could see him deciding whether to keep trying or ask me to help.
He looked at me.
“Ms. Marsh.”
“Yes sweetheart.”
“Could you — “
“Of course.”
I set my wine on the side table. I did not move from the chair. I folded my hands in my lap. I spoke to Hannah.
“Hannah. The small one is not a mouth tool anymore. The small one graduated. The small one is for his other pussy.”
Hannah blinked.
“The other — “
“Tommy’s other pussy, sweetheart. That is my word for both openings — his mouth and his ass. Both of them. Pussies. It is the word I have been using with him since early October and it is the word he uses in his own head now. The small dildo lived in his mouth for the first few weeks of September and then, at the end of September, we started using it on the other one. His second pussy. The tighter pussy. The one that needed a starter more than his mouth did.”
Hannah’s hand went to the pendant at her throat.
“Okay.”
“Tommy?”
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“Correct.”
“That’s — that’s right, Hannah. The smaller one is for — for the other one. My — “ he swallowed, “ — my other pussy.”
The word in his mouth. I watched Hannah watch him say it. His own voice using the word I had given him, in front of the girl he loved, for the first time in his life.
“Keane.”
“Yeah.”
“Say it once more so I hear it.”
“My other pussy.”
Hannah’s eyes stayed on his. Her hand stayed at her throat. “Oh, Tommy.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Hannah let out a small breath — half laugh, half nothing — and looked at the silicone on the flannel, and then at Tommy, and then at me, and then back at the silicone, and I watched her face do something that was not quite any of the things I had expected. Not shock. Not anger. A kind of settling. The settling of a piece of information arriving in a place that had already been prepared for it by dinner, and fitting.
She reached out.
She picked up the Brandon off the flannel. Her hand closed around the shaft. Two fingers and a thumb — the same grip she had used on Tommy’s little guy in my mirror on Wednesday, the same grip her hand had trained on the actual Brandon three years ago in a basement, the same grip the hand knew.
She held him in her palm. She felt the weight of him. She turned him once.
“Hm.”
“Hannah.”
“He’s close, sweetheart. He’s not a portrait. The head is a little different. The vein runs the wrong way for the real one. But he’s close. I can see why you picked him. If I’d been the one picking I might have picked him too.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
She set the Brandon back down on the flannel.
She looked at Tommy on the carpet for a long second. Then she stood up from the coffee table.
“Keane. Get off the floor.”
“Okay.”
“Come sit on the bed with me. The one nearest the fire.”
She held out her hand. He took it. She pulled him up.
She did not take the Brandon from the table. She left both of the silicones on the flannel, side by side, and she led Tommy past them around the end of the coffee table and across the carpet to the queen bed nearest the fire. The bed was made with white linens and a cream throw. She pulled the throw off and dropped it on the floor at the foot of the bed. She turned the duvet down.
Then she stopped.
She turned around. She crossed back across the carpet to the coffee table. She picked up the Brandon in her right hand. She walked back to the bed.
She did not look at me when she did this. I did not look at her either. I was very still in my chair.
“Tommy.”
“Yeah.”
“Take off your slides and your pants. Leave everything else. I want you in what I — what Vivian — what Vivian and I bought you. I want everything underneath it still on you. Just the pants and the slides come off. Can you do that for me.”
“Yes.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. He unbuckled the belt. Zipper. Button. He slid the cream linen down his legs. He folded the trousers carefully and laid them on the bench at the foot of the bed. The slides under the bench. Then he stood up.
He was in the rose silk-cotton shirt and the dusty rose panties and the dusty rose bra under the shirt and the black sheer thigh-highs, and nothing else. The shirt came to mid-thigh. The thigh-highs came up to just below the knee. Between the hem of the shirt and the top of the thigh-highs was a narrow strip of pale bare skin and the scalloped top of the panty leg and the shape in the panty where his little guy was already holding the lace forward.
Hannah looked at him.
Her mouth opened. Closed. Her eyes moved down his body and back up.
“Oh, Keane.”
“Hannah.”
“Get up on the bed, sweetheart. Sit up against the headboard. Back propped on the pillows. I want you — I want you sitting up. I want to be able to see you. Panties stay on. Shirt stays on. Everything on. Just — just settled. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He climbed onto the bed. He scooted back until his shoulders were against the padded headboard. He arranged the pillows behind him. He straightened his legs in front of him, the thigh-highs stretched along his calves. He put his hands flat on the duvet on either side of him, uncertain what to do with them.
Hannah watched him arrange himself. Then she reached down, under her slip dress, with both hands. I looked at the fire for three seconds. When I looked back, her panties were in her hand. She dropped them on the bench with Tommy’s trousers. Her dress stayed on. It came to mid-thigh.
She climbed up on the bed.
Not straight to him. Up to the foot of the bed. She knelt there, facing him, her knees planted on the white sheet, her dress pooled around her thighs, the Brandon still in her right hand. Her hair was loose. The fire was warming the side of her face.
She was in the position a sixteen-year-old girl had been in three years ago in Tyler Becker’s basement.
She looked at Tommy at the headboard.
She looked at me in the chair.
“Vivian.”
“Yes sweetheart.”
“I was going to take us back. To the basement. I was thinking about it all day. I had it planned in my head from the massage. I had a whole — I had a whole scene built. Me on my knees at the foot of the bed. Tommy in the doorway in his own way. Me doing what I did in the basement at sixteen. Letting him see me this time. I didn’t know yet what I was going to do it with — I hadn’t seen the bag — but I had the shape of it.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
“I am not going to do that.”
“No?”
“No. I — I thought about it just now. When he was unwrapping the bag. I thought about going back and I thought — I don’t need to go back. I am here. Tommy is here. You have been telling me all day what’s in front of us. I don’t want to look backward tonight. I want to look forward.”
She took a breath.
“I want to — I want to go somewhere new. Instead of somewhere we already were.”
“Okay, sweetheart.”
“Is that — am I allowed to — “
“You’re allowed.”
“Okay.”
She looked at Tommy.
“Keane.”
“Yeah.”
“I am going to try something. I don’t know if I can do it. I might — I might start and stop and have to start again. I might say the wrong word. I might — “ she laughed, short, a little shaky, “ — I might not get very far. I’m going to try anyway. Will you — will you just be on the bed and let me try.”
“Yes, Hannah.”
“Good.”
She set the Brandon down on the sheet beside her knee. She put her hands flat on her own thighs. She looked at Tommy for a long moment, and her mouth opened, and nothing came out.
She tried again. Nothing.
She looked at me. Her eyes were a little panicked.
I said one word.
“Begin.”
She looked back at Tommy.
“Okay. Okay. I — I’m going to — Tommy. I want to tell you — I want to — I want to picture something. Out loud. While you — while you do what you were doing in the basement. Not — not because we are going back there. Because — I want you to do your hand thing. While I talk.”
“Okay.”
“Can you — your panties. Push them down. The way — the way Vivian told you. Not all the way. Just enough. I want to see you. I want to watch you while I — while I say what I’m going to say.”
Tommy’s hands came down. He hooked his thumbs into the scalloped waistband and pushed the panties down to mid-thigh, the lace folded flat against his skin, his little guy coming up from the panty line, small and pink and already hard.
“Good.”
“Okay, Hannah.”
“And your hand. The way you do it. On Saturdays. Two fingers and a thumb. The — the rub. Not — not the other thing. The one Vivian taught you. The girl’s way.”
“Okay.”
His right hand came down. His fingers closed around his little guy in the cradle. Two fingers and a thumb. He did not move his hand yet. He was waiting for her.
“Start when I start. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She took a breath.
“I’m going to — I’m going to tell you about a night. A night that hasn’t happened yet. I am making it up as I — as I go. I have never pictured this before. I am picturing it now, with you, for the first time. Will you — will you picture it with me.”
“Yes, Hannah.”
“Good.”
She closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, they were clearer. She had found something to look at in her head. She was looking at it.
“Okay. A — a few weeks from now. Or — or a month. I don’t know. Soon. At my apartment — I live — I will have the little place over the bookshop. I — don’t have it yet but I will. Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Brandon — Brandon is coming over. On a — on a Friday. After his practice. He’s going to have a shower before he comes. He always does. And I — I have told him. That you’re going to be there. I’ve — I’ve had the conversation. By then. On the Tuesday before, or the Wednesday. I’ve told him everything. And he’s said yes.”
She stopped. She looked at Tommy’s hand. It was moving. Very slow. The rub.
“Keep your hand moving, sweetheart. Don’t stop if I stop. I’m going to start and stop. You keep going.”
“Okay.”
“So. Brandon is coming over. Friday. After practice. And you — you’re already there. I had you come an hour early. I — I dressed you. I put you in — “ she stopped. Her eyes flicked over Tommy’s body on the bed. “ — I put you in what you have on right now. The rose. The panties. The shirt. I did your hair the way I did it tonight. I — I put the — the perfume on your wrists. The scent we had at dinner.”
“Okay.”
“You’re sitting in my — in my little living room. On my couch. Which is — which is kind of ugly but it’s mine. With a blanket. And I — I’m nervous. I’m walking around. I’m trying to — to straighten things. Moving books. I’m scared. And you’re just — you’re sitting on the couch watching me be scared. With your legs crossed. In those panties. Like a — like a girlfriend would. Letting me move around.”
Tommy’s hand was moving. His breath was going a little.
“And then the knock.”
“Okay.”
“And I — I go to the door. And I open it. And Brandon is there. In his — in his hoodie. His hair wet from the shower. And he — he sees me first. And I let him kiss me. On the cheek. Not the mouth. Because — because tonight isn’t just for me. And he steps in. And he takes his shoes off at the door because I trained him to do that. And then — and then he sees you.”
She took a breath. Her voice went quieter.
“And Brandon — Brandon stops. For — for just a second. And he looks at you on the couch. And his face — his face does something. It’s not — it’s not what I thought it would be. It’s not — hostile. It’s — it’s like he’s seeing something. That he didn’t — that he didn’t know he was going to like. Until he saw it. His face is — it’s a kind of surprise. And then it settles. And he — he smiles, Tommy. He does the Brandon smile. The — the one he did in the basement. The slow one. And he says — hi Tommy.“
Tommy’s breath caught. His hand kept moving.
“And you say hi. Quiet. The way you say things. And Brandon walks over. And he sits down on the couch next to you. And he — he looks at you for a minute. And he reaches out with one hand. And he touches the strap of the bra through your shirt. Like he’s — like he’s checking that it’s real. That he’s allowed to touch it. And you let him. And he says — Hannah picked this for you? And you say — yeah, Brandon. She picked all of it. And he — he smiles again.”
Hannah was breathing through her mouth now. She was picturing it. I could see her picturing it. The Brandon was still on the sheet beside her knee, forgotten for the moment. Her hands were on her thighs.
“And then Brandon — he leans back on the couch. And he says — come here, then. Come sit on my lap. Let me get a look at you. And you — you stand up. And you walk over to him. And you sit on his lap sideways. With your — with your legs over his. And your head against his shoulder. And he — he puts one arm around you. Like you are — like you are his girlfriend too. And he — he kisses the top of your head. And I am standing in the middle of my living room watching my boyfriend hold my sissy on the couch and I — I am — “
Her voice broke a little.
“I am wetter than I have been in my entire life, Tommy. Just from that. Just from watching him hold you. I haven’t — nothing has happened yet. Brandon’s hand is on your waist and his mouth is in your hair and you are in my panties on his lap and I am going to — “
She stopped.
Tommy’s hand was moving faster now.
“Slow down, sweetheart. I need you to not — not finish yet. I’m not done. There’s — there’s more to picture. Slow your hand.”
Tommy slowed his hand. His mouth was open. His eyes were on her.
“Good.”
She picked up the Brandon from the sheet.
“Okay. So. Brandon is — he’s holding you on the couch. And he whispers — he whispers something in your ear. I can’t hear what he says. But you nod. And you slide off his lap. And you go down between his knees. On the carpet. And Brandon — Brandon unzips. Slow. He’s — he’s hard already. From holding you. From what I told him about you. From walking in and finding a boy in panties on his girlfriend’s couch. He takes his cock out in front of you for the first time.”
She crawled forward on the bed. Not fast. On her knees and one hand. The Brandon in her other hand. She came up the length of the bed slowly until she was beside Tommy’s hip at the headboard, kneeling there, the Brandon in her hand.
“And I — I walk over to you. Behind you. And I put my hand on the back of your neck. Like this.”
She put her free hand on the back of Tommy’s neck. Light. Anchoring.
“And I say — it’s okay, sweetheart. He’s ready for you. Open your mouth.“
She brought the Brandon to Tommy’s lips.
“And Brandon’s cock is — is this size. Not quite this size. A little thicker. But this is close enough. And it’s warm from being against his body. And he — he holds it for you. Not the back of your head. Not yet. He holds the base of himself. He lets you come to him. Because I told him that was important. That the first time you take a man you need to — you need to come to him. Not be taken.”
She pressed the head of the Brandon against Tommy’s lower lip.
“Open your mouth, Tommy.”
He opened his mouth.
She fed the Brandon in.
Just the head, at first. Past his lips, onto his tongue. She held it there. Her other hand stayed at his neck. Tommy’s right hand — the one on his little guy — had stopped. He was too focused on his mouth.
“Keep rubbing, sweetheart. You don’t stop. When Brandon’s cock is in your mouth for the first time, your hand is still on yourself. Because you are a girl receiving something for the first time and your little guy is responding. Rub.”
Tommy’s hand resumed.
“Good. And then — and then Brandon lets you have a little more. Because he can feel you want it. He slides in. Another inch. Your tongue is — is doing what Vivian taught you. Underneath. The spiral. You are doing — you are doing everything Vivian taught you on Brandon. Because you trained for this.”
She slid the silicone in another inch. Tommy’s eyes closed.
“And Brandon — Brandon is watching you. He’s looking down at you. At your mouth on him. At your hand on yourself. At the scalloped lace at your hips. At the thigh-highs. At everything I put you in. And he is — he is amazed, Tommy. Because he has never seen anything like you. Because his girlfriend has given him a sissy in panties on her Friday night living room carpet. And his cock is telling him — that he likes this. That he is not threatened by you. That you are — you are food for him. Vivian said the word at dinner and I’m using it. You are what he didn’t know he wanted.”
She slid the silicone in another inch. Tommy took it. The base was not yet at his lips but more than half was in his mouth. His breath was coming through his nose. His hand was moving on himself. Steady rhythm.
“Good boy. Good girl. Both. Both of those are you.”
Her free hand left Tommy’s neck. It came down.
I watched it go. I did not look at what it was doing under the slip dress. But I saw the angle of her shoulder change, and I saw her breath shorten, and I knew the hand had gone where hands go when a picture in the head is doing what this picture was doing.
“Okay. Okay. Now — now the second picture. Brandon — Brandon takes his cock out of your mouth. Because he is going to come if he doesn’t. And he is saving it. For something else.”
She pulled the Brandon slowly out of Tommy’s mouth. Tommy’s lips were wet. He drew a breath through his mouth and let it out.
“And he — he looks at me. Brandon. Over your head. And he says — come here. And I — I do what he says. I come to him. I know this tone of voice. I have been fucked by this tone of voice for three years. Tommy — I am so wet I can feel it on the inside of my thighs.”
Her hand was working. She was not making a sound yet — the hand was doing what she was saying, not what her voice was doing. Her voice stayed steady. Her eyes were on Tommy’s.
“And he — he takes me by the hips. And he turns me around. And he sits down on the couch and he pulls me down onto his lap, backwards. My back against his chest. My — my legs spread over his thighs. And he pulls my dress up. He pulls my panties off with one hand. And you — you are still on the carpet between his knees. Watching. And Brandon — he puts his cock at my — my pussy. Right in front of your face, Tommy. Three inches from your mouth. And he — he pushes up into me. Slowly. Because you are watching. Because this is the first time he has ever fucked me in front of someone else. Because you are there. I am being fucked by my boyfriend on my own couch in front of my sissy.”
Her breath caught. Her hand went faster.
“And you — you are watching his cock go into me. You can see it. Three inches from your face. You can see my — my — my pussy — you can see everything. I’m being penetrated in front of you. He is inside me. And I — I look down at you. Between Brandon’s legs. And you are — you are looking up at me. With his cock inside me. And your hand is on yourself. And I — “
She broke off.
Her head went back. Not far. A small tip. Her free hand worked under the dress. Her other hand, with the Brandon, was pressed flat against her own chest over her heart, the silicone warm against the cream silk.
“Oh — oh — Tommy — I — “
I watched her come.
Not hard. Not loud. The quiet wet coming of a girl who had been building for three hours and had finally, in the act of describing her own body being taken in front of her sissy, found the picture that tipped her. Her shoulders hitched. Her mouth opened. A sound came out of it — not a moan, the sound before the moan, the oh sound — and her eyes closed and her knees pressed together on the sheet and her hand kept working, slow, through it.
Tommy watched her.
His hand did not stop. He had been told not to stop and he did not stop. He watched her face come through the picture and he watched her shoulders settle and he watched her eyes open again wet and glassy, and he did not come yet, because she had told him to wait, because he had been trained to wait.
“Tommy.“
“Yeah.”
“I just came. I just came on the picture of me being fucked with you watching.”
“I know.”
“Are you still rubbing.”
“Yes.”
“Good girl. One more picture. The last one. Stay close. Don’t finish until I tell you.”
“Okay.”
She breathed out, slow. She lifted her head. The Brandon was still in her other hand. She brought it down from her chest. She looked at Tommy. Her eyes were wet and warm and wide open now, post-orgasm, soft.
“Okay. Last picture. This one is yours, sweetheart. The one we’ve been building toward.”
“Okay.”
“Brandon — he is still inside me. On the couch. And he says — turn around. To you. And you — you understand. And you get up from the carpet. And you go past us. To the rug on the floor. And you kneel on it. Facing the couch. On your knees and your elbows. Your face down. Your ass up. In the panties. In the lace. You are — you are presenting, Tommy. Because that is what sissies do when a man says turn around.”
Tommy’s breath went. His hand kept moving.
“And Brandon — he lifts me off of him. Gentle. He sets me on the couch beside him. He stands up. And he — he walks over to you. On the rug. His cock is — his cock is wet from being inside me. That is what is going to be inside you next, Tommy. The same cock. The one that was inside your girlfriend a second ago. It is going to be inside your pussy.”
She moved.
She brought the Brandon down the length of Tommy’s body. Past his hip. Past his thigh. She did not touch his little guy with it. She brought it to the side of his hip and — gently, without pressure, with the deliberation of a woman pressing a weight against a door without opening it — she laid the silicone along the inside of his thigh and let the head rest against the curve of his ass over the dusty rose panties. The silicone against the lace. The lace against his skin.
She pressed. Small.
Tommy made a sound.
“He takes the lube I’ve left on the coffee table. He puts it on himself. He puts it on you. He rubs it into — into your pussy, Tommy. Into the pussy that the six-inch has been in for three months. The one that is ready for a real cock for the first time. And then he — he pushes in. Slow. Because I told him to. Because this is your first time. Because you are my sissy and he is my boyfriend and he is going to be gentle with you the first time even though he does not know yet that he is going to love you.”
Her voice went soft. The last sentence was quieter than the others.
“He pushes in. And you — you feel it. You feel what a real cock is for the first time. You feel what I feel when Brandon is inside me. The — the fullness. The — the being opened. And it is — it is so much, Tommy. So much more than the six-inch. And I — I am on the couch watching. And I have my hand on myself. And Brandon has his hands on your hips. And he is inside you. And you are — you are a girl, Tommy. In that moment. You are being fucked like a girl for the first time in your life. By the man your girlfriend picked for you.”
She pressed the silicone against him harder. Still not penetrating. Just the press. The weight.
“Come for me, sweetheart. Come for me on that picture. Come for me with the idea of Brandon inside your pussy for the first time.”
Tommy came.
Three seconds. Quick spurt. The same physiology his little guy had always produced. It came up onto the rose silk-cotton shirttail and onto his stomach below the hem of the shirt and onto Hannah’s hand where it rested at his hip, a wet warmth on her knuckles, and he made no sound at all except for the broken breath of a boy whose body had just been instructed to finish and had.
Hannah held the silicone against him through it.
Her other hand, I noticed, had left her dress. It was flat on the sheet now. She had not come again. She had just watched him finish — watched Tommy finish for her, to the picture of Brandon inside him, with her voice in his ears and her silicone against his lace.
Her face was — extraordinary. I do not have another word. She was looking at him with the face of a woman who had just seen, for the first time, the thing she was going to have. Not the fantasy. The thing the fantasy would one day be.
She leaned forward. She kissed his mouth.
Small. Closed-mouth. The first kiss she had ever given him on the mouth. Her lips on his lips for three seconds and then back.
“I love you, Tommy.”
“I love you, Hannah.”
The room was quiet.
The fire was low in the grate. The clock on the mantel ticked. Somewhere outside, the October wind moved the last leaves on the maples at the back of the property.
I did not move from the chair.
Hannah sat back on her heels on the bed. She set the Brandon down on the sheet beside her knee. Her hand was still at Tommy’s hip. His come was on her knuckles. She did not wipe it off. She was looking at it as if she were cataloguing it — the warm evidence of what they had just done.
She looked over at me.
“Vivian.”
“Yes sweetheart.”
“Was that — was that okay.”
“That was extraordinary, sweetheart.”
“I — I think I just — “
“I know.”
“I think I just figured out who I am.”
“I know you did.”
“Oh.”
She was crying a little. Quietly. Not from distress. The crying that comes after a thing — the body discharging the last of what the body has been holding. Tommy, at the headboard, his breath slowing, reached up with his clean hand and wiped a tear off her cheek with his thumb.
“Hannah.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh Keane — “
“That was — that was the best thing — “
“I know. I know, sweetheart. Me too.”
After a long minute — maybe two — Hannah stirred on the bed. She looked at Tommy’s stomach, at the mess on the rose shirttail, at her own hand.
She looked at me.
“Vivian. The wipes. From the coffee table. Could you.”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
I stood up for the first time since we had come into the suite. I crossed to the coffee table. I opened the container of wipes and took out three and walked them to her and gave them to her and sat on the corner of the bed at Tommy’s ankle — not on the bed with them, on the corner. The delegation.
Hannah cleaned him. The same careful way she had cleaned him in her mother’s mind a thousand times, probably, without knowing that’s what she had been rehearsing. She wiped his stomach. She wiped the head of his little guy. She wiped the underside. The rose shirttail she pressed with the second wipe and got most of it. The third wipe she used to clean her own knuckles.
She dropped the wipes in the wastebasket beside the bed.
“Keane.”
“Yeah.”
“Panties up.”
He hooked his thumbs into the lace and pulled the dusty rose back up over his hips.
“Good.”
She looked at me at the foot of the bed.
“Vivian.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to need to sleep now. I don’t think I have any more in me tonight. I don’t think Tommy does either.”
“I don’t think he does either, sweetheart.”
“Can we — the beds. The way we — “
“Whatever you need.”
“I want Tommy in this one. With me. I want to sleep on his chest. Is that — “
“Tommy?”
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“You want to sleep in this bed with Hannah on your chest?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are going to. I’ll take the other. Nobody is going anywhere tonight.”
“Okay,” Hannah said.
I stood from the foot of the bed.
I picked up the cream throw from the floor and folded it and laid it over the arm of the couch in the sitting room, on top of the cardigan Hannah had set there earlier. I picked up Hannah’s panties from the bench and folded them and set them on the coffee table beside the silver tray. I picked up Tommy’s trousers from the bench and folded them smaller and set them beside the slides under the bench. The Brandon I took from the sheet and wrapped, clumsily — not the way Tommy wrapped it, but tenderly — back in its flannel, and laid it on the coffee table beside the smaller one. The canvas bag I left on the floor where Tommy had left it.
I crossed to the closet and took the third robe off its hanger and laid it across the foot of the second bed. Mine. The one I would sleep in.
“Hannah. Tommy. Who needs the bathroom first.”
Hannah, from where she was still at the headboard beside Tommy: “Tommy does.”
“Tommy.”
“Yes, Ms. Marsh.”
“Go in. Brush your teeth. Come back in whatever you want to sleep in. No rules.”
He slid off the bed. He padded across the carpet to the en suite door and disappeared.
Hannah watched him go. Then she looked at me — sitting on the foot of her bed, the bed she was going to sleep in with him.
“Vivian.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for staying in the chair.”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart.”
“I couldn’t have done any of it if you had moved.”
“I know.”
“Where — where did that come from. In me. I didn’t know I had that. I have never — I have never said anything like that out loud. I didn’t know I could — I didn’t know I could see any of that, Vivian. Until I started talking. And then I could see all of it. The couch. His face at the door. His hand on my hip. I could — “
“You saw it because you were ready to see it, sweetheart. I did not put those pictures in your head. You made them. In the exact moment you made them. That is the instrument I was telling you about at dinner. It was working tonight. You used it.”
“The instrument.”
“The instrument.”
“Oh.”
She was quiet for a second.
“Vivian.”
“Yes.”
“I have to call Brandon on Tuesday.”
“I know.”
“I am going to call him Tuesday and I am going to ask to see him Wednesday and I am going to tell him the truth and I am going to watch his body.”
“Yes sweetheart.”
“And if he says yes — “
“Then the picture you just made will be yours to shape in time.”
“And if he says no — “
“Then the picture is still yours, sweetheart. The picture is already in your head. The picture does not require Brandon to take it well. It just requires you to be a woman who can see it. And you have just proven to yourself that you are.”
“Oh.”
“Whoever the man ends up being, Hannah — Brandon or not Brandon, this month or next year or in five years — you know the picture now. The picture is a thing you own. That happened tonight, in this room, and it cannot be unhappened.”
“I own the picture.”
“You own the picture.”
She let out a slow breath.
“Okay.”
The en suite door opened. Tommy came out. He had taken the rose shirt off, folded it, stain and all, and laid it on the counter by the sink. The bra was on the counter too. He was in the panties and the thigh-highs and nothing else, his mouth smelling of spa mint toothpaste.
Hannah sat up.
“Keane. Thigh-highs off. You can’t sleep in stockings.”
“Okay.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. He rolled each one down. He handed them to Hannah. She set them on the nightstand beside her.
“Now you.”
She stood. She took a pair of navy sleep shorts and a thin cotton tank from her weekender. She took her toiletry bag. She crossed to the en suite.
She stopped at the door. Turned.
“Vivian.”
“Yes.”
“You too. Change. Get ready. We are all going to bed.”
“Yes sweetheart.”
She went in. The door closed. Water ran.
Tommy stood by the bed in the panties. He looked at me.
“Ms. Marsh.”
“Yes sweetheart.”
“Am I — “
“You’re okay. Get into the bed. She sleeps on the right side. Take the left. Leave her the right.”
“Okay.”
“Good boy.”
The settling. The small one, the boy version. He climbed under the duvet and lay back against the pillow on the left side of the bed.
I changed. I washed my face at the sink in the main bedroom while Hannah was in the en suite. I took the pendant off and set it on the dresser. I put on the plain cream nightgown I had packed that morning and the robe over it. I sat on the edge of my own bed and breathed.
Hannah came out of the en suite in the sleep shorts and the cotton tank. She crossed the room and climbed into Tommy’s bed from the right side. She slid under the duvet and she turned on her side and she nested her body along his — her head on his bare chest, her arm across his stomach, her knee up over his thigh.
Tommy lay very still for a second. Then he breathed out, and his arm came up and settled around her shoulders, and his other hand found hers on his stomach and laced with it. They were arranged.
I got into my own bed.
“Goodnight, Tommy.”
“Goodnight, Ms. Marsh.”
“Goodnight, Hannah.”
“Goodnight, Vivian.”
My lamp was on. A pool of light in the room. I could see across the space between the two beds — the shape of Hannah on Tommy’s chest, the rise and fall of his ribs under her cheek.
That’s what beside looks like.
I turned off the lamp.
The room went dark.
The fire made its small last sounds in the grate. The clock on the mantel ticked. Somewhere outside, the wind moved the last of October.
Two people breathing in one bed.
One woman breathing in the other.
The suite held them all.
Plot twist!!!! Again another great chapter in a wonderful story. I must admit I did not see this coming. Now you have on the edge of my seat wondering how Brandon will react to this relationship complication. I love how your mind works in writing a story. The last chapter you had me laughing now you have me saying what???? Well done frothe well done👏👏👏👏
This story just continues to amaze me Ms Frothe. Such a wonderful tale so very well told. Such a beautiful relationship for all three of them but especially for Hannah and Tommy I know it’s all fictional but I’m so so happy for the two of them!