Predictable

Hallie Corwin's problem was that her sex life had become predictable.

Not bad. Bad would have been interesting, and something to fix. Steve kissed her neck on Saturday nights, touched her left tit, then her right tit, then went down on her for what she suspected he timed, and then he climbed on and pumped until he came. It took eleven minutes. She had checked the clock on the cable box more than once.

She was thirty-six. Steve was thirty-eight. They had been married twelve years, and for the last two of them she had faked roughly one orgasm in three.

That was how they ended up on a leather couch on the second floor of the Larchmont Professional Building at four o'clock on a Monday, sitting six inches apart.

"I appreciate you both being here," Dr. Antonio Calder said. "Most couples wait until they hate each other. You two are early."

He was forty-four, according to the framed diploma dates, and he was big, not fat but big the way a doorway was big. He was Black, with a shaved head, a trimmed gray-flecked beard, and reading glasses he took off when he wanted to look at someone properly. He took them off now and looked at Hallie.

"Mrs. Corwin. What brought you in?"

Hallie opened her mouth, and nothing came out, and she closed it again.

"We're committed to making it work," Steve said. "That's why we're here."

"I didn't ask if you were committed," Dr. Calder said mildly. "I asked what brought you in."

Steve's ears went pink. He drummed his fingers on his knee and stopped when he noticed he was doing it.

"It's predictable," Hallie said. "In bed. It's like we're following a script."

"Predictable." The doctor wrote it down. "Steve, would you agree?"

"I don't think it's that bad."

"That's not a no."

"It's…" Steve looked at the carpet. "It's not a no."

Dr. Calder leaned back until his chair creaked. "Hallie. When you're alone, and nobody's going to read your mind, what do you think about?"

Her face got hot. How was she supposed to answer that with Steve sitting right there? Was she supposed to lie? Wasn't the whole point of paying two hundred dollars an hour not lying?

"Being taken," she said. "Not gently. Someone who knows what he wants and doesn't ask permission for every single touch."

Steve turned and stared at her.

"Someone who's sure," Dr. Calder said.

"Yes."

"That's one of the most common fantasies I hear, Hallie. It's not about being hurt. It's about not having to steer." He turned to Steve. "How does it feel to hear that?"

"Surprising," Steve said. "Twelve years. She never mentioned it."

"Maybe she never felt she could. Would you call yourself assertive in bed?"

"I'm considerate. I always make sure she's—"

"Comfortable?"

"Yes."

"Comfortable and exciting are usually on opposite ends of the couch." Dr. Calder put his glasses back on. "Have you ever worried about your performance?"

"Everybody does sometimes."

"Of course. Confidence comes from a lot of places. History. Habit. Equipment." His eyes went to Steve's lap for exactly one second and came back up.

Steve's hands moved to cover his crotch. He caught himself halfway and put them on his knees instead.

Hallie saw it. Her cunt clenched once, hard, the traitor, as if it had been waiting twelve years for somebody to say that out loud.

What kind of wife got wet when a stranger looked at her husband's dick and found it wanting? She didn't have an answer. She crossed her legs.

"Here's what I'd suggest," Dr. Calder said. "Weekly joint sessions. And a few individual sessions for Hallie, so she can say things without watching your face while she says them. Steve, are you comfortable with that?"

Steve looked at Hallie. She looked at the carpet.

"If it helps," he said. "I want her to be happy."

"Then Thursday at four, Hallie."

In the car, neither of them said anything for six blocks. Steve kept both hands on the wheel at ten and two. At the light on Ferris Avenue he shifted in his seat and adjusted his slacks, and Hallie, who had been married to him for twelve years, knew exactly what that meant.

He was hard.

***

On Thursday, Hallie changed clothes four times and ended up in a knee-length skirt and a silk blouse that she told herself was about confidence.

Denise at the front desk smiled at her. Hallie wondered if Denise smiled at everyone that way or if she could smell it.

"Hallie." Dr. Calder held the office door. "Come in."

The room looked different without Steve in it. It was the same couch and the same lamp and the same box of tissues, but now it was just her and him and a closed door.

"Without Steve here, I want you to try something," he said, sitting across from her. "Close your eyes. Not because anything magical happens. People just say more when they don't have to watch someone hear it."

She closed her eyes.

"Describe the encounter you actually want. Not the one you think you're supposed to want. As explicit as you like."

How explicit was explicit? Hallie took a breath.

"It starts with him wanting me before he touches me. I can tell. I can see it." She swallowed. "Then he grabs me. Doesn't ask. Holds me down, not to hurt me, just because he's sure. And then I want to be filled. Stretched. Until it almost hurts and doesn't. Until I can't think about anything but how deep he is."

"Go on."

"I want to be fucked like he owns me." She heard herself say it. Her cheeks were on fire. "Like my pleasure is something he takes for granted. Like it's going to happen whether I try or not."

The room went quiet. Hallie kept her eyes shut and listened to the air conditioner.

"Open your eyes, Hallie."

She did.

Dr. Calder was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His face was perfectly calm. His slacks were not. There was a bulge running down his left thigh that was too long to be anything else and too thick to be polite, and he wasn't hiding it.

Hallie stared. She knew she should stop staring, and she couldn't.

"Yes," he said. "That's exactly what you think it is. And that's the end of this session."

"What?"

"I'm attracted to you." He said it the way he'd said predictable, like he was writing it down. "I've been doing this fifteen years. That's never happened in this room, and it isn't going to happen to a patient of mine. So you're not going to be one."

Hallie's mouth opened and closed.

"You're dumping me?"

"I'm referring you." He took a card from his desk drawer and held it out. Dr. Marcia Kettleman, LMFT. "She's very good. She has a ficus and a sliding scale. I'm not billing you for today, or for Monday."

Hallie took the card with a shaking hand. Her panties were soaked through. Was she humiliated? She was so humiliated. She was also staring at his crotch again, and her tits ached under the silk like they wanted a vote.

"And if we weren't your patients," she heard herself ask, "then what?"

Dr. Calder looked at her for a long time.

"Then that's a conversation for three adults," he said. "Not one I have on this couch with a file open, and not one I have without your husband in the room saying yes with his own mouth."

"He would."

"Then he can say it."

She stood. Her knees were not entirely working.

"Can you write something down?" she asked. "For Steve. Like the notes you said he'd get. I want him to read what happened. I don't want to tell it wrong."

"You want a discharge note."

"I want the truth on paper."

He sat at the desk and wrote on a yellow legal pad. It took him three minutes. He tore it off, folded it once, and handed it over.

"That's the least professional thing I've ever written," he said. "Read it before you give it to him. If you don't like it, burn it."

She read it in the elevator.

Discharge note, Hallie Corwin, age 36. Patient described a clear and specific need to be taken firmly and filled completely, which her current sex life does not provide. Husband covered his lap when size came up. Therapist became visibly aroused during patient's account and ended the session. Therapist has referred the couple to Dr. M. Kettleman and will not treat them. Therapist would like to see Mrs. Corwin again in a non-clinical capacity if, and only if, both spouses ask. Prognosis: excellent.

Hallie read covered his lap three times.

Mrs. Corwin, the woman who'd walked in at four, would have been mortified on her husband's behalf. Hallie was not sure where Mrs. Corwin had gone. Somewhere between the second floor and the lobby, probably.

***

The envelope sat on the kitchen table between them. Hallie had found a manila one in the junk drawer because it seemed wrong to hand him a folded piece of yellow paper.

Steve had been half-hard since she walked in the door. He hadn't said so. He didn't have to.

"You don't have to read it."

"I want to." He opened it and unfolded the page.

She watched his face. She'd been watching it for twelve years and had never seen it do this. His mouth moved on the first line. At firmly and filled completely he swallowed. At Husband covered his lap when size came up his whole neck went red.

"He wrote that down."

"He did."

"He wrote that I covered my lap."

"You did cover your lap."

"I know I covered my lap, Hallie!" He read on. "He got…"

"Hard," she said. "Yes. Very."

"How hard?"

"I don't know, Steve! I didn't measure!"

He laughed, a strangled little sound. Then he read the end. Then he read it again. He set the paper down very carefully, as if it might go off.

"He dropped us."

"He referred us. To a woman with a ficus."

"And he wants to…"

"If we both ask."

Steve's face was a mess. He looked angry and sick and something else, and the something else was winning. He shifted in his chair. He crossed his legs and uncrossed them.

"You liked it," he said. "Him."

Hallie could have lied. She'd faked one orgasm in three for two years, so she knew how. But that was why they'd gone in the first place, wasn't it?

"Yes," she said. "I got wetter in that office than I've been in a year. My cunt was dripping on his couch, Steve. Does that make you angry?"

"It should."

"Does it?"

"No." His voice cracked. "It doesn't make me angry. It makes me…" He looked down at his lap. So did she. There was a dark spot on his khakis about the size of a quarter.

"Oh, Steve."

"Tell me what it was like."

"Are you sure?"

"Please."

She got up and walked around the table and stood between his knees. She took his hands and put them on her hips.

"He made me close my eyes," she said. "I told him I want to be taken. Held down. Filled until I can't think. And when I opened my eyes he had a hard-on running halfway down his leg, Steve, and he didn't even try to hide it."

Steve made a noise she'd never heard him make. He slid off the chair onto his knees on the kitchen tile.

"Can I?" His hands were on the button of her skirt.

"Yes."

The skirt went down. Her panties were stuck to her. He pressed his face into them and breathed, and she put her hands in his hair.

"He said that's exactly what you think it is," she said. "Out loud. Like he was reading me the weather."

Steve pulled the wet cotton aside and licked her. He was frantic about it. He had never once been frantic about it. He licked her like there was a man in the room he had to beat. There wasn't. There was only a yellow piece of paper on the table, and he was losing to it anyway.

"It was so big!" Hallie said. "I kept thinking, how would that even fit? Where would it go? Oh—fuck, Steve—"

She came on his face in the kitchen with her skirt around her ankles. It wasn't one of the one in three. It was real, and loud, and her knees went, and Steve held her up by the ass and kept licking until she slapped his head away.

When she could see again, she sank down onto the tile with him and put her hand on the wet spot on his khakis. He was hard as a rock.

"From that?" she asked. "From hearing about him?"

"I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Nothing's wrong with you." She kissed him and tasted herself. "Or something is, and it's wrong with me too."

Steve leaned his forehead on hers. He was breathing hard.

"Call him," he said.

"What?"

"Call him. Ask him if he still writes notes."