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by Dave Edelman

( page 4 )

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"I'd like to meet you on the bus," Lawrence stated simply.

This was no joke. Shelly's mounting, shivering desire was no joke, either. "When?"

"7:30, like I said."

It was crazy, and yet lust was once again twisting the impossible, pretzel-like, into new and terrible shapes.

Robert could watch the kids ... we're always ahead on our bills, they could wait a day or two ...

"Where?"

"You think," sighed Lawrence, "that if you go to meet me on the bus, any bus, I won't be waiting for you?"

And then the line was silent, leaving Shelly with knees of gelatin and a husband due home any minute.

Dinner that night was a colossal failure, a mixed hand of leftover meats and instant powdered potatoes. (Soon, Shelly was convinced, everything would be available in powdered mixes.)

Robert was a non-presence, responding on automatic pilot to the questions of the three children while he idly manipulated his food into curious geometric shapes. Shelly considered fleetingly the chance that Robert was also conducting an affair, that some of his late afternoon work was consulting of a different kind than he professed. In the end, however, she concluded that the world was not quite as structured and ironic and Hollywood-ready as her fantasies.

Shelly waited until the dishes had been hustled safely away into the dishwasher and Robert was absorbed in the living room with the children and the evening news with Dan Rather, bland and sexless as mayonnaise. Then she slipped up to the bedroom, changed her clothes, scribbled a quick, noncommittal note for Robert and bolted out the front door into the cool night.

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© Copyright 1995 Urban Desires