And laid her ear against the door.
Bam... Bam. Bambambam. Bam... bam bam.
The muffled sound was a little like a shoe going around in a dryer, or a loose shutter slapping the outside of a house in a storm. Except that they didn’t have shutters and it wasn’t even drizzling.
Which led to the next philosophical question: What if she wasn’t the kind of person who moved away from mysterious thumping noises, instead of toward them?
She gingerly turned the key.
Gently, gently poked open the door with a fingertip.
She left the door open a crack in case she needed to flee. But surely a burglar would have left the door open, too?
She delicately put one foot in front of the other all the way down the soft hall runner. Along the way she discovered the sound wasn’t coming from the kitchen... Or the bathroom... But itwasgrowing louder.
She stopped at the threshold of her bedroom.
And...
It was like the time she’d been mugged. A guy had materialized out of nowhere on Oak Street, pointed a gun at her, and said, “Give me all your money.” She’d looked up at him half smiling because... surely this was someone’s idea of a practical joke? Surely this wasn’tactuallyhappening?
But no, as it turns out, she really was being mugged.
And no, the white butt bobbing up and down on the bed really did belong to her boyfriend, Corbin.
Ten orange toenails sparkled at the base of his spine.
They were attached to the feet which were attached to the legs which were locked around him.
In the middle of those ten toes were little white blobs. Avalon knew those white blobs were meant to be skulls, because she’d squealed over the adorableness of the Halloween pedicure at the office just a day ago. Because, you know, sisterhood.
In short, Corbin was banging their intern, Grace.
Not only banging her, the intermittent headboard bamming meant he was attempting to befancyabout it.
And to think, for all his evangelizing about originality, Avalon could never even really get him to do it in a mirror.
She was mesmerized. She couldn’t feel her limbs or her face. It was as though shock had squeezed her consciousness from her body and she was watching the whole thing from overhead.
She finally jumped when Corbin suddenly yelled, “Holy shit!”
As this wasn’t what he normally shouted when he came (though he’d once shouted “Wow oh wow oh wow!” in wonderment, like a dying person moving toward dead relatives in that proverbial bright light), Avalon figured he must have caught her reflection in the bulbous chrome base of their (artisan) bedside lamp.
He shot upright, yanking fistfuls of the sheet with him like a magician attempting that tablecloth trick, and Grace spooled like a rotisserie chicken right off the side of the bed and landed with a dull thud on their lovely, thick Flokati carpet.
And all was silence.
Apart from... was that some sort of car alarm outside?
Avalon realized the ghastly high whine was in her own ears.
Corbin pulled the sheet up to his clavicle. His fist was clenched white over it. This struck her as the second uncharacteristically stupid thing he’d done today (the first being banging an intern in their bed). She’dseenhim all the way naked plenty of times before.
Absurdly, he looked the way he did when he’d just showered after racquetball. His curly hair was glued to his forehead with sweat.
Corbin always looked peculiarly unfinished without his glasses.
Suddenly knowing all of these little intimate things seemed intolerable.
