OCR Text |
Show -7 Motherlunge a novel 41 Adam would shove his wallet into his back pocket and grimly thank the clerk. He would push his way out of the store, letting the glass door swing back on me. "Come on." Driving away, I'd be frustrated, amused-an awkward combination that I value now as a coping response. "People love young couples. It gives them an orgasm just to see us. It's all Brother Sun and Sister Moon-all afternoon delight." But Adam claimed to have a personal policy against lying. I still can picture the blotches on the sides of his pale neck as he said this. Couldn't that have been his tell, a physical sign of his deception? I lie like a rug, of course. I always have. I lied, for example, about being on birth control for all the years Adam and I were together. I had a personal policy about it, a position, namely that it was my business. Mine. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas: you stick an unprotected penis in a vaginal canal and it, my friend, is on its own. I could understand why Pavia hadn't told Jack right away about her pregnancy. In any case, during all that time with Adam, I never got pregnant. Later, in the big city, despite an initial bolus of casual sex, same thing: no dice. I started to imagine my uterus like an airport windsock-thin-walled, half-slack, the wind blowing dirough and leaving nothing behind except a general indication: they went thataway, southeast. I stopped going out as much after Pavia helped me get a full-time job. The job was working for Pavia's boss's wife, Charmaine, copyediting for QmedCare. "Do you know the difference between 'that' and 'which'?" Charmaine asked me in my interview. I did. QmedCare is America's number one resource for high quality, regulatorily compliant medical education materials. At QMedCare we wrote for nurses: "A patient |