He has never slept with a woman who has a child before. They have discussed Richard on more than one occasion, and finally, he thinks he is comfortable with the idea. She has told him all about Richard - how he is six years old, how he swings a plastic, hollow bat through the air, how his favorite things in this world are rocket ships. But, Richard is gone for the weekend. He is staying with his grandmother outside of town.
He stands in the living room. She has gone into a shadowy part of the house; leaving him, with his black coat under one arm, to take everything in.
"Do you need anything?" she asks from another room.
"If I could use your bathroom," he says.
"It's down the hall, first on the right." And as she says this, she dips out from a dark doorway and smiles, one hand removing an earring.
In the bathroom, he flicks the light on. The switch itself is white with a little pink hand dotting the end, making a 3-dimensional arm that alternates between up and down positions. It is the waving arm of a comic astronaut as he sits in his flying ship. The ship is racing through the dark blue painted walls of the bathroom, as if it were in outer space. He shuts the door behind himself and lays his coat across the sink. The coat dips gently into it.
As he looks into the mirror to fix wild chunks of hair, he catches the burnt scent on his hands. He has been smoking all night. He knows that soon, they will kiss, and since she does not smoke herself, he does not want to make the crucial error of bad taste. He checks his pockets for gum, but finds only car keys and a dirty nickel. Looking around her bathroom for mouthwash, he cannot find any. The cabinet below the sink is a library of plastic pullout drawers, each containing bathroom and shower items, but no mouthwash. The situation looks grim. He frowns at himself in the mirror and turns to use the toilet.
He is holding himself and the urine is coming out in a shaky wire. He wants desperately to be back at the bar, spraying aimlessly, covering the trash bin and the floor. But he is not at the bar. That would be impolite.
He looks back at the sink, finishing. He notices a small ceramic holder protruding from the wall. In it, there is a pink toothbrush. He knows he cannot use her toothbrush. People are very concerned about their toothbrushes. It is a toothbrush, he thinks. It would not bother him, not at all, if they were in reverse circumstances. But he does not want to be rude. He actually likes this woman. So he goes back under the sink and begins opening the plastic drawers.
"Bingo," he says. There is an unopened package buried in the back of one of the drawers. He pulls it out and examines it. It has its own plastic case, a six-inch long transparent cylinder. Along the outside of the case, there are tiny rocket ships with trailing flames. With any luck, she will not notice it has gone missing, and he will tell her in time, when this is something more funny and less criminal.
He takes his coat from the sink and places it onto the toilet seat. He starts running the water and opens the toothbrush. He uses her toothpaste. He brushes his teeth quietly over the sound of the water, cleans up, and gets ready to leave the bathroom. Again, he frowns at himself in the mirror. The toothbrush, he thinks. He cannot just toss it into the garbage. She would know he was a terrible person. Quickly, he dries off the plastic case, inserts it deep into his pants pocket, and leaves the bathroom.
There she is, standing along the corner of one of the walls. She is still in her black dress. She looks beautiful. He sets his coat over a chair.
She motions him closer and takes him into her arms. Her breath is warm and sweet. She pushes his head aside and kisses his neck. Her hands begin to wander down his chest, past his stomach, stopping at his belt. He leans back to look into her eyes, and they smile at one another. Her hand is almost where he'd like it to be, finally, when she grabs on to it.