This Time Will Be Different

2

Forty-five minutes earlier, Jack had been in an apartment off Sansom Street, lying naked on a firm mattress with only a sheet on top—a young Korean woman who called herself Coco astride him: her crotch against his, her skin—except on her face where makeup covered a trace of acne—soft and smooth and flawless. When he hadn't come after a few minutes, the woman bent forwards and leaned on his well-built chest, her lips brushing the microscopic hairs of his ear. "Doe-ggy?" she said in her broken English, the smell of cigarettes on her breath.

He repositioned himself behind her, starting off slow and gradually picking up the vigor of his movements. He turned to the mirror on the wall, undoubtedly mounted so customers could enjoy the view. What a surreal, ridiculous scene this was: he, a married man who loved his wife—his tan barrel chest heaving as he grunted behind this tiny woman to whom he'd hardly spoken two sentences.

When it was over, she kissed him on the cheek, not unlike how an older aunt might, he thought, and used alcohol wipes to clean her hands and between her legs.

"You want to shao-wah ba-by?" she said to him. He agreed and was led by the hand down a dark hallway to an industrial-looking bathroom where a shower head jutted from the wall and a drain sat in the middle of the floor. She gave him a towel and disappeared. Jack turned the water on as hot as he could bear and scrubbed copious amounts of cucumber-melon shower gel over his body. He couldn't seem to escape the feeling that an invisible filth covered his body, his face, his groin.

After he dressed, Coco re-materialized and guided him to the door.

On the way out, she slipped him a business card with the nonchalance of someone who'd just given him a haircut. The reverse of the card was a series of boxes, one of which had been filled with a pineapple stamp. "Buy 5, get one 50% off," it read. He pocketed the card out of politeness and made a mental note to throw it out before he got home.

"See you next time!" she said, and a moment later Jack was back on the street headed home.

A block away, he saw the homeless man with the green eyes again, still panhandling on the same corner. Jack stopped, turned back the way he'd come, and went inside a Wawa to buy the man, who would soon introduce himself as Ben, a sandwich.