Short Stories

Sex

I really miss taking my daughter to the park to play. A couple of months ago, at her birthday party, she let me know that she was officially too old for our Saturday sojourns. I was crushed. You'd think that I'd be used to it by now. This wasn't my first time around the mulberry bush. I'd gone through this three times before. However, knowing that this was going to be the last time, I was hoping that we'd make it until at least 10 before Lisa's independent streak set in.

So, to fill the void, I've been going to the park down the street from my office for lunch. I only had a few more minutes left before I had to get back, when all of a sudden she showed up almost as abruptly as she had left five years ago.

I heard that unmistakable accent, before I saw her. "What's up, Sex?"

Most people call me Six, but Maria studied Latin in college so she liked to call me by the Latin word for six . It wasn't as weird as it seems because the way she said it didn't really sound like she was saying the word sex. The irony of her moniker for me was that she was the least sexual person that I had ever met. As a matter of fact, the guys at the office used to joke that she was asexual. No one had ever seen her out with a guy, or a girl for that matter. She exuded zero sexual energy.

Don't get me wrong, she was an attractive woman — extra virgin olive oil skin, shoulder length, jet black hair, full lips, ample bosom and a posterior and hip combination that was hemispheric but not quite global. As put together as she was, she didn't really do anything for me. It was like, at some point, she placed her sexual assets in a blind trust where she didn't really care about appreciation or interest.

As I got up from my park bench to greet her, something felt different. While she was gone she must have decided to put her assets back in the market because as I hugged her I could definitely feel the Dow Jones rising.

After a not-too-long embrace, I stepped back to fully take her in. "Maria Mendes, what's up, girl? How you been? No, no, the question is where have you been? It's like you fell off the face of the earth. It was like one day you were here and the next day you were gone."

"I'm good. All's right with the world," she replied. "I just had some things I had to take care of so I decided to go away for a bit."

She seemed preoccupied as if she were dividing her attention.

"Where'd you go?" I asked.