Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories by Stuart Dybek Page B

something, at least to inquire if help is needed—a stranger coming to the aid of a stranger. Or could he be sued for trying to help? Maybe he should simply call 911 and let them handle it. But if he called, what would he tell them? Help, I think I hear someone moaning.
    By now, Marty is totally awake, sweating, staring into the dark, straining to hear every nuance of the sound. It’s a woman’s voice. He’s sure of that. The moans have become steady, there’s almost a singsong about them, and something else—a throatiness that makes each moan more disorientingly familiar than the last, as if he’s gone from a hypnagogic dream directly to a déjà vu. Suppose it’s an auditory hallucination. But the longer Marty strains to listen, the more convinced he becomes that he is hearing the voice of the woman in the apartment one floor down from his, the shy-looking one who wears a Dodgers cap when she jogs—maybe she moved here from L.A.—the girl downstairs who would rather look away than nod hello, even though one day Marty went to the trouble of buying a Cubs hat and timing his trip to the mailbox in the lobby so as to be there when she came jogging in, her hair a little sweaty, her face flushed and more full of life than usual. He’d hoped that maybe the baseball hats would give them something to talk about, but she didn’t notice and jogged past him before he could say, How ’bout them Dodgers , or whatever he was going to say. He’d never rehearsed the exact words, just hoped that at the time he’d say something right, but she didn’t notice him any more than she seems to notice how alone she appears. It’s only the sound of her moaning that carries from her bedroom window a floor below, moaning in a steady chant which she can’t know has disturbed him. Like a voice crying alone in the wilderness, Marty thinks, and yet she’d be mortified to know he’s overheard her. He’ll never tell. It’s a secret he’ll keep safe from a world of predators. Everything’s all right, it’s none of his business, after all, he can simply lie back now, relax, and close his eyes, listening as her breath grows rapid, wilder, rises an octave then plunges to a guttural sigh—a sigh to which, tonight, he tries to time his own moan—before they both drop off to sleep.

 
     
    Fantasy
     
    “Do you fantasize about me?” she asked.
    “Sure,” he said, not volunteering any more information.
    “I have the oddest fantasies about what I’d like to do with you,” she said.
    “Like what, for instance?”
    “I want to shave you.”
    “I want to shave you, too,” he said.
    “Not that way,” she said. “I mean it. I picture you soaking in a steamy tub, a beautiful old claw-footer, and I lather your beard with a boar-bristle brush. I even know where they sell them—at Crabtree and Evelyn. Then you lie back and close your eyes, and with an old-fashioned straight razor that makes the sexiest scraping sound, I give you the best, closest shave you’ll ever have. Shave you clean and smooth and rinse your skin as if I’m your geisha.”
    “Sounds nice,” he said, rather than tell her there was no way in hell she was getting near him with a razor.

 
     
    Transaction
     
    “I wouldn’t mind selling my body if somebody’d offer to buy.”
    “You’re kidding,” George said.
    “Actually, George, it’s not an especially original female fantasy. But besides the fantasy turn-on, there’s something attractively up-front about it. A simple transaction seems honest compared to the bullshit I’ve seen that passes for a quote ‘relationship’ between men and women.”
    George raised his coffee cup and sipped. The pause was a part of a conversation in which he was at a momentary loss for words. From across the green Formica table of their vinyl booth, he eyed Britt skeptically. “How much would you charge?”
    “How much do you have?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “What do you mean, ‘what do you mean’? It wasn’t a