The Interruption of Everything by Terry McMillan Page B

course we do! We’re flying to Vegas with six of our closest friends for two nights of nonstop partying and we’re staying at the Bellagio and I’ve got tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s O and Celine Dion, even though you don’t like her, and while you guys are in the cigar lounge us girls will be sipping apple martinis and salivating over male strippers, but other than this little excursion, I think we’re free.”
    “Very funny, Marilyn. What male strippers?”
    “Why’d you ask?”
    “I was just wondering. Some of the fellas wanted to get together and do eighteen holes on Saturday.”
    “What else is new?”
    “But we could try and do something like this one day save for the strippers. They’ve got some great courses in Vegas. Do we have six close friends?”
    “Forget it, Leon. I was just messing with you.”
    “Well, let me ask you something. Are there ever any men in those classes?”
    “What classes?”
    “The ones at the gym. Or are they just for women? I’ve been thinking. It’s really time I start using my portion of that membership rather than let it go to waste.”
    “Am I hearing right, Leon? Did you just say you actually want to go to the gym?”
    “That’s right.”
    I’m trying not to laugh when I ask: “What part of your anatomy would you like to focus on first?”
    “My whole body, actually. You haven’t seen Frank in months and you know how huge he was? You probably wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him. He’s lost about thirty pounds and looks fantastic since he moved out.”
    “What do you mean ‘moved out’?”
    “He’s getting a divorce.”
    “He? You mean Frank and Joyce?”
    “Well, yes, technically, but Frank is the one who’s filing.”
    “You can’t be serious, Leon.”
    “Very. I thought I mentioned this to you a while ago.”
    “Mentioned? What happened?”
    “I’ll tell you more of the details later. But anyway, so many of the guys at work have turned to the gym to get rid of stress and they’ve reshaped themselves completely. I think I may be one of the last of the Mohicans.”
    I’m supposed to laugh but I can’t. “What time did you say you’ll be home?”
    “I can’t really say just now. We’re finishing up the last-minute details on the Douglass project—you know the one in Riverside?”
    I nod, knowing he’s not really waiting for an answer. I listen to him ramble on but I don’t hear a word he’s saying. What I’m really thinking is that Leon’s phone call—a cliché if ever there was one—most likely means he’s on his way to an economy hotel (he’s a miser, but wouldn’t be caught dead in a motel) where in a couple of hours he will, if he hasn’t already, order room service (at least a decent bottle of Moët), and his much-younger-than-me, slender and sexy girlfriend who probably works in a cubicle somewhere in his office, is spraying on some kind of popular perfume after having just come out of the shower so that after he arrives and imbibes a little he will have wiped me and Arthurine from his mind and loosened up enough to enjoy watching her suck his dick like he’s in some porno movie and to be fair and make sure he can repeat this escapade, he’ll also manage to go down on her the way he used to go down on me when there was more space between my thighs and they were ripple-free. And when he wakes up fifteen minutes later and looks at the clock, he’ll drag himself out of bed and take a quick shower and drive home triumphant that he still “has it” and when he comes into the bedroom to see if I’ve been waiting up for him, which of course I will not have been because I’ll either be sound asleep or pretending to be, he’ll run back downstairs where he will take his dinner from the microwave and dump it down the garbage disposal where I happened to have left a spoon and the noise will give him a jolt and he will remove said spoon and place it in the sink and then take his second shower of the night and not think