Thom's first day back.

I insisted on driving him to school and on the way we had another of our legendary conversations on the existence of god. Finding myself, as always, personally rebuked by his atheism, I tried to invoke Pascal and Kierkegaard to my side, to no avail. So I stood at the gates, relinquishing him to the protocol of boys, and began to wonder at my own need for pathos, and bad luck. I would be a better man if I saw him more.

And so, as if demanding explanation or perhaps expiation from all of this, I drove to work and went straight to Helen's room. She was bent over a book and careful not to attend me quickly. I went straight to her window, as before, and while I intended to seduce her I was crippled by a prior and nagging need to find out what she was reading. This was a mere symptom of my impossible position so when she then said,

I have a client in-

I heaved a display of hurt and was out the room before she finished. Seconds later, relieved but still pretending to smart, I was standing at my own window when she entered the room. Taken over by a libidinal trance and unspeakable need, she repeated herself as our lips met. And so as she put a hand in my shirt (I knew that only my passivity would prolong this embrace) and circled lower with her fingers, I tried to contain my own desire, absorbing her. It was within this containment that I began to wonder, again, the title of the book she was reading and so, to banish this line of enquiry, I clutched her arse with one hand, her breast with the other, and bit her neck. I worked my fingers between her buttocks and as she sighed, allowing me my desire, we broke off because, indeed, she did have a client in a few minutes time. We had understood enough to know we would continue later on, and we did.