4. The Table
The fellowship hall was half-lit and sticky.
Punch film on the plastic cloth they hadn’t pulled.
Ham ghost in the air. Folding chairs nested along the wall.
The hymn board still said *Serve one another* in Easter letters.
The cross on the far wall was cheap wood and a cheap nail and it watched the empty room the way Eli had watched the pantry crack.
They put Ruth on the table the congregation had eaten from.
Bound wrists transferred from the pantry leg to this one, coffee-urn cord coarse and sugar-sticky and tighter now.
Sunday dress rucked to her ribs. Dark thatch shining under the dimmers, three men already in the hair, her own squirt drying in strings.
A tick on the plastic. A pastor’s wife served where the rolls had been.
Eli went first on the table because he’d found the key.
He pushed into her on her back. Tied hands above her head.
Tits still trapped in wet Sunday cotton.
The table complained the way it complained when too many covered dishes landed at once, a cheap metal groan.
Ruth looked at the cross so she wouldn’t look at the kitchen door, so she wouldn’t invent Paul’s footsteps.
She twerked what she could off the slick cloth — a filthy little roll, ass sliding in her own mess — and the dirty talk came back easy, sanctuary-ruined, mean.
“Fuck the pastor’s wife where his people said grace. He’s two buildings over with leftover ham thanking God I stayed to wash pans. Pathetic. Weak little cock. Counts to sixty and asks if I’m comfortable. His brother had this on the winter coats while he carved. Now you have it on the punch cloth.
Don’t you bless it. Don’t you say amen for me. Just use it. Fill it. I want to feel this in the pew.”
Eli did.
Unpracticed and earnest and deeper for the table.
The plastic wrinkled into a map under her ass.
She squirted a little against his belly, a short pulse that ran toward the red punch stain, through the dark curls, and she laughed at the ceiling tiles she’d been counting for years in a different bed, in a quieter house.
“Mess,” she gasped. “That’s what he calls it. Make a mess on his table.”
Don waited at her head, slacks still open from the pantry, offering-ushers patience used up.
Cal watched from a stacking chair with his belt already undone, deacon, board meetings, pie forgotten.
Paul’s porch light was on across the lot.
The hall lights were not.
Eli finished in her on the punch cloth.
A pulse she felt add to the pantry, add to the coffee-urn cord, add to every quiet night in the parsonage she’d gone to sleep empty and told herself it was holiness.
His hips stuttered. Camp lanyard stuck to the wet front of her Sunday dress, crooked beads clicking.
He made a sound that wasn’t a prayer and pulled out dripping onto plastic that had held ham and rolls and somebody’s famous Jell-O salad.
A string broke on her dark thatch and on the punch stain.
Ruth’s tied hands pulled the cord until her fingers went white and numb.
She twerked at empty air — a filthy tired roll, ass sliding in the mess — and a fresh tick ran through the soaked hair toward the red film.
She pleaded at the cheap cross because Don was already at her head with his slacks open and the offering-ushers patience gone.
“Mouth,” she said.
Wrecked. Mean. No greeting line.
“You passed plates all morning. You never dropped a dollar. Pass me this. Don’t be gentle. He is gentle. I hate gentle. I hate *are you comfortable, Ruth.* I hate the minute he lasts. Put it in my mouth and use the pastor’s wife like the plate is heavy. Like it owes you.”
Don put it on her tongue.
Still a count. Still a walk down an aisle that wasn’t there.
Ruth took him the way she’d taken the youth leader between the corn and the mop — sloppy, eager, drooling toward her own bound wrists, lipstick from the greeting line smearing his slacks.
She moaned around him when Eli’s mess ran out of her onto the table in a thick pale line through the curls.
Don used her mouth until her eyes watered and her jaw ached the way it never ached at home.
Then he pulled out, walked the length of the sticky cloth like he was still taking offering, and pushed into her cunt in one long seat through three men’s worth of slick and her own squirt and the hair Paul barely parted.
She squirmed. Spread her knees until the table edge bit. Laughed at the ceiling tiles she’d been counting for years in a quieter bed.
“That’s a man. That’s not my husband. Weak little cock. Pathetic. Paul would have asked permission to change positions. Paul would have wiped off and thanked God he didn’t make a mess. Don’t you ask. Don’t you thank anybody. Fuck his wife on the table they said grace over.
His brother didn’t ask either. Thanksgiving. Guest room. Coats. I came on the wool and walked out to dinner with it running down my leg and I said the blessing.”
Don gave her the aisle-count again. Even.
Deep. Unhurried until her talking made it sloppy.
The folding table walked toward the nested chairs, metal complaining, punch cloth wrinkling into a map under her ass.
Ruth looked at Cal in the stacking chair — belt open, deacon, leftover pie forgotten — and at the cheap cross and she squirted a little around the usher just to show the next man what he was in line for.
A short pulse. Wet on Don’s belly. Wet on the red film.
Dark curls dripping off the edge of the cloth onto linoleum nobody would explain on Wednesday.
The porch light across the lot stayed on.
Nobody opened the parsonage door. Paul, inside, had not wondered long enough to walk.
Cal stood up from the stacking chair.
He didn’t ask whose turn. Deacon patience used up on the looking.
He climbed onto the punch cloth at her head, knees either side of her bound wrists, coffee-urn cord under his shin, and put himself on her mouth while Don was still buried in her.
Ruth opened. No greeting line. No amen. Three points the second Eli put his hand back where it belonged — youth-leader fingers through the soaked dark thatch, finding the swollen bead Paul never stayed for, rubbing through her own squirt and two men’s mess.
She moaned around the deacon. She twerked on the usher.
The folding table screamed across linoleum toward the nested chairs.
“That’s a church,” she got out when Cal gave her air. “That’s a whole board meeting on the pastor’s wife. Fuck the hole he doesn’t use. Pathetic man. Weak little cock. Thanks God and rolls over. His brother had this. You have this. Don’t you stop— *mmph*—”
Cal filled her mouth. Don lost the aisle-count for good, sloppy, deep, jacket still on.
Eli’s fingers worked in wet circles that made her hips jump off the plastic.
Ruth came hard enough to squirt across Don’s belly onto the cloth — a real splash this time, punch-red and clear and filthy under the half-dimmers, dark curls dripping off the edge of the table onto the floor they’d mop before Wednesday and never mention.
The cheap cross watched. The hymn board watched *Serve one another* and got what it asked for.
She shook with her hands tied over her head and drooled on a deacon and laughed into it and did not ask anyone to stop.
They didn’t rotate so much as stay piled.
Don finished in her on the aftershock, a fourth pulse on the grace table, forehead toward her tits, a curse that wasn’t Sunday.
Cal used her throat until his board-meeting voice broke and he came on her tongue the way Don had come in the pantry, and she swallowed what she could because her hands couldn’t wipe.
Eli rubbed her through the oversensitive jerk until her knees tried to close and the cord said no.
When they pulled back she was a map on the plastic: thatch dripping in strings, Sunday dress wrecked to her ribs, mouth shining, church shoes hanging off the table edge, porch light still on across the lot and none the wiser.
“Leave her,” Cal said, breathless, deacon again, belt already finding its hole. “Cloth can come off. She walks home. Pans got done.”
Ruth laughed at the ceiling tiles.
“I can walk. I’ve walked with worse on me. Thanksgiving. Guest room. Cranberry sauce. He never knew. He won’t know. Untie me or don’t. I’ll sit in his pew tomorrow and feel every one of you.”
They untied her when the cloth was already ruined.
Cal picked the knot like a man closing a meeting — no hurry, no tenderness, deacon fingers on coffee-urn cord that had gone tight and sugar-sticky around a pastor’s wife’s wrists.
The black bite came off and left a red ring on both arms, honest, hidden the second she tugged her sleeves.
Ruth sat up on the punch-stained plastic.
The folding table complained. Dark thatch dripped onto her own thigh in a thick slow tick, then onto the linoleum nobody would explain on Wednesday, a map of Eli and Don and Cal and her own mess running together.
She did not cover herself yet. She looked at the cheap cross and at the hymn board and at three men putting their belts back on like the potluck had simply run long.
Eli found the good underwear on the floor.
Pale. Church. Soaked. She didn’t take them. Don pulled her Sunday dress down over the wreck — over the wet hair, over the drip, over tits that had been in dishwater and then in a youth leader’s palm — the way he covered a plate when the last dollar was in. The fabric stuck. She let it.
“Key goes back on the hook,” Cal said.
Board-meeting voice. Pie still in the fridge.
“Pans look done. You were useful. He’ll believe useful.”
Ruth laughed. Hoarse. Mean. Almost the greeting line, not quite.
“I was useful. Tell my husband the pans. Tell him I served. Tell him *amen.* I can still walk. I’ve walked out of his brother’s guest room. This is just a longer hallway.”
She stood.
Church shoes spotted and sticky. Knees unsure, then sure.
Wrists hidden. The cheap cross watched a pastor’s wife pull herself together with three men’s spend in her thatch and her husband’s porch light waiting across the gravel like a quiet, stupid star.
They did not walk her to the door. Eli nested a chair that didn’t need nesting.
Don rolled the coffee urn back to the wall and coiled the cord like it had only ever made coffee. Cal hit the dimmers one click lower.
The hymn board still said *Serve one another.*
Ruth crossed the lot alone, dress stuck to her thigh, and did not look back at the fellowship hall. The pans, inside, were dry enough to lie.