Interlude II
Graham sorts the laundry on the bed. Darks, lights, and the small pile that gets washed by hand. The shower is running down the hall. He has time.
The camisoles go flat, one seam laid on another, like they came folded in the package. He does it properly. He does most things properly. He buys them three at a time now, and Teddy has never once asked where they come from.
He had bought the seamless ones before there was a Nora.
Cotton prints through denim. It ridges at the waistband and a hand at a belt buckle finds it early, in a restaurant, with the lights up and a table of strangers four feet away.
Seamless gives a hand nothing until the hand is already inside the waistband, in a quiet room, with the door shut.
Nora was gentle about it. Graham had counted on that.
Meg had been gentle about it too. He hadn't arranged Meg. He'd only had to be in the kitchen when it was over.
He squares the last camisole and starts on the panties. The work is small and he doesn't hurry it.
The last toy was the piece he cared about.
He had it measured against himself before he ordered it, and he ordered the one that came closest. Not bigger.
Closer. So that when the night came there would be nothing new in it.
No stretch to brace against. No moment where the body could say this is different and give the mind somewhere to stand.
Thursday went the way it was built to go.
That isn't the part he keeps turning over.
What he keeps turning over is the order of it.
The plug before the name. The name before he needed it.
The failures spaced so the comfort after each one arrived as the only warm thing in the week.
Every piece making the next one reasonable, so that by the time the boy was on his back with his legs open there was no step left to take.
Just the last one, already sized to fit.
He didn't finish inside him. There's a place for that. It isn't here yet.
He carries the hand-wash pile to the bathroom and hangs it over the rail, spacing the straps so nothing dries creased.
The drawer under the sink holds the box the cage came in, the lube, the plug packaging, the spare keys.
The condom is where Teddy put it. Creased at the corners. Expired two years ago.
Graham sets the new box in the drawer, under the old one, where it will be found and not mentioned.
In a week or so he'll tell Teddy to text her. He'll say it once, warm, like he says the useful things, and then he'll leave it alone and let Teddy carry it around for a few days until it turns into his own idea. He won't have to say it twice. Teddy has never once let a kindness go unused.
She'll answer. She's the kind who leaves the door open and means it, and there is nothing in the world Graham can use more cleanly than a person who means it.
He checks the rail once, straightens the last strap, and closes the drawer with his knee.
The shower shuts off down the hall. Graham goes back to the folding.