Читать книгу No One You Know - Jason Schwartzman - Страница 19

“Do you want to cum over?” someone texts me from a dating app that supposedly tracks people you pass in the street.

In her pictures it is a little hard to see what she looks like. But it’s been a while. I call my friend to ask his advice, and also to tell him what happened, in case I should go poof.

Sure, I want to. I stop by Duane Reade, the family planning aisle, I tell her 20 minutes. While I’m walking over, she texts me again to find out how kinky I am. “Not very” is the answer, which I know she doesn’t want, so I say, “How kinky are we talking about?” Quick verbal pesticide. She says whatever, just get over here already. By then I’m nearby, so I ask if we can meet at a bar, do a quick sanity check.

No.

“Ring 1F,” she texts. Immediately after I step inside her building I receive a three paragraph text, too long to have been typed out right then. “The door is open,” the text reads. “When you come in, you’ll see a sheet on your right. The sheet has a hole in it. Put your penis through the hole.”

I am standing there in the hallway. Put your penis through the hole?

I don’t know what to do – I have already come all this way. I imagine being murdered, a quick knife to the gut. I imagine being robbed, the loss of my ID, my wallet, my coffee card on which I have almost attained the ten-punch prize.

The door is open, as promised. There’s a sheet, as promised, and it’s draped across a door frame on my right. Then I see the hole.

“Hello?” I say, like I’m in a haunted house, trying to dispel ghosts with my words.

“Put it in,” a voice says.

The hole is the size of a human head. I see skin. I see curves.

“Can I see you first?” I say to whoever is behind the sheet.

Whoever is behind the sheet says no, I cannot see her first. Whoever is behind the sheet has a distinctly female voice. I imagine the knife again. I imagine having no penis. I imagine never having sex again, sheet or no sheet.

“I think I need to see you first.”

“I have a boyfriend,” she says.

It sounds as though she is worried one day I will see them on the street and tell him about her secret life.

“This is getting a little weird,” I say from my side of the sheet. “You’re not going to come out from there?”

She won’t, and there is a long silence.

“Think I’m gonna go,” I say at last.

“You’re not kinky at all!” she yells, as I reenter the hallway and speedwalk home.