Flings Read Online Free Page B

and thinks to herself, How do I become the slut who just served me lunch? But it happens, man. It happens like clockwork, and the lesson—not the first or the last time I’ve learned it—is that there’s an awful lot of shit in this world that I don’t know.
    Ethan hires girls he wants to fuck, obviously. I mean he hires girls everybody wants to fuck: radiant vortices of bleach, wax, and puka shells who know exactly what you’re thinking when you look at them, who sound like TV shows—believe me—when they’re pretending to get off. To Ethan’s credit—and this is the only time you’ll catch me using that turn of phrase—he doesn’t fire them for not fucking him. He waits until he catches them stealing; then he fires them. And they always end up stealing, irrespective of whether they need the money. Need’s got nothing to do with it. Ethan’s just a hard guy not to steal from. He brings something out in people. I’m lucky he doesn’t want to fuck me because it keeps him from noticing how badly I’m fucking him. If I had tits I’d have been shit-canned years ago. Instead I keep getting promoted, to the point where I’ve become a kind of imperial factotum, body man for the restaurant, what in a real place of business would likely be described as “the manager,” a term Ethan abjures on account of its lack of good vibes. I do the books and the purchase orders, the scheduling, plus incidental waiting, bussing, onion chopping, secret sauce mixing (half balsamic vinegar, half anchovy-free Caesar dressing, pinch of salt), and of course, at the moment, I wear the mushroom suit. It’s some low-down proletarian shit, I’ll grant you, especially for a guy closer in age to Ethan than the Melissa/Jessicas, but you know what? I’ve got an ex who adjuncts at the college and I know what she makes per poetry workshop. I also know what her current squeeze—a math PhD—gets for his Intro Stat lecture, a class that seats four hundred and is simulcast on the web to twice as many again. I’ll own a house before those motherfuckers, that’s for sure.
    A light goes out and then comes on again, but it’s blurry—I mean blurrier than usual. I feel oddly relaxed but also weighed down somehow . . . somehow . . .
    Oh, that’s right.
    The suit seems to have become horizontal, and me with it, and there seems to be a transition scene missing, so smart money says I had a bit of heatstroke and fainted, fell. I’m facing upright—that blurry light would seem to be the sky—but stuck. If it rained right now I’d drown, which is scary, but somehow not scary enough to keep me from blacking back out.
    Light again, and a dark shape blocking most of it, but a light-dark shape if that makes any sense, and long, thin golden strands descending through the grille mesh, tickling my nose. That’s hair. (And so much then for the hair catch analogy.) The strands belong to one of our newer Melissa/Jessicas, who must have looked out the front window and noticed that a certain purple obscenity had dropped out of the landscape. Already proving herself a team player, this Melissa/Jessica. I ought to learn her real name, would ask her except I should probably already know it: there’s a good chance Ethan told me, or that she herself has, possibly when I interviewed and hired her, which it’s entirely possible I’m the one who did.
    â€œHey,” she says. “Let me help you.” As if I could stop her; as if she could help. But I don’t say anything. Let her tug and jostle me a while; the sooner she tires herself out, the sooner she’ll go get Ethan. Even through the stink of this suit, I can smell her: whatever lotion she uses, coconut-y, and beneath that a hint of something danker, the smell of her futile exertion, maybe, though I may be smelling myself.
    My nose still tickles. I’m