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stared — there’s no better word for it than
longingly,
I swear — into one another’s eyes. It was every night like this, and I have to admit I was starting to think of her as more
     than just a neighbor. I was still too reticent to use the word
girlfriend
in a sentence, but I was envisioning scenarios, projecting more than one day into the future, for the first time in recollection.
    And throughout — and this is not insignificant — there was that cat. That fucking cat. Mewling, crying, caterwauling, shrieking
     like a disturbed inhuman spirit from a gothic novel, she leapt from car to car, crying insanely up at my kitchen window, baying
     pathetically at the Hollywood moon.
    ______
    “I want you to come see me,” Angela said. This was a week, maybe two, after the lamb stew introduction. She sat up and stabbed
     out a burning Ultra Light in a dish. “I want you to see me at work.”
    I wasn’t sure what she meant. I looked into her eyes and saw that they were brown tonight, flecked with miniature spots of
     yellow. “Come where?”
    “I want you to see what it’s like,” she whispered. “I’ll give you a free lap dance.”
    I had known it, actually, had guessed from her clothes, the glitter she wore on her skin, the ridiculously high heels, the
     strange hours.
    “I appreciate the offer.” I shook my head.
    Angela hit me, a bejeweled fist on my upper arm that was a little too hard to be playful. “What’s wrong with you?
Everyone
wants a free lap dance.”
    What was wrong with me was that I was terrified. A public place was frightening enough, and over the past several years, I
     had developed the courage, with psychotropic help, of course, to visit the supermarket, the pharmacy, Supercuts, and even
     the Gap. But a topless club…
    “I have a problem with new places.”
    “Then let’s go somewhere familiar.” Angela dragged me into my bedroom and pushed me down on the mattress. She pulled my shirt
     over my head. She undid my pants, pulling the zipper, sliding them off my legs, slipping them off my feet. She reached for
     my boxers.
    “What are you doing?” I grabbed her hands.
    “Shhhh.”
She tugged on the elastic waistband.
    “Angela, please.” I had an erection. My penis was ready for this, all too conspicuously, but I wasn’t.
    “Okay.” She shrugged. “So leave them on.”
    I tried to keep my eyelids open but couldn’t. An hour or so earlier, I had taken several tabs of Ambien. I felt the warmth
     of her body, skin as smooth as cotton sheets. I felt her warm breath in my ear. “What are you doing to me?” I was too self-conscious
     to have sex, and it had been too long.
    And I was so tired. So incredibly tired.
    And afraid.
    She reached over to the side table and turned on my electronic wave machine, then nestled in next to me, wiggling her hips.
     “What do you like?”
    We had slept together, kissed, held one another, nuzzled, spooned, sighed into one another’s eyes, done everything, anything
     but sex. “I like orange sherbet,” I answered childishly. “I like green Jell-O.”
    “I mean sexually.” Then she laughed. “Or is that what you mean?”
    An electronic surf washed over the room, a placid ocean of synthetic noise enshrouding the too-loud televisions blaring in
     the upstairs apartments, the car engines igniting in the parking lot outside. The wave machine was something Dr. Silowicz
     had recommended, years ago, to help me sleep, and right now it was working all too well.
    Angela reached over to the side table for another cigarette. “I’m serious, Angel. Don’t you like sex?” She lit it and exhaled.
    I felt the warm smoke against my face. “I don’t really —,” I began. “I don’t really think about that kind of thing very much.”
    This was a lie, of course. I thought about it constantly. Sex was all I ever thought about.
    She brushed her lips against my cheek. “Don’t you trust me?”
    “I trust you.”
    “Then tell me.”
    “Tell you