I carried sleeping Andrew up the walkway and into his bedroom, where we laid him down on his walled-in bed. It was equipped with straps which she said she sometimes used if he just wouldn't lay still.
"He won't be needing them tonight, though," she said.
The walls and floor of his room were coated with a bouncy rubber surface, protection against accidents like the one he'd just had.
"I'm really sorry about Andrew's fall," I told her. It was about the fifth time I'd apologized.
"Please," she said, "it could hardly have been avoided."
That was the kind of thing Mrs. Dent would say: "it could hardly have been avoided." Sometimes she seemed like a character from one of those old movies where people smoke cigarettes and speak in that strange formal manner.
Mrs. Dent asked me if I'd like a drink, and I said I would. Right after I said yes, it occurred to me that maybe she was just asking out of politeness and that I was supposed to decline.
"I don't need to have a drink," I called out to her as she fumbled with the ice tray.
"Well, I'm having one," she said,"and you can join me if you'd like."
So we both had a scotch while sitting in her kitchen. I had only tasted scotch once or twice before, and it made my throat burn.
"Don't drink it so fast," Mrs. Dent told me. "Sip it."
I tried to act like this information was unnecessary. Of course I knew how to sip scotch. Mrs. Dent poured a little more into
"You know what labia are?" she asked. I thought I had a pretty good idea.
my glass and already I was feeling somewhat drunk. Mrs. Dent had taken off her high heels, but still her legs looked nice.
"Were you ever a model?" I asked her. "Because you could have been a model."
Mrs. Dent gave me a curt smile.
"I mean you could be one right now," I said, "if you wanted to be. You look fantastic."
"I've never been a model," she said. "But thank you."
It was a stupid compliment I'd tried to give her, if it was even a compliment at all. I attempted a proper sip from my glass of scotch and some of it dribbled down my chin.
Mrs. Dent asked me if I had a girlfriend, and I told her about Peggy. The scotch had thrown me for a loop, and my judgment was off. I gave her much more information than she'd asked for. I told her about Peggy coming home high and demanding orgasms and how I was still learning what to do. I should have kept all this to myself, but Mrs. Dent seemed interested. She kept saying, "Is that so?"
Mrs. Dent finished off her scotch and looked me over carefully. "I'd like your opinion about something," she said.
"Sure."
"I want you to be honest with me," she said. "You have to be honest about this. None of that polite bullshit."
"Sure," I said, "I'll be honest."
I was surprised to hear Mrs. Dent say the word "bullshit." Until that point, it hadn't seemed like a word she might use. But seeing her sitting there in the kitchen with her hair undone and an empty scotch glass in her hand, it started to make sense. I pictured her like this every night after wrestling that bouncy Andrew into his bed. She'd have a scotch and watch old movies on television, staring at people who made sense to her.
"Do you know what labiaplasty is?" she asked me.
I recognized the word "labia" as having something to do with a woman's vagina, but that was as far as I could go.
"No," I said, "I don't."
"You know what labia are?" she asked.
"Sort of," I said. I thought I had a pretty good idea.
"I want your opinion," said Mrs. Dent.
"For some time," said Mrs. Dent, looking down at the floor, "for some time I've been concerned about the size of my labia — that they were too large and got in the way of things."
"I'm sure they're fine," I said. I wanted to get off of this subject quickly and couldn't understand how it had even come up.
"I've had a procedure done," said Mrs. Dent. "I already had it done. A procedure to reduce their size."
"Okay," I said, nodding. I couldn't understand why a person would want to get her labia reduced. It made no sense to me. Then I wondered if I actually knew what labia were. Maybe it had something to do with the actual size of her vagina, the opening itself. I'd heard of women getting things tightened up down there.
"I'm not sure about the results," said Mrs. Dent. "I need a second opinion."
"I'm sure it's fine," I said.
"I want your opinion," said Mrs. Dent. "I want you to be honest with me."
She twisted her skirt to the side and began to unbutton it.
"You want me to look at it?" I asked.
"Yes," said Mrs. Dent, "and feel it, please, if you'd like."
