Twenty Down
“You know, I think I prefer sex in the afternoon.” She’s sitting next to me on the couch, my wife, the woman who has been with me for the past 21 years. She’s doing the Times Sunday crossword, an endeavor that usually takes up to three days to complete. OK, so, she’s prone to fits and starts. But what she lacks in organization skills, she fully makes up in conviction. “Beg pardon?” She’s bouncing the rubber eraser end of a No. 2 pencil between her teeth as she scans the squares of the crossword and contemplates the right word for the spaces. The pencil makes a nagging, click-click-click sound against her exquisitely white teeth. “Sex. In the afternoon. I think it’s my most favorite time.” She looks up from the quarter-folded newspaper and meets my perplexed face. I look at my watch. It’s 3:12 p.m. Her face goes flush, the pink of her cheeks turn ruddy. These are my most favorite times to be with her. In bed, a tangle of sheets, warm and wet in places, a sheen of...
