He waits for her to open the door before backing out. All she can see is headlights. She waves, he's nice. Cute in the face but she's sad. Inside now, she cries and driving home he wonders why the prostitutes refuse to kiss him in the mouth. He offers them more money and they take it but the lips, a kiss, the intimacy cannot be paid for. He wonders if he should have asked
her for a kiss. He hugged her and he shook her hand and it was awkward and embarrassing.
She is a woman who he has met recently in a normal social situation. She is attractive, not a prostitute and another day he calls her on the phone from work and they chat about things and laugh about their respective uniforms.
"I will take mine off when I get home," he says. "And I will sleep okay."
"Be truthful," she says. "About the little things. It means a lot to me."
He is honest now and he tells her that he does not sleep well in the night. He eats alone and he wears his uniform until it is time for bed. He is ashamed.
"I am happy about the things you tell me," she says. "In a way that transcends your particular circumstances. You are a good person and you deserve to sleep and sleep in your sheets and on your pillow."
"I am not a good person," he says. "I have paid girls for sex with my own money and I don't know how old they are."
She is surprised by his honesty and relieved. "I have given my boss a blow job in his car," she says. "He is not an attractive man."
"I will ask you a question," he says, "and you do not have to answer it. Have you kissed your boss before or after you have sucked his dick in his car?"
She laughs and she says that she has not kissed her boss before or after sucking his dick in the car. She can't imagine it.
"I think about kissing women in the night," he says. "You or prostitutes or any woman in the world. What it feels like, how it tastes to kiss a person in the mouth with clothes on or at the movies or under the covers or in the snow. And to wake up in the morning and to kiss them again. I don't know this kind of kiss and I crave it."
"I will kiss you," she says. "I will hold your hand and you will touch my face and we will kiss in the mouth and on the lips. You will know and you will understand and we will take off our uniforms and I will be a woman and you will be a man and nothing else. We will be together."
"I won't sleep tonight," he says and he doesn't.
In the morning it is Saturday and she waits for him in the park. It has been a long time and she is drinking coffee and he isn't going to come. She is happy now, later in years and in months. But she sometimes wonders about this man who was so honest and broken and ready to walk through the door to everything. She wants to know if this man is kissing a woman in his bed and sleeping at night. He is nice but all she can see are headlights as he backs out of the driveway in her mind.
