Valeria’s online crush says he’s coming to her. His words skitter her pulse. “Fantasies turn real,” his DM reads. Is he going to send her a photo of his dick? She angles her phone from her sleeping husband.
The online flirtation has spiced Valeria’s nights. Colored her dreams all autumn in goldenrod, wine, forest green, and every shade of brown. Her crush lives in faraway British Columbia. They connected in a gardening forum. Both are happily married. Valeria is spurred by the feeling of wanting messiness, to not know where everything is.
Last night, she sent him a photo of her freshly pedicured feet, posed on a flagstone beside a brimming pot of echeveria “afterglow.” Just a bit of fun. It was this image that spurred his latest message.
But now that he is talking about coming to Tucson, the flirtation has amplified. Will Valeria rent a hotel room? She tries to imagine him disrobing her in it. She tries to fantasize about his erection, unleashed as they stand between the two queen beds, the air conditioner roaring and the ice loudly melting in its bucket.
Last spring, on a trip to London, she and her husband happened a television program, a reality show. They were tipsy after their visit to a couple of pubs. The contestants’ faces were hidden and only their genitals and in the cases of women, their breasts, were illuminated while the main contestant asked them saucy questions and added things like “Yum!” and “Oh, very nice!” There were various piercings and bare skin where in regular life there would be hair.
One poor fellow’s penis was terrible. Bulbous and purple. Scottish, Valeria thinks he was. But when his face was revealed, he wasn’t bad looking at all. Valeria and her husband watched in bed while enjoying their takeaway kebabs, legs in a puppy tangle.
Valeria’s crush is a plain man with a stunning garden. His lips are of a full variety. Valeria has fantasized about them meeting; she definitely has. But there is something perfect about the way things stand now. Shimmery and abstract.
On the naked dating show, those not chosen for a date seemed sheepish about having participated. The Scotsman with his terrible penis. Another one, a slim bloke, who in his plaid shirt and nice trousers looked like someone you’d smile at in the grocery store. When this one’s penis was illuminated, he had bounced it up and down.
Expectant energy crackles in the air between her and her phone. Okay, okay. Fantasize. Treat this like the TV show. Only focus on the night; the illuminated parts. She pictures herself and her crush, together at the hotel sink, brushing their teeth. Smiling at each other in the mirror.
The pale ding sounds again. It’s a photo, not of her crush’s isolated mouth, nipples, or erection. It’s a plastic mask with a hose coming out of it. A CPAP machine. It reminds Valeria of a baby elephant’s face. “Continuous Positive Airway Pressure,” her crush explains. He wants to give her a head’s up that he wears this apparatus on his face in bed. That the machine delivers air and elevates his sleep.
Valeria loosens the neck of her nightgown. She bids her crush sweet dreams and adds that she knows about these things. She imagines the rhythmic whooshing sound of the machine, in faraway Canada. Keeping a lovely man alive and vital. She passes her hand over her breasts. Her nipples stiffen.
Beside him in bed, Valeria regards her husband. “Flashlight on, “ she says softly. Then she holds her phone’s bright light over his clavicle, then his chest, with its scar. She illuminates his nipple. Finally, she lifts the blanket and regards his penis in its repose. She takes a picture, careful to contain the flash. This is the man who dropped to his knees when she told him all those years ago, she was pregnant with their first child. Who was in the room when Valeria’s mother died. Whose toenails she had trimmed after his heart procedure. She puts her phone down and takes his face in her hands. His lips are a little chapped. She hopes he is drinking enough water.
“Flashlight off,” she says. In her mind’s eye, she sees herself and her husband checking their blood pressure together before breakfast. Her recording the numbers in their book. Later, their son will call. Little pats. Little sounds. Hair mussed; slippers discarded who knows where.
