All the Lasting Things by David Hopson

they were. They were, first, a lesson in what could and couldn’t be done with two of four extremities in casts. Without both arms to support his weight, the missionary position was out. As was anything that required standing for too long. He couldn’t cup her firm, young ass and pin her to the wall or take her in a handstand, holding on to her legs like the handles of a wheelbarrow. He tried standing behind her, his good hand braced on her back as she planted forward into downward dog, but soon the pain elbowed in like a bothersome third who wanted a piece of the action, and he had to lie down. He was best sitting or on his back, with Cat riding his lap or rising above him with calisthenic abandon or holding on to the headboard with a grip wide enough for motorcycle handlebars and lowering herself—ever so teasingly—onto his face.
    It had been years since he’d paid attention to the subtle emotional tremors that attended sex, since he had cared enough for his partner to see her so vulnerably exposed, but the aftershocks of their lovemaking registered once again on the heart’s delicate apparatus. He saw the ways in which Cat could be generous or selfish or self-conscious or scared. He saw the peaks of her happiness. Shadows of a remoter grief. And for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t the first one to let go, roll to the other side of the bed, and fall asleep.
    He might have been thirteen again, for the frequency and firmness of his hard-ons. Now, letting his mind wander across the pages of their compromised Kama Sutra , he slipped his hand under the tented sheet to treat himself to a few vigorous tugs. He trained an ear on Cat in the shower, trying to gauge when the water might shut off, if he could finish before she did, and had fallen halfway into a serious rhythm when the phone rang. The smooth glass face of Cat’s phone lit up. It chirped like a cricket atop the neatly stacked books on her nightstand. Benji fumbled for it. He’d never seen a picture of Molly, but the one displayed beneath her caller ID fit well enough with his preconception. Her curly, shoulder-length red hair, riotous freckles, and severe mirrored sunglasses squared with her willingness to meddle and, on occasion, make Cat cry. His fingers, two mischievous steps ahead of his brain, swiped across the screen and brought the phone to his ear.
    “Molly?”
    There was a pause. “Who’s this?” she asked, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing.
    “It’s Benji,” he said, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of having to say more.
    “Is my sister there?”
    “She is, but she’s in the shower.”
    Another pause. “What’s wrong with her voice mail?”
    “Nothing,” he said cheerfully. “I just wanted to say hi. Introduce myself.”
    “Oh. Hi.” She sounded deflated, as if the pleasantry, insincere though it was, had punched a hole in her peevish mood. But she recovered in no time. “Actually, now that we’re talking, I want to ask you something.”
    “Shoot.”
    “What’s going on up there?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, in Xanadu. You do know she was supposed to be in New York a week ago, don’t you?” She had the thick, sinusy voice of an unrepentant smoker and cleared her throat from time to time with a rough, bronchial bark. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. But, honestly, I’m at a loss.”
    “She doesn’t have to be in New York until the end of the month.”
    “I mean, who passes up an opportunity like that?” Molly asked, barreling over Benji’s protest like a professional linebacker taking on the JV team. “A Broadway play.”
    Benji scoffed. “Where’d you get Broadway?”
    “She didn’t tell you?” Molly sighed, softening toward the philosophical. “A thousand actors would kill for a chance like that. To be invited to an audition in New York City. By. A. Director.” She nailed his ignorance to a cross with each hammered word. “He saw Hamlet and asked to hear her