Inappropriate Behavior: Stories by Murray Farish Page A

something.”
    â€œIt’s not like anything, huh? Then why did you get so hot?”
    â€œBecause you were hot, Patty.”
    â€œYeah, I’m real hot compared to that.”
    â€œListen, Patty,” Tom said. “I didn’t ask you to go down on me in the kitchen.”
    â€œYeah, but your dick was already hard when I pulled it out,” she said. “You’ve never fucked me that hard. You’ve never—”
    â€œPatty,” Tom said. “Calm down, okay? Let’s just go to sleep.”
    Two nights later, it happened again, exactly as before. And then:
    â€œYou want kinky. I don’t mind kinky, Tom. I’ll dress up. You can tie me to the bed if you want. You can spank me. You can have my ass.”
    â€œI don’t need all that,” Tom said.
    Weeks passed. It happened again and again.
    â€œThen why is the only time we have sex anymore after we watch her in the window?”
    â€œThat’s not the only time we have sex.”
    â€œOh yes it is,” Patty said.
    â€œWell, hell, she’s there every night.”
    â€œNot every night.”
    â€œAnyway, Patty, most nights. And I am, I will remind you,a man, and that is a teenaged girl who right here in this state would have been a very marriageable person only a couple of decades ago.”
    â€œYou prick.”
    â€œWhy am I a prick?”
    â€œYou’re a prick because all you think about all day long is getting through dinner and getting to those dishes. Our dishes have never been so clean. I couldn’t pay you to help with the dishes before.”
    So now the question becomes, did they eventually stop? They did not. Nearly every time they did the dishes, they wound up savaging each other in the kitchen. There were different instigations, different positions. There was the thing with the spatula. One night, bent over a rolling microwave cart, she did give him her ass, demanded he take her ass. Tom decided it wasn’t for him. At times food would intervene—vegetables, jellies, spices, sandwich meat. Patty became skilled at the sexual applications of various kitchen soaps. Some nights Tom didn’t even want to that much. But they did it, and afterward there would be the same recriminations, the same guilt.
    â€œDo you think this might mean I’m a lesbian?” she cried one night.
    â€œI’m worse than a lesbian,” she cried one night. “I’m a lesbian pedophile. Do they even have those?”
    â€œI just wanted a normal sex life,” she cried one night. “You’ve got me so fucked up now I don’t even know who I am.”
    â€œPrison,” she cried one night. “I can tell you right now, that’s where this is heading.”
    One night she cried, “I’m going crazy.”
    And on top of all of this, the thing with the dog got worse and worse. They installed a gate at the top of the stairs, but the dog leaped over it or busted through it. They tried crating the dog when they left the house, but by now they hardly ever left the house, and you can’t keep a dog crated all the time—it was cruel, and what was the point of having a dog in a crate? Tominstalled an indoor invisible fence at the top of the stairs. Made things worse—the dog ran right through it and thrashed down the stairs even louder, yelping from the pain where the collar was zizzing him on the neck. Also, the ghost kept unplugging it. The notes from downstairs kept coming, kept getting meaner and meaner. Profanities, and so on. Old Hoard kept calling, demanding that they come up with a solution. The term eviction was actually employed. School wasn’t going well for Tom. Patty had gotten a job in the registrar’s office at the college, and she hated it there, too. They began to make plans to leave Norfolk. Old Hoard would keep their deposit for breaking their lease, but it didn’t matter. Tom would finish out the semester, they would go