She liked him because he was simple and generous in bed. He turned her breasts over gently in each soft, salesman hand while he called her “darling” in breathy gasps. She figured he liked her because she was a woman, and that was easy enough for her anyway.

He was impressed by her presence; the slow way she dressed in the morning and applied lotion to her body, the quiet whirring of her breath in his ear, the sweet, warm smell she left in his sheets and on his clothing. They met at a big staff party for a company neither of them worked for. She had come to bartend as a favor to a friend. He had come to hook up the audio equipment.

Before the party she watched him sweat as he held two cables in his hands, looking puzzled and unfitting in the large empty space, a disco ball swinging high above his head. He had those sad knees that stick out of khaki shorts all knotted and knobbed. His course black hair was graying near his ears and she suddenly saw him as an old man, pouring a ritual glass of scotch. She sliced lemons and stalked straws while he reclined in the dimly lit den of her imagination.