Keith and I go to the Blue Coyote Café for some Dragon Well green tea and chocolate raspberry biscotti. We take the table in the corner near the front window. Even with the curtain pulled, the afternoon sun blazes through. It’s quiet and peaceful, the silence broken only by the crunch of Keith’s biscotti and the clack of the waitress thumbing text into her cellphone. I page through the free magazine Keith had plucked from a rack near the door on the way in. Modern Interiors.

“What do you think of this couch?” I ask Keith, pointing to a glossy photo of a huge white sectional sofa with little bookcases built into the ends.

“Very white,” he says. “Nice.”

“Why do you suppose the bookcases are bare? You’d think there’d at least be a magazine.”

“Like Car and Driver?” Keith says.

“Oh, sure. Or Road and Truck.”

“Road and Track,” Keith says. “Anyway, I can picture you lying on that couch.” He fingers the far end of it. Caresses it. “On your tummy. You bare ass looks so beautiful. So inviting.”

“Bare ass, huh?”

“To go with the bare bookcases.”

I laugh.

He says, “Okay, I’ll let you have one book.”

“A good one, I hope. No car stuff.”

“How about Wisconsin Dairy Production, 1947?”

“Just what I always wanted to read. Wait. That’s just the cover. The actual book is something else.”

“It is?”

“Yup. Secrets of the Perfect Blow Job.”

“Ha!” Keith exclaims. His finger jabs the glossy picture of the white couch then returns to stroking. “What are the secrets?”

“I guess you’ll have to read the book,” I say. “Hmmm, chapter six looks interesting.”

“What’s chapter six?”

“‘When to Spit, When to Swallow.’” I glance at Keith to see if he has a reaction. He raises his eyebrows.

I move my head slowly side to side. “Is that all you can say?”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“So I noticed.”

We stare at each other. I’m not going to give in.

“Okay, I like the way it looks when my cum leaks out of your mouth,” he says. “But I like when you swallow, too.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It makes me feel like you like me. Like you like my cum.”

“I do like your cum,” I say.

“But do you like the taste of it?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I like the idea of having your cum in my tummy. I like the idea of having your cum in my cunt, too.”

“Mmmm,” Keith says.

“You’re getting hard, aren’t you?” I say.

“Mmmm.”

“Do you want me to make you come in your pants?”

Keith looks over at the waitress, who is still behind the counter working her cell phone. She is the only one in the Blue Coyote Café besides us.