this issue with sex? Or how we have this issue with not having sex?” Thump.
“Yeah, I’m well aware we’re not having sex.” Thump. “Max, stop with the hymnals for a minute.”
“Okay, okay. Anyway, here’s the thing. When I was still seeing Corey—after I was dead, I mean—I told you there was one night when I swear she knew I was there, that she could feel me, like she knew I was hot for her and wanted her. She got all squirmy and breathy like she did when I was alive.”
“Where are you going with this, Max?” Granted we had all the time in the afterlife for Max’s ramblings but I was fidgety today.
“I’m getting there, be patient. So, with the hymnals, I’m practicing moving them, right?”
“Right…” I was totally lost now.
“Okay. So if we put all that together…”
“Max…”
“I think we can get into people’s bodies and borrow them to have sex.” I could hear the triumph in his voice, like he’d discovered the secret to the universe or gotten a new toy.
“Max, that’s wrong. You can’t just manipulate random people for your own pleasure. That’s kind of creepy and, well...it’s just creepy.”
Max had tried to teach me to move things, like the hymnals in the church, but I couldn’t quite get the hang of it. He thought maybe getting inside someone’s body—which I still found vaguely icky—might be easier. He didn’t know why, but he just thought it might be.
“Not random people, Delia, couples, people who are already having sex with each other, who love each other...like married couples.”
I laughed. “You think all married couples are still having sex?”
“Well, maybe not some old couple, but…well, like a just married couple, newlyweds. Like the ones who get married here. I bet they’re all over each other.”
I thought about this. There was something intriguing about Max’s idea, although I wasn’t quite sure we could actually—what was the word?—was there a word for this?—borrow people to have sex. But Max was persistent. He wanted to try it with the next couple that got married at St. James.
“All we need to do is follow them back to wherever they go after the wedding.”
“Max, they go to have pictures taken, then they go to the reception, then they go on a honeymoon. Do you want to follow them around until they get to some tropical island before they have time to make love?”
“Delia, are you even interested in this? Or do you just want to shoot down my suggestion?”
I sighed. I’d been sighing a lot in the afterlife. “No, I’m not just trying to shoot down your suggestion. I’m trying to look at this from all sides and see how it will work. This is how I work through problems.”
“Okay. Well, let’s do this then. Let’s go find Corey and her new boyfriend and try it with them.”
“Max, no. That would be you having sex with your old girlfriend and me having sex with her new boyfriend. No deal on using someone you used to date.”
“Oh, yeah, I didn’t think of that. You’re right.” We were silent for a long time. Until the hymnals started hitting the floor again.
“Okay, Max. You win. We’ll look for someone tonight, a couple in a bar maybe. If we watch them we should be able to figure out how well they know each other, things like that. If they seem compatible, I guess.”
We left the church about sometime after midnight. As with most big cities, there was a bar on the corner across from the church. Max knew the place; he decided there’d be the right kind of couples to pick from there.
“What kind is the “right” kind of couple, Max?”
“Well, Delia, do you want to have sex with someone who’s good looking, like Channing Tatum—or me, you know, before—or do you want to have sex with some fat old guy? I’m not interested in having sex with an old woman. I want to have sex with someone I think you
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