That's no lady...

You know from your own lives what happens when people are thrown together. For all sorts of reasons. Comfort, confession, cold temperatures.

Brenda instinctively knows where she can go for comfort. To the only man who’s been kind to her – Jason is so off-and-on, it could count as mental cruelty – Clyde Waters, the go-to guy for her sexual campaign. That’s what it is. A campaign to free females from the consequences of sex. It’s only fair. It’s the only way to make them equal to men, who can go about their business and their monkey business, without swelling and giving birth to a new being.

The question is, do women belong at home making babies or in the workplace, making men?

Either way, there’s probably one sitting at the desk next to yours, and if you’re a man, you’ve probably noticed her sexy short skirt, her blouse slipping forward and down… you’re working next to a woman. Your body says, decrease the distance till it isn’t there, then go one step further. Enter the body. Make it yours.

This goes on day after day. The more time you spend together, the more entitled your body feels. The closer it brings you to her when you take a step, or have to get something on the other side of her desk. Clumsily, it brushes against her as you pass by. If that doesn’t cause a scene, maybe you’ll invite her for a drink after work.

It’s not you. It’s biology. Ancient biology. Animal biology. Apartment equals cave. Steak dinner equals club. You club her over the head with your steak dinner and taxi her back to your apartment. The motivation is the same. The likelihood of reward is the same. The result? That’s why we have Planned Parenthood.

If it weren’t for coincidence we would have no fate at all. Situations have to rub up against each other, swap juices, mesh in some mind-bending manner, then break the entanglement, if they can, and go their separate, snarled-up ways.

Brenda has realized that she over-reacted to Jason’s interest in Dads for Tads. After all, she first heard about that site from Clyde. That woman, whoever she is, probably some washed-out religious nut who can’t stand the idea of sex in the first place, pushed that site on more men than Clyde. Maybe even on Jason himself. He went to it, and somehow got hooked.

She has absolutely no reason to suspect him of having an affair. Maybe a while ago, when he was acting so strangely, as if he were someplace else, and what was going on in his own home was happening to strangers. He’d been very nice, then, she remembered. Doing the laundry, driving the kids all over the place with no complaint… now he was back to his old self.

No, there was nothing to it. She should not have let herself get so riled up that she couldn’t see straight. It was dangerous. She might have confronted him with that nonsense. How ridiculous. She must be badly in need of a rest.

But she wasn’t going to take one now. Aside from its connection with Jason, the Dads for Tads website reminded her that Roe v. Wade is not a foregone conclusion forever. There are these men, who want to behave like ancient kings, with their bastards all over the countryside, being brought up by single moms. Drop around and see the kid once in a while, lay a few bucks on the mother and go back to the official queen and the official harem.

Men like that ought to be exposed for what they are – men with no restraint, who can’t or won’t, think about birth control before it’s too late. Men who don’t see that an abortion is a woman’s way of making up for the precaution he didn’t take. Less satisfactory, to be sure, but whose fault is that? Usually the man’s. Women don’t initiate sex, men do.

Whoa. Brenda! Where have you been? Times have changed, if they were ever any different. It’s often the waiting, wanting womb that gets things going. A relative of the little head.

Brenda calls Clyde. She wants his advice and complicity in conducting a campaign against fathers who want to interfere with a woman’s right to her own body. She also wants to bask in Clyde’s barely perceptible adoration. She knows she feels cared for when she’s with him, as if she’s got at least one person on her side. When she goes out to campaign, the whole world is against her. Republican district, remember? She doesn’t want to hear another word about the Olympics.

They meet in the same trucker’s stop they did before. Partly to indulge in the grease, but primarily not to be seen plotting together. Because sex is involved, it somehow feels like an unholy alliance. The Tomorrow pill has been ripped by the right as a moral shift that turns daughters into whores, and eliminates God’s creatures wholesale. They say it will cause AIDS because people won’t use condoms anymore. It’s not pretty.

Almost simultaneously, our man Jason has received a call from another forward female. Danielle wants to meet him. Not at the apartment. She wants to explain. But not at the apartment. It can’t be anywhere near. Does he know that diner out on the highway? Always a lot of trucks outside. She goes there sometimes for coffee when she doesn’t want to meet anyone she knows. It’s like another world.

He stretches his visual memory. Yes, he sees it. He knows where it is. They’ll meet for lunch.

Jason arrives at the diner, and takes the second booth, across from the counter and behind the cashier. He picks up the menu and starts to read. He’s trying to keep his emotions down. He’s over her, he says. She’s nothing but a slut. He hasn’t seen her in weeks and has almost stopped thinking about her.

He picks up his head just as she comes in, and he’s shocked by how sexy, how gorgeous she is. Her hayfield hair curls all over the tight suit, and rushes into the flat space between her breasts that are bigger even than he’s been fantasizing.

She slides into the seat across from him, with her back to the cashier’s back. They exchange hellos, very formally, but their eyes catch. The turquoise pools enlarge. Jason falls in. He’s sorry. He’ll never do it again. He’s forgotten that she’s the one who did something. She’s the one screwing another guy.

“Jason,” she says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep it a secret for so long.”

And that’s as far as she gets, because the booth is at a window and along with Jason’s face, she sees the parking lot. Getting out of a car is… no, it can’t be… but it is! It’s Clyde! Her boss! Their boss! Well, not exactly, but close enough.

“Don’t turn around,” she says, enclosing her face in the menu. “It’s Clyde. He’s with a woman.” She peeks over the top. “It’s that bitch! The Democratic candidate for congress. There’s something funny about her name. Shapiro. That’s it. The same as yours. Could you possibly be related? No, I don’t think so. She’s awful.”

Jason is a wild, trapped animal. His head is whirling. His big head. His little head is nowhere to be found. It’s shrunken and hiding – Jason tries to do the same.

He scrunches as far into the corner as he can and holds his menu high and wide. When Clyde and Brenda enter, they walk past two menus with arms, and continue on past the counter to their back table, where Brenda, who likes to look out at the people, takes the seat with a view of the room. Clyde sits down opposite her.

Brenda sees only the back of Jason’s head. Danielle peeks and sees that Clyde is sitting with his back toward them, and only the woman, who doesn’t know them, is looking out.

The waiter comes over to take their order – two cups of coffee, two donuts to go, they’ve changed their minds, they’re not staying, and when the ritual is through, takes their menus. They have nothing to hide behind. Jason tries to scrunch further into the window.

“What are they doing?” he whispers.

“Clyde is patting her hand,” she reports. “I didn’t think the old boy had it in him.”

“Patting her hand?”

“Yes – you know – kind of… caressingly. You don’t think Clyde’s having an affair with the candidate, do you?”

“What!”

“Well, what are they doing here, in this place? Maybe they’re doing the same thing we’re doing. Hiding.”

“That can not be,” he states firmly and defiantly.

“Okay, okay, but what do you care where old Clyde is sticking it? You should be glad he’s happy. You were, for a while.”

Brenda now has noticed the impossibly beautiful woman who has emerged from behind the big menu. Has seen the suit with the slit down the front, the beguiling blonde curls. Once she even caught the turquoise eyes looking at her.

“There’s a gorgeous woman sitting in that booth,” she says to Clyde. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the sight. Take a look.”

Obediently, he turns his head and finds himself staring at his top salesman in spite of no Tomorrow pill receipts. She’s staring back. He sees Jason, pressed against the window, looking away.

The women are clueless. Only the men know what is going on.

Brenda is a woman, and women sometimes stand up at the oddest moments and announce that they are going to the ladies room. Brenda does this while Clyde’s eyes are locked with Danielle’s. She walks up the aisle between the counter and the booths, past the cashier, past the entrance, and into the alcove of rest rooms.

She is so intent upon surveying the hair, the clothing, the style of the stunning woman in the slit suit, that she does not notice her own husband, shriveled up in the corner on the opposite side of the booth.

She disappears into the Ladies, just as the waiter comes back with two bags, each with a coffee and a doughnut. He’s guessed these two are not sticking together.

They hasten up, Jason hands a ten to the waiter, saying, “This should cover everything – we’re in a hurry, would you mind taking care of it?”

They’re out the door, crossing the parking lot when Brenda comes out of the bathroom. She sees them walk down its length. Now there is time to notice who the bodacious babe is with. A small man, shorter than the woman, with dark curly hair. Looks a little like… she turns her head one way and the other, like a deer, to establish an identity.

The couple part. Brenda is still not sure. She doesn’t think it’s possible. Then the man gets into his car, backs out, and starts in her direction. But instead of coming past the diner he screeches to a halt, backs into his space, and then pulls out, this time heading in the other direction. The man who looks like Jason is driving Jason’s car.

How humiliating. She’s caught her husband with another woman. It was true after all. Jason got this hot number pregnant, she wants to abort it, and he’s signed up with Dads for Tads. They’ve been fighting about it, and that’s why there’s no more Mr. Nice Guy at home anymore.

She walks unsteadily back to the table and sits down. Clyde notices something is wrong, and asks if she’s feeling well. She shakes her head no. She would like to leave. Clyde assumes it’s some female problem.

She leans against him on the way down the stairs. It feels good to have someone to lean on. He walks her to her little car, settles her into her seat and says, “You know… I’m not happy about your going home alone. I’m going to follow, and make sure you get there all right.”

Her assurances that she’s fine get nowhere. She has weakened, and Clyde is feeling masterful. His insistence quickly breaks down her resistance. They head off in their separate cars, his nose to her tail.