"We're in my bed, right?" Stephi says. ller gaze settles on the pictures above the TV while letting the cashier pull off her gloves. "I'm just wanting a little sex. Then from nowhere he tells me his fantasy is to get as much comfort as possible." The cashier's back straightens like someone dropped ice cubes down her shirt. She places Stephi's gloves on the end of the couch and slides Stephi's jacket off her. "Cheap thrill seekers," the cashier replies. "The boss wants kinky group sex." The cook whispers the word, "comfort," and the image appears - the cashier the morning after the wedding, folded in his arms, her head rising and falling on his chest. Stephi paces in front of the family pictures on the wall, stringing her cross back and forth. "It's not the sex," she says. The cook watches Stephi glance at the pictures on the wall; they're pictures of the cook's family, the cashier's. The cook and cashiers' wedding picture stops Stephi cold. "Before his wife died, it was them and the next door neighbors," Stephi says. "The boss says it's the safest place you'll ever find." The cook Jeans over the sink to study the wedding picture. Him and the cashier got married in the winter, but he can't say why. They had lived together before they married, and the cook can't remember who brought up the idea of marriage first, but there they are, all smiles. "Every man's fantasy is to get as much sex as he can," the cashier says. "Sure, they'll dress it up." The cashier throws her boot in the comer by the TV, breaking Stephi's concentration on the wedding picture. "Comfort. That's pretty creative." "Is that true?" Stephi asks the cook. The cook knows it's his question. Since tllis morning one person or the other has wanted to know either how or why. It's those kinds of questions that the cook has the most trouble with. "You can't blame a man for his fantasies," the cook says. "Can't blame a man for his fantasies," the cashier repeats. The other boot knocks over the stack of newspapers in the comer for 42
Ft;GL'E #23