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second,
two.”
    “Obvious, isn’t it? Not all Bas are created
equal.”
    Bard didn’t follow Oz inside.
    “Keep yourself busy in here and out of
trouble,” he said, “I got some stuff I have to do.”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “None of your fuckin’ business type
stuff.”
    “What am I supposed to do? Just wait around
for you like some dog?”
    “Ruff.” Bard turned on his heel and slammed
the door.
    Well fuck you too, then.
    The apartment was an oven. Stuffy. Oz walked
the perimeter opening windows and filling the apartment with cool
air and noise. Beneath the window in the far corner of the main
room was a box that Oz was sure hadn’t been there before. It was
folded closed with “Open me” written in the corner in black marker.
How Alice in Wonderland, he thought and considered not opening it.
Curiosity won. He pulled back the flaps and found a typewriter—a
baby blue electric Smith Corona. Oz gently lifted it out of the
box. The faded keys and the scratches and chips on the body told
him the thing had seen major use, but Oz was willing to bet this
gem still had some life in it. Underneath it was a note written in
loopy, girlish hand: Didn’t think you were the television type.
For the down time. Cora.
    Cora.
    He lifted the paper to his face. It smelled
like a garden. Basil and something sharper. Cilantro or sage.
    Bard was an asshole and not above withholding
the truth. Maybe he’d been fucking with Oz about the whole lesbian
thing.
    That body.
    Oz couldn’t ever remember seeing a woman with
a body like that. And now, she’d given him a gift. Granted, he
could probably go from now until eternity without seeing another
typewriter and be okay with it, but it was a personal gift.
If he remembered correctly, women didn’t give men these types of
presents unless they wanted to sleep with them. Or was it the other
way around?
    He preferred not to think about how long it’d
been since he’d been near a woman or the last time he’d felt desire
like he felt for Cora. God, how long had it been since he’d thought
about a woman in terms outside her death? The question hurt his
brain and his balls. Pathetic.
    Oz pressed the note to his face again and her
scent stirred an old, but familiar feeling.
    He locked the door then sat on his small
bed.
    Though it’d been a long, long, (long) time,
like riding a bike or breathing, the mechanics of masturbation
stayed with him. Oz wasn’t sure he could go through with it
because, like the shoulder and the face that stared back at him
from the bathroom mirror, the dick wasn’t his. He couldn’t quite
get over that hurdle. Holding some other dude’s penis was still
holding some other dude’s penis. Oz wasn’t the type of guy to do
that. But the more he thought about Cora, her heart-shaped ass, the
way her entire body swayed when she walked...
    His new dick looked different. Darker.
Smaller. But only slightly. He made a fist around it and nearly
collapsed with pleasure. If he closed his eyes, he could forget
that the body wasn’t his. It didn’t matter in the dark. He jerked
faster, gasping, slowly falling backward against the mattress.
Every muscle in his body tensed, like a guitar string tightened to
the point of snapping, before, finally, quick release.
    I’m alive, he thought.
    He wiped the jism from his pelvis with the
corner of the sheet.
    Kind of.
    Oz laughed. Years without a single orgasm. It
felt like the first time—twelve years old—hidden beneath a
makeshift bed sheet tent and the astonishment (and not a little
fear) that something came out of this fleshy joystick. He felt that
same astonishment now.
    He kicked the sheet to the floor and vowed to
burn it at first chance. The sperm of a reaper couldn’t be anything
but noxious.
    As it’d been in those beginning sexual years,
the euphoria passed and it was only minutes before boredom set in.
Oz considered a second round, but the twang of an acoustic guitar
drifted through the open window,