"Normal is what you get used to." Maggie reminded herself as she got up from the king-size futon on the hardwood floor of her bedroom.
The two men were still asleep. She tried not to wake them. She showered, washing off the smell of sex, combed her hair and tied it into a bun, rubbed cream into her face, looked at herself critically in the mirror, and crept across the semi-dark room. She opened the top drawer to her dresser, fumbled for a bra and panties, then walked over to her closet, and pulled blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt off hangers.
"Are you up?" came a voice from the bed. It was Doug.
"Shhh. Don't wake Jason. I'm getting ready to go to work."
"Don't you know it's Sunday?" He turned away from the light coming in through the windows and nestled under the covers. "Nice night," he murmured.
She carried her clothes out into the hallway, shutting the bedroom door behind her and walked down two flights of stairs to the living room of the townhouse. She tossed her clothes on the sofa. "Oh, God, do I need a cup of coffee." She walked into the kitchen, filled the coffee pot with water, spooned coffee into the filter, and left the coffee to brew while she returned to the living room to dress.
"I can't believe what I have done," she said to herself as she put on her clothes. "I'll think about it later. Today it's work."
Tomorrow, she was scheduled to present to her team, peers, and superiors the results of her work for the last year. She was a physicist, with a specialty in quantum mechanics. Only a year earlier she had stood on the podium with a group of men and had been awarded a doctorate degree.
She quickly drank two cups of scorching hot coffee, ate a bowl of dry cereal with her fingers. Upstairs, she heard Doug and Jason stirring. "First time I ever woke up with a man in my bed," she heard Doug say. He was an amusing and outgoing boy - she called them both boys although they were 26 years old - and she was half in love with him. Jason was more like her best friend. He was better looking than Doug and almost feminine in the softness of his features and in the delicacy of his speech. People often thought Jason was gay. Maggie and the two boys had been roommates for a year. She was 29 years old.
Maggie slipped out the front door of the townhouse. She worked all day at the laboratory, recalculating for the hundredth time her mathematics, going over her power-point presentation, trying to anticipate the toughest questions her colleagues would ask her. Satisfied, she left the lab at 5 p.m. and walked home, enjoying the fine spring day and the vibrant life of the streets.
Doug and Jason were on the back deck of the townhouse. Their girl friends were there. Doug called out to her, "Maggie, is that you? Hey, come out here and join us."
She walked through the living room and the kitchen and poked her head out the door opening onto the deck. Doug was at the smoking grill, cooking hamburgers and hot dogs. Jason was sitting near the hot tub engaged in a serious conversation with his girl friend. Jason was much too serious around his girl friend. He adored her, but she gave him fits with her wayward ways. "I don't want to intrude. I'll just go to my room."
"No, don't," answered Doug. He reached into a cooler, pulled out a bottle of beer, popped off the top, and held it out to her. "Have a beer and a hot dog." He kissed her on the cheek. A brotherly kiss. A roommate's kiss.
The two girls chimed in unison, "Hi, Maggie." They were attractive, slender, and young, a year or two out of college, and she felt like Grandma Moses when she was around them. They were respectful to her, but she detected a slight condescension in their attitude. They had boy friends; she did not. They were slender and cute and stylish, and she was tall and ungainly and uninterested in fashion or glamour. "Little do they know," she said to herself as they exchanged air kisses.
Maggie drank the beer, ate a hot dog, and departed to her room. Nobody urged her to stay longer. Later, as she tossed nervously in her bed trying to relax, she heard the two boys and their girl friends retire to the two bedrooms on the floor below her.
***
Her presentation went well. She had been confident, authoritative and even a bit charming to the audience, mostly men, sitting around the long table in the conference room.
Jason called her that afternoon to ask how she had done. "That's great," he said. "Let's have a beer after work. Meet you at the corner?" They often hung together at the bar just down the street from their townhouse. "I'll call Doug to see if he can join us." Jason was the thoughtful one of the two.
She got to the bar early. She was always early. She mused as she drank her beer alone. "I can't believe I feel so...well...unchanged. I fucked both boys night before last. Both. Together. And, then, last night after that they took their girlfriends to bed as if...as if...it never happened. Should I feel like a slut? Should I fell like I've been used?"
She summed up her love life in her mind. "Three affairs - all of which turned out to be unsatisfying - and downright boring. Three one-night stands. That is my pathetic love life. Then, along came the boys. Both of whom are in love with other women."
She had moved in with them a year earlier. She didn't know either of them, but they were shopping for a roommate to share the cost of renting the townhouse, and she had just moved to the big city to begin her job. It had been a congenial relationship from the beginning. She had no friends except among her work colleagues nor any social life of her own. She was working long and hard and spent most of time thinking about the puzzles of sub-atomic particles rather than seeking romance. She was already, in her mind, an old maid, married to her work, advancing upward in a field populated with brilliant but arrogant and dominating men.
Three months after moving into the apartment she had sex with Doug. It was unexpected and came on a night when his girl friend was out of town. Doug had invited her to join him in the hot tub and things proceeded from there.
Shortly after that she had sex with Jason after his girl friend announced her independence and intention to see other men. Jason had been devastated and in comforting him she found herself in bed with him. That was repeated many times, for under his shy, unassuming countenance Jason had a powerful libido. Then, when Jason's girl friend came back to him, it was Doug again. Not often, but nearly every Friday after a long week at work they would meet in the hot tub and have sex there or in her room. Doug said that sex with her made him a better lover later that night when he saw his girlfriend.
Both boys were aware that she had sex with the other. "Let's keep this a secret among us," she said to them. "I don't want any complications or to cause you to have problems with your girl friends."
She was not unhappy with the arrangement. In her moody moments she reflected that she was like a piece of exercising equipment, to be used now and then by the boys to burn up their excess sexual energy. She didn't mind. Much. She enjoyed sex. She wanted to be more than a sex toy, but she didn't want to devote the time and effort needed to develop a serious relationship. "Been there, done that," she said to herself. Moreover, men were not beating down her door. She was attractive, but not beautiful, big-breasted but too large in the hips; uncomfortable with casual chatter and flirting, an introvert who was confident and animated when talking shop, but never the life of any party, most often the inconspicuous person being ignored n the corner.
***
Saturday night had begun with Jason. His girl friend - a flighty little bitch in Maggie's opinion - was giving him trouble again and he was depressed. Maggie had planned to work on her upcoming presentation, but she took time out to comfort Jason.
"Let's go get a beer," she said. That was a bad idea as Jason downed the first one, ordered another, and then another. It was unusual for Jason to drink so much. He declined her offer to let her help him get home. She called Doug for help and he soon arrived.
"Sorry," she said. "Did you have plans?"
"Nothing special," he answered. "Maybe I'd rather see you tonight than go out with my girl friend."
"First things first, let's get Jason home. Then I have got work to do."
