She offered him a glass of wine, and he refused, sitting silently on the couch. She realized that she hadn't heard him talk since he had come into her downtown apartment. "Talk," she ordered.

"No," he replied. His voice was pained, and his face suddenly wrinkled in discomfort. He leaned over, and was almost doubled over on himself.

"Don't you goddamn dare throw up on my carpet. It was designed by Deserre Morland, and I would kill you if you puked on it."

He looked down at the carpet, and saw that, while it was incredibly clean and soft, it was only a simple white. Some guy had really designed it? It must have taken a lot of effort, he thought sarcastically. He sat back up, his face having lost most of its color, and he managed a weak smile at her. "You'd have to fight to kill me. I'd probably try to get my tongue on one of your tits before you got me."

She looked horrified, and she thought of throwing him out of her apartment. She couldn't, she realized with certainty. She loved this man, and envisioned herself fucking him so hard that he would want no other women ever, but she understood that she couldn't. She instead walked off to her spacious kitchen, which had been designed for her personally by a team of people whose purpose to humanity was to design kitchens for the 3 of the population that actually wanted one especially designed. "Well, I'm going to pour myself some Cognac."

"Is that wine, exactly?" he asked from his seat on the white leather couch.

"Not exactly," she said. "I would prefer it if you would not talk to me while I pour my Cognac."

"What sort of Cognac? Alize? Remi Red?"

"Hennessey."

The man laughed from his spot in the living room, which looked very attractive and clean with its vibrant white tones and then the black and brown tones of some of the furniture. "Hennessey?"

"Yes. What, do you think I'm a rapper? Do you think I roll on dubs? Do you think I'm a reg'la O.G.?" she inquired from the kitchen. He laughed again, and she stuck her head out from the kitchen and smiled too. The mood had lightened in the apartment, and the pained look on the man's handsome face had vanished. She came back out into the living room with her Hennessey in the distinct Cognac glass that had a stout and fat bottom that tapered somewhat as it rose to the top. He watched Pilar's long firm legs as they carried her slim body over to the couch. He considered her body, which was fat at the right places and thin in the right ones as well. His eyes glanced down at her stomach, and then he looked away quickly. He felt his heart quicken. She sat down next to him, her ass filling the gray skirt she wore.

"Where's my glass?" he asked.

"C'mon, Hoffa. You're not going to make me get up again for the love of Christ, are you?"

"Christ? You believe in him?"

"Of course I do. He existed, didn't he?"

"According to the Gospels, if they are to be believed."

"Other people chronicled his existence, too."

"Oh, did they?" Hoffa looked away, out one of the broad windows in her apartment that looked out at the tall skyscraper that stood across the street. "That doesn't prove he was the Son of God."

"It's God I question," she said. Hoffa looked away from the window, and focused on her soft, pretty face. Pilar was drinking a little of her Hennessey, and when she took the glass from her pouted lips, Hoffa leaned in and kissed her. The action took her totally unawares, and she almost spilled her Cognac all over her specially designed floor despite her efforts to avoid its despoliation. His hungry lips and hands explored her body, and her nipples instantly rose to life, and she gasped when his nomadic lips had roamed away down to her neck. "Stop," she said, but her voice was hot and puzzled, and his fingers had found their way down to her moistness, and his gentle stabs worked to erode her surprise.

"I love you," he said, his voice saturated with lust, and he was all against her, not crude, but gentle, forceful, driving forward like a blitzkrieg across Poland.

"You're married," she said, shocked. She loved him, though. Her skirt was open, his fingers caressing her without relent, without quarter, with passion.

"So are you," he said, but his voice had lost its rationality, and was driven by something that was purely animal and famished. He reached up with his free hand and worked her wedding ring free. It fell to soft carpet with an inaudible noise. She gasped again, her eyes closing, and then she swallowed hard.

"I don't know if you're thinking, though," she said, her inhibitions dying like the Edmund Fitzgerald but releasing some energy in their death. "Please, think," she pleaded.

His hands found the buttons of her white shirt, and he ripped the bottom half of it open, and her stomach, with the growth of a four-month old fetus beneath it, was exposed to his sight. He leaned in and kissed her slightly fat stomach, his hand forever working her lust among her brown pubic hairs. Pilar closed her eyes again, and arched her back upward. As she expected, his hand found her breasts, and then his tongue found them. "He might come home," she whispered huskily.

"I know."

"It's his baby."

"It's mine."

"No it isn't."

"I know."

"I love you."

"I know."

The great sweep of night sky beckoned the gazes of dreamers and idealists, and the city skyscrapers were like mock stars in their own right, beckoning the ambitious and cruel with their promise of something sinfully desirable.