Stewart shot up.

Jarred, he desperately looked for what took him seconds into consciousness to realize was a crying baby.

Then seconds more to realize where it was.

He scrambled to kill the TV volume and stubbed his toe, crying out in pain.

The apartment had grown dark. It was late, and Janie wasn’t home yet. He closed his eyes again but that didn’t help shut out the worry.

Though he would have had cause for trepidation over a series of rapidly approaching events on his horizon that would create a fork in his life and forever change the world, the fact was he didn’t have a clue.

Still, he would worry. Everything could make him worry and it didn’t matter they ultimately would never relate to him. But, still, he would worry.

The middle-aged guy dressed in pajamas he covertly eavesdropped on in earlier that day made him worry.

At the counter, pajama-man went through a long series of ailments to the woman dressed in white behind frosted glass: Hardening of the arteries. High blood pressure. High cholesterol. Malignant toothache. Irregular hear beat. Irregular bowel movements. Migraine headaches. Night sweats. Persistent weakness… on and on.

He fidgeted describing a tangle of desired preemptive measures: x rays, MRIs and cat scans he wanted to schedule to adjourn fears of an enlarged spleen, brain tumor, and breast cancer.

“When can you fit me in?” he begged, holding his breast.

“Men don’t get breast cancer” said the woman, trying to be patient.

“Yes they do! Yes they do! And she calls herself a doctor!?” he exclaimed looking to the others seated in the waiting room for support. For a split second his eyes locked on Stewart’s but Stewart quickly looked down.

“I’m the receptionist, sir.”

“Could you please refer me to a competent gerontologist then…?”, he weakly moaned out of breath, clutching his heart.

Her doeish eyes caught Stewart’s peeping up from his copy of “U.S. NEWS and WORLD REPORT” who now sat frozen absorbed in all the things unchecked and possibly going wrong in his own body, suddenly distracted from his previous occupation with all the unchecked things that could possibly go wrong with the world.

He never had a full body scan. Neither had Janie.

His worries about her followed him home. Walking alone through dank streets as the dark moonless night fell around him, he envisioned her having to do so as well. Nobody ever exchanged eye contact. Everyone, like the hypochondriac, was taking prophylactic measures to protect their bodies. The disease was anyone you didn’t know. The disease was humanity.

Home, he was met by an official notice slapped to the doors of their run-down apartment. Probably just some kind of inspection, but that too made him worry so he didn’t read on past the formal letterhead. It didn’t matter. It was just some ominous sign that couldn’t be good. He wondered if it was a mistake not to have called management about the rotten sewer swamp swelling under the rose bushes on the side of the building. He knew was best never to have mentioned the black mold. Maybe the communiqué indifferently proclaimed that now, because of him, it was just too late.

He climbed the severely cracked, weathered stairs. He touched the rough exterior walls. The paint was peeling. Stucco was flaking off. They’re gonna tear the old place down. Then where will we go?

And then, mid-obsessive thought, he startled at seeing his Russian neighbor, a birdcage in one hand and bedding in the other, lumbering down the stairs towards him. The Russian’s girlfriend hauled her voluminous wardrobe behind him.

“What’s going on?” It was silly question that decorum drove him to dumbly ask.

“We movin’ out.”

“What? Where are you going?” His feigned concern was followed by a weak hand gesture to assist then finalized by him leaning on the wobbly black iron railing to augment the passageway.

“Don’t know. Maybe to live with Natasha’s parents,” the Russian said in a syrupy thick accent.

As they lumbered down the stairs the yellow bird squawked and fluttered bouncing around in the round cage, upset by the whole ordeal. Janie would be that way Stewart thought. There’s no way she’d ever agree to live with his parents, or hers for the matter.

“Hey Natasha, maybe we come live with you guys,” he shouted after them, unintentionally falling into their accent and tone.

She gave the Russian an irritated look off which the Russian turned, perhaps to ricochet a mitigated version of her scorn, but instead inadvertently banged the cage against the dingy wall. The bird squawked at Stewart, seemingly for him.

“You guys not like building?” he yelled after them.

“I like it better when they tear it down”, Natasha shot without glancing back for a sentimental last look.

As the foreigners waddled off with gear in tote babbling against their bird and just as incoherently, Stewart made way inside his apartment and felt very much alone.

The Russian incident made him worry too: the little faux pas. There were always times of feeling like you were talking to someone who spoke another language, or even worse, trying to communicate with a completely different species.

Even with loved ones a slight misstep in cadence or conversation could cause contention. The result could be hours, to a lifetime, of another party chafing over you and complaining about you, creating all the evidence they needed to convict you of being a home wrecker or loser or pervert or whatever might apply… on and on.

He didn’t want to look at his missteps with Janie. Sadly, though, that wasn’t necessary; they were right there staring at him. The crappy apartment. Not enough money for kids. Not even enough for her to pay for parking so she was forced to take the train to work. And, work for her was long hours cooped up in an inner office where she never saw the light of day.

He didn’t know how she could tolerate it. He felt sickened that she had to support them. He knew for certain that she was the better person as he reflected back to his one repressive day at SecureCo and felt secretly happy that his tenure ended on the day it started; the day the impropriety scandal tore the company to shards.

Like those feelings, he had another secret which was buried so deeply that he never told anyone, especially Janie. But, this one was worse. He battled over deep a seated fear about being repaid for the karma of his past:

Maybe she found the best way of getting through the drudgery of the day was by crafting secret rendezvous to lockable single-stall bathrooms with random co-workers.

Like he did…

Leaning against the counter Molly gave him a puckish smile of uneven teeth over her shoulder as he walked in. Her chopped boyish red hair was a good mate with her skick body and flat ass.

Which she arched.

He moved in closer. His left hand, to her right, poured coffee while his right, to her left, searched through small boxes in the cupboard. She was in the middle. He didn’t touch her.

“Creamer?” he asked. He knew his heavy breath sent wisps of air cascading along her long boney neck which rocketed tingling electric waves down her back and into her groin.

Which she was touching, the top button of her low rise jeans undone. “I wished you-” she started…

What did she say after that? He strained to remember. Some details were patchy and she certainly wasn’t hot but somehow it helped if the characters were real.

“You’re a real jerk,” he said aloud. Still, he wiggled out of his boxer shorts and kicked them across the room.

She was Molly. Not his only work-time affair but by far the most memorable. He was already hard and that in his hand along with Molly in his head somehow made it easier that Janie still wasn’t at home, maybe even preferable. If she was cheating so would he. Molly was always there.

He even still had her number though had never used it. He was pretty sure she’d gone back to Peter after it ended. His affair started while she was living with her boyfriend. It also ended with her living with him. The three worked at the same company and as far as Stewart could tell the guy was oblivious pretty much everywhere.

She would fondle Stewart in the cafeteria when Peter turned to order his quick slice of quiche.

At the table she’d have no compunction about kicking off her shoe to give him a foot-job while Peter extolled her amazing gardening prowess, bragging how big she could make the cucumbers grow.

With trays in tote they headed back to their respective cubicles. At the rubbish bins she hugged Peter while playfully giving Stewart the tongue over her cuckold’s shoulder. In his ear she complained with soft whispers that they were out of toilet paper and tampons. He promised to go to “Longs Drugs” after work.

His hug came as Peter dealt with her trash. As he carefully separated recyclable from Styrofoam and steel utensil from tuna casserole Stewart got the look. And, if he didn’t happen to get the message she put an exclamation point on it by grabbing his member and giving it a little tug. He was still hard from lunch.

He’d gotten the message. He was to go to the only single bathroom on the third floor of Building 23. And wait.

It was part of their game. The first to arrive would strip off all their clothes and get ready: hard or wet, whichever the case may be. For him the mere idea got him aroused as he walked up the grand staircase and pulled his shirt out to cover his lap.

He went in and left the door unlocked. That was part of the game, too.

Then, rock hard and stroking or dripping wet - one hand on clit the other on breast they would wait in anticipation for a knock to which they would throw open the door and exclaim:

“What took you so long!”

It was really just a meaningless catch phrase but she took to it as easily as she did to the meaningless bathroom sex which was also his idea. Molly was always fun. And part of the fun, aside from the freedom of nudity was the prospect of being caught.

The ring of Stewart’s phone snapped him back to present. It was Janie. She was going to be late. And though he was in a high state of arousal, rock hard and stroking, he didn’t let on about that, or his revisit with Molly. Instead he was curt with her, down deep worrying at that moment she was too with someone else; down deep he hoped that maybe his distance would draw her nearer.

No one unexpected ever did knock to be given entrée. No one except Peter, that is. Twice.

Stewart threw open the door with the usual “What took you so-”

With his erect member, like a gun, pointing at Peter, he froze. His stomach turned to knots. Instantly he began to soften for the first time facing the other eventuality of their game. Heightened all the more by being caught by him.

But a strange thing happened. Peter just turned away as if not seeing him or maybe as if seeing right threw him. Either way, half erect, he came, shooting against the industrial spring loaded door as it adroitly slammed, closing him in.

He never brought that up with Molly and neither did she though she did give him a bit of an elfish smile at lunch the following day.

The next time Peter was subjected to “What took you so-” was from a panting Molly who was too just seconds from climaxing: her breath steaming up the bathroom, her body glistening from sweat, her long boney legs dripping with moisture.

After uttering the catchphrase, she paused for a split second. Her body recoiled and tensed at the unfamiliar familiar man. Then she grabbed him, unzipped his fly and impaled herself on him, slamming home. The industrial spring loaded door slammed closed. Her wet hand locked it with a click.

Stewart watched from down the hall, discreetly peering from around the corner. When he heard the click he stuck his head out and squinted at the door with a puzzled expression.

Somehow he grew brazen and walked up to the door, overacting innocence as he looked around, then pressed his ear against the thick corporate wood to hear their faint pants and moans inside. He entertained the idea of knocking or even bringing some new innocent into the game but abruptly called it off when a sudden irrational fear rocketed electrical waves down his back and sent him running.

Down the hall he opened a door and ran into the enclosed stairwell where their sea of sex sounds reverberated through the walls turning the tall rectangular space into a giant echo chamber. He pulled open his pants and shot his load over the railing with one quick stroke.

As he ran down the concrete stairs to their pounding moans he knew that she was pulling him into her and kissing him with her thin lips and flat tongue. He knew her angular pubic bone would be cutting into his stomach as he fucked her. He wondered how Peter could tolerated it. Maybe it never bothered him. As he buttoned his fly and ran out of the building the thick corporate security door locked in their moans with an automated click.

He saw it again as he masturbated voyeuristically thinking about her and the cuckold getting back together. At the time he told himself he was doing it for them. At least that’s what he wanted to tell Molly. He couldn’t though. After that she never talked to him again.

But it would have been a lie. The truth was it turned him on in a perverted angry way that gave his stomach knots to see her with him. And, those emotions returned first feeling angry about the way it ended with Molly then with a fiery vengeance festering into manic frustration as he imagined Janie cheating on him. Turning him into the cuckold. His stomach ached or maybe it was his spleen but either way he was locked out in the lonely stairwell.

The old echoes haunted him as he watched his Janie fucking some new random guy in a dirty bathroom. He stroked harder and faster as she impaled herself on him, as his come instantly filling her and dripping down her leg. Droplets to fly into her ballet flats which were tossed by the door that she would feel sometime later. Sometime when she was with him. And though she would later be reminded of that intimacy, Stewart would never have a clue what sparked her smile.

He broke out into a sweat thinking of another mans cum dripping out of her and into her panties as she sent him to the drug store for feminine products. A hard fact: she always left white discharge in her panties. What if it was from another man? Or many?

He stroked harder watching her writhe on the black and white bathroom tile floor with her secret lover. Her head was right next to the toilet as he picked up one of her legs over his shoulder. The other rested on the handicapped rail as they grinded together. Moans reverberated off mirrored walls.

His heart reverberated in his chest as his member reverberated in his hand. Both were driven by passion and outrage of seeing her with another.

Then, lover after lover.

Then, something pushed him over the edge.

What sent him over was always an unexpected sensation. It wasn’t usually the sexiest moment. A lot of times it wasn’t the most passionate moment or even a moment when he was most connected with the one he loved.

For Stewart it was a knock. He came as he jumped up and threw open the door.

It was Janie standing there. Her body was worn from the day. Her ballet flats were wet from the rain. She would never notice the semen that his half erect member shot down her naked calf and into them.

Or maybe she did and covered well. But, in any case she fell into his arms and held him and kissed his neck and whispered gently in his ear, “What took you so long?”

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