It was a hot Saturday night in Richmond Drive, Miami, Florida. Substitute teacher Dorothy Zbornak was sitting on her bed, alone except for the book in her hands. She'd been reading for more than two hours, but couldn't put the book down - it was so intriguing that she forgot herself and her life for a while, getting lost in an imaginary, but not always a better world. Ever since she'd been a child, she'd loved to spend rainy afternoons or long winter nights cuddled up with a book and a cup of tea, and now she still loved to do it. There was no Stan who would turn up the television, yell and snore, there were only her three roommates, her mother and her two best friends, who were the best family and company imaginable.
As Dorothy heard voices and footsteps, she looked up at the clock. It was way after midnight, and she already knew it could only be Blanche, the southern belle, and her date of the day. As she tried to get back to reading, Dorothy kept hearing their hushed voices, quiet steps, the door of Blanche's room opening and closing. Then they were there, just behind the wall. Dorothy wished she'd gone to sleep earlier. Even though she never brought it up to her best friend, sometimes she couldn't just not overhear what was happening next door. The problem was not the noise, oh she could easily sleep with noise, over thirty years of living with Stan had got her used to that, it was the kind of noise that she couldn't ignore. Blanche's low, sensual voice, her moaning and panting drove her crazy, and she didn't want to admit it - it aroused her.
Why? Why, after all these years, did you have to fall for a woman, Dorothy? Didn't you learn anything? Why desire her when it's so hopeless, why torture yourself? Do you want to be rejected? Or maybe even worse, be somebody's dirty secret again? Bear all the suffering until you break apart? Really, Dorothy, think and get yourself together! She is not the kind of woman you should love, not so much, you know she could never make you happy. You can look at her, listen to her, imagine what it would be like if it were you - but it's only making it worse. Tomorrow at breakfast you will blush, you'll feel all magenta looking in those pretty blue eyes ... But that's not what you're thinking about now, is it?
Dorothy quietly let out a sigh, closed her book and put it down on her nightstand. Then she switched off the light and got under the covers. What mattered now was only that she was all alone, and desperate for affection from the beautiful woman next door. It had been so long since she'd made love to anyone she truly loved that the thought of her and Blanche was too much to bear.
Slowly, her right hand found her way under the nightgown, while in the other room things got heated. Dorothy closed her eyes and concentrated on the sweet little sounds, ignoring the male voice even lower than her own. Her fingers knew her body well, and they gave her the pleasure she'd never been able to receive from a man, and her brain kept quiet for a while, making it possible to imagine that in fact Blanche's hands were touching her, right here with her, breathing hard with excitement.
Once it all was over, the usual mixture of pleasure, jealousy, shame and sadness weighed upon Dorothy like the blanket she was covered with. Trying not to think about anything, she hid under the covers and went to sleep.