Matt got up from his desk and felt something in his back crack, not with a satisfying sound but with a potentially ominous one (he had become all too adept at telling the difference). He grimaced and wondered if he should move up his next doctor's appointment, but didn't see how that was possible given his current schedule. Clearly, something to worry about another time. After all, ignoring it in the hopes that it would go away went so well last time, he thought sourly.

He had been considering doing some last-minute tweaks to the Nicolas Cage sketch, even though the cast was already deep in the thick of dress rehearsal, but that would have to wait just a little bit longer, because Bad Community Theater was coming up next.

Matt shuffled out onto the balcony and leaned forward, resting his arms against the railing just as Harriet and Simon launched into the sketch. The jokes were visual as much as anything else, so Matt wanted to watch it with his own eyes to make sure that everything worked. And for a second he even believed that that was the only reason he was watching.

The sketch started out great, getting laughs everywhere it was supposed to, and Sim and Harry were clearly having fun with it, vamping their way through an over-the-top, low-budget version of A Streetcar Named Desire.

"A woman's charm is fifty percent delusion," Harriet purred, pursing her lips like a goldfish. The audience laughed obligingly.

Matt smiled, even as he realized, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that he was becoming increasingly distracted by the way Harriet looked as she strutted around the stage. Half the joke was that everything in Bad Community Theater was ridiculously low-budget, so she was wearing a cheap, un-sexy nylon slip from Sears, but apparently Harry's body hadn't gotten the memo that it wasn't supposed to be erotic. The thin material clung to her lush frame in all the right places, accentuating the curve of her hip and hugging her ass just so. She was wearing a bra underneath for modesty's sake, but the slip still exposed more than enough of the creamy skin of her breasts to get Matt's imagination revving.

Matt licked his lips, remembering with brutal clarity how her skin tasted beneath his tongue: salty and sweet. He cursed himself for not being able to come up with a more original description, because Harry certainly deserved one.

How the hell had he allowed her to slip (no pun intended) away? Right then he truly couldn't remember.

He shook his head violently, trying to snap himself back to reality. You know why, he told himself sternly. He tried to picture Harriet having sex with Pat Robertson in an attempt to simultaneously remind him of her transgressions and completely gross himself out, but it didn't work, because he kept replacing his own head with Pat's, and boy there was so very many things wrong with that scenario he didn't even know where to start. He cleared his throat and glanced around to make sure no one was in the vicinity, worried that his sick thoughts might actually be palpable to those around him.

Satisfied that he was still alone, he resolutely turned his attention back to the stage. Instead of a delicate lady's handkerchief that might suit a wilting flower like Blanche DuBois, Harry was waving about a furry washcloth covered in yellow rubber ducks. It looked ridiculous, just like it was supposed to, but when Harry trailed the cloth down between her breasts, mock-seductively, Matt's lips went dry again.

And he was assaulted with memory, suddenly, a memory so vivid he couldn't believe he was experiencing it without the aid of pharmaceuticals.

As he stood under the warm spray of the shower, water pounding his aching back, Matt vigorously rubbed the washcloth over a bar of soap, working up a thick, bubbly lather. They were at Harry's place, so it was a fragrant soap -- Matt was pretty sure it was jasmine -- and the washcloth he held seemed to have an unusually high thread count. He wondered offhand just how much something like that cost, then decided this probably wasn't the time (although arguably the place) for such a question.

Harry was facing him in the spacious tub, her wet hair slicked back, her body studded with droplets of moisture. She was a veritable Venus -- all she needed was the clam shell. With a reverent touch, Matt swirled the washcloth over Harry's chest, leaving a swath of suds across her sternum, then trailing down to her stomach, tracing her navel with slow caresses. Finally he moved the washcloth to her breasts, anointing them with suds, watching as white bubbles collected around pale pink buds.

On stage, Harriet was vamping it up for Simon, running her hand down his shirt while Simon gave the camera an exaggerated sneer. Matt tried to imagine what Harry's slip would look like if she weren't wearing a bra, if her hardened nipples would strain against the thin fabric for all of America to see.

Harriet had been watching him silently all this time, her doe brown eyes simply monitoring his ablutions, but she sucked in a loud breath when he pinched her nipple through the washcloth. He grinned at her, then kept tweaking her with a steady rhythm, the roughness of the cloth at odds with the slickness of the suds, and he could see that it was getting to her, that the juxtaposed sensations were just as he'd imagined they would be.

He placed his hand over her other breast and just grazed that nipple with the smooth skin of his palm -- at least, he assumed it felt smooth, it wasn't like he was a farm laborer or something -- and kept doing so, with small circular motions, as he continued to pinch her other nipple with the washcloth.

Harry closed her eyes and let her head fall back; her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. He watched her throat move as she swallowed, the expanse of wet ivory skin beckoning him.

Finally he couldn't resist anymore, and he leaned in to kiss her.

"I have always depended upon the kindness of stranglers, I mean, strangers," Harry cooed on stage, her eyelids now fluttering like bats out of hell. Simon melodramatically ripped open his shirt -- thank god it worked this time, in rehearsal he'd had some trouble -- then growled with manufactured desire as the audience howled with laughter.

Their bodies met in a swirl of suds and heat. Matt let the washcloth drop to the floor of the tub and cupped Harry's face with his hands as he kissed her long and hard. Her hands caressed his hips, traveled to his lower back, then cupped his ass.

Matt pulled out of the kiss and maneuvered them both so that he was now standing behind Harry, with the front of her body facing into the spray. The water rinsed away the suds, bubbles cascading down the length of her. She leaned back into Matt as he drew her body flush with his. He snaked his hand around her waist and downward, then parted her folds with his finger, stroking her there insistently as the spray continued to pound down on her, turning her creamy white skin a delectable pink. She was wet and warm against him and soon she was bucking against his hand, trying to increase the friction, and he whispered in her ear Come on, Harry, and then she let out a series of cries so intense they were almost keening, like lamentation rather than exultation, and her body jerked against his again and again until she finished, went limp, giving him more of her weight.

"You okay?" he whispered after she'd been silent for what felt like too long.

"Delightful," Harry choked out.

Simon and Harry were now hurrying off stage to prepare for their next scene, and Matt realized he'd completely zoned out on the rest of the sketch. He also realized he was sporting a partial erection and prayed that no one raced up to join him with any notes just yet. Matt supposed there were more embarrassing things that could happen than his co-workers spotting him sporting a chubby, but he was having trouble coming up with any at the moment.

He also realized, as the eroticism of his memory was forcefully pushed away in the hopes of bringing his body a little more under control, that just as vividly as the sexplay in the shower, he remembered what had happened afterward: the two of them giggling madly in bed when Harry decided to spend the rest of the morning talking like Julia Child. He was pretty sure they'd managed to cover every possible innuendo that could be derived from the term "rump roast." It had also been difficult to remember that morning -- and now -- the last time he'd laughed so hard.

God, he missed her. And that was the problem, the simple fact that he tried his best to ignore. He didn't just miss the sex -- although god, did he miss the sex -- or the idea of her, or the comfort and security of being in a long-term relationship.

He missed her. He missed the woman who'd just made an audience roar with laughter, armed only with a polyester slip and a rubber duckie washcloth. He missed the person who'd reduced him to a heap of helpless giggles while talking to him about basting methods in a funny French accent. He missed the person who'd wrapped her arms and legs around him afterward like something out of a Lennon/Ono photo shoot.

He missed the person that she was, not the person he'd tried to convince himself that she was.

"I'm so screwed," he muttered to himself. He suddenly craved a cigarette, wanted nothing more than to draw smoke into his lungs and savor the burn. Anything to stop feeling like this.

"We're gonna have to cut 20 seconds in the cold open," Danny said from behind him, and Matt stifled a sigh.

A smoke, like so many other things in Matt's life right now, was just going to have to wait.

End.