Stu’s next client was a man by the name of Robert, who enjoyed touching foot to foot, sole to sole, a sensation that Stu had begun to find quite pleasing after some initial hesitation. Then came Izzy, a pale young woman who had a habit of stroking Stu’s bushy beard as they spooned, which he endured but did not appreciate. His penultimate client, Lucius, was a larger gentleman who liked to hold Stu’s hand while they lay side-by-side in an overly snug twin-size bed. Once the sessions ended, each client, in his or her own way, expressed gratitude, most often in the form of a five-star review. Stu himself was grateful to provide such a service to people. He felt good about the work he did. This, of course, made him think about his ex-wife, Liz. She’d never understood why he snuggled for a living. Stu remembered the way Liz would scowl at him from her side of the bed when she thought he was sleeping, prickly heat radiating off her body. The way she would shirk from his touch. “How many hands have yours touched today?” she’d accuse, as if he were contaminated. “What are you bringing into our home?”

Stu told himself not to dwell on the past. Today wasn’t even over yet. There was one last client: an older woman by the name of Deborah Bronstein. Unlike the rest, she was a new client, which meant she requested him specifically, and had paid a premium for it. Deborah existed in a hospice on the outskirts of the city, and according to her profile, had stage four pancreatic cancer. Stu felt the weight of her request. He hoped he could make her comfortable.

After changing into sweatpants and a white t-shirt, Stu checked in at the front desk. He was guided by a nurse to Deborah’s mushroom-colored room. The effect of this hue was less calming and more off-putting, as if the décor had been installed so that the residents could familiarize themselves with being buried under soil. In this room, Deborah was set up on the bed, back propped against the headboard by two pillows. Rather than starkly bald with sunken cheeks, she looked surprisingly healthy, given her situation. There was a wisp of hair on her head, and color in her face. She wore a wrinkled lilac nightgown that extended to her ankles.

Stu took a seat on the edge of the bed next to the side-table.

“Hello, Deborah,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Not too shabby,” she said, with a shrug. “Ever since they stopped the chemo, I sometimes think I must be getting better.”

Stu didn’t know what to say to that. So he just smiled. In Stu’s experience, a smile always seemed to do the trick. It didn’t ask hard questions.

“Do you want me to put any music on?” he asked. As usual, Stu had brought a portable speaker in case Deborah had not set things up beforehand. Most clients wanted music playing to cover up the sounds of their own hastily beating hearts.

“I think I would prefer nothing for now,” she replied. “I like the quiet.”

Stu found this sweet, if unexpected. “That sounds good to me.”

There was a pause and Stu took his opening. “How would you like to start?”

“Regular spooning would be nice,” she said. “It’s been some time.”

“Of course, Deborah.”

Stu moved into position as the big spoon and Deborah curled into his plentiful body, allowing herself to be enveloped. He felt the blunted ridge of her spine, her cold, smooth hands. Stu slowed down his breath, trying to coax Deborah into breathing in time with him. He’d found that linked breathing had some special, soothing power. Sometimes, when the breath was just right, it seemed as though he and the client were one entity, connected by some invisible thread. In the quiet of the room, Stu could, with concentration, make out the sound of faraway birdsong.

But then something happened, both wondrous and terrible: Stu got an erection.

As a professional snuggler, Stu had only ever been on the receiving end, never the giving end. He had felt the erections of male clients, solid, pressed against his upper buttock. Often the men were embarrassed for their involuntary, if natural reaction, in which case Stu happily ignored it and moved on. But sometimes they wouldn’t be embarrassed. This kind of man was usually desperate. Desperate with desire even for Stu—mildly overweight, divorced, in his fifties. Typically these men themselves were also mildly overweight divorced men in their fifties. Stu would tell them a stern “No,” and invariably they would settle down, their erection fading into the covers. At his own erection, Stu’s first emotion was surprise, almost bewilderment, as if he was unable to comprehend his penis working as it was supposed to.

Panic came, quick, hot. This shouldn’t happen. This couldn’t happen. Stu was the consummate professional. An erection was amateurish, incompetent. Worse, it was unethical. Deborah had not signed on for this, had not given her consent.

His first thought was to stop everything, get up and call the session off. But no, that would be a disaster. That would ruin him. He would never be able to snuggle again. Stu needed to be delicate, tactful. The problem was that if he moved his penis, it would show his discomfort, perhaps even reveal the offense. But if he didn’t move, he would be subjecting her to more of this fiasco, this phallic farce. He couldn’t decide. He was frozen stiff.

But it was not just the pressure of her body that Stu felt, it was also something else, something worse: a rising surge of lust in his chest. It disgusted him. How could he feel this way? Deborah was vulnerable. She trusted him.

The lust in Stu’s chest turned to nausea. Enough was enough.

With one deft movement of his hips, Stu shifted position, slightly adjusting his crotch so that his penis was safely pushing up against open space, while the rest of his body was still locked securely to Deborah’s. He was breathing hard though, unable to control the fear, the confusion that had taken hold of him. Still, he heard no peep from Deborah. She seemed oblivious, perhaps didn’t even realize that this was not how it was supposed to go.

Stu’s penis was still at full mast. It was unbearable. But he didn’t stop the session. Not only for his sake but for Deborah’s. After all, she had paid for his services, paid to be embraced, paid for the small relief of his comfort against the great pain she faced. He felt heartsick that he couldn’t provide solace to her, that his penis had betrayed him. It was a cruel joke, crueler still that he could not stop it, that he was locked into this nightmare.

“Are you okay, dear?” Deborah asked, suddenly.

Stu tensed, the blood surging in his penis. “Of course. How are you doing?”

“Wonderful,” she said. “I’d like to lie side by side if that’s alright to you?”

“Anything’s alright with me, Deborah,” Stu said, but inside he was thinking: She felt it! She must be horrified! She must be repulsed!

For the next twenty minutes, they lay together, holding hands like otters do to keep themselves from floating away. In the intervening silence, Stu managed to slow his heart rate. His erection was still going strong, but it was now held down by the weight of the goose-down comforter. There was no tent rising up to tip Deborah off to his present condition.

Stu was thankful for that at least.

“Stu,” Deborah said, his name in her mouth only excited him further.

“Would you mind if I hummed something, an old song I used to know? Leonard and I would sing it to each other from time to time.”

Stu knew from her profile that Leonard was Deborah’s late husband.

“Not at all,” he said. “I would love to hear it.”

She made a little noise, a chirp of joy. “Let’s see if I can carry a note.”

Deborah began humming a sweet, slow song, that reminded Stu of autumn, of a brisk evening stroll. It reminded him, also, of a Halloween night in college where he and Lacy, his first serious girlfriend, screwed their brains out in a pile of raked leaves after an off-campus frat party, too horny to make it all the way home to the dorms. It was itchy and mildly unpleasant, but they both still got off. For the first time in a decade, Stu longed to masturbate.

Instead, as Deborah’s airy voice filled the room, Stu took action. He stuck his hand down his pants and managed to tuck his erect penis under the girth of his belly.

This hurt, but at least his erection was now hidden.

When she finished, her voice remaining steady and clear throughout the performance, Stu clapped lightly. “Encore,” he said. “That was lovely.”

“You’re too kind,” she replied. He heard the warble in her voice and wondered whether she was thinking of Leonard, of the way he used to kiss her neck, her nipples.

Stu clutched Deborah’s soft, dry hand until the buzzer rang, at which point he shot up from the bed where she continued to lie.

He pretended to stretch, as if waking up from a contented nap, making sure to keep his back toward Deborah so she couldn’t see the protrusion in his pants.

“I will say it was strange,” Deborah said, her voice restrained.

“Oh?” Stu asked. He turned only his head and tried to contain his panic.

“There was…I don’t know, something very sustaining about your presence. It has just been me by myself for a long time, ever since Toto passed. I’m sure you get this all the time, but it felt so nice to have someone else next to me.”

“I know exactly what you mean, Deborah,” Stu said, suppressing the urge to run from the room and quit snuggling forever. “People aren’t meant to be alone.”

She smiled, a full smile, her teeth surprisingly bright. “You’ve got a beautiful soul.”

Stu felt like he’d been punched hard in the gut. He couldn’t find his breath.

Deborah closed her eyes. “Goodbye for now, Stu.”

He nodded, had already started collecting his things. As soon as the door shut, Stu made for the visitor’s bathroom. In the stall, he grabbed his swollen penis with a fist.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, angrily tugging at its girth.

But his penis was deaf to mercy.

Stu changed into jeans and put on underwear, the combo successfully pinning his penis to his thigh. “I hope you suffocate,” he said to it.

Bandy-legged, Stu stumbled out of the hospice’s double-doors, almost toppling into a small, stone fountain. In the center of the fountain was a frog, water pressure so low that it appeared as if the frog was letting water dribble out of its stone mouth. The sun, low in the sky, beat down, and Stu shut his eyes, clenching them tight until he could see the faint, bright outlines of stars. He imagined Liz, his ex-wife. He imagined her bottom lip quivering, eyes red and tear-filled, face flushed and hair disheveled as she pled with him to fuck her.

“Please just fuck me, Stu. Why won’t you fuck me?”

He opened his eyes to the stone frog dribbling its water in the evening heat. It appeared to him now that, rather than smooth-flowing water, the frog was continuously spewing vomit out of its mouth into an even larger pool of vomit.

Liz’s words came to Stu again, the way her voice broke.

“Why won’t you fuck me, Stu? Why?”

A wave of nausea traveled up Stu’s throat, the words still so potent even now, and he retched onto the sidewalk. As he panted, doubled over with hands on his knees, Stu’s erection began to fade, first softening, then flattening back into that familiar, impassive calm.