"Oh, poopoo," the girl said. "Everybody does it." This in spite of the fact that not a single bare bottom could be seen from where they lay. "Wait an hour. Half the people on the place will be naked. And nobody will care. Can you help me?" She said all this in the most matter-of-fact way.
"Here," Nan Mikell said. And she smiled at the girl-which brought a puzzled look before acceptance took over. People were not so free with their smiles in Europe-even in so Americanized a part of Europe as the French Riviera. After a beat's pause, though, the girl smiled back and offered her brown hip for Nan's sure-handed aid.
It was all so…so matter-of-fact The phrase, once again, was the only one that seemed to fit It was like running into a girl at the beauty parlor-back when she'd still gone to beauty parlors-and having her ask Nan to pass her a copy of Redbook from a nearby table; she couldn't stay under the drier and reach it Nan's fingers tugged deftly at the stubborn cloth and suddenly pulled it loose; the green cloth slipped down the girl's thighs, again matter-of-factly, and she just as simply opened her legs to let it fall. And she was suddenly naked as an egg next to Nan, on an adjacent blanket
"Ah," said the girl, "thank you. That feels much better."
Nan's eyes could hardly leave the girl's crotch. It was nude-of clothing, of hair, of anything. Instead of the black patch of hair, there was a brown expanse of skin ending in a brazenly naked fold of flesh as bare, and as innocent as that of her daughter Mickey, when Mickey was a baby-but where Mickey's innocent little bottom had been sexless and inoffensive, merely something to make messes with, this was a mature woman's slit with-she saw as the girl turned toward her, smiling-open, dangling lips that hung brazenly down between her open thighs, emphasizing the fact of the shameless nudity she had so suddenly placed on display.
She looked up, embarrassed, to see the girl smiling at her. "You should try it," the girl said. "It feels much nicer you know." She lay back, baring the startlingly naked body-so much more naked because of the shaved area where her legs met-to the sun, smiling in friendly fashion at Nan. "Oh, come on, my dear," the girl said. "Nobody will mind. Look," she said, a gay laugh in her voice. "Even men do it."
Nan, blushing, followed where the girl's gaze led her. And to her intense embarrassment-where had things come to, after all, on a public beach?-she saw, not ten feet away, two deeply tanned young men in their late twenties, their bodies superbly trained, walk slowly past her, deep in conversation, oblivious of her own bare breasts, oblivious of her companion's shameless and shocking nudity-and as bare themselves as was the girl next to her!
"Voom!" said the brown girl on the next blanket "Ah, cherie, yon can have the one with the blond hair. Look at the…the rod on the other one! Ooh, babee!" And, laughing, she moved her brown hand to her hairless mound, giving it a long and shameless rub before resting the brown hand beside her on the blanket
Nan blushed again; she couldn't help it Neither could she help looking where the girl's finger had pointed; the young man's penis, bouncing along at rest on his own berry-brown young body, must have been well over nine inches long in its current flaccid state. How large must it be erect?
"Mon dieu," the girl said. "You are blushing!" She smiled; it was a nice, wrinkly-nosed smile. "I have…a girl friend, you know, who has slept with him. She says he is…" here her hand made an eloquently disdainful motion, "…nothing." She smiled again. "I know many men better."
"Heavens," Nan said. She couldn't get used to all this…openness was the only word for it. She'd had to take a half-dozen very stiff drinks to get herself ready for her disgraceful little escapade at Nice. No, be honest; she was all but blotto. And this open parading on the beach…"I'm afraid I'm not quite used to all this," she said. Her hand waved at the beach around her. As the girl had said, more nudes were beginning to appear. As she watched, a stunning redhead slipped her sheath dress over head, folded it neatly, and sat down next to it on her red blanket twenty feet or so away from Nan's. She was model-like in her thinness, and still had the white marks from her bikini bottom. She must be as new to this as Nan was.
"Stick around," the girl next to her said with a merry laugh, "youll be quite at home before long."
"Look," Nan said, "I'm sort of new here. I mean, I haven't any friends." The impulsive act was also something she wasn't used to-but, it appeared, there was a new side to her, and when it was in charge she would do things that would never have occurred to her before. "I…would you like to have dinner with me tonight?"
The girl looked across at her, a friendly look in her laughing eyes. "Why…why, certainement, my dear. I will…how you say…show you around." She reached over and gave Nan's hand a friendly squeeze. "Now," she said, rolling over to bare her pert bottom to the warm sun, "would you oil my back for me, please?"
Chapter 5
The rest of the afternoon passed in friendly girl-talk conversation, switching back and forth from English to French (although the girl, whose name was Marie-Helene, simply put her to shame as a linguist). Nan's one successful attempt to master her timidity-her impulsive offer of dinner to the girl-was all she managed to muster. She had shot her bolt, and was content for Marie-Helene to lead the conversation where she would the rest of the day.
Similarly, despite Marie-Helen's urging, Nan could not force herself to take off the remaining bikini bottoms. Baring her breasts on a public beach was the limit of her bravery, it appeared. Marie-Helene, who was certainly a lot farther down the road to liberation than she, kidded her impishly about this, and brought blushes to her cheek time and again with her comments, lusty and appraising, on the men who passed, clothed and nude, speculating on how this one or that would do between the sheets. Nan grew fond of her in the course of the one afternoon, and found herself enjoying the girlish conversation immensely. It took her a while to figure this out. Marie-Helene was pretty, young, lusty, and outgoing; but her mind was commonplace. No matter; it was a commonplaceness she knew already from somewhere, a reassuring sort of everydayish dullness that made for good friendships. Where had she come across this sort of thing before? she wondered.
And then, just as she was helping Marie-Helene into first her bikini, then into the little dress she had worn over it to the beach, it hit her. It was like school again. like her first year in boarding school, after the scholarship had come in at Bryn Mawr. The innocently smutty confidences shared, the matter-of-fact quality of casual friendship…how nice it was, after all these years! And, as she thought this, Nan felt a little thrill of affection go out from her to her new friend. Helping her into the little jacket that came with the dress, Nan impulsively gave her a little hug, one which led to an immediate reaction in herself. She pulled back and blushed, a hesitant smile on her face.
"Oh," she said. "I…I couldn't help doing that. It's just that…My husband died some time ago, and I haven't had any friends of my own for so long…I've been lonely, you know."
Marie-Helene studied her with grave eyes. Then her warm, crinkly-eyed smile returned. "Oh, yes," she said. "I understand, my dear. And I like you too. Here, let me help you." She held up Nan's bikini top for her to put on. "Here," she said. "Ah, void les petits tetons…you know, you're most lovely. I think we shall become great friends.
Nan agreed, and she found herself blushing again as she finished dressing with Marie-Helene's help and stuffed her blanket into the beach bag the hotel had given her.