Besides being hungry, my ego was bruised. The Man from O.R.G.Y. being dumped for the sake of variety! That laugh you hear is Kinsey in his grave. I needed something (Oops! sorry, Leila! sorry, Gloria Steinem5 ! I mean someone!) to restore my faith in the old Victor virility and attractiveness. The redhead looked superqualified for the job.
Ambling down to the surf, I waded in up to my waist. I ducked agilely as she came flopping in on her surfboard, sprawled across it on her belly, her half- bared derriere glistening in the sunlight. She was riding a small wave and it broke just before she reached me. Seeing me scramble to get out of her way, she swerved and then stood up, holding the surfboard. Sorry, she said to me, just being polite, and started to go back toward the incoming waves again.
“Do you fuck?” I asked her before she could quite turn away.
She froze as if debating whether or not to complete her turn away from me. Then, deliberately, she swiveled back and faced me. She set the surfboard down flat on the water in front of me and held it in place by spreading the fingers of one hand so that the fingertips rested lightly on top of it. “What did you say?” she inquired.
She spoke English without any trace of an accent. Yet, close-up, the Spanish-Indian cast of her features was even more pronounced. And she looked even younger than she had before -- late teens perhaps, certainly no more than early twenties. A yummy age!
“Do you fuck?” I repeated.
“That’s what I thought you said.” She considered the question. “That’s a really gross way to approach someone,” she decided.
“Oh, I don’t know. We live in a very frank age.” I smiled engagingly. “Do you?”
“What-—?” She was momentarily confused.
“Fuck,” I reminded her. “Do you fuck?”
“I could slap your face.”
“You could.”
“Or I could answer your question.”
“That’s my choice.”
‘She looked at me and laughed. She had a really intriguing laugh. It was deep and hearty, but there was something very sensual about it too. Maybe it was the way her full lips spread to reveal those pearl-like white teeth. Or maybe it was the way the teeth parted so her pointy red tongue could dart out and back.
Now the redhead composed herself. Her features became serious, the faint but cruel down-line of her mouth reasserting itself. When she spoke again, it was poker-face, deadpan. “Would you repeat the question, please?”
“Why? You know what it is.”
“I Want to hear you say it again. Please.”
“Do you fuck?”
“Sometimes.” She looked me straight in the eye. “Sometimes I do.” And then she laughed again, as heartily as before. “And sometimes I don’t.” She picked up her surfboard, turned abruptly, and dived with it into an oncoming wave.
That might have been the end of it. I never was sure whether or not she intended it to be. But the Caribbean was on my side.
As I stood there cursing myself for what was certainly my lack of suavity, the wave she’d dived into swelled and tossed her and the surfboard skyward. Then the water pulled back out from under her. She came down on the wet sand in a tangle of arms and legs. The surfboard descended after her, smacking her on the side of the head. The surf rolled back in, covering her.
It took me a minute to react. I didn't give it much thought, but I sort of expected her to stand back up. When she didn’t, it dawned on me that something was wrong.
The receding surf had washed her out a few feet, and now she was lying face down in the water. When I reached her, water was trickling out of her mouth and nostrils. She was unconscious.
I picked her up in my arms and carried her up on the shore. It was doubtful that she could have swallowed enough water in such a short time to drown, but I couldn’t take the chance. I knelt over her and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The blow she’d received must have been only a glancing one. She regained consciousness while my lips were still pressed to hers, sucking only a small amount of water from her lungs. She misunderstood what was happening. Her knee came up hard, catching me in the groin. I collapsed backward onto the sand.
“When I decide!” she snarled. “Not when you or any other man does!”
“Don’t worry,” I groaned. “I’ll never rape anybody again.”
“I’m glad to see you’ve learned your lesson.”
“I haven’t learned anything. I’ll just never be able to!”
“Isn’t that too bad?” Sarcasm laid on with a snow shovel.
“I wasn’t trying to rape you!” Finally I remembered to say it.
“Oh, no? Then what were you doing?”
I explained.
She felt the side of her head. “Ouch!” I couldn’t see the lump there, but evidently she could feel it. Her doubts gave way in the face of this evidence. “I guess I owe you an apology,” she said in a very small voice.
Actually, the pain in my crotch had subsided by this time. But the Machiavelli inside me said there was no point in letting her know that. “Ohhh!” I groaned.
“Does it still hurt a lot?” she wanted to know. Her voice was husky with sympathy now.
“The pain is indescribable!” That was true, since I wasn’t feeling any pain now.
“I’d better help you home,” she suggested. “You should lie down.”
“I don’t have any home,” I confessed.
“What do you mean? You must live somewhere.”
I groaned again to keep from explaining that the “somewhere” I lived was on the beach.
“Well, never mind. You can come to my place and rest there. It’s just up the beach.” She pointed.
“Maybe we can put some ointment on the bruise to ease the pain.”
Now wasn’t that a superb humanitarian idea? Florence Nightingale herself couldn’t have come up with a suggestion more to my liking. Senorita Red had just the nursing qualities I was looking for to soothe my aching genitalia—especially since the ache was lust rather than pain.
Her “shack”—that’s what she called it—was on a low hill overlooking the sea. A comfortably sprawling ranch house, its decor was simple but expensive. Its grounds were surrounded by a high wall. Behind it was a swimming pool, a building housing a sauna and steam bath, a tennis court, and stables.
“How come you don’t swim here?” I asked her, indicating the pool.
“No good for surfing.”
“Don’t get insulted, but you don’t seem to be much of a surfer.”
“I’m just learning. Teaching myself.” She led me into a sort of den that was furnished in ultra-modern style—inkblots and pretzel chairs, Kandinsky and the Danes. “Make yourself comfortable.” She indicated a couch styled for the comfort of a boa constrictor. “I'll just get something to put on your—umm -- bruise. I’ll be right back.”
“That was fast.” I’d barely had time to study the problem of fitting my haunches into some section of the sofa’s contours when she returned.
“I just had to get it from the bathroom. Here, you put it on yourself while I go in the den and make us some drinks.”
Dashed hopes! “It’s awfully tender. Couldn’t you put it on for me?” I tried.
“Oh, no.” She laughed indulgently. “Besides"—she felt the bump on her head and winced --“I need a drink to anesthetize this. I’m going to make myself a martini. What will you have?”
“Scotch on the rocks, if you have it.”
“I have it. Soda? Water?”
“Just Scotch and Scotch, on the rocks.”
She left to make the drinks. I looked at the bottle she’d given me. Some sort of salve. What the hell, it couldn’t hurt. I pushed down my bathing trunks, dipped my fingertips into the bottle, scooped out a liberal amount of the jellylike substance, and spread it over my genitals. The directions said to knead the affflicted area, to massage it until the ointment had been well absorbed by the skin. They said the patient would recognize that this had been accomplished by the feeling of relaxing warmth which would spread over the part of the body to which the salve was applied.