“What did you think of the pictures?” I asked.
“Did you see the cheerleading shot? My thighs were positively grotesque.”
“But what about Cameron?”
“Cameron is a pig.”
When the waiter brought our main courses my legs and claws were arranged in an artsy, nouvelle-type design on the plate. He went into that routine where they hover over your food with what looks like a walnut fence post.
“Fresh ground pepper, sir?”
A bare foot plopped in my lap. “No, thank you.” Katrina had amazing toe dexterity. Midway through the salad, I felt my Levi’s zipper slip.
“If you’ve seen the pictures, why are you so chipper?” I asked.
“I’m turned on just thinking about my birthday orgy.”
“There’s not going to be a birthday orgy. This is it. Right now.”
Her toes grazed up and down. “Don’t be silly. The last diddle before you lose a lover is always so poignant. I love it, better than the first time.”
“We’ve already had our last diddle.”
“Au contraire, chéri. Eat up, the party kicks off at eight, with or without you.”
My first thought was this: Starting tomorrow, I was to begin a God-knows-how-long celibate period while I convinced Gilia I wasn’t a promiscuous male. That left tonight.
“Why is the orgy on a time schedule?”
“It’s that jerk, Skip.” Katrina did strange, probing motions in my boxer shorts. “His Highness ordered me home by eight to tape Monday Night Football.”
“Why not program the VCR to turn itself on?”
“You ever meet anybody knows how to work those machines? The directions say it can be done, but it’s a dirty, Japanese lie.”
She accepted another martini from the waiter. I suspected he knew about the footsie game under the tablecloth, but he was too cloying to comment. Whenever I see a waiter I think about the poor single mother somewhere who’s out of a job because this guy is too lazy to work construction.
“Skip said he’ll confiscate my car if I don’t get his precious ball game—every second—so I have to be there to change the tape after three hours. Football games last longer than videotapes.” She gave me the most Southern smile you can imagine. “And you know what we’re going to do for those three hours?”
“The Ramada Inn?”
The toe popped through. “Nope. We’re going to do it right in old Skippy-pooh’s king-size bed. This is the last time and I demand it all. Bondage. Fantasy. S and M. Anal. I’ll bet you know stuff I haven’t even heard of.”
Probably true. “How many times have I explained, sex should be affectionate, not revenge.”
“Revenge gives a better orgasm.”
Katrina eyed me while I looked down at my empty claw and thought of Gilia. Gilia was wholesome, Katrina was sick. Where did that leave me?
“What about the Saunders?” I asked.
“Mimi can get her own gigolo.”
“What if they see the lights?”
“So what if they see the lights?”
“How about Phadron?”
“She asked for a raise and Skip had her deported. I never told you about Phadron, how did you know her name?”
I shrugged and faked innocence. “Heard it somewhere, I guess.”
The waiter cleared our plates. I said no to dessert and yes to an after-dinner Grand Marnier. Katrina had another martini. Her foot grew increasingly aggressive.
“I’ll do it,” I said, “only at the Ramada. One last time, but this is absolutely it.”
She smiled. “You’ll do it at my house.”
“I think that’s a bad idea.”
She jabbed her toe. “I don’t care what you think. Can’t you understand that? I no longer care about you.”
“You have a warped attitude toward sex,” I said.
Now, she was mad. It always frightens me how quickly a woman can go from a perfectly pleasant mood to all-out fury.
“I have a warped attitude? What about you, Mr. Pussy Eater? You afraid of honest copulation? Afraid to get our little pee-pee dirty?”
Two tables over, a busboy dropped a glass.
“I need romanticism.”
Strong words for a man with a foot in his fly.
Katrina laughed—a harsh sound, not tinkle-like at all. “I’ll bet it doesn’t work. You lead with your tongue because your pee-pee can’t cut the mustard.”
“That’s right, Katrina. You hit the nail on the head.”
“Not yet, buster.”
“Skip won’t do it with me any way but him on top banging like a rabbit,” Katrina said as she drove through the slick streets. My car was back at Bonaparte’s because I’d drawn the line at parking in front of her house.
“He plays all kinds of games with his girlfriends and whores, but with me it’s old, boring squash-the-boobs.” Her voice was sad.
“How do you know he plays games with his girlfriends?”
“They tell me. That slut Tiffany Jane in the shoe department says Skip likes to spread-eagle her on a copier and Xerox the whole thing. I tried getting on top once and Skip called me a ‘feminist.’”
Although she couldn’t be too athletic and drive at the same time, Katrina still managed to keep my attention with her right hand. Manually speaking, most women go at it like the guy is fourteen years old, holed up in the bathroom with a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue while his sister bangs on the door, shouting, “Hurry up.” Katrina was considerably more subtle.
She went on. “He’s probably got Tiffany Jane in Atlanta right now. Hell, he takes the entire shoe department. I’m taping his dumb football so he doesn’t have to pull out his cock long enough to turn on the TV.”
In her driveway, Katrina decided we’d had enough foreplay. She kissed me long and hard while I fumbled with my seat belt. During French kissing, the average girl expects the boy to extend his tongue instead of her extending hers, but Katrina wasn’t the average girl.
I backed quickly toward my door. “It’s almost eight, we better go inside.”
“I can’t believe you are so anal retentive. If I’d known you were this conventional I’d have chosen somebody else.”
“I’m real conventional, Katrina.”
“Not according to your phrenological chart.”
I got the door open and myself out of the car without falling on the driveway. Katrina followed me out the passenger side, Frenching all the way.
She said, “Let’s do it in the yard.”
“It’s raining.”
“I swear, you have no spontaneity.”
“I don’t believe in spontaneity when it’s raining.”
As I started across the lawn toward the door Katrina tackled me from behind and rolled us more or less under a shrubby bush. She sat astraddle me with her knees on my shoulders.
I said, “You’re not wearing panties.”
“Take me now,” she said.
“Do I have to?”
No use fighting fate. It actually wasn’t that bad by the bush. The ground under my head was nearly dry, and, except for twigs in my back, it was comfortable—not comfortable enough for a nap or reading a book, but passable for nature sex.
Katrina twisted around, yanked off my shoes and socks, and threw them across the yard. She slid onto the grass and began pulling at my jeans and boxers. I arched my back to make it easier on her. When they finally came off, she whirled them around her head like a lasso and let go. Then, she tore off my shirt. This wasn’t my first choice for fun, but I could live with it. Both the Prescott and Saunders houses were dark except for a dim security light over by the Saunders’ driveway. A larger hedge blocked the first-floor view from the house on the other side. I wondered if Gilia had gone to the movie without me. Maybe she was with a boy her own age.