Professor Divers was regally seated at the head of the assembled guests. The little party was his way of bidding a fond adieu to his department's most prized professor and most fierce competitor. None of his books had ever been published for popular markets. He wrote long, scholarly studies on the mating habits of flatworms and the nocturnal activities of the two-toed sloth. In other areas, he had even less to offer.
"Blair, dear," he said, grasping her hand with his gnarled hairy one, "you're looking positively radiant this evening."
What a bunch of crap! He was patronizing her and she knew it. How could he say such a thing anyway? She was wearing khaki pants, a khaki blouse and Army boots, for Chrissake.
"What are you going to do with all that lovely hair?" Mrs. Divers said, nodding her head in Blair's direction, "I expect you'll have to cut it off."
"Well, the jungles are steamy," Blair said, stirring a little milk into her cappucino, "but I've decided to risk not going bald for the occasion. I'm thinking of wearing it in braids or something."
Actually she hadn't given it much thought.
"Such a lovely color," Owen Divers chimed in. He was such a sweetie. Always waiting for Mommsie and Daddykins to have their say before he opened his mouth, "Do you call it Titian blonde, I believe?"
"Strawberry blonde," her father said, reaching for the sugar, "like her mother had."
For some reason, it still made Blair feel a little sad every time he brought up her mother. Why couldn't he just find a nice college widow and get remarried? She would miss him terribly, but the man must get lonely. Surely at least just for companionship… Her thoughts were cut off by the very charming Mrs. Haver, the wife of another Zoology professor. One whose specialty was long-legged birds.
"Aren't you afraid you'll be a bit lonely out there in the bush?" she said, lifting all three of her chins up as she raised her head and eyed the girl, "I was. My goodness, the year Jackson and I spent there, I nearly lost my sanity. No one to talk to, no one to listen to me, except Jackson, of course…"
Blair was vaguely aware that Mrs. Haver was droning on ad nauseam. But something the woman had said made her thoughts rush off and carry her along with them. What was it?
Ah, yes, the loneliness thing. Why wouldn't she be lonely out there? Away from everything and everyone she knew that was familiar to her. Not another white person around for hundreds of miles. Why had she no fear of those outer reaches of the world? Why was she even looking forward to the peace and solidarity of it?
She tapped her spoon on the table as the woman continued to buzz on, her voice rambling off in a jagged monotone. She was actually eager about getting out there. Fiercely eager.
In fact, it's all she had thought about for days. All the plans and packing and shots she had had to get. She had loved every second of it. She would miss her entire sophomore year at college. Oh, she would get her Zoology credit all right. And she needed it, since she was planning to become a zoologist herself. But she would miss homecoming, the football games, the swimming meets, the dorm friends, the dates…
Her thoughts stuck on that last one. Dates. Men. Young men. The ones she had been seeing in the last year. Ah! That alone would make a book. She resolved to write it someday. After she had been celibate for a number of years. That is what she was planning.
To cut herself completely off from sex. To go without it. It had been so ever-loving disappointing this last year. And, often, before that, too. Not that the guys she had been with were animals. That was just the problem. They weren't animal enough.
There hadn't been a risk-taker, a devilishly daring one, a really energetic one, a truly macho one in the bunch. There had been some incredibly good fucks, though, she had to admit. And a couple of them had been superior. But no tingle as far as she was concerned.
There had been Gary Fulton. He had been a lot of fun. A super guy, really. Captain of the swimming team. A body like an Olympic star. Not handsome, but then, she never really saw the use of handsome men. They were just so stuck on themselves.
But he had been rugged and outdoorsy. Not like little darling Owen who sat across from her now, trying to flirt with her. Owen was two years older than her, but she always felt she was babysitting him whenever they were alone.
Their one and only date had been a disaster epic. He had taken her to a remote beach for a quiet, private swim. At least that's what he said. And she had gone there, to get just that.
She had ridden all the way out to the ocean cliffs with him and they had skipped across the sand together. That part had been fun. She even dared to hope that they might be friends if they could have a bit of fun together. But then, the shit hit the fan.
When she stood up and threw her towel down and peeled off her sweat shirt, Owen had gasped.
"What's the matter?" she said, unzipping her jeans and stepping out of them. "I thought we were going swimming."
"I thought you'd be wearing a bathing suit," the shocked young man had said, his glasses fogging up even in the clear light of that sunny afternoon.
"You said it was a deserted beach," Blair said, "what's wrong with a nude swim?"
She stood staring at him, her hands thrust up to her hips and back arched bravely against the salty air.
"What if…" the startled lad began, "what if somebody sees you?"
"Then they do, I suppose," Blair shouted back. She was getting pretty fed up with Owen Divers and they'd only been together an hour.
"Does your father know you go around like that?" he asked, carefully lowering the zipper of his linen pants.
"My father doesn't much care how I go around," she said, shaking her head in disbelief that anybody could be so fucking dense as to object to a little nudity in such a private setting.
Owen stroked his razor-clean face and smiled a cautious, edgy grin, "maybe you'd like me to go in like that, too?"
"Do whatever you like," Blair called back to him as she kicked the sand up behind her heels and headed toward the noisy surf.
She didn't much care what Owen Divers did. Nor any of the men she had seen in the last few years. But there had been one… when was it… a long time ago. How far back was that?
It was in Ceylon. Sri Lanka, they called it now. In the jungles. She had only been twelve years old at the time. But it was a thing she had never forgotten.
Funny how some memories lingered and others just drifted off like fog in early morning. But this was one memory that stood out in her mind. One she couldn't forget, and didn't want to let go of.
There had been a temple. A kind of gold and ivory thing. Huge, forbidding, and completely overgrown with thick jungle foliage. Her father had set up his base of operations there, along with two of his associates and some local hands.
The men were Ceylonese. Blair remembered them very well. They were dark, fierce-looking men with simian foreheads and sturdy shoulders.
She admired the way they plowed through the jungles with great agility. And, she remembered how they looked at her strawberry blonde hair and pointed excitedly the first time they saw it.
Their interpreter told them the cause of the men's excitement. Blonde hair was unheard of around these parts. They thought she was some sort of Goddess. A vision come back to bring them good luck.
And, of course, those men were very nice to her. One of them had a son, a boy not much older than her, though it was difficult to tell age among people so dark-skinned.
He was incredibly handsome, with a furrowed, heavy dark pair of eyebrows that almost touched above the bridge of his nose. And masses of wavy blue-black hair.
Blair had been especially drawn to that. She loved hairy men. She couldn't tell why exactly, but the clean-shaven men who had filled up her social calendar recently just didn't turn her on to look at them.