BRAVADO ALWAYS BACKFIRES, WITH ME. EVERY TIME I make a bold claim, particularly if I make it with a woman, fate blows it back in my face like a piece of wet newspaper.
The fact that Cindy had been up and ready to hit the street at seven the morning before had misled me into thinking early rising and the efficient dispatch of business was a pattern that could be relied on.
The minute we got home from the Embassy she konked out and slept like a baby, while I sat on the bed feeling restive and indecisive. Life was looking more and more complicated. Cindy was even more beautiful asleep than awake—slumber added an almost ethereal shapeliness to her face and body. Of course she was shapely asleep or awake, but the minute she was awake enough for her impatience level to rise to its normal mark on the gauge she stopped seeming ethereal and began to seem like a big beautiful Santa Barbara girl who was used to getting her own way.
Cindy slept evenly, peacefully, untroubled by the thought of tomorrow or the memory of yesterday, while I sat and fidgeted for hours, worrying about all manner of murky eventualities.
When I finally dozed for a bit I had my backward driving dream. It was early morning before I had it, because when I awoke from it fall sunlight was filtering through Cindy’s long windows. About that time, Cindy, who had been sleeping with her back to me, turned over and curled against me. She slept with her mouth partly open, which for some reason made her seem far more helpless than she really was.
She might not have been helpless, but she was warm. She flopped an arm across my chest and the arm was hot as a stove. Having a long warm girl stretched out against you as the October sunlight is beginning to come through the windows in the morning is a good way to overcome the fidgets. After cooking for a while in Cindy’s body heat I became genuinely drowsy and went to sleep, only to have, once again, little flash cuts of myself driving backward.
Then I began to have a vague but sexy dream involving Boss Miller. As it got sexier the flash cuts of backward driving gradually stopped. Boss took the dream and it got sexier and sexier, although I could not tell that we were actually doing anything. Unfortunately, as the sexiness increased I began to wake up. I tried to stay asleep but I couldn’t. I woke up and looked at Cindy, only to discover that she had slipped down in the bed and was quietly and rather speculatively performing an oral sex act, in which I had been playing an unwitting but cooperative part.
I was very surprised, since in our previous lovemaking she had been energetic without being either aggressive or inventive. She went straight to the point and made it. After a bit she might recoup and make it again, but it was essentially the same point. Her lovemaking was like I imagined her tennis game would be: a matter of serve and volley. She was not into drop shots, topspin, or elaborate baseline strategies. She went for the ace, and then went for another ace.
But a change had come over her. Perhaps the fact that I had been deeply asleep had made her feel that a little harmless experimenting could be done. She was experimenting rather tentatively, as if she hoped to learn a new game without the embarrassment of having someone watch her practice.
Being compliant by nature, I went along with what I judged to be the requirements of the situation and pretended to be asleep, although for a time I watched what was going on through lidded eyes. It only had the effect of making me feel like a peeping Tom. The longer Cindy’s experiment went on, the sillier I felt, though thanks to her natural impatience it probably only went on a few minutes. The fact that it was early morning and that I couldn’t decide whether to be asleep or awake made it seem longer.
I guess Cindy concluded that oral sex might have its interest but was not likely to get her any aces. She soon decided she preferred the old game of serve and volley and hopped on top of me. I opened my eyes just long enough to glimpse a narrow band of bright sunlight between her body and mine. Cindy must have been pretty excited because she looked like a big strawberry. She came in no time and collapsed on my cheek in a kind of victor’s trance. Her breath, warm from her exertions, ruffled the little hairs on my arm while I cuddled her a bit.
As for me, I felt as distant as if I were in the middle of Wyoming. My mind was as sere and dry as the flats along the Wind River, and they are very sere and dry.
Then she began to want to be kissed, which surprised me a little. After all, she hadn’t spoken to me at all the evening before. But she definitely wanted to be kissed. Her breath was always fresh as a green grape—breath that was blowing straight off some absolutely tiptop cells. Even in the early morning she had a clean, grapelike flavor that was very appealing.
After a while my Wind River mood passed and I began to feel not so empty. Also I began to feel curious about what might be going on with Cindy. It was true that we had made love on previous occasions, but there hadn’t really been much amorousness involved. Cindy had just wolfed down a little sex much as she had wolfed down Brie and salami. The wolfing had had no real character. It had been all vigor and no tone.
Now all of a sudden, on a morning when I was supposed to go somewhere with Boss, she was developing an interest in tone.
“Let’s fuck all day,” she said. “I never have.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I never have just spent a day in bed, doing things,” she said. She said it almost meekly, as if it were a shameful confession.
“You never will, either, if you start this early,” I said. “Not unless you can arrange for a string of fellows. No one fellow is going to last all day.”
“It doesn’t have to be just fucking,” Cindy said, still meekly. “We could do other kinds of things.”
“What other kinds of things?”
She shrugged her beautiful freckled shoulders. “Orgy-like things,” she said. “You probably know more about them than I do. I never get to do those kinds of things.”
“That’s hard to believe,” I said, though in fact I could believe it perfectly well. A lot of brash girls who will fuck you in an instant turn out not to have done much sexually—they often live a life of very simple fucks.
“But you’re the toast of Washington,” I said. “How come you haven’t had better opportunities?”
“I told you,” she said, wiggling a little. “These are successful people. They can’t lay around in bed all day.”
She looked slightly depressed, as if it had just occurred to her that she had missed a lot because all the successful men she knew were off running the country, leaving no one to do what she called orgy-like things with her.
“What about the reporters?” I asked. “They don’t have to run the country.”
Cindy shook her head. “They always fall in love and then they never leave their wives,” she said. Then she reached down between my legs to see if there were any signs of recovery in that region. I could hardly believe what was happening. The efficient social-climbing woman of the weekend was fading out and being replaced by an almost lovestruck, partially innocent Santa Barbara girl who wanted nothing more than a day of slightly out-of-the-ordinary sexual adventure.
“Come on,” she whispered. In my confusion I had not exactly launched into doing things.
Clearly I had to do something, so I repaid her what might be called a favor—I guess it counted as an orgy-like thing, because Cindy had an orgasm so strong that an observer might have thought she was being electrocuted. After that she fell into a deep sleep and I got up and shaved and took a shower. From the force of the orgasm I judged she might sleep long enough for me to go off and spend a few hours in the country with Boss.
That plan had a life-span shorter than a gnat’s. While I was standing there, half adrowse in the shower, the door opened and Cindy stumbled in, half asleep also. I woke up but she didn’t. She hugged me and resumed her nap. The shower poured down over both of us. Cindy didn’t have on a shower cap. I don’t think she cared that her hair was getting wet. She had just got out of bed and sought a body to be near. Some homing device had brought her straight to me. She seemed to be sleeping soundly, her wet face against my wet chest.
After that we stood there for a while, one of us asleep and the other wide-awake and a little confused.