If she was interested in me at all, he thought (and God knows why she would be, he added gloomily to himself), I have undoubtedly put paid to that by exposing the full range of my sophomoric wit.

Well, he had done things like that before, and he supposed he could live with the knowledge that he had done it again.

She looked at him over the rim of her teacup with those disconcertingly frank eyes and smiled again, and the shred of equanimity he had been able to muster up promptly vanished.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked. It sounded like some lumbering double-entendre, but he had to say something, because she must have had some purpose in coming here. He felt his own protective smile faltering on his lips in his confusion.

“Yes,” she said, and put her teacup down decisively. “Yes, you can. Maybe we can help each other. Could you come into the living room?”

“Sure.” His hand was shaking; when he set his cup down and rose, some of it spilled. As he followed her into the living room, he noticed how smoothly her slacks (which aren’t very slack at all, his mind gibbered) clung to her buttocks. It was the panty line that broke up the smooth look of most women’s slacks, he had read that somewhere, maybe in one of the magazines he had kept in the back of his bedroom closet behind the shoeboxes, and the magazine had gone on to say that if a woman really wanted that smooth and seamless look, she should wear a G-string or no panties at all.

He swallowed; tried to, at least. There seemed to be a huge blockage of some kind in his throat.

The living room was dim, lit only by the glow that filtered through the drawn shades. It was past six-thirty, and outside the evening was drawing toward dusk. Harold went to one of the windows to run the shade up and let more light in, when she put her hand on his arm. He turned toward her, his mouth dry.

“No. I like them down. It gives us privacy.”

“Privacy,” Harold croaked. His voice was that, of an age-rusted parrot.

“So I can do this,” she said, and stepped lightly into his arms.

Her body was pressed frankly and completely against him, the first time in his life anything of the sort had happened, and his amazement was total. He could feel the soft and individual press of each breast through his white cotton shirt and her silky blue one. Her belly, firm but vulnerable, against his, not shying away from the feel of his erection. There was a sweet smell to her, perfume maybe, or maybe just her own smell, that seemed like a told secret that bursts, revelative, on the listener. His hands found her hair and plunged into it.

At last the kiss broke but she didn’t move away. Her body remained against his like soft fire. She was perhaps three inches shorter, and her face was turned up to his. It occurred to him in a dim sort of way that it was one of the most amusing ironies of his life: When love—or a reasonable facsimile—had finally found him, it was as if he had slipped sideways into the pages of a love story in a glossy women’s magazine. The authors of such stories, he had once claimed in an unacknowledged letter to Redbook, were one of the few convincing arguments in favor of enforced eugenics.

But now her face was turned up to his, her lips were moist and half-parted, her eyes were bright and almost… almost… yes, almost starry. The only detail not strictly compatible with a Redbook ’s-eye view of life was his hard-on, which was truly amazing.

“Now,” she said. “On the couch.”

Somehow they got there, and then they were tangled up there, and her hair had come loose and flowed over her shoulders; her perfume seemed everywhere. His hands were on her breasts and she was not minding; in fact she was twisting and squirming around to allow his hands freer access. He did not caress her; in his frantic need what he did was plunder her.

“You’re a virgin,” Nadine said. No question there… and it was easier not to have to lie. He nodded.

“Then we do this first. Next time it will be slower. Better.”

She unbuttoned his jeans and they snapped open to the zipper-tab of his fly. She traced a light forefinger across his belly just below the navel. Harold’s flesh shuddered and jumped at her touch.

“Nadine—”

“Shhh!” Her face was hidden in the fall of her hair, making it impossible to read her expression.

His fly was pulled down and the Ridiculous Thing, made even more ridiculous by the white cotton in which it was swaddled (thank God he had changed clothes after his shower), popped out like Jack from his box. The Ridiculous Thing was unaware of its own comical appearance, for its business was deadly serious. The business of virgins is always deadly serious—not pleasure but experience.

“My blouse—”

“Can I—?”

“Yes, that’s what I want. And then I’ll take care of you.”

Take care of you. The words echoed down into his mind like stones flung into a well, and then he was sucking greedily at her breast, tasting the salt and sweet of her.

She drew in breath. “Harold, that’s lovely.”

Take care of you, the words clanged and banged in his mind.

Her hands slipped inside the waistband of his underpants and his jeans slid down to his ankles in a meaningless jingle of keys.

“Raise up,” she whispered, and he did.

It took less than a minute. He cried aloud with the strength of his climax, unable to help himself. It was as if someone had touched a match to a whole network of nerves just under his skin, nerves that plunged deep to form the living webwork of his groin. He could understand why so many of the writers made that connection between orgasm and death.

Then he lay back in the dimness, his head against the sofa, his chest heaving, his mouth open. He was afraid to look down. He felt that quarts of semen must have splattered all over everything.

Young feller, we’ve struck oil!

He looked at her shamefacedly, embarrassed at the hair-trigger way he had gone off. But she was only smiling at him with those calm, dark eyes that seemed to know everything, the eyes of a very young girl in a Victorian painting. A girl who knows too much, perhaps, about her father.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“Why? For what?” Her eyes never left his face.

“You didn’t get much out of that.”

“Au contraire, I got a great deal of satisfaction.” But he didn’t think that was exactly what he had meant. Before he had a chance to consider this, she went on: “You’re young. We can go as many times as you want to.”

He looked at her without speaking, unable to speak.

“But you must know one thing.” She put a hand lightly on him. “What you told me about being a virgin? Well, I am, too.”

“You—” His expression of astonishment must have been comical, because she threw back her head and laughed.

“Is there no room for virginity in your philosophy, Horatio?”

“No… yes… but—”

“I’m a virgin. And I’m going to stay that way. Because it’s for someone else to… to make me not a virgin anymore.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

He stared at her, suddenly cold all over. She looked back calmly.

“Him? ”

She half turned away and nodded.

“But I can show you things,” she said, still not looking at him. “We can do things. Things you’ve never even… no, I take that back. Maybe you have dreamed of them, but you never dreamed you’d do them. We can play. We can make ourselves drunk with it. We can wallow in it. We can…” She trailed off, and then did look at him, a look so sly and sensual that he felt himself stirring again. “We can do anything—everything —but that one little thing. And that one thing really isn’t so important, is it?”

Images whirled giddily in his mind. Silk scarves… boots… leather… rubber. Oh Jesus. Fantasies of a Schoolboy. A weird kind of sexual solitaire. But it was all a kind of dream, wasn’t it? A fantasy begotten of fantasy, child of a dark dream. He wanted all those things, wanted her, but he also wanted more.