Dex reached over to Gena's arm swinging loosely by her side. She caught her fingers and held them. Gena looked up at her and grinned.
"I thought only us kids held hands," Gena perked up.
"Honey, I didn't think eighteen-year-olds these days had that much romance in them." Dex was smiling, enjoying the fast quips that broke the tension.
"You'd be damn surprised," replied Gena aggressively. She squeezed Dex's fingers tightly and almost pulled her toward the building.
Just as they reached the entrance, the Dalmatians bounded up and sniffed happily and curiously around Gena's ankles.
"Hi there," Robard called, his bass voice rising from the depths of his broad chest. "I guess you must've missed seeing Ryan…"
Dex raised an eyebrow. "You saw her coming in this morning?"
"Only five minutes ago."
To what did she owe this warning, Dex thought testily. Wouldn't Robard find it much more to his advantage to get the two of them fighting so that Ryan could run upstairs to him and then, God knows what…
"Thanks," Dex said, forcing a grin of gratitude over her lips. If there was a catch to it, she couldn't figure out what it was. Maybe, just maybe she had been wrong about Robard and Ryan. Maybe there was nothing there at all.
She grabbed Gena by the elbow, getting her wits about her and dealing with this real situation. She steered her on past the entrance and kept on walking toward the corner.
"Hey, what's the matter?" Gena said, half laughing, half upset.
"Where do you live, honey?" Dex said, ignoring Gena's question.
"Why can't we go back to your place?" Gena responded impishly.
"You know damned well why," Dex growled.
"Why?" Gena persisted, blinking her eyelashes with mock innocence.
Dex hailed a cab and pushed Gena into it. Gena grabbed hold of her wrist.
"Aren't you coming with me?"
"Sorry. Not today anymore."
"Oh I see. You're scared of the big bad wolf, whoever she is."
"Come on, girls," the cabbie interrupted. "In or out."
Dex pulled her arm free and slammed the door shut. She put a five-dollar bill into the cabby's hand and turned her back on Gena.
As she strolled away, she heard Gena's voice calling, "Scardy cat. Shit! Shit!" The choked sound of the voice made her look back for a second. It seemed to her in the quick glance she got of Gena that her face was streaked with tears, that she was really calling out for her. Impossible, Dex thought to herself, closing the book on the subject.
Dex ground her teeth down, determined not to turn around again or waver and hail the cab. If they were tears, they were crocodile ones. She was a kid, a kid who liked it fast and easy, and that was all. The tears were a figment of Dex's imagination. Tears from Gena would be tears of anger, frustration at having been cast aside so easily.
Well, good riddance, Dex mumbled to herself. An eye for an eye. She would not give Gena the satisfaction of seeing her irritated. She could yell "shit" at her all the way down the block.
Oddly enough, the "scaredy cat" had had more effect. As she kept on walking, the words drilled through her. There was something childish in Gena's approach to the whole dilemma of illicit love affairs. She made it sound like a game of pickle-in-the-middle. All one had to do was catch the woman who happened to be flying past. Little could Gena know about such temperamental personalities as Ryan.
The irritation spun round and round. Mentally, Dex could not throw off the shadow of Gena's taunting voice.
She was still thinking about Gena when she entered the apartment and looked around for Ryan.
She heard the water turned up full force and splashing against the bathtub. Dex heaved a sigh of relief. Obviously Ryan was sober, otherwise she wouldn't have either the steady hand or the interest to run a bath. She'd just flop down on the bed and fall asleep. The fact that Ryan had stayed out all night and come home sober was newsworthy.
"Dex, where the hell are you?"
Dex snorted in response to the familiar voice seeking her out. The night's depression began to lift. Ryan was home. Life would continue in its usual pattern. They would talk. Work up to a fight probably. Then go to bed. Maybe the phone would ring, and a strange woman's voice would ask for Ryan. Dex would tell the voice that no such person lived there. And thus would fade Ryan's latest venture into unfaithfulness.
As Dex went toward the sound of Ryan's voice, she could see Gena sticking out her tongue and calling scaredy cat again. Gena was right, damn it. She was afraid, afraid to talk back to Ryan, afraid of rejection, the end of their relationship, in fact, just about afraid of her own shadow. The pleasure she had felt at hearing Ryan's familiar call now vanished. Replacing it was bitterness at her own ability to get walked all over. Twice within two hours.
Gena wouldn't take all this guff from Ryan. Gena would probably get into the bathtub herself and make Ryan scrub her back.
Dex pushed the bathroom door open and peered into the billows of rising steam.
Ryan lay the full-length of the tub. The heel of one foot was propped on the faucet and water lapped along her smooth, tanned thigh. All of her glistened as though she had been rubbed down with oil. The pampered breasts floated among soap bubbles. They were round and fully developed, and their nipples were a deep red.
The languorous way she sponged her body with the soft terrycloth intensified the impression of voluptuous flesh. Every inch of her body was carefully cared for, pummeled by masseuses, oiled and delicately suntanned and then licked passionately by Dex. The full curve of her hips was hidden by the water, but the shadow of her bushy pubic hair was tantalizingly visible through the splash of suds and perfumed water.
She lay the washcloth across her forehead and closed her eyes as Dex entered the steamy bathroom. The thick shadow made veils on her lids. A tiny nerve twitched above the lashes just before she opened her eyes. They were a dark, intriguing blue, the color of dusk.
Dex swallowed hard as all the old feelings for Ryan came upon her with a rush. No cute eighteen-year-old body could match this pampered woman's flesh. Its full curves, perfect cheekbones and demeanor which expected slavish attention were irresistible to Dex.
"Hi, butch," Ryan said. "Watcha been doing?" She spread her fingers through her dark hair and lifted it, dripping from her neck. "First time in five years you aren't home when I get in…"
Ryan was speaking with the voice of one of the low-down characters that she played in soap operas. It was the voice she used when an anger was taking over that she wanted to control.
Dex got the message. Ryan, who stayed out all the time whenever she pleased with seemingly little concern for Dex's reaction, was demanding an explanation. How could she have stood this attitude for so many years? Her eyes feasted on the richly sexual body bathing in the tub and gave her the answer. She was hopelessly in love with Ryan's body, her assurance of feminine beauty, her arrogance, her selfishness. Dex was a fool and a masochist, she decided, accusing herself in the third person like a prisoner before a judge. Emotionally and physically Ryan held her in bondage. She could never have enough of that body, those lips, the random attention she got from Ryan. She was hooked, as surely as if she plunged a needle into her veins every day.
And yet there was Gena. How had that happened? What had made her desire that body, young and smooth where Ryan was full and luscious? And what was worse was that Dex had not come out much better with the girl than with Ryan. Both had walked all over her.
With an audible sight of despair at her inability to control the people she loved, even to make them care for her properly, she sat down on the edge of the tub.
"So what's new," said Dex, picking the wash cloth off of Ryan's forehead and plunging it into the water where she let its folds randomly sink down and caress Ryan's body.