“All right, Lolly.” I was hypocritically businesslike. “Now the thing about Leslie in this play is that she’s naive.” I rifled through the script. “Take this scene with her mother. She’s actually been living in the bordello, yet she doesn’t realize that her mother is a Whore.”
“But that’s just too square! How do you expect me to play that with a straight face?”
“Well, the first thing any actress has to do is relax.”
“I’m relaxed. But you look pretty tense to me, Vance. Your eyes are bulging.”
She was right. My eyes were not only bulging, they were bouncing around in their sockets like pinballs from trying to take in the multicolored, harlequin-style outfit Lolly was wearing. It consisted of hip-hugger short-shorts that started a good inch and a half below her belly button and a brief top that hung loose from her shoulders to the curve of the lower half of her breasts. It was no good trying to rest my eyes by focusing away from the bright colors either. When I did that, they became snagged on miles of long, curvy Lolly legs, or hooked by the peek-a-boo revealing of her breasts as she stretched—which she seemed constantly to be doing. I was obsessed with the youthful, uninhibited joys her body promised, and my eyes gave me away.
“You’re‘ right,” I admitted. “I’m tense.”
“I’ve got just the thing to relax you. Me too.” She found her handbag and fumbled in it. Finally she came up with two bedraggled looking cigarettes. They were loosely packed and dribbling tobacco. “Here.” She handed me one. “Have a stick.”
“What --?”
“Pot.” She lit up and held the match for me. “You smoke, don’t you?”
“Well, sure . . . ” Inanely, I held up a pack of Pall Malls.
“Not that, silly. I mean tea.”
“Oh, natch.” Jargon and all, I tried to be casual. I took a deep puff on the reefer.
Nothing happened, which surprised me. The truth was I’d never smoked marijuana in my life. Born twenty years too soon, I guess. Anyway, I’d expected some kind of effect from it. All that happened was my nostrils wrinkled from the smell of sour smoke.
“Ahh!” Lolly sighed. “Cloud Nine, here I come. I’m already beginning to float. Is it getting to you, Vance?”
“Not yet.” I shrugged. “I guess I’m too used to it.”
“Well, maybe it’s ’cause your system’s more accustomed to it. After all, you’re older.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” I told her drily. Bitterly, I took another deep drag on the reefer.
“Don’t get spooked. That wasn’t an insult. I told you, I dig older men. Just relax.” She knelt on the couch facing me and reached around to the back of my neck. Her fingers worked expertly at the kinks in the muscles there.
I tossed the script aside, took another puff on the reefer for courage and kissed her. She’d been expecting it. She kissed back like it was a matter of emergency mouth-to-mouth respiration. My hand slid under the convenient gape of her blouse and closed over her bare breast. She gasped and it inflated in my palm.
“Whatcha doing, Lolly?” It was a childish, piping voice. “You playing ‘Doctor’?”
I almost fell off the couch in my effort to recover my composure. Lolly, however, didn’t blow her cool. She puffed at her stick and looked at the little boy calmly. “What are you doing out of bed, Raymond?” she asked him.
“I have to tinkle.”
“Urinate, Raymond,” she corrected him. “I told you, it’s childish to say ‘tinkle.’ ”
“Well, I’m a child,” he replied logically.
“ ‘Tinkle’ is a word that turns me off,” Lolly confided to me.
“It turns me on.” Raymond giggled. “But I know some better words, Lolly. Like pi-—-”
“Never mind! Just do what you have to do and get back to bed.”
“Come with me,” Raymond insisted. “My hands are cold.”
“So?” Lolly looked at him inquiringly.
“Your hands are always warm, Lolly.”
“Males are males,” she sighed, “no matter how young they are. I’ll be right black.” She took Rayn1ond’s hand and followed him out of the livingroom.
I closed my eyes and puffed on the reefer reflectively.
As far as I could tell, I was still feeling no effect whatsoever from it. I opened my eyes and found myself looking at a second tot. This one was a girl, about five years old, maybe two years younger than Raymond.
“Are you Lolly’s boy friend?” she inquired.
“Not exactly,” I hedged.
“Are you the milkman?”
“No. Why?”
“Well, you were squeezing her. I was peeking before and I saw you. And that’s how they get milk from cows. My Mommy told me.”
“It’s not the same thing,” I assured her.
“Are you sure?” She looked doubtful.
“I’m sure.”
“Then why were you doing it?” she asked triumphantly.
“You shouldn’t ask so many questions.”
“Yes I should. My Daddy says I should. He says how else am I gonna learn?”
“Then ask your Daddy.”
“He never does that to Lolly.”
“That must be a relief to your mother.” I was running out of patience.
“Oh, he does it to Mommy. But not when he knows Raymond and me are watching. Only he doesn’t know we peek a lot of times.”
“Well,” I reflected, “I suppose everybody has to get their sex education as best they can.”
“Oh, I know all about sex,” the little girl assured me. “Mommy told me. I even know about birth control. Only Daddy’s funny about that. When Mommy talks about it, he scowls and mutters about how I was born laughing and my fist was clenched and when they pried it open there was this pill in it.”
I choked on my reefer.
“Lucinda! Now what are you doing out of bed?” Lolly was back with Raymond in tow.
“I can’t sleep. Tell me a story.”
“Yes!” Raymond chimed in. “Tell us a story! Tell us a story!”
“They won’t give us any peace if I don’t,” Lolly sighed to me. “All right,” she told them. “But a very short one.”
“The Princess and the Frog!” the children chanted. “Tell us the one about the Princess and the Frog!”
“All right.” Lolly took a deep breath and her too-short blouse billowed out interestingly. “Once upon a time there was this Fairy Princess who was like alienated from the whole scene. She didn’t dig her fogies, and they didn’t dig her. School was like nowhere and the way she glommed it, the kids were squarer even than the teachers. So one day she cut out, took it on the hook, and pedaled over to the local greenery. Here she nooked in for privacy behind some bushes and settled down for her daily hype. Well, she’s squeezing for a vein when she looks up and there’s this Frog looking up her dress.
“ ‘If there’s one thing bugs me,’ the Fairy Princess horns, ‘it’s a Voyeuristic Frog.’ And she pegs a rock at the bug-eyed toad.
“ ‘People without panties shouldn’t throw stones!’ says the Frog as he hops to avoid the rock. ‘And anyway, you shouldn’t judge by appearances. You can’t tell a book by its cover, you know.’
“ ‘You’re telling me!’ the Princess agrees. ‘I picked up this paperback the other day with this couple making out on the cover-—all naked and everything—-and it turned out to be Greek mythology. But wait a mo! If you’re a Frog, what’s with the lingo? Didn’t they fill you in in toad school, or wherever? Frogs can’t talk. They’re only supposed to like croak.’
“ ‘I’m hip!’ the Frog croaks. ‘But see, like I’m no ordinary run-of-the-pond Frog. I’m enchanted! Dig?’
“ ‘Enchanted? What’s the bit?’ It’s a new kick to the Princess, so she’s interested.
“ ‘I wasn’t always a Frog,’ the hopster tells her. ‘I used to be a handsome, young Prince, six-foot-four, big on shoulders, and dripping muscles from all the bar-bells I hefted. Then, one day, I’m workin’ out at Muscle Beach, and along comes this witch—only spelled with a B like, you know?—and she goes green ’cause the gay boy she’s with goes ape over me. So she casts this spell, and like the next thing I know I’m hopping like crazy just to stay off the menu in French restaurants.'