“I guess that’s the same everywhere.”
“Maybe. Anyway, she moved away and I never saw her again. End of story.”
“Until now?”
“No. End of that story. I had a boyfriend in high school. He said he loved me and if I loved him I’d let him fuck me. I knew that one and I knew I didn’t want to get pregnant or get an STD. So I kept my legs crossed unless it was my hand between them. I lost my virginity when I was seventeen in college. All I knew was that I was ready. I didn’t know who or when or where. I was available for the first guy who asked, the first one who tried anything. That was anticlimactic…”
Ronda giggled at the pun.
“Thanks. It was anticlimactic but at least I knew enough about sex to keep up with the other girls in the dorm. Anyway, I never did like it much. I didn’t have any special feelings for any of the guys. They were just guys. It was like a game the girls played. Who’s fucking who. Keeping score.”
Angela was silent as she sipped her wine. “But there was a girl on the rowing team. The coxswain, the boss of the boat?”
“She’s the little one that tells people what to do?”
“Yeah. She invited me to her place one night and it was just like being twelve again. It was pleasant, nice, innocent, but entirely sexual and wonderful. Almost as good as when I’m with you. Much better than any man.”
“Say that again.” Ronda refilled her glass.
“So that’s when I knew it wasn’t just a childish fluke. And I was hearing all this stuff about lesbians in college. But I knew I wasn’t like the lesbians I knew.”
“You were still doing guys?”
“Yeah. Too many. And I could tell what they were thinking. Half the time they were fantasizing about some other woman while they were fucking me. That ruined it. I couldn’t come like that. It made them mad when they couldn’t make me come. So lots of times it would go bad.”
“Were you married when you had the kid?”
“We’re coming to that. Then there was a guy who was madly in love with me. A lot of girls are never sure about that, but I was lucky enough to be able to tell. He was totally into me. That I couldn’t resist. I married him when he asked at the beginning of our senior year. I had the baby just after we graduated.”
“It didn’t last?”
“Drunk driver killed him.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Even though he was crazy for me physically and every other way, I still felt incomplete. It was like the sexual part wasn’t quite right. He’d look at me, get hard, fuck me, we’d come.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. At its best, I guess. But I still felt something missing. Even when it was at its best.”
“So there you were with a kid to raise?”
“Yeah, I got through college early. I was twenty when the baby was born, twenty-five when Robert died-was killed. That coxswain? She called me up one day. Said she wanted to see me. Said her husband was cheating on her.”
“Oh, she got married?”
“Yes. But her husband was cheating on her, she thought. She remembered our talks about my psychic abilities and asked me to see if I could learn anything. She invited me to supper. And sure enough, through supper he was thinking about fucking another woman. Vividly. So after supper, he made some excuse and left.”
“You told her?”
“Sure I did. I could even describe the woman. She said, ‘Let’s go’. We went to her best friend’s place, and there they were, hard at it.”
“Wow, what happened?”
“She divorced him. But that’s when I figured I had a talent that could help me make a living. So I moved out here and set up shop.”
“The kid?”
“Mona? She’s grown up and finished college now. Working as an accountant.”
“You could see that much detail in the guy’s…whatever…?”
“I call it a mental image. Yes. I can see as much detail as there is. For instance, if you could have seen what Jeff was imagining when we had supper the other night, you’d have known that he’d never seen me naked.”
“Why’s that?”
“He was envisioning me with thick, dark pubic hair.”
“You think he likes that?”
“Yes. If he didn’t, he’d have imagined me like you are.”
“So, you think I should grow it out?”
“Worth a try.”
“I never enjoyed getting my hair pulled out by the roots anyway. I think I will do just that. I’m going to let it grow.”
“Good for you, girl. Are you ready for bed yet?”
“I’m almost always ready for bed when you’re this close.”
The two went hand in hand to the bedroom.
Chapter Five
The next Monday Angela finished her last invoice, printed it, printed the envelope, stuffed it and sealed it. Finished! Before noon.
She packed up her laptop, locked up the office and went across the street to the coffee shop where she ordered a roasted turkey sandwich on a bagel and a cup of latte. She was surprised to see the place nearly empty when it was often so full. She sat at a table in a corner, pulled her laptop out of her bag and opened it because she knew there was free wireless.
“Your sandwich is ready,” called the nose-studded barista.
Angela fetched her sandwich and drink and returned to her computer. She ate quickly and started sipping the latte as she checked her e-mail. Gudrun’s report from Copenhagen. Nothing. She had stuck to Jeff like glue. All he did was go to meetings. Marcella had gone with her and gotten into his hotel room while Jeff was at a meeting. She’d checked his computer. Nothing. Gudrun reported that the only woman involved in any of the meetings was Danish, and, though Gudrun had to check several sources to be sure, she verified that “she” was a cross-dressing Dane waiting for a sexual re-assignment operation. Not Jeff’s type. And they weren’t together outside the meeting room anyway. The surveillance cameras showed only one incident in the hotel room besides sleeping, dressing, bathing, shaving and going to the bathroom. Jeff lay on the bed and masturbated one time.
Angela envisioned him lying naked on the bed, his muscular body tight with tension as he began to stroke his enlarged, stiff cock. Faster and faster until… She felt herself getting wet at the images.
I bet he was watching porn on the television.
The report continued that the only visual stimulation was a photograph of Ronda. Fully clothed.
Marcella took up the story when Jeff returned to O’Hare Thursday evening as he had promised. He got his car from long-term parking, and went home. He left the house about 9:00 the next morning and went to his office. He and one other corporate officer-male-were on a conference call to Tokyo.
No women. No men. Nothing. He slept on a couch at the office. Maria took over from Marcella at the office they had rented across the street from Jeff’s. They kept up the surveillance mainly through microphones that Stephanie, dressed as a cleaning woman, put in the office as she emptied the trash cans. They had visual contact via a telescopic lens on a video camera. Nothing.
Those girls are good!
Maria had managed to get into his office dressed in a uniform from the cleaning contractor, pushing a vacuum cleaner and to check all of his files and bills. Nothing on the credit card. Nothing on the cell phone. Nothing on the computer.
“Hi, how are you doing?” a familiar voice rang out across the coffee shop.
“Mrs. Windborne? I’m fine, how are you?” She was with Angela’s former client, Michelle Anderson.
Angela flashed onto the vivid images of Mrs. Windborne’s husband fucking Michelle Anderson and wondered what the heck these two were doing together.