They came like Greeks, bringing me little presents. While none of their gifts matched what Merry Cat had brought me, I was grateful for the two containers of cardboard coffee, the grilled-cheese-and-bacon sandwich, the socks and underwear.
“I couldn’t remember whether you wore jockey shorts or boxer shorts,” Alison said, blue eyes sparkling and plump cheeks glowing. “But Naughty Nasty Nancy remembered.”
“Hardly the sort of thing she’d forget,” B.J. said.
“Meow,” said Nancy Hall. She was still wearing the witch’s hat, and mordant madness danced in her eyes. “Meow, meow, meow. Look at Merry Cat, she’s positively radiant. Orgasm brings the most beatific look to her face. Are you in a state of grace, Marry Katherine?”
“Sure, and don’t I half feel sinfully saintlike,” Merry Cat said.
“Sister Theresa talks like that. Do her some more, Merry Cat.”
“Faith, and am I not a fair candidate for canonization, with the Spirit of the Holy Name running down my leg.”
“I think that’s blasphemous,” Dawn Redmond said.
“Sure and you’re nothing but jealous, Dawn me love.”
“Oh, shut up and kiss me, Merry Cat,” Dawn said.
They kissed and went into a clinch. Merry Cat and I had our clothes on again. The rest of the girls and I were sitting on the bed or leaning against the wall, and Dawn and Merry Cat were standing up in the middle of the room with their arms around each other and their tongues in each other’s mouth. We all watched for a while, and Naughty Nasty Nancy kissed B.J. on the neck and touched her breasts, and Alison petted Naughty Nasty Nancy gently on the bottom, and Ellen Jamison cuddled beside me on the bed and opened her mouth so wide for my kiss that the braces didn’t get in the way. And eventually Dawn and Merry Cat let go of each other, and they both had a glassy look in their eyes, and Dawn said, “Well, at least Larry hasn’t spoiled you for me, Merry Cat. I guess I still can turn you on.”
“Till the day I die, Dawn.”
“Isn’t it nice,” said Ellen to me, “that we all love each other so truly?”
There’s not really much to add to this. It’s not as if I felt compelled to burden you with a blow-by-blow description of my life without you, anyway. I just wanted to put you in the picture, so to speak, and it seems to have taken me several thousand words to do it.
That’s a really terrible school, incidentally. They have all of these seventeenth-century rules administered by a batch of desiccated nuns who spend most of their time remembering the good old days with Torquemada. My six little daughters of Lancaster seem to be the six really fine girls in the school. As B.J. put it, “We’re really alone here. Nobody else drinks and nobody else smokes and nobody else turns on and nobody else fucks. There are some lesbians, but they’re hopeless. All so sickeningly sincere about it. When they’re not eating each other, they’re praying over it. You could really vomit, honestly.”
Fortunately, these six have parental permission to sign out for overnights with mythical New York aunts and uncles. That afternoon B.J. and Alison signed out, and Merry Cat drove us to the station, and we rode into Grand Central on the New Haven. We just kept talking about things. Total rapport. I can understand how exciting it must be for you and Steve. There was a phrase in his letter about the words in popular songs being endowed with personal meaning when you’re in love. I haven’t put it as well as he did, of course, but I know what he means. I wouldn’t say that I was getting any secret flashes out of the transistor radio a few seats down the aisle, but it was that sort of very vital feeling you get when you interact in utter honest intimacy with another human being, or, in this case, with two other human beings.
We talked about you, Fran, but I didn’t tell them anything you wouldn’t want them to know. Set your mind at ease.
There was an odd moment just as the train left Westport when the two girls exchanged a brief but thorough soul-kiss right there in front of everybody. You could hear the jaws fall. But nonembarrassment is as contagious as embarrassment, and the girls were totally cool about it, and so was I. I wish Steve had been around to take pictures of the faces of some of the other passengers.
Then we got to New York and I took them over to the Feenjon for dinner, and we listened to music for a while, and then we all went back to the apartment and balled.
Dawn came in the following week, which is to say, this past Saturday. I thought she would be bringing one of the other girls along too, but nobody else could get away. It’s exam week, or exam week is coming up, or something. They’re all in the same class, with another year to go before they graduate. I guess school will let out this week or next, and not all of them will be spending the summer in the New York area, but they have solemnly assured me that I will have balled all six of them before they leave for wherever they’re going. There are only two that I haven’t gotten to so far, Ellen and Nancy. I wouldn’t want to miss out on either of them, believe me.
I didn’t know if I would be able to handle Dawn. If I’d be up to it, that it. Oh, you know what I mean. Because I spent the previous night with Jennifer and was slightly exhausted. Smoked a lot of grass, and while it had more or less worn off I still felt faintly spaced out. I was relieved when just one of them showed up, and relieved too that it was Dawn, because all anyone had to do to please her was pay proper attention to her breasts, and anyone who wouldn’t want to do that would have to have something the matter with his head.
Anyway, I surprised myself. It was really a sensational evening, and I use the term advisedly.
So here it is, Monday, and I keep telling myself that I ought to go out and look for a job, and I think I might have done just that, except I got this letter from Steve and wanted to answer it right away. Although I don’t suppose you would say that I am answering his letter, Fran(ces), since it’s you I’m writing to. But in the sense of this letter being in response to the other letter, then I guess it constitutes an answer.
A few paragraphs ago I was going to say that being in bed with two girls at once reminded me of the conversation with Bill Adams, but I don’t think I sent you that conversation. Unless I’m mistaken, that was in a letter I wrote to Lisa. I’ll allude to it anyway, Fran, on the chance that you might see a copy of that letter sometime, or that you might have an affair with Lisa yourself, as far as that goes. Did you ever have anything going with another girl? You always swore you didn’t, but that might have been because you thought I wouldn’t approve of something. Now that it no longer matters whether or not I approve of what you do or have done, I wish you would answer that question again. I’d be damned interested. An honest answer would probably explain a lot about you. Of course there’s no reason why you should have to explain aspects of yourself to me, but I would be interested.
Please keep in touch.
P.S: It occurs to me that I haven’t said anything about the fifteen hundred dollars which seems to have shrunk to $1480, and which also seems to have turned from our money into your money. You managed to figure out that the whole thing ought to belong to you, on the theory that you were leaving me our ratty furniture and the unwashed dishes and some of your dirty underwear. (Or did you want me to send the underwear along? I’d be glad to, but I don’t know if they would allow me to send it through the mail, let alone across international boundaries. But just say the word and I’ll look into the situation more closely. If you don’t want them, I can probably sell the lot to one of those funky-underwear freaks.)