“And for us,” he went on, wondering if Hollywood would give him a job if they heard him. “I’m doing it for us, so that we can be closer together.”
“I know, Vince.”
“Drink some wine.”
She drank some wine.
“Have another drink, Rhonda. I think it’ll do you good.”
“Do you really think so?”
He nodded, and she had another drink. This time when she put the jug down he could see how flushed her cheeks were.
He knew just how to play it. After each swig of wine he would kiss her and stroke her as long as she went on responding, and the minute she stopped he would stop also. Then he’d get some more wine into her stomach and start in where he left off.
It was time to begin.
He stretched out beside her and reached for her. This time the kiss was good all the way — her mouth was hot and eager and her tongue matched his own tongue in passion. He hadn’t been prepared for that strong a response and for a minute he thought somebody had sneaked up and switched girls on him. But no, nobody else had a body like the one pressed up against him.
He worked expertly, kissing her, stroking the nape of her neck with the fingers of one hand and fondling her breast with the other hand. He kept waiting for the wine to wear off and for the responses to cease, but the responses just got stronger.
He began unbuttoning her blouse. Now, he thought, she was going to stop him.
But she didn’t.
He unbuttoned all the buttons and managed to lift her up so that he could get the blouse off. While he had her that way, he got up the nerve to unsnap her bra and get that off, and once he got rid of the bra and there was nothing between him and those breasts, it was no longer a question of nerve. There was just no stopping, not for him.
“Don’t, Vince. We don’t want to lose control. We have to be careful, Vince.”
He wanted to pick up a rock and crack her skull with it. Somehow he forced himself to remain patient. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he told her. “I can control myself, Rhonda. I just want to touch you. You like it when I touch you, don’t you?”
Her answer was a kittenish purr.
And then they were both naked and their bodies were touching and she was more excited than any girl he had ever been with in his life. He knew that she was ready, ready for him, and he was certainly ready for her. More than ready. He couldn’t wait any longer.
It began, and he was surprised that she didn’t feel any pain. There was supposed to be pain with a virgin. That was what everybody said. But everybody was evidently wrong, because Rhonda was taking to it like a duck to water. She was having a ball.
When it was over she started to cry. He calmed her, reassured her, told her everything was all right.
“I didn’t want it to happen,” she said. “I was afraid it would happen. And it did.”
“We couldn’t help ourselves,” he told her. It was a good line for this sort of situation.
“You liked it,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“Well,” he said, “that’s the important thing. You got rid of your inhibitions.”
“Of course,” she said. “I always do when I drink.” He just looked at her.
“Every single time,” she said. “But only when I drink. With Norman and with Phil and with Johnny and with Dave and Allen and Robert. Every time I drink it’s all right and I like it, but I like it so much that I can’t stop. That’s the bad part. I always go all the way when I drink. I just can’t help it.”
He couldn’t believe it. He knew instinctively that it was true, all true, but he just plain didn’t want to believe it.
“It’s very strange,” she said, her voice almost clinical. “I suppose it’s a reaction formation. I’m all repressed and inhibited, and then when I lose my inhibitions I lose all control and I just have to go all the way.”
She looked sad, then grinned. He had never seen her grin that way.
“But it’s worth it,” she said. “Pass me the wine, Vince. I’ll have a little more wine and then we can do it again.”
Three
Oh well, what the hell, there was always Adele. Once Vince had managed to unload Rhonda, he’d checked the available quail, and decided that Adele was next.
Not that it was all that easy to unload Rhonda. When Rhonda lost her inhibitions, she had a hell of a time finding them again. After that first night, out at the island, she’d been ready for wining and twining on a steady basis, and Vince was to be the lucky guy.
They had a relationship now, that was the thing. That was the way Rhonda saw it, anyway. They had a relationship, and so now her inhibitions and complexes and mental blocks were all soothed and quieted, as far as Vince was concerned. But not as far as any other guy was concerned. Vince was the only one she could feel really free with. That was the way she expressed it. He was the only one she could feel really free with.
And did she want to feel really free! She wanted it as much as she could get it.
So it wasn’t too easy to unload Rhonda. Every time he turned around, there she was, the old gleam in her eye and a bottle of wine in her hand. Vince finally had to resort to psychological double-talk himself.
“I think our relationship is strained,” he told her. He knew something was strained, or would be if they kept on like this. “It’s because,” he told her, “you still need the wine. I can’t feel as though it’s really me you want. Do you understand?”
Of course she did. She understood completely, and it was a very natural reaction. But she also had the solution. They’d go out to the island without any wine, and they’d see what would happen.
“I bet I don’t really need any wine,” she said, and rubbed against him a little bit.
He was pretty sure she was right. But he hadn’t gotten over his disappointment that the little bitch hadn’t been a virgin after all. All he wanted between Rhonda and himself anymore was distance. And lots of it.
He told her he thought they ought to part for a while, that it was time to test their relationship and see if it was really strong. And the only way to do that was to not see each other for a while. Then, when they met again, if the relationship, if the feeling between them — “simpatico” she murmured at that point, nodding — if the feeling between them was still strong, they’d know they really had a solid and lasting relationship on their hands.
She agreed, finally, though with reluctance. And off she went, preceded by her chest, and Vince mopped his brow and went swimming.
Then he lolled around for a couple of days, trying to talk himself into calling off the virgin-hunt.
He gave himself lots of good reasons. He lay around out on the strip of sand between the cabin and the water, soaking up sun and counting off the reasons on his fingers.
The reasons: In the first place, it was by now obvious to him that you could never tell for sure whether a girl was a virgin or not. Her own statements on the subject were worse than useless, of course, and even her actions didn’t mean much. Nor did her reputation. Nor did her appearance.
In the second place, virgin-hunting was one of the most frustrating and annoying projects in the world. Vince had been in a lousy mood for a couple of weeks now, and all because of the virgin-hunt. If it weren’t for that, he’d be enjoying himself up here at the lake.
And, in the third and last place, it meant he was missing a lot of sure stuff. You go after a virgin, she’s liable to still be a virgin after you leave her. You go after one that’s been made before, you’ve got a better chance to make her again.
Three reasons, and all of them good ones. Vince spent a couple of days going over them, trying to talk himself out of this quest of the holy quail, then he strolled over to his father’s car, slid behind the wheel, and drove off to see if this lousy lake could boast of even one single guaranteed virgin.