“Ha,” Richard snorted, then reddened.
“Suit yourself,” Jimmy waved off Richard’s half-apology. “Just write me up an iron-clad contract, and weed the list down to twenty or so.”
“About the contract,” Richard cleared his throat and continued. “I’ll need to know pretty specifically what you’ll expect the young woman to do.”
“Just put in that she won’t get damaged.” Jimmy’s face was as red as Richard’s.
Richard shook his head. “Kramer versus Johnson. Ohio, 1994. You want to get her to agree specifically in writing to everything you want to do. Otherwise she can sue.”
“Put them all in then,” Jimmy blustered. “How the hell do I know now what I’ll feel like doing then?”
“Vaginal intercourse?” Richard’s voice was clinical and impersonal. He might have been making a grocery list.
Jimmy nodded.
“Discipline?”
“You sound like a fucking machine, Richard. Ha, was that a pun?” Jimmy swiveled to look out over the water toward Jericho Beach. “Put it in.”
“Just a lawyer. What about bondage?”
Jimmy waved assent with his hand, then cleared his throat.
“Add sodomy.” His voice was a croak. “Shit. Screw the contract. Screw the whole thing.”
Richard ignored his eruption.
“Artificial stimulation?”
“You mean dildos? I guess.”
“Group sex?”
“What the heck.” Jimmy swung back to face his lawyer and his eye caught Richard’s hand adjusting the bulge in his trousers. He laughed and barked, “Put in every God-damned thing you ever heard of. Just don’t ask me any more questions.”
Chapter 3
Agnes Marie Trout, known to her friends as Aggie, wrapped the scarf firmly around her neck. The Cincinnati wind bit the air in late fall and she wasn’t going to chance a cold throat. She was as tall, thin and auburn-haired as her identical twin sister, Angela, but she hid her figure under layers of baggy clothes and wore her hair in a careless shag. She thought the men, and sometimes women, who stared as she passed were startled by her Annie Hall clothing.
Aggie had decided to go into the library early. A shipment of books had arrived yesterday and she was eager to get them catalogued and shelved. Her small branch didn’t have many employees and though she was the head librarian she didn’t like to leave all the grunt work to the other staff. She backed her car out of the garage and headed down the quiet street, secure in the knowledge that she would be the first to arrive at the library by at least an hour.
Burger King coffee was definitely better than McDonald’s, Aggie thought as she pulled into the drive through. She winced as the young woman handed her the hot cup. Her wrist was sore. She must have slept on it wrong. She balanced an open syrup container on a magazine on the passenger seat and dipped French toast sticks gingerly as she drove the three miles to the library. In the parking lot she savored the last few swallows of coffee in silence.
After she locked her car, she rotated her wrist slowly. Still stiff. Could Angela…?, she wondered then dismissed the thought. She wheeled the bin for overnight book returns through the heavy double entrance door. Four hours later, the new books were catalogued and shelved, the preschoolers had listened spellbound to I Love You Forever and the library had settled into its quiet morning routine.
Aggie sat behind her desk and smiled complacently. Life was good. Lunch would bring Andrew; her mind skipped to visions of a quickie, then she laughed at herself for entertaining the thought. Andrew wasn’t a quickie type of guy. At twenty-five he was three years younger than Aggie. Though he didn’t know it, he was a nerd, and Aggie loved him for it.
Nerds made the best boyfriends. When he wasn’t with her, he was on his computer. If he was on the Internet, she knew he wasn’t downloading smut. More likely playing chess with his long-distance buddies. Maybe he was a little slim and pale, but at least he was tall. At five foot ten, Aggie paid attention to height. The jangling phone interrupted her thought.
“Cincinnati Library, Oakville Branch,” she answered automatically.
“Hi, Pookie.”
“Andrew,” Aggie protested, “you can’t call me that at work. What if someone else had answered the phone?”
“I know your voice,” Andrew explained. “I can’t come for lunch today.”
Andrew never beat around the bush. Telephone conversations were like shorthand.
“That’s okay,” Aggie agreed. “What’s up?”
“The boss has a client in from Sacramento. I have to explain the new network software protocols.” The explanation was a long one for Andrew. Aggie wondered how the client presentation would go, though she knew that Andrew was painstakingly meticulous when detailing computer dogma. He just didn’t like talking on the phone.
“Okay,” she agreed again. “Good luck with it. Come over after work.”
“I can’t be there till 5:45.”
Aggie laughed. Andrew usually came at 5:30.
“That’s all right,” she reassured him. He really was a dear.
That evening Andrew arrived at Aggie’s small brick house on the stroke of 5:45. He knocked on the dark oak door, though Aggie had given him a key months before.
“Come on in,” she greeted him.
He leaned forward into her kiss and took her face in his hands. Minutes later they were naked on Aggie’s old-fashioned sleigh bed. The metal slats bounced with every movement and amplified Andrew’s enthusiastic pumping. He came with a whoop and kissed Aggie’s cheeks and eyes and chin.
“Did you come?” he asked, barely out of breath.
“Yes,” Aggie lied.
“I can do it again,” Andrew offered. Ah, youth.
“Maybe after dinner,” Aggie agreed.
Andrew rolled off her and headed toward the bathroom.
“What do you want to order?” he called back over his shoulder.
Though Aggie looked domesticated, she was near feral in her avoidance of household tasks. An older woman came in once a week and did what she could to keep order in the house. Aggie took her clothes to a laundry service. Her kitchen contained not one pot or pan, but a double set of dishes and cutlery and two dishwashers so she could manage until the housekeeper’s weekly visit. Breakfast was Burger King coffee and lunch at a rotation of five favorite eateries. Dinner however was eaten in the house, usually with Andrew, and thus the need for dishes.
“How about Chinese?” Andrew’s voice drifted in from the bathroom. He was running a shower. Aggie thought about joining him. But her hair would get wet and she hated to go to sleep with a damp head. She stuck her head in the bathroom door.
“We had Chinese on Tuesday. How about Mexican?”
Andrew poked his head out around the curtain. Without his thick glasses and with his hair slicked down, he looked closer to twelve than twenty-five. Aggie smiled indulgently.
“If you really want Chinese,” she offered, “we can.”
“Mexican is fine,” Andrew shouted over the spray. “Try the new one over on Beechmont.”
An hour later the remnants of tacos and enchiladas littered Aggie’s scarred oak table. The dining room furniture had been her maternal grandparents’ and was a comforting inheritance.
“Do you want some more refried beans?” Andrew asked.
“No,” Aggie laughed. “I’ll fart too much.”
“Fart all you want,” Andrew offered. “I don’t care.”
“I will,” Aggie agreed, but she passed on the beans.
Thirty minutes later they were back naked on the bed.
“Do you want the top or the bottom, Aggie?”
“Do you want to try something different?”
“That depends what,” Andrew hedged.
“How about on the table?”