"Who?"
"Mrs. Witherdine."
"Old Mrs. Witherdine? My God. Up on the hill?"
"That's the one."
"I don't get it. What's your screwing Mrs. Cruise got to do with Mrs. Witherdine?"
"Simple. I screw Mrs. Cruise a few times, make her very happy. We can't keep it up all summer because sooner or later somebody will get suspicious. Mrs. Cruise wouldn't like it if everybody suspected her of sleeping with the assistant sailing coach. And her having such a nice young son like Shawn, what would everybody think? Besides, it's probably against club rules."
Jane laughed. She watched Rick's face jubilantly.
Rick continued. "But Mrs. Cruise knows a good thing when she's got it, so she just happens to mention to her good friend Mrs. Witherdine that she knows a nice young chap who is very friendly. Mrs. Witherdine, being unable to prowl the restaurants like Mrs. Cruise, is always willing to try a friend's suggestion and says, `My, why don't you ask this nice chap to drop by.' Mrs. Cruise, wanting to insure a spot in Eastern society for her boy Shawn, Lys, `I'll suggest it to him, I'm certain he would be delighted to meet you.' A few recommendations like that and I'm on my way."
"Where?"
"To easy street. No more goddamn school, none of that garbage for me. I'll get by on my wits and my cock. I'll screw old ladies till I'm blind and deaf and I'll make them love it. I'm not going back to school this fall, if it works out this summer. I'm going to give it a try, screwing rich old ladies. If it works out, I'm going to Florida for the winter."
"What about your folks?"
"They don't know where the hell I am. Or care either."
"That's stupid," she said, "to throw away a college education to live like a ass. It sounds great, but it really is stupid."
"Stupid hell. It's relaxing in front of the fire, the ladies bringing my brandy and absinthe, serving me supper, making love to me like I'm the last piece of ass they'll ever get in their lives. You know how hungry that can make an old lady? Damn hungry, just damn hungry."
"Mrs. Cruise isn't old. She's only about forty."
"Thirty-five."
Jane laughed. "That's not old at all."
"She's just an entry permit," Rick said. Jane's laughter bothered him, almost as if she was laughing at him. "Mrs. Cruise is one of my top references right now."
Jane said, "Mrs. Witherdine's only about fifty. Would you screw anybody older than fifty?"
"I don't think I'll have to. I hope not anyway." Rick added, with bravado, "Would if I had to, though."
Jane studied her beer. "Well, does that mean you'd be around here more often?" She tried to think of herself as Rick's only young friend, as the only girl he would know under forty. She thought that might be an enviable person to be.
Rick reached across to her and touched her neck. "I don't know if I'll be around or not."
She looked nice with her tan skin, her blonde hair. Rick leaned toward her, turned her face up and kissed her mouth.
"Rick," she said, shaking her head. "Are you just practicing up for Mrs. Witherdine?"
He kept his mouth close to hers. "No. You look beautiful. Sailing is good for your complexion."
"I spend too much time running from table to table picking up dirty dishes. And don't say I'm beautiful. I know I'm not."
He touched her neck just below her jaw. "Your skin is so smooth, it's so fine. There's very light hair all over your body, you know. It's sexy."
Her eyes focused on his. She kissed him quickly, moved her head back. "Rick," she said, her eyes moistening, "why are you so good looking?"
He stacked the remains of the lunch into the basket and stowed it all beside the tiller. He reached into the hold and pulled out a canvas and began to lay it across the deck. He looked at her once and her eyes, following him, were happy, expectant.
After he laid the folded canvas across the deck he smoothed the creases. Then he reached for her hand and she crawled over to him and sat very quietly on the canvas as he knelt behind her and began to untie her white top.
He said, "I've had it with teaching kids how to trim a sail, how to set a spinnaker. My summers from now on are going to be spent in leisure."
"Sounds like fun," she said. "Do these old ladies ever want a young female companion?" She laughed when she asked the question, but she was half-serious.
Rick said, "I'll make discreet inquiries."
As he finished untying her top, Jane said, "A friend of mine is having a party in a week or two. You want to come to it?"
Rick passed his palms up and down her bare back. He touched her side and found where her breasts began to swell. She held her hands over her tits. He said, "Yes, I'd like to go. I want to see you some more." He kissed her back. "Let me know when it is."
She took her hands from her breasts.
Cupping his hands around them, Rick caught the thin material between his fingers and pulled it off. Her back, against his lips, was smooth like velvet, tanned, smelled of sea and the sun. His palms went back to her tits and he touched first her nipples that were beginning to harden, then closed over the breasts themselves.
"That's why I didn't want to go swimming," she said.
He didn't understand. "What do you mean?"
"Don't you notice it?" she asked.
"Notice what? That you've got two breasts with nipples? I knew that."
"Not that. Don't you notice one is smaller than the other?"
Rick squeezed them. One did seem smaller. But if she hadn't mentioned it, he did not think he would have noticed.
He moved in front of her. She sat very still, her hands folded demurely in her lap, her arms holding her sides. She raised her chin bravely to let him know she wasn't ashamed.
Her left breast was more rounded, fuller, than her right. The nipples seemed the same, both were erect now as he stared at them, firm statues on their round brown aprons. Rick put his hands on her tits. Yes, he could tell, slightly, that the right was smaller. "I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me."
"Well, that's why I didn't want to go swimming. I didn't want you to see that.'
"Why did you let me take your top off?"
"That's different." She sounded unsure of her own rationalization, but she pressed on. "I wanted you to take it off." Her mouth shook as if she might cry, then she stopped.
He lifted her chin. "You sure you're not a virgin?"
She forced a laugh. "I'm sure. I'm just nervous. I never fucked one of you rich guys before. On a sail-boat."
"We'll fix that up right away," he said. He started to laugh, but swallowed it when he saw how. serious she was. "And don't let your breasts bother you. Nobody's tits are the same. Life isn't like a mirror, your left side isn't exactly the same as your right."
"That's easy for you to say. They're my tits."
"Hey, they're gorgeous." He rubbed his thumbs over the nipples. "They're nice, really they are."
"You've seen a lot, I suppose. You should know."
"Damn it, yes I have. I have seen a lot of fits and you do have a nice pair. I never, would have noticed that one isn't as big as the other if you hadn't mentioned it. Hey, Jane, don't let it bother you. It's just not something that should bother your "It does. Sometimes. It bothers me right now."
"Because you're with me?"
"Yes."
He kissed her cheek, then her nose and lips. "If it makes you feel better, I like your breasts very much."
"That's easy for you to say. All you want to do is fuck. And you have a perfect body. It's perfect. I looked at you. I looked at you all over. Your body's perfect."
Rick got mad: "Damn it, you're right, I do want to fuck. Right now I want to fuck with you. But not if you're going to mope around like that. Damn it, nobody's body is perfect. Not mine or anybody's. Listen, sometimes my balls don't hang even. Sometimes the left one is lower than the right." He thought a moment, worried that it was the right one that was lower.