Was that what she was doing? I wondered. Taking the pill perhaps without Wade knowing? Had she promised to stop and not stopped? Suddenly their intimacy was of great interest to me. Like a little girl who couldn't imagine her parents having sex, I had difficulty seeing them in a passionate embrace.
Wade might still be wearing a shirt and tie, I thought, and giggled to myself.
I looked across the room at the shadows in the corner. They seemed to take Noble's form. How I wanted a companion. If I cart out to him, he'll be there, I thought, and then. . . then it could all begin again.
I shut my eyes hard, shut them like someone locking a pair of jewelry boxes. I could almost hear my eyelids slam closed. I fled into sleep.
Despite the obstacles standing in his way and mine, Trevor was true to his word the following day. He spent every possible moment with me at school. It got so we sat alone in the cafeteria, and twice he managed to find a secure place in which to kiss me. He pulled me into the empty science lab once, and the second time he stopped walking, let the people behind us go ahead, and then pulled me behind the door to the English classroom. Of course I was nervous about being caught, but that just seemed to make his kiss sweeter and my heart pound fast and harder.
The remainder of the week, Ami was right there at the end of the school day to pick me up promptly, rushing me off so I would not be late for my driving lesson. On Thursday, she even came into the building, which prevented me from walking with Trevor to the front entrance. Of course, she was continually asking me about him.
"Is he still after you?" was her initial question. "Pouncing on you every chance he has?"
"You make it sound like a hunt or a chase," I replied.
"That's exactly what it is at your age, Celeste. You're prime prey for them," she insisted. "And what do you think would happen once he has his way with you? I'll tell you," she said before I could even think of an answer. "He'll drop you like stale fruit, because that's what you'll be in his mind."
"Why?" I asked. Was she right? Was she as wise about the relationship between men and women as she claimed?
"Why? Because the mystery of you is gone. That's what intrigues them. They all think there's something different about this girl or that, something that will give them a wondrous orgasm.
"That's right," she said, blushing a little herself. "That's what men are hunting for, the mythical wondrous orgasm, because they don't have what we have."
"What's that?"
"The ability to have multiple orgasms during intercourse," she explained in the tone of some health and science teacher. "For them it's more important. They just can't start immediately on another one.
"Weren't you taught any of this?" she asked. "Ever? I can't believe you weren't exposed to something."
"A little," I said. It was one thing to learn about reproduction in biology class and another to learn what would actually happen to you personally.
"Well, now you know more, and you can understand more why I'm so concerned, right?"
"Yes, Ami," I said,
but not with the enthusiasm she hoped for. I could see the disappointment in her face, but I really didn't sense these sort of base motives in Trevor, and I had always depended upon my own instincts when it came to people. They had always proven reliable for me when I was younger and confronting one sort of threat after another at the orphanages. Of course, I was afraid my therapy had taken me far away from those abilities. I had long ago stopped being Baby Celeste, the gifted little girl. Perhaps I truly was as vulnerable as anyone else.
"You'll come to appreciate me," she predicted, more to herself than to me, I thought.
That Friday we dressed in what she called our "killer outfits,", and she took me to dinner at a restaurant nearly thirty miles away. She explained that Wade never liked driving that far just to eat.
"To him it's simply eating. To me, it's an evening out," she explained. "He'd be just as happy going to some diner, believe me."
Once again, I saw that the maitre d' knew her and told her he would hold a good table for us. The restaurant was an upscale Oriental restaurant, featuring Thai food as well as Chinese and even some Continental dishes involving steaks and lobster. There was a very busy bar where we went first to have our cocktails. For a moment I thought they would insist on checking my identification, but Ami slipped the waiter some money, and he brought the two
Cosmopolitans. She ordered two more and had them delivered to our table when it became time to eat.
Before that, just as she had done at the Stone House, she flirted with some single men, giving them the impression they might be able to pick us up and then, just as before, at the last moment flashed her wedding ring. I realized that she had slipped it off and then slipped it on, and that was probably what she had done at the Stone House.
"Don't you think they might get very angry at you one time and make lots more trouble?" I asked after she had justified herself the same way she had before, claiming she just wanted to have fun and see if she could still "run with the bulls," as she called it.
"No," she said. "They won't bother. They'll just turn to another target, believe me," she said. "I know men."
She saw I wasn't happy with the answer, and I couldn't help thinking about Wade. Being Ames partner during all this made me feel guilty.
"What's the matter?" she asked, a little impatient at the way I was playing with my food and looking down. "Aren't you having a good time?"
I thought a moment and then decided to tell the truth.