As she adjusted the temperature of the water, she decided to shower rather than have a bath. So she pulled the thinga-mabob on the faucet. At that moment her lovemaking with Fleming Pickering flashed again into her mind. And it brought with it another one of those dangerous thoughts about smooth young muscular male bodies generally and Sergeant John Marston Moore specifically.
In bed, Fleming Pickering was everything that she hoped he would be, and more. He held his age well. Even his body had been firmer and more youthful than she expected.
It wasn't that he left me unsatisfied, but that he whetted my appetite; opened the floodgates, so to speak.
But I am not a fool. I am not going to risk what I have so carefully built up for so long by behaving like a bitch in heat. While it would be very nice to actually have John Marston Moore's smooth and muscular young body in my bed, I am going to have to do that in fantasy.
She turned the shower head so that it produced a strong, narrow stream of water, rather than a spray; and then she directed the stream where she thought it should go.
Sometimes, under the right circumstances, the fantasy is better than the actuality.
She sat down in the tub, slid against the sloping back side, and spread her legs. The stream of water struck the tub eight inches from the right spot.
"Damn!"
She stood up and moved toward the shower head again.
The screen door slammed, and a moment later, the front door. Sergeant John Marston Moore did that every time he came home. Thus every time he came home, the whole damned house shook.
She inhaled deeply. After that, she changed the shower flow back into a spray, and shifted the head again, so that it flowed onto her hair, instead of halfway down the tub. Then she picked up the soap and went ahead with her shower.
Fate, she thought. Kismet. I really didn't want to do it that way, anyway.
Chapter Seventeen
(One)
WATER LILY COTTAGE
MANCHESTER AVENUE
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA
1905 HOURS 13 AUGUST 1942
Three or four hairs popped up from the aureola of Sergeant John Marston Moore's nipples. Ellen Feller thought they were adorable. She toyed with them with her fingernail, watching them spring back into little coils when she turned them loose.
"Baby," she said, "if we're going to do this again, you're going to have to use something."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I don't want to find myself in the family way," Ellen said.
I should have thought of that before. God, was it the rum? Or how excited his shyness made me? For a while there, I was beginning to think that he was either a fairy or a virgin.
"Oh," he said. "I see what you mean. Are we going to do it again?"
"You don't sound very enthusiastic. You did a minute or two ago."
"I mean, is it smart? What if we got caught?"
"Who's going to catch us? Or didn't you like it?"
"It was great," Moore said.
And fuck you, Mrs. Howard P. Hawthorne. You are not the only fish in the sea. And your teats aren't as nice, either.
"It was great for me, too," she said. "I can't believe it happened."
"Me, either."
"You must think me terrible, giving in to you the way..."
"No. Not at all."
"I didn't have any idea you... were thinking of me in that way."
"It was the tennis dress," he said. "When you showed me your tennis dress."
"What about my tennis dress?"
"I thought your legs were great," he said.
I'll be damned. He's blushing again. How sweet!
"You really think so?" she asked, and threw the sheet off them.
"They're beautiful," he pronounced.
"Yours aren't so bad, either," she said, and ran her hand over his hip and then down his leg.
"There's a pro station at the barracks," he said. "But, Christ, I hate to go out there."
"What?"
"There's a pro station. When they give out the you-know-whats, at the barracks. But I hate to go out there."
"Maybe you could buy some at a drug store. What do they call them here, 'chemists'?"
"Yeah."
"Is there any chance that Hon is going to show up here?" she asked.
"I don't think so. He's going to play bridge with General MacArthur."
Thank God for small blessings!