put the old one in the outhouse and I'd sneak out and tear out those pages. I had a frabjous collection and even took them to college with me. I called it my jackoff scrapbook. Then, one horrible day, I was in the library and read in INSIDE EUROPE that Hitler found Rhoem in bed having sex with another man and had him shot cause he was something called a ho-mo-sex-yul, and I went back to my room and burned my loverly scrapbook. It was," he said, looking very, very sad, "the worst day of my life."

Sue laughed, not at Willie-Poo (because she knew it was all true and that he WAS sad), but at the expression on the other people's faces. Willie-Poo took getting used to.

"Zh-ack off?" squeaked Trudi, head over her pad, "zat I don't know, spell zat, somebody, pleaeze?" and looked up bewildered when everyone laughed. Then when Chris whispered in her ear, Trudi giggled, and Sue watched fascinated at the beautiful blush on her face.

Suddenly realizing she was staring at Trudi, and at the same moment realizing Chris's eyes were on her, Sue, in a small panic, found herself saying, "You know, I haven't seen anybody blush in years."

To cover her embarrassment, Sue bottoms-upped in one gulp her cocktailthe number of which she had lost count-and squatted down by her chair to stroke a beautiful pure white cat that had appeared.

She stayed down by the cat, sneaking it smoked oysters. When she got up into the chair, she found her cocktail had been refilled and in reaching for it. there, in the next chair, blazingly, shockingly close, was the young blond goddess, with her bright yellow hair, her blue-blue eyes, with her brown neck with that beautiful-beautiful hollow at the base which was the most beautiful hollow at the base of any neck she had ever seen, with those sharp jutting breasts that could be lifted up in awe like fuchsia blossoms (oh if I could see her just once dressed open like in that Crete thing by Renault!)-and to cover her shock and wild thoughts, Sue said, "Why hi there," and felt foolish. "Hi," the blazing goddess smiled back.

It wasn't an ordinary hi. It was not just a flirty hi. It was even more than a straight-in-the-eye, a come-on hi.

It was one of those very rare hi's that Sue had learned to recognize from a trillion cruisings, that kind, so rare, with vibrations and undertones and overtones which magic-like vibrated third-dimensional back and forth from that moment into the past life of both of them and then vibrated back to that moment with an enormous finality on a true dead-center. (Yes, it's like when I met Marnie-like tuning that old Crosley radio back home with those two wiggly lines, one on each end of the dial, and when you got it tuned dead-center, they merged into one.)

There was a pause, fat with pregnancy.

Simultaneously, the two women said:

"Oyster?"

"Cigarette?"

They laughed, and Trudi took an oyster and Sue took a cigarette.

The taste of menthol, which she hated, shook her. She took a deep breath of fresh air. She told herself that she had drunk too much and was addled in the head and was imagining things and should leave for the bathroom and splash cold water on her face.

She stole a look at Trudi and thought, ogawd, she's beautiful, and found that her body was not moving.