Transvestia

clear of a tinge of envy and I'd always sworn both to Dawn and myself that there would never be any resentment of her popularity as a party attraction. So far there never had been and living together would have been pretty impossible if there had.

I went into the bar poured two more Martinis, put an olive in Dawn's and drained mine at one go in a most un-ladylike fashion. When I went back to the bed-room she wasn't there so I wandered into the perfumed cloud that by now enshrouded the bathroom. She was luxuriating in a welter of foam and, as us ual, doing nothing about getting bathed. "Time's getting on!" I reminded her and set to work on her with a king-size loofah while she went into action with a pearl-handled nailbrush. She stepped out of the bath and I handed her a large turkish towel which she tossed aside and stood there on the white sheep- skin bath rug a glistening, golden Aphrodite. I took the oil bottle from the shelf and slowly ann- ointed her sun-tanned body while she sipped her mar- tini and munched contentedly at the olive.

"Mm!" she said, either at the drink or the mas- sage and then went on ruminatively "So I'm walking out on my devoted sister - to say nothing of Lobster Thermidor and Chablis - hope you don't mind darling!"

I said I didn't and that I was sure the evening would be lovely. I meant it. I thought it would be productive for her too. My mind went back to her first similar night out after we set up house to- gether in Johannesburg. She had gone off to the old Carlton Hotel to dine and dance with an American visitor who had been given her number by a mutual friend in New York and badly wanted what he called "real beautiful company" for the evening. It had indeed been a long evening and when I fell asleep at two o'clock the other bed was still empty. She later was reticent about her evening but from that occasion onward I became only too well aware of the expensive gifts furs, jewellery, perfume and such-