Small Town

On the other hand, it was easier to do it in the first place if you were a woman. If you were reasonably attractive, and if you presented yourself well, you really weren’t going to have a great deal of trouble finding some man who would like nothing better than to go home with you and fuck your brains out. He might not be terribly good at it, and he might never call you again, but if all you were looking for was to get laid, well, how hard was that?

Women knocked themselves out trying to attract men, and all they really had to be was available. A man did not care who made your shoes, or if they matched your bag, and if he even noticed such matters he was probably not in any event going to be the man you wanted to take home. A man did not pay attention to your earrings (unless you were wearing them someplace other than your ears) and had no idea what you paid for your dress. His concerns were more basic. Did you have tits? Did you have an ass? Did you have a mouth? Did you have a pussy? Were any or all of these available to him? Fine. I love you. Let’s go to bed.

The night with Fran Buckram, a delicious experience in its own right, had given her a sense of her own power. Here was this man, this unquestionably manly man, this leader of men, and he had let her do whatever she wanted with him. Franny she’d called him, and made a girl of him and fucked him like a girl. And made him like it. And afterward, with the rules suspended and her dominance put aside, she’d gone on calling him Franny, and he hadn’t asked her to stop.

“I’ll see you next Friday,” she had told him at the door. “I don’t think we need to meet anywhere, do you? Come here at eight. And, Franny? Don’t bring flowers.”

Tuesday afternoon she had a call at the gallery. “Susan? This is Jay McGann, we met at Stelli’s the other night.”

“I remember.”

“I’ve been working all day and I need a break. I thought I might come over and look at some art.”

“That would be nice,” she said. “Why don’t you bring your friend?”

“My friend?”

“Your editor. Isn’t he your friend as well?”

“Oh, Lowell? Yes, friend and editor, but the poor guy’s got to work for a living. I don’t think he can get away from his desk at this hour.”

“Come this evening,” she said.

“Are you open nights?”

“I could arrange to be,” she said, “but actually I have some of the best work at my apartment. You’d be getting a look at something the public doesn’t get to see.”

“I’d like that,” he said. “And I could get away tonight.”

“Call Lowell. See if he can make it.”

He couldn’t figure it out, and she was in no rush to help him. After a pause he said, “Uh, actually I’d hoped we could get acquainted.”

“Yes, I feel the same.”

“So it would really be more convenient, you know, if it was just the two of us.”

“It was so nice meeting the two of you the other night,” she said. “The way you interacted was very pleasing.”

“Yes, but—”

“So I think it would be really nice to get intimately acquainted with both of you.”

“Oh. Uh, whew. Uh, would you want one of us to bring a girlfriend?”

“Whatever for?”

“Uh...”

“Jay,” she said, “don’t you think I can make you both very happy all by myself?”

She went home and showered and put on the same dress she’d worn Friday night, knowing it looked good with nothing under it. They showed up together at a quarter to seven, a whiff of Scotch on their breath from the drink each had needed to get that far. She knew they wanted her, knew they couldn’t believe it was really going to happen. And, of course, they had to be possessed by the usual performance anxiety, magnified by the need to perform in front of another male, and a friend in the bargain.

She began by showing them the art, and was pleased by the intelligence and perception evident in their reactions. They didn’t need to be aesthetes, she just wanted to fuck them, but it made things better when there was a mind operating the body. All the standard fantasies about brutish macho studs notwithstanding, bright and sensitive men were almost always better in bed.

Emory Allgood’s piece drew the most interest, and one of them wanted to know the price. She explained that it wasn’t for sale, but that the artist had a show opening in the fall. She’d make sure they got invitations to the opening.

Enough, she thought.

“It’s so nice to see you both,” she said, and brushed the back of her hand across Jay McGann’s crotch, then flung her arms around Lowell Cooke’s neck and gave him a lingering openmouthed kiss. She thought Jay might grope her while she was kissing Lowell, but no, he was just standing there politely, waiting his turn. She turned from Lowell and kissed Jay, and felt Lowell’s hands on her ass.

In the bedroom, they gaped at her when she got out of the black dress, gaped again at the gold at her nipples and the hairless pubic mound. They stripped without embarrassment, and there was another round of kissing with hands reaching everywhere, and then they were all three in her bed.