Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [84]
Billie was in high spirits. “Why shouldn’t I celebrate when the universe coughs up exactly what I want?”
They had coffee in the library, and after Old Bill retired, Libby asked Red up to her room to look at some insurance papers. There were no papers, of course, so they took off most of their clothes and lay down on her bed. She didn’t even think he was fat anymore; she saw only his lived-in, fully mature male body and luminous smooth skin. His legs were remarkably strong. Against his considerable chest, she felt tidy, compact. “Remind me again why we’re not having sex?” she said.
“Maybe because we want to do it someplace where Billie Fitzgerald doesn’t have her ear to the heating vent.”
“Oh, that.” She nestled on his chest until her nerves calmed and she could hear clearly the hum of his body and its strong central heartbeat.
He gave her back a few absent pats, cleared his throat, then spoke into her hair. “I didn’t want to tell you during dinner, but the reason I was late tonight was Lewis.”
Libby carefully lifted herself away from his body, which somehow seemed appropriate.
“Apparently, our friend Billie sweet-talked him up to the hills and then ditched him.”
“She what?”
“He walked to the farm barefoot. His feet were pretty torn up, so I gave him a ride into town.”
Absorbing this information, Libby felt an unexpected protectiveness toward Lewis. Then she giggled. “God. You’d think he’d know better than to mess with her.”
“Strolled right into the bear’s cave,” said Red.
“Poor Lewis!”
“He’ll live,” Red said dryly.
“We shouldn’t laugh,” Libby said, and bit the pillow to stop.
NO SOONER had Red gone home than Billie tapped on Libby’s door, let herself in, and climbed onto the bed. “You guys consummating yet?”
“You’ll be the last to know.”
She lifted the sheets. “I gotta see if there’s a wet spot.”
Why in the world had Libby ever mentioned that she and Red were waiting? Some misguided notion that Billie would appreciate—or be instructed by—such restraint? Whatever the inflated moral purpose, Libby was now paying dearly for it. “There’s something abnormal about your interest in these things, Billie.”
“There’s something abnormal about two perfectly healthy adults not fucking. Can’t Red get it up?”
“You want to tell me what you did to Lewis?”
Grinning, Billie wiped a cloud of hair back from her face. “Yeah. I took him on a little one-way trip.”
“But why?”
“Because he was there.” She shook Libby’s foot through the covers. “And because he can’t fuck with my friends and walk away whistling.”
“I can fight my own battles.”
“Not to my satisfaction.”
“Oh, Billie.”
“What did you see in him, anyway? He’s got a little dick.”
“If you’d seen it, you’d know it wasn’t little.”
“I didn’t have to see it. It’s little.”
“Lewis has a perfectly respectable, above-average penis.”
“ ‘Penis’? Listen to you. All those intellectuals have teeny weiners. I knew a Goethe scholar once whose dick was the size of a baby carrot.”
“You weren’t really messing around with him, were you?”
“What would you care, even if I was?”
The answer was a tangle Libby couldn’t begin to unravel—not at this hour of night, nor with this conversationalist. “How’d you get him up there in the first place?”
“He’s easy, Libby. I don’t want to ruin any sacred memories you might have, but the guy’s kind of a dog, if you know what I mean.”
“He always had a thing for you,” Libby said bitterly.
“Not anymore he doesn’t.”
“So you drove him out in the hills and made him get out of the truck?”
“We were checking irrigation pots in the tangelo grove and I went back to the truck for a wrench. The old you-wait-here trick. I actually said that. ‘You wait here.’ And this beautiful inspiration came to me: Why not just leave? You should’ve seen the look on his face.”
“I have to feel a little sorry for him,” Libby said. “He was so out of his league.”
“I only wish I’d gotten his clothes off first.