So Willing

by Lawrence Block

  And, in the third and last place, it meant he was missing a lot of sure stuff. You go after a virgin, she’s liable to still be a virgin after you leave her. You go after one that’s been made before, you’ve got a better chance to make her again.

  Three reasons, and all of them good ones. Vince spent a couple of days going over them, trying to talk himself out of this quest of the holy quail, then he strolled over to his father’s car, slid behind the wheel, and drove off to see if this lousy lake could boast of even one single guaranteed virgin.

  It could. Adele Christopher. And this time, he was absolutely sure. Never mind about appearances being deceiving, they couldn’t be all that deceiving. Adele Christopher was a virgin, no question about it.

  Actually, she wasn’t much Vince’s type. She was a short, slender, mousy girl, with a boyish figure. She had breasts, but they were about the size of a bee-bite. And she had hips, but just barely. She did have good legs, at least, and a pleasant, oval face beneath short-cropped mouse-blonde hair, and she was definitely a virgin.

  Adele was sixteen, but she looked more like twelve. She usually wandered around wearing scuffed loafers and frayed faded blue jeans and a white man’s shirt with the tails tied in a knot beneath her bee-bites. But her little butt wiggled nicely inside the tight blue jeans, and her waist looked small enough to put his arm completely around it, and she had a nice friendly smile and clear blue eyes.

  She wasn’t precisely his type, but the more he looked at her, the more he had a feeling she could become his type without too much trouble at all. There was an old saying he’d heard once: The closer to the bone, the sweeter the meat. And you couldn’t get much closer to the bone than skinny Adele.

  He’d also heard it said that a thin woman is built for speed and a fat woman is built for comfort. A girl like Adele, being as thin as that—and it would be her first time, too, of that he was sure—she might just go wild. It didn’t take much thinking-it-over before he really began to look forward to the experience.

  The first thing, of course, was to get to know the girl better. He’d met her at the grocery store-post office around on the north shore of the lake, talked with her a bit, seen her a few times when he’d swum from his own cabin to the public beach near the store, but it had never been any more than talk about the weather and sunburn and how cold the lake water was. So the first thing to do was get to know her better.

  That part was easy enough. He drove around the lake to the store, parked in the gravel parking lot beside the store, and there she was, at the public beach, sitting with a bunch of girls. She was dressed, as usual, in blue jeans, white shirt and scuffed loafers, and she looked, as usual, not a day over twelve.

  He went over and talked for a while, talking with the whole group of girls. The usual vacation-at-the-lake crap, about the weather and the temperature of the water and all that; and when the right moment came, he asked her if she wanted to join him for a coke over at the store. Adele wouldn’t be a wine girl like Rhonda. She’d be a coke and hot dogs girl.

  And, of course, her Dream Man would be a coke and hot dogs boy. An outdoorsy type, young and kind of gawky, the kind of clown who’d wander around with Lassie at his heels. So that was the way Vince played it, young and gawky and full of coke. He fooled around with the notion of borrowing a dog from somebody, but decided it was too much trouble, and he could be gawky enough all by himself.

  She went with him for the coke, but so did two of the other girls. That was the thing with girls, particularly short fat ugly girls like the two who came along to share the coke. They always ran in packs. You get a bunch of good-looking girls together, it’s no trouble at all to cull one out of the herd. You get a bunch of beasts together, with one good-looking girl in their midst, and they’ll cling to the looker as though she were a life-preserver. Vince thought that was probably because they knew the looker would attract males, and they didn’t want to miss out if there were any extras. Or maybe they were just hoping some of the looks would rub off on them if they hung around long enough.

  He knew better than to let the girls know he was less than overjoyed to have them along. He knew he had to make believe he liked Adele’s bug-eyed monster friends if he wanted to get anywhere with her. So he grinned at them and talked with them, and waited half an hour before asking Adele if she wanted to go for a ride around the lake. She said yes, and he pulled her away before the beasts knew what was going on.

  That first day, all they did was drive around the lake, looking at the cabins and the swimmers and the motorboats, while Vince did some strong groundwork on the Dream Man. By the time he brought her back to the store, where she wanted to be let off, he knew he had her hooked. She thought he was just the greatest thing since Claude Jarman, Jr. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said as she got out of the car, and she smiled and nodded, looking very pleased.

  He spent four days that way, just driving her around the lake, going swimming with her either at the public beach or the little beach behind his parents’ cabin, and all the time building up the young and gawky impression for her.

  After the first day, he didn’t have too much trouble with the beasts any more. It was obvious that Adele preferred to go off with him, rather than hang around with the tons of fun, and that was an excellent sign. There was only one of the beasts who caused any trouble at all; a short, heavy, stringy-haired mound named Bobbi. She even managed, on the second day, to come along for the ride around the lake—which pleased Vince no end. After that, he worked extra hard to keep himself and Adele away from lovable old Bobbi.

  The fourth day was a Friday, and there was to be a dance that night in Cornwallville, a town about eight miles from the lake. In a Grange Hall, no less. While they were driving around that afternoon, Vince asked her if she wanted to go to the dance with him, and she said she’d be glad to. By that time, they were old hound-dog buddies.

  So that Friday night was the first real date. He knew he was dealing with a genuine virgin this time—there wasn’t the slightest doubt of that at all, he kept telling himself—so he played it very cautious on their first date. At the dance, which was lousy, consisting of a hillbilly jukebox alternating with some local hillbilly non-talent, he danced with her as though they were brother and sister. Afterward, he drove her right back to her cabin, and kissed her only once before saying good-night. She was surprised that he hadn’t tried to kiss her again, he could tell that, and he knew she wanted him to kiss her again. She could keep wanting for a little while, he told himself. Work the anticipation bit.

  At first, he’d been planning the defloration for the backseat of his father’s car, but as the time grew nearer, he began to think about the mechanics of the thing again; that business of switching from front seat to back, of squirming around trying to get your clothes off in a cramped backseat, and he decided a grassy slope somewhere under a tree would be a hell of a lot better all the way around.

  But not out at the island. Not after the fiasco with Rhonda. He didn’t want to have anything to do with that lousy island ever again. Somewhere else.

  He took some time out to look for a new spot, a place as secluded and handy as the island. He went looking on Monday afternoon, three days after the dance.

  The thing was, this was a vacation-type lake. Every inch of shore was used by somebody or other, with cabins and docks and boathouses and beaches. A two-lane blacktop road circled the lake, and even the side of the road away from the lake was solidly lined with cabins.

  Yet he couldn’t roam too far away from the lake. He had to find a spot close enough so it would seem natural to go there. It would be in the afternoon, of course. An outdoorsy girl like Adele, you could only de-virginize her in the daytime, with the sun shining like mad.

  He drove around Monday afternoon, looking for a secluded spot and not finding one. Then he noticed the little stream that fed into the lake from the east, tumbling down from the wooded hills back of the lake. There was a small bridge at the point where the road crossed
the stream, and he noticed what looked like a narrow path leading off from the road along the streamside.

  He stopped the car just beyond the bridge and walked back to look at the stream and the path. There was nothing up that way but woods. No roads and no cabins and no people. The path was overgrown, barely visible more than a few feet from the road.

  This looked like the place. It would be the most natural thing in the world for a nature boy like Vince to suggest a little walk up that path. And it would be the most natural thing in the world for a nature girl like Adele to think it a great idea.

  But it might also be a great idea to check first, to make sure there was some sort of clearing up that way, someplace where a couple of nature-lovers could lie down and have some room, if they happened to feel like it.

  Vince didn’t like to walk, not even on sidewalks. And he especially didn’t like to walk along overgrown and weed-choked paths in the God-forsaken great outdoors. But a man with a goal will suffer a lot of inconvenience to reach that goal. And Vince was definitely a man with a goal. He started walking.

  The stream meandered around like an idiot, curving back and forth and climbing erratically over hills, and the path followed right next to it, occasionally angling away from the stream for a few yards to cut through some particularly heavy underbrush. Vince fought his way along, and the farther he got the more overgrown the woods became, with trees crammed closer and closer together and all kinds of bushes and weeds stuffed in among the trunks. It looked as though there was no such thing as a clearing in these lousy woods.

  But there was. And it was inhabited.

  He heard the voices first, ahead of him. They sounded familiar, but they were still some distance ahead, and he couldn’t figure out who it was. He had a sudden fear that it might be Rhonda, and he almost turned around right then and ran back to the car.

  But he didn’t. The voices might mean there was an open space ahead. Vince left the path, climbing up a steep slope away from the stream, planning to circle around and see who these people were before showing himself to them.

  He was halfway up the slope when he suddenly realized that one of the voices was Adele’s. He hesitated, wondering what the hell Adele was doing there, and all at once he had the horrible fear that he’d goofed again; that not even Adele was a virgin, that she was up here with some guy.

  Maybe there just wasn’t any such thing as a virgin, after all. Maybe virgins were myths, like unicorns. He suddenly remembered the legend that only a virgin could capture a unicorn, and now he understood that legend. It took a myth to catch a myth.

  But as he stood there thinking about it, getting more disgusted every second, the other voice started talking again and, with a sigh of relief, he realized the other voice also belonged to a girl. So Adele wasn’t up here with a guy, after all. It was just one of her little Brownie friends.

  He thought he heard Adele mention his name. Sure, she was talking about him, she was telling the Brownie about him. Good old Adele.

  He wondered what she was saying about him. He moved forward even more slowly and cautiously now, wanting to get close enough to hear what Adele had to say.

  From the top of the slope, he could see them. It was Adele and the tons of fun, Bobbi, the menace who’d been hanging around so much all last week.

  And there was a clearing. A great clearing, right out of a storybook. It was oval in shape, with the stream gurgling through the middle of the oval the long way. There were level grassy banks right down to the edge of the stream, and the whole place was ringed with slender-trunked young trees and dark green shrubbery.

  Adele and Bobbi were sitting on the grass next to the stream, on the same side as Vince. They were both dressed in the uniform of the area, blue jeans and white men’s shirts, and they were sitting chatting together about one thing and another. And mainly about Vince.

  He lay prone on his stomach on the top of the slope, peering through the high grass, and watched and listened.

  Bobbi was saying, “Vince wants to make love to you, you know.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” said Adele. “All boys think about it, but it doesn’t mean anything. I mean, he isn’t going to try anything.”

  Vince grinned down the slope at Adele. That’s what you think, little baby, he thought. And what a great big surprise you’ve got coming. A great big surprise.

  “I know why you’re going around with him so much,” Bobbi was saying. “It’s to make me mad.”

  “I haven’t been going around with him so much,” objected Adele, but she smiled at the other girl, and she didn’t deny the charge. “We’ve just gone riding in his car, that’s all, just riding around the lake.”

  “You went to the dance with him Friday night,” Bobbi said. Vince could see now that Bobbi was pouting. There was accusation in her voice.

  Adele shrugged. “I wanted to go to the dance,” she said. “What’s wrong with that? And I couldn’t very well have gone with you.”

  “Why not?” Bobbi demanded. “Girls go to dances together all the time. They even dance together. Who’d think anything?”

  “I don’t know about your parents,” Adele told her, “but my mother and father are beginning to suspect.”

  Vince frowned, not following the conversation at all. Suspect? Suspect what?

  Oh for God’s sake, he thought suddenly, they’re members of a non-virgin club. He knew it, he knew it, he’d known it all along, there just wasn’t any such thing as a virgin. Virgins and unicorns, mythical beasties.

  The conversation was still going on down there, and through his depression Vince continued to listen, and what they were saying down there just kept getting more mystifying all the time.

  “They do not,” Bobbi was saying. “Parents never suspect a thing like that. We could do it right in front of them, for Pete’s sake, and they’d think we were just playing games.”

  “All I know,” Adele said, “is that Mom’s been hinting that I ought to stay away from you. And every time she gets on the subject, she gets too embarrassed for words.”

  “Then don’t worry about it,” Bobbi advised her. “Even if they think they know something, what difference does it make if they’re afraid to call you on it?”

  “I don’t think I’d want them to know,” Adele said soberly.

  “Are you ashamed? I told you, Adele, there’s nothing in the world to be ashamed of. There’ve been lots and lots of women—”

  “I know all that. I just don’t want my parents to know about it, that’s all.”

  “You changed the subject,” said Bobbi suddenly. “You didn’t want to talk about that Vince any more.”

  Adele smiled, and lay back on the grass, staring up at the sky. “I think I like him,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Adele, don’t be mean.”

  “I think maybe I’ll let him make love to me,” she said, still smiling at the sky.

  Vince sat up and took notice. Now, that was the kind of thing he liked to hear!

  “Adele, you’re just teasing me,” Bobbi said reproachfully. “Don’t tease me like that.”

  “I wonder how it would be,” mused Adele, ignoring the other girl. “I wonder how it would be to have a man make love to me.” She turned and looked at Bobbi, grinning wickedly at her. “Don’t you wonder sometimes how it would feel?”

  Bobbi made a face and said, “Ugh!”

  “I do,” said Adele. She lay back on the grass again. “And I think I really will do it. I’ll bring Vince up here and—”

  “Adele, stop it!”

  “After all,” Adele went on, “I really ought to try it.”

  She was a virgin, Vince was thinking gleefully. This time, for sure, she was a virgin.

  She went on, saying, “Just once, of course. But I ought to try it once, see what it’s like. Maybe I’d enjoy it.”

  Oh, you would, little baby, thought Vince. You sure as hell would. And you sure as hell will.

  “I think I’d like him to—”

/>   “Stop!” Bobbi, her face contorted with rage, suddenly lunged forward and cracked Adele ringingly across the face, open-handed. “Stop that!” she screamed. “Stop tormenting me like that!”

  “Don’t you slap me!” Adele was suddenly enraged, too, and came up from the grass swinging.

  Vince stared at them in blank-faced astonishment. Their conversation, their actions—none of it made any sense. And now they were rolling around on the ground down there, punching and scratching and biting each other, and he couldn’t figure out for the life of him just what the hell they were fighting about

  The two of them, fighting grimly and silently now, kept rolling around on the grass, slugging and clawing one another, until finally the inevitable happened, and they both tumbled off the bank and into the shallow stream.

  They came up gurgling and thrashing, and all at once they weren’t fighting any more. They looked at one another, solemnly, and both climbed back out of the stream; and sat down on the bank once more.

  They sat in silence for a while, Vince watching and scratching his head, until at last Adele said, softly, “I’m sorry I teased you, Bobbi. I shouldn’t be mean like that.”

  “And I’m sorry I slapped you,” Bobbi said. “But when you talk that way, I just get so jealous I can’t stand it. And when you keep going off with that Vince all the time—”

  “I won’t do that anymore,” said Adele. “I’m really and truly sorry, Bobbi.”

  Vince blinked. What was this? A minute ago, she’d been talking about making it with him. Now she was saying she wasn’t even going to go for rides with him anymore. He wondered what the hell was going on down there, and he also wondered just who in hell Bobbi thought she was, and where she came off, queering his deal that way.

  Bobbi got to her feet, a round blob in the middle of the clearing. “My clothes are soaked,” she said.

  “Mine, too.” Adele stood up beside her, and started undoing her shirt. “We better take them off and spread them out on the grass, so they’ll dry.”