Red Rain: Four-B (F/m) Saturday, January 4th, 1998 “So,” I hemmed nervously, “this is nice.” It was like something out of the Twilight Zone. The three women I was having dinner with might as well have been clones, each at a different stage of development. I was seated at the head of the dining table, with Camille on my right and Casey at my left. Stacey, the older girl, was next to Casey, further down along the table. At least the food was excellent: spaghetti in a rich red sauce that had bits of sausage in it, with stuffed mushrooms and garlic bread on the side. There was a bottle of Corbel, too, but Camille was drinking most of it herself. “So, uh, Casey, you like baseball, huh?” Casey, who had just slurped up one long noodle, liberally spattering her face with tomato paste; just rolled her eyes as if I’d asked the stupidest question on earth. Stacey snorted loudly. “Our father likes baseball,” Camille answered sharply. “I do, too!” Casey insisted. “You know,” I interjected, “I couldn’t help wondering...” “Daddy wasn’t invited,” Casey said, answering my question before it had been asked in a small, sad little voice. “Father remarried after mother died,” Camille explained, seeing my curious look. “I don’t get along well with her.” “Stacey says Barbara’s a ‘cunt’!” Casey added. Both her sisters shouted at her in unison. “You little troll!” Stacey added, punching the girl in the arm. “Stacey!” Camille barked furiously, banging her fists down on the table hard; rattling the china. I suddenly wished she wasn’t hogging all the champagne. Casey murmured darkly, rubbing her arm. “You know,” I said, again desperate to change the subject, “this meal is terrific!” “Get used to it, Stud,” Stacey muttered. “Everything else she makes tastes like bat barf!” Camille didn’t say anything, but she glared murderously at her younger sibling. In spite of the tension, Casey giggled a little at “bat barf.” Camille poured herself another glass while the rest of us quietly stared at our plates; occasionally shoveling a forkload of pasta into our mouths. “So tell me, Stud...” Stacey began. “Will you please stop calling him that!” Camille snapped. Undaunted, the girl ignored her sister and looked me straight in the eye. “So how did you two meet?” “At a party, actually,” I said as Camille knocked back half of her refreshed flute. “Were you drunk?” she asked, giving Camille a dirty look from the corner of her eye. “Not particularly,” I answered. Camille had her hands in her lap, curled up into tight little fists. I reached under the table, took her left hand in my right, and gave it a reassuring little squeeze. Stacey seemed disappointed, and quietly went back too her dinner. Casey carefully placed both hands around her glass of milk and lifted it to her lips. When she set the glass back down, a deep, heady belch escaped her. “Good one!” Stacey laughed. “What do we say, Casey?” Camille said sternly. “sorry,” the little girl answered meekly. “Jesus, Camilla,” Stacey shot back, angrily. “Like you’re so perfect you never burp or cut the cheese!” Camille glared at Stacey, but the girl went on, addressing me directly. “I hope you know your girlfriend shits milk white chocolate!” A stunned silence fell over the table. “Is that with... or without almonds?” I asked, batting my eyelashes innocently. Stacey’s jaw dropped open, and Camille looked at me with open shock. Then the teen-ager broke into a wild, almost hyena-like, laughter. I joined her, chuckling affably; giving Camile’s hand another squeeze. Casey joined in, not quite getting the joke, but not wanting to be left out. Even Camille managed a tight smile at her own expense. We ate the rest of the meal in good spirits. As Camille got up to bring out the sherbet, I felt a sudden urge to try again with the small talk. “So, what time is Camille taking you two home tonight?” “She’s, uh, not,” Stacey replied, her eyes darting around evasively. “I’m not what?” Camille asked, returning from the kitchen. When I told her, she made a strange face. “Well, Casey is staying until Sunday,” she explained, looking intently at Stacey. “And I just assumed Stacey would just drive herself home.” “I, uh, didn’t see a car out there...” I said nervously. Stacey gave me a dark look and Camille’s tension returned with a vengeance. “What happened to you car?” Camille demanded icily. “Geez! It was just a little fender-bender! You don’t have to get all postal about it! Carly’s going to pick me up at ten!” “You mean your stoner friend?” I shifted in my chair, suddenly very uncomfortable. I caught Casey’s eye and we regarded each other, embarrassed. “Wanna see my baseball cards?” she asked quietly. I nodded eagerly, and she took my hand and led me away from the burgeoning war zone. She led me to the stairs, and for an instant, I had a horrifying vision of her calmly leading me by the hand down the stairs, to that place of darkness; her piping, melancholic voice the last thing that I would hear as the door slams shut, saying, “We look like everyone else.” Thankfully, she led me up the stairs instead; to the second bedroom which had, up until then, registered in my consciousness as little more than a closed door next to the bathroom. The room was much like her sister’s next door, save for the fact that the furnishings were all obviously reproductions, instead of genuine antiques; and all painted in a matching white. There were pennants on the walls, all Cubs, and a bookcase whose shelves were filled with binders on the lower levels and a few assorted plastic figurines on the upper ones. “This isn’t my real collection,” she said, stressing the word “real.” “These are just my doubles. My real collection’s at home.” She picked out a binder and we walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge of the pink, quilted comforter. I looked at pictures of people I didn’t know, and listened to stats I could care less about. The more she went on, the more she relaxed. “Do you get to see a lot of games?” “I used to, all the time,” she said, the glum quality returning to her voice. “But now daddy spends all his time with Barbara.” She said the name like a child’s taunt. “So... I guess you stay over here a lot?” I asked, looking around the room again. After all, sweet as she was, she did represent a possible hitch in my blossoming sex life. She shrugged. “Every other weekend or so. I think Camilla wants to be my mommy.” I looked down at her, surprised at her insight. We sat quietly for a moment, the binder still open in her lap. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my billfold. “You wanna see something?” I asked, unfolding the worn cowhide. She nodded, looking between me and the wallet with avid curiosity. “Okay,” I began, “this is a true story. Before I was born, my parents lived in New York City...” “Yankees!” she said, breaking into a heartbreakingly innocent grin. “Exactly,” I said, returning the smile. “Anyway, my grandfather was a taxi driver. Was his whole life. And people were always leaving stuff behind in his cab. Jackets, money, umbrellas...” I left out used condoms and hypodermics. “The day I was born, right before he got the news, in fact, he was cleaning out his cab from that morning, and he found this - ” I handed her the card, and her eyes became as big a saucers - “wedged down into the back seat.” The card had been bent in half, the corners were dog-eared, and the border had severe foxing, but none of that mattered to her. “Joe Di Maggio,” she whispered reverently. I nodded. “My grandfather always kept it in his wallet after that. Considered it his good luck charm. When he died he passed it on to me.” I saw the way her eyes sparkled, the way her tiny hands trembled as she held the ratty old thing; tenderly, yet clinging to it for dear life. “You like that, huh?” I asked. She looked up at me with newfound respect, and nodded solemnly. “You can keep it, if you like.” “Jordan, no!” I looked over at the sound of Camille’s voice and saw her standing in the doorway, her arms folder across her chest, looking at me in the same awestruck way that her sister was. Casey jumped off the bed, calling out to her sister and brandishing her newfound treasure like the Holy Grail itself. “Look Camilla, look! Joe Di Maggio! Joe Di Maggio!” I laughed and stood up slowly. Camille was saying “Yes that’s nice,” without ever looking at the card. Instead she kept her eyes on me the whole time. “I can’t let you...” she began. “Aw, it’s pretty beat up. You can barely make out the autograph.” Casey shrieked with excitement and immediately began thoroughly inspecting the card for the faded remnants of ink. “Jordan, it must still be worth...” Ignoring her, I turned to Casey. “Hold out your hand,” I said. She did, giving me a funny look, and I gave her a quick low-five. “Slapjack,” I said in the parlance of my own childhood, “no tradebacks!” “What’s that mean?” she asked, puzzled. I dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper, but not so low that Camille couldn’t hear me. “That means she can’t make you give it back.” Casey started dancing around the room, while Camille still glared at me with resigned irritation. I smiled and gave her a fleeting kiss. She sighed, gave me a look that indicated she didn’t know if she wanted to hug me or punch me in the nose, and then leaned in and gave me a second, longer kiss. “It’s past your bedtime!” she said loudly, resting her forehead against my chest. “Awww!” “Say good night to Jordan, please,” Camille said, pushing herself away from me reluctantly. The little girl walked over to me and stared up with those huge, sad eyes. “Good night, Jordan.” I smiled warmly back at her. “Night, Casey.” Then Camille shooed me from the room as she began giving orders for Casey to prepare for bed. I strolled down the stairs with a goofy grin on my face. There was a cool breeze through the living room, and it carried a smell I still remembered from college. Stacey was on the back deck, the joint clenched between her lips. She looked of her shoulder at me as I stepped through the open sliding glass door. “Pretty expensive bribe for your girlfriend’s kid sister, don’tcha think stud?” she asked, taking a long drag. She exhaled a cloud of noxious smoke and tried to smile at me seductively. “Makes me wonder what you’ve got for me!” “You heard all that, did you?” I asked, leaning up against the rail beside her. She nodded, and offered me the cigarette. “Want some?” I shook my head and she shrugged her shoulders as if it were no skin off her ass. “I don’t know,” I mumbled, turning to stare out over the placid, gray surface of the lake. The air was cool, but it had lost the bite of the previous days’ chill. “Maybe it was a bit much, but fuck it! By the time I have kids, baseball will so far out of it that they won’t even care who Joe Di Maggio was. Hell, I only really know about him from the card, and ‘Mrs. Robinson.’ ” “Who’s Mrs. Robinson?” Stacey asked. I turned my head slightly, to see if she was yanking me. She wasn’t. “So tell me,” I said, turning back to face her; leaning up against the rail on one elbow, “why do you enjoy busting your sister’s balls so much?” “Maybe because she always acts like she has balls,” she said, taking one long, final drag. She flicked the remainder away towards the lake; a cascade of sparks flitting through the air before being swallowed up by the night. “She’s a bitch,” she said, blowing out a last, billowing plume up into the air. “She deserves it. You could do better.” “Why? You know someone who’s available?” She smiled enigmatically, and was on the verge of responding when the distant crunch of tires on the gravel drive interrupted; followed by the grating bleat of a horn. “Gotta jet, stud,” she said, backing away, still smiling. “You watch out for those almonds, now. They get stuck between your teeth!” She winked, and disappeared around the prow of the house. A few seconds later, the car tore out of the drive loudly, with a gratuitous flourish of the horn. Silence slowly settled down over things again. I turned back to the lake and lost myself in its depths for a while. Eventually I heard Camille close the sliding glass door behind me. She took one breath and swore sharply. “God damn her!” She leaned up against the rail next to me and sighed mournfully. “Well, I guess I should be happy it’s just weed and not heroin... yet, anyway.” I cocked my eyebrow and looked at her sidelong. “What are you? Joe Friday? Weed!” I laughed. She laughed, too. “Mary Jane!” “Whacky Tobaccy,” I said in a slow, southern drawl and we both broke into laughter that lasted a long time. When the laughing had run its course, she sighed and took my hand. “Walk with me,” she said, leading me down the steps. We walked hand in hand along the shore, moving steadily away from the house. We kept going until her house was just a vague, dark shape at the end of the beach. We stopped a few yards before the strand gave way to hills and grass and the shoreline curved back towards the more densely packed beach houses. The moon was waxing, but it still wasn’t very full. Starlight reflected off the mirrored surface of the lake and frolicked in the depths of her eyes. “I want to do something,” she said, biting her lower lip and glancing back anxiously at the house. I turned my head and looked around. Even if Casey were to wander out onto the deck, she still probably couldn’t see anything clearly that far away in the dark. “Take off your pants.” I didn’t need to be told twice. In seconds my khakis, only one of two pairs I owned, lay in a wadded heap in the sand, along with my briefs. Camille put her hands on my shoulders and gently eased me down onto the cool, gritty sand. I laid on my back, staring up at her with breathless anticipation. Billowing her long skirt like a tent, she stepped astride my bare legs, and let the fabric of the skirt cover my nakedness, the hem reaching all the way up to my chest as she squatted down over my cock. “Just so you know,” she informed me, grunting from the strain on her legs as she held her position, “I did not go through dinner bare-assed! I took them off before coming out on the deck!” With that, she awkwardly began thrusting her uncovered pussy around; blindly trying to connect with my penis. When the head of my dick brushed up against the moistened lips of her sex, I shuddered and had to suppress a sudden, premature eruption. It took a little more, entirely thrilling, fine tuning, but finally she was able to steer me inside of her, and with a last, heavy sigh, she dropped on top of me unceremoniously, our pubic bones banging together painfully. She didn’t lose herself in passion, as she always had before, but rather rode me with a look of fixed concentration on her features, sitting bolt upright, her whole frame trembling a little from the exertion. The only complaint I had was that the sand dug into my ass mercilessly. After a few minutes on thrusting and groaning, she slowed her already leisurely pace and looked me directly in the eyes. “Hold very still,” she said, deadly serious. She began lifting herself up off my cock, stopping halfway. She kept herself in that position, again, showing the obvious strain of doing so. She smiled, a chilling, wicked smile. The orgasm hit me, literally hit me, so fast and so hard that I lost all conscious awareness of everything around me for several minutes afterwards. It was as if she had, in one unbelievable maneuver, managed to envelop my cock, my balls, my thighs, my pubis - all of it - in the searing, wet juices of her womanhood. The hardest hit was the penis itself, experiencing a rush of heat and wetness unlike anything I’d ever felt in all my life. I lay there on the beach, dizzy and gasping for air. Camille chuckled to herself and lifted her body off of mine. As her skirt swept away, the dampness, which had so warmed and thrilled my entire lower region a minute previously, started to turn cold and clammy when exposed to the night air. I suddenly realized just what she had done, and it sent a second chill racing through me. I began to squirm, my ass sloshing around in the soaked sand. Camille leaned into my field of vision, cheeks flush, eyes bright and grinning from ear to ear.