“It’s too short and frisky,” Laura said. “This baby’s going to Goodwill.”

“Don’t you think I deserve to see you in it at least once?”

Laura and I were making slow progress cleaning out the upstairs closet, and I was in the middle of trying to persuade her to try on a skirt which she claimed she hadn’t worn since high school when my brother Ted called. He was in from the East Coast to visit Mom and Dad, and he invited us over for a little cookout.

“I’ll be fixing all my specialties,” Ted told me on the telephone, “if only I can find where Dad hid the grill. The chicken is already in the marinade and the shrimps are all peeled. You and Laura better be able to make it. Nell is really eager to see you guys.” Nell was Ted’s serious girl friend.

“We wouldn’t miss it,” I assured him. “What should we bring?”

“Just yourselves,” Ted said. “That and the usual wine.”

When I got off the phone Laura had put on the skirt. She swirled around and the skirt flared up and I could see her pale pink panties.

“You must wear that skirt,” I said.

“No way,” Laura said, “And it’s not really a skirt; it’s more of a summer frock. A jumper, really.”

My parents’ house is about a thirty minute drive from our place. On the way we stopped at Book Nook to buy some overdue birthday presents for Ted, who had turned 30 the week before. Laura picked out “A Cat Lover’s Book of Days,” and I chose a CD of orchestral music by Samuel Barber. Lately on these hot summer evenings we’d been enjoying Barber, in particular “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.” Something hauntingly beautiful about it, especially when it played softly, while in the next room Laura and I made love.

“I hope he likes these,” Laura said. She was wrapping the presents as we drove. “You were so clever to bring along the paper and tape. So ... what’s the word? Perspicacious? Precipitous? Pre ... Prah...”

“Prescient?” I had the feeling Laura was putting me on. No one knows words like Laura.

She laughed. “I’m not sure ‘prescient’ is right,” she said. “Anyway, it’s such a silly sounding word. It makes me think of ‘prissy.’ Like it’s still dripping and smug with satisfaction. Yes, a little silly and maybe a little naughty.”

“Naughty?”

“You know, like a teenaged boy getting an erection in church.”

“What do you know about teenaged boys getting erections in church?”

“Nothing really,” Laura said, and she laughed again. “Look, all wrapped up. Didn’t I do a good job?”

“Good job!” I agreed. I reached over and stroked her bare leg just above the bare knee. The skin was cool. The leg long and firm and smooth to the slow sweep of my fingers. “Great job,” I said a few moments later as my fingertips inched under the hem of that frisky skirt or frock or whatever it was, curled under her panties, and slid into the slippery wet slot. “Great, great job.”

“Mmm,” Laura purred. She put her hand on top of mine and pressed gently, helping me move in and up, and in a few minutes we were rewarded by the several succinct spasms.

“You’re so bad,” Laura said. “Do you think maybe we can stop at a McDonald’s for some ice cream?”

“I don’t know if there’s one on the way,” I said, “but I seem to remember a Dairy Queen somewhere around here if you like.”

“Yes, please,” Laura said. “One of your old high school haunts?”

“Not really,” I said. “Maybe once or twice. I liked the dipped cones. I think they had three toppings. Chocolate, fudge, and caramel. I thought it was neat the way the topping would harden instantly into a thin shell.” I waited in the car while Laura went in and ordered. The cute young couple in front of her must have asked for something more complicated. They were waiting off to the side rubbing up against one another as the tall boy behind the counter handed Laura her cone.

“Want a taste?” Laura offered as she seated herself next to me in the car. I let my tongue lap up the slope of sweet white custard.

“Good, huh?” Laura said, between expert licks. “Want another?”

“No, thanks,” I said, pulling out of the lot. Surreptitiously I let my fingers brush beneath my nose. The mix of Laura’s sex scent with frozen custard wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.

“What are you thinking?” Laura asked. “You have a funny smile.”

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “I was just wondering how come you didn’t get a dipped cone.”

“I like my ice cream plain,” Laura said. “Nothing to get in the way of the pure goodness.” She took another lick, letting her tongue linger on her upper lip afterwards. “If you wanted dipped you should have gotten your own.”

Five blocks from here to my mom and dad’s house. As Laura licked her cone, I felt at peace. Contented. But also aroused.

“Is Ted’s girlfriend still trying to be an actress?” Laura asked. Though Laura had not yet met Nell, she’d seen her in the movies, an extra in the background of a Woody Allen film.

“I think so,” I said. “It’s not easy.”

“Mmm,” Laura said. “She’s really beautiful, isn’t she? With the long red hair you like so much.”

“I just saw her the once,” I said. “In real life.”

“Plus in the condom dream.” Laura grinned at me and took a big taste from her cone, nipping into the rounded top.

“You’re not going to mention the condom dream to anyone.”

Laura smiled an ice cream smile as I turned into my parents’ driveway.

If I have an interesting dream I usually share it with Laura. Maybe sharing this one was a mistake. It took place on the top floor of a New York City high rise. Laura and Nell were sitting on the windowsill blowing soap bubbles out over the city. “Don’t you just love the sound when they pop?” Laura had said in the dream.

“I like it best when they last a long time,” Nell had told her.

Then Ted had come in. “Oh, bubbles,” he’d said. “Can I blow some, too?”

“Sure,” Laura told him. “But first you have to lie down.”

“And take off your clothes,” Nell added.

When Ted was naked Nell and Laura fit the condom over his penis.

“There,” Laura said.

“There,” Nell agreed.

Together they began stroking, and it wasn’t long before creamy bubbles began filling the condom.

“So much,” Nell exclaimed. “We don’t want it to burst.”

Nell and Laura together eased the condom from Ted’s erupting penis, and with a nifty twist, Laura tied the condom off.

“Do you have another?” Nell asked.

“I don’t think so,” Laura said.

“Then I’ll just have to... “ and expertly Nell mounted herself upon Ted’s pulsing member. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “Feels like hot custard. The kind they feed babies. It tickles.”

Laura laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” Nell said. “When I get filled up you’ll have to take over.”

The dream had ended there. “Where were you while all this was going on?” Laura had wanted to know.

“Working the dream camera, I guess,” I’d replied.

At Mom and Dad’s Nell and Ted were in the backyard fussing with Dad’s grill. Sunlight streamed through the tall trees and danced in Nell’s wildly red hair.

“Hi,” Laura said, introducing herself. “I’d shake hands but I just had a Dairy Queen and I’m a little sticky.”

“Me, too,” Nell said. “Not Dairy Queen, but my hands are full of charcoal smudgings.” She showed us her palms. “Ted may be a great lighting designer, but he doesn’t know beans about building a good fire.”

Then Nell and Laura shook hands anyway, and Ted squirted lighter fluid into the grill—a lot more than necessary, I thought. “You’ll drown it,” I said, and Nell and Laura both laughed, and Nell said “Nice outfit” to Laura as they strolled towards the house. I had the uneasy feeling that Laura would tell her about my condom dream.

But over supper the talk was of spiders and poison ivy. My mom was telling us about some neighbors who found a bunch of black widows in their garage.

“Ooh,” Laura shivered, “Black widows.”

“Black widows are very shy,” I said.

“You’re thinking of the Brown Recluse,” my dad said. “For most people the bite of a black widow is not especially dangerous, not much worse than poison ivy.”

“Dad, the spider expert,” Ted said.

“No,” my dad informed us, “but an uncle of mine wrote an important book about spiders. A field guide.” I remembered that little pocket manual. As a small boy I’d spent hours looking at the illustrations.

“I think I’d rather get poison ivy than be bit by a spider,” Laura said.

“Poison ivy is no picnic,” my mom said. “When I was a girl I got some on my hands from grabbing this vine pulling myself up an embankment. It itched like crazy.”

“What were you doing in an embankment?” I wanted to know.

“Just hiking with your dad,” my mom said.

“I had poison ivy, too,” Nell said.

We all looked at her.

She was blushing, or maybe it was just a trick of her red hair.

“I was a Brownie,” she said. “I was in the woods on a campout and I had to go. I used the leaves as toilet paper. I didn’t know. I thought I was being resourceful.”

“City girls!” my dad scoffed.

“That must have been horrible,” Laura said. “What did you do?”

“I don’t remember very well,” Nell said. “Probably spent a lot of time in the bathtub.”

“I wish I could have been there,” Ted said. “I’d have kissed it and made it better.”

“This is really good chicken,” said my mom.

After dinner Ted opened his presents. “A Cats Book of Dogs!” he exclaimed, “Just what I always wanted.”

“‘Days’ not ‘Dogs,’” Nell corrected, and they laughed and kissed, and then Dad took Laura to the library to hunt for the spider book, and Ted and Nell went for a little walk. I helped my mom load dishes.

“I hope you don’t mind that I’m putting Nell in your old bed,” my mother told me. “Not that I expect ... Do you think she made that up about the poison ivy?”

“Well, she is an actress,” I said, “And it does sound a bit like one of those urban legends to me. Maybe she was feeling left out. Or maybe...”

“Your Laura would never make up anything like that,” my mom said.

A few moments later Ted and Nell returned.

“That was quick,” I said. “How was the nature walk?”

“Fine,” Nell said.

“I was hoping to get in some poison ivy practice,” Ted said, “But we couldn’t locate any ... so, um, we had to make do.”

“There’s a bell concert tonight,” my mom said. “The new carillon at the park. I’ve heard they’re supposed to be very good.”

“A bell concert,” Laura said. “That sounds neat.”

My dad preferred to stay home. I took my mom in our car, and Laura went with Ted and Nell and the chairs and blankets. We met up in the paved lot above River Park. You could see the trim green meadow across the river and the tall bell tower gleaming in the sunset. “It’s beautiful,” Laura said.

“It looks out of balance to me,” I told her. “Off kilter. Not quite symmetrical.”

“Everything doesn’t have to be symmetrical,” Laura said.

“I think the twist is nice,” Nell said.

“Nice?” I queried.

“A little disturbing,” Laura said. “A little ... provocative.”

“Ah,” I said. “Like an itch. When it comes to bell towers I prefer purity.”

“Speaking of itches, I wonder if that’s poison ivy growing along the walls,” Ted said. He handed me the trio of lawn chairs and promptly patted Nell on her pretty bottom.

“Be cheaper than all these guard dogs,” I speculated.

“There do seem to be a lot of loose dogs,” Ted observed. His palm was smoothing more than patting now.

“They seem well-behaved,” Laura said.

“They’re having a whole series of concerts in honor of the new tower,” my mother offered, as if that explained the dogs. “Tonight is an Englishmen. He’s supposed to be the best.”

Many people were making their way into the meadow. The older folks carried canvas slings which unfolded with nimble precision into sturdy lightweight lawn chairs. The younger concert goers preferred blankets and beach towels.

“There are only about a dozen of these carillons in the whole world,” Ted told us as we strolled towards the base of the tower. “The biggest bell weighs over eleven tons, and its name is Big Joe. All together there are over six octaves of bells.”

“Do all the bells have names?” Laura wanted to know.

“The rest are probably called Little Joe,” I said.

“You think the bells are all boys?” Laura said with a smile.

“Joe could be short for Josephine,” Ted said.

We joined Nell and my mom, who had found a spot not quite in the middle of the meadow just beyond the tip of the tower’s shadow.

“Anyway, I think the tower is really quite something,” Laura said. “Very...”

“Phallic?” Ted said.

Laura grinned. Ted and Nell kissed and spread out their blankets and kissed again. My mother and I sat on lawn chairs just behind them, and Laura sat on the edge of Ted and Nell’s blanket.

“Isn’t it a beautiful sky?” Laura pointed out. “Nothing but the purest, deepest blue and a big round moon.”

“Perfect,” Ted said.

“And the dogs are so very well behaved,” Laura said. “Look at those over there.” To our left two small well-groomed dogs were sitting peacefully, one in the lap of an older woman, the other by the feet of her companion, an older man. The dogs were looking at us. “Don’t they look like the kind that won the Westminster Dog Show?” Laura asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “Which one?”

“Both of them.” Laura let her head rest peacefully against my knee. Ted was lying on his back looking up at the sky, his hands behind his head. Nell was curled next to him, her head on his belly. Orange sun swirled in her red hair.

“Lots of children,” my mom said.

It was true. Dogs and children all over the place. The neighbors to our right had two children, a boy and a girl. The little girl lay between her mother’s legs nuzzling against the beginnings of a nap. The boy was sitting next to his dad playing with a white toy truck while the father read a paperback book titled Lying in Bed. “What does pucelage mean?” he asked his wife, who was reading, too—a volume thick and scholarly, it appeared: Episcatory Dictums in the Age of Ylem. She sighed and twisting towards her husband said something too soft for me to hear. On the back of her thigh a small pale scar, perhaps a thorn scratch, crept upward and inward, disappearing under her shorts, and I couldn’t help but wonder how far it went, whether it brushed the innermost skin inches or less from the shy petals of her sex. My erection sprang up sharp and strong, and of course Laura noticed. I shifted a little in my chair, hiding myself from my mother’s view.

“Virgin,” Laura whispered.

“What?”

“Pucelage. It means virgin.” And she touched me briefly, softly, almost inconsequently on the bowed front of my shorts. The jolt was indescribably intense. Hastily I glanced at the young woman. The little girl was rearranged between her mother’s legs, the small scar now out of sight. The mother stroked the girl at the nape of her neck, the gentlest touch, and with her other hand she managed to turn a page in her book. I wondered who or what ylem was. I thought about asking Laura, who knows stuff like that, but instead I watched the little girl’s restlessness; she just couldn’t get comfortable. “Do you want to roll down the mountain?” her mother asked her. The little girl shook her head. “It’s okay,” the woman said, “All the kids are doing it. Randy will take you. Randy, take your sister to roll down the mountain.” Dutifully the little boy got up and took his sister’s hand, and they set off towards the hill at the left edge of the meadow where now I noticed perhaps two dozen children of various ages rolling and tumbling down the slope. I turned my glance back to the young mother, and she smiled at me, set her book down, and took her husband’s hand. Laura was kissing my knee and her hair whispered upon the top of my leg, and her fingernail traced a slow line under my thigh about where the woman’s scar would be. My erection, which had started to subside, freshened. I was sure the woman could see.