Chapter 28: Marla Trolls For Fish

The next day I went off to work again before hapkido class. Marco’s father was there, as he was several times a week, behind the register. He greeted me in Spanish, and I answered him respectfully in the same language. He beamed. I was realizing that people took an effort by non-natives to learn their language very seriously, and it could open a lot of doors.

As I cleaned and stacked and swept, part of me was listening to the rapid discussion between Marco and his father. This part was hard for me, grasping the meaning of the conversation when it was spoken so quickly, as it was in normal conversation. I lost the thread quickly, and I certainly couldn’t speak as fast yet.

But over the course of some time, maybe a week or two, I found myself better able to follow the conversational ping-pong ball, missing only the occasional word that either I had not yet learned, or had misunderstood because it was spoken with the accent of Marco’s regional dialect, which he reverted to when talking with his father.

I really needed to experiment with other languages to try to determine if this was some natural gift for language, or some manifestation of a new part of my talents. No denying it was useful, but I needed to understand it.

My summer felt a bit more structured that it had last year, when I had had no direction, no place I had to be, no one I had to see, just wait and see what the day brought. Now I had this part time job, and hapkido class, and the reading I had been doing in Spanish and calculus. It gave structure to most of the day, but there was still time left in the evenings and on weekends.

I wasn’t spending as much time with Jeffy and Frankie because, well, I had all this other stuff on my plate. Jeffy, of course, spent most of his day planning how to get into Marla’s pants. Her parents were not helping, being rather restrictive in what she was allowed to do and with whom.

But to hear Jeffy tell it, they had found someplace quiet and had spent an instructive few minutes feeling each other up, ending with both of them really frustrated. But they did it again the next time they were together.

Frankie called me at home one evening and told me they were planning a swimming party and picnic at Parker’s Pond on Saturday, why didn’t I come. Jeffy had said he was going to bring Marla. Her parents were okay with her going out with a group of people in a public place during the daytime. So Jeffy would get to see Marla in a bathing suit, and contemplate what was underneath.

I had nothing planned, so I called Karen and asked if she’d like to go, too, but she had already made plans to go shopping with her mother. Damn, I would have liked to see her in a bathing suit. But in the end I decided to go anyway, just to keep in touch with my friends.

On Saturday I packed some sandwiches and chips and a few sodas in my backpack, along with a towel and a jacket, and bicycled over there. There were already a few people gathered and I caught up with what was happening in their lives.

After a few minutes, we stripped to our bathing suits and jumped in with much splashing and shouting. It was nice to get together with the folks I had spent so much time with growing up over the past few years.

As I clambered dripping out of the pond and grabbed my towel, Jeffy arrived with Marla on his arm. He looked like the cat who ate the canary, as smug and proud as I’d ever seen him. Marla, who I remembered when I saw her, had gotten cute in the past year or so. She’d filled out nicely, good legs and a nice butt. Jeffy kept stealing glances at her.

Another group of people had arrived and were clamoring about getting in the water, so Jeffy talked Marla into going in, too. She peeled down to the bathing suit she had on under her clothes, and she was hot in a way.

She exuded a kind of feral sexuality, though she didn’t have the large tits and full lips most guys associate with ‘hot’ women. But she knew she was attractive and she was almost posing, looking for admiration. A lot of girls do that once their bodies have developed and they realize the effect they now have on boys. And men.

So she and Jeffy jumped in and started splashing each other and everyone else, occasionally grabbing each other and laughing, while they each got a surreptitious feel under the water. Soon they came out again and dried off. Jeffy used his towel as a means to get dry, as most of us did.

She used the towel as a prop to pose for everyone, leaning this way to emphasize her bust, and that way so that her butt stuck out and wiggled. Unlike the other girls there, she was subtly but consciously displaying herself. I found it odd.

Jeffy came over with Marla in tow. He said, “Tom, do you remember Marla?” She smiled and took my hand.

“Now that I see you close up, I do remember you. You’ve changed a lot since the last time I saw you. But I guess we all have. Anyway, nice to see you again.”

She said thank you, and made a brief comment about the last time we’d met. And I realized I was getting a buzz from her. She was not just aware of my presence, she was focused on me, assessing me, cataloging me. This is strange.

Jeffy pulled her away to grab a soda and some chips, while I watched her out of the corner of my eye. And I noticed that she was doing the same with every other guy there. Checking them out, filing them away somewhere. And presenting herself for inspection to them.

She’d stand up a little straighter, subtly stick out her chest and wiggle her ass, and smile brilliantly. I was getting a bad feeling about this.

I put the thought aside for awhile while I joined a group of people I’d known in middle school and we reminisced about hated teachers and funny things that had happened. I noticed Jeffy and Marla wandering off into the brush. Probably going to forage for mushrooms and other edibles. Not.

After twenty minutes or so, they wandered back, Jeffy looking a little flushed, and Marla looking smug. They went for another swim.

I was still chatting with my middle school group when Jeffy and Marla came over carrying their bags. “Time to eat, I think, Tom. You bring something?”

I said I had, and now that he had brought it up I realized that I was hungry, so I went and got my backpack with my food and went back to sit with them. She started talking with Jeffy but I was aware that she was including me in the conversation, and as the minutes passed I saw that she was talking more to me, asking me about my math interest and my summer job.

As she talked about something she was going to do later in the summer I took a glimpse into her epicenter, just to confirm or negate my suspicion. I wasn’t entirely wrong. She wasn’t just flirting, she was assessing every guy here as a possible sexual partner, cataloging them by attractiveness, build, the size of their dicks based on what she could discern beneath their suits, and so on.

As I looked around more inside I saw that Marla had recently discovered sex, and found that she really liked it, and the more of it she had, the more she looked for it. She liked it for how it made her feel, and for the power it gave her over boys. She loved being admired and lusted after, of being the object of desire for scores of guys. And even while she was dating Jeffy and telling him how handsome he was, she was putting out hooks for other guys.

She was still a virgin, I read there, but not for lack of trying. She hadn’t been able to find a place where she could get naked with a guy and get it over with. She’d done handjobs and blowjobs (not Jeffy, some other guy), and she’d been fondled and fingered and rubbed, even a finger in her ass. Lots of different guys.

She liked all of it indiscriminately, just hadn’t been fucked yet. But it was only a matter of time, maybe days or weeks, depending on when she could find an hour alone with someone.

If Jeffy knew about this, it would break his heart. He had a virginal image of her in his head, that she was sweet and shy and inexperienced and liked only him. He would not believe that this current Marla existed if I were to tell him. I was angry at her for treating him like this, but she couldn’t really help the way she was. I really needed to study some psychology when I got to college to try to understand what drove certain people to be the way they are.

The sun would be going down soon, so I decided I’d try one more swim before the air got too cool. Some of the guys had collected some brush and driftwood and were prepping a campfire on the shore. I jumped in the water which was still warm, swam a ways, then floated on my back. I heard Marla asking Jeffy if he wanted to swim, but he said he’d had enough.

“Well, I’m going to go in,” she said, and waded out till it was waist deep and then swam. She wasn’t blatant about it, but after swimming around for awhile she moved toward me, as if by accident. When she got up near me, she exclaimed, “Fancy meeting you here!” Clever repartee, designed to set the victim at his ease before she pounced for the kill.

“I’m a little tired,” she said, “do you mind if I hold on to you while I catch my breath?” I said sure, go ahead, but at the same time I checked into her epicenter to see what was going through her devious little head. Ah, that’s not good.

She had heard the rumor, third-hand, of my super-sized appendage, and now wants to verify it first hand, so to speak. She is looking for a suitable candidate to help her lose her virginity in an emphatic manner, making a statement by selecting a suitably large dick. She will be disappointed if it ever got to that.

She’s chatting on about how much she loves summer when she can go swimming and work on her tan wearing almost nothing in the back yard. I was still floating on my back and she had one hand on my arm and one on my thigh, while treading water. My crotch is under the water, but she’s trying to catch a glimpse.

I have never tried this, but if ever there was a time, it is now. All my tricks with linkcasting and channeling to date have been for one purpose, getting laid, and making sure my partner enjoyed the experience. I am going to try to convince her not to get laid, except with Jeffy. I don’t really know how to approach this.

This is almost the opposite of what I normally do. I want to suppress her desire, except for one specific guy. I want her to find him the most attractive and sexually interesting. When she thinks about other guys, she gets bored, loses interest, and goes back to thinking about that hunk, Jeffy. You can see how difficult a task this was. I like Jeffy, but he’s a nice guy, not a hunk.

And the other part of this was that these linkcasts don’t last forever. I still didn’t know how long they remain in effect because I’ve never had the opportunity to check. I didn’t even know if I could make this work when the object of her desire is to be someone else. It’s always been me that I’ve been working for in the past.

All I can do it try. First I linkcast her a sudden insight, her feminine intuition letting her know that I was seriously involved with someone and would not cheat on that someone. Then I created an image of Jeffy overlaid on that of Brad Pitt, and I permeated it with a sense of someone who cared about her and who had great potential as a sexual partner, willing to please her any way she wanted, and linkcast that to her. I followed that immediately with a channeled lick to the clit which I hoped she would associate with the thought of Jeffy/Brad.

That’s it, that was all I could come up with on the spur of the moment, I was out of further ideas. If this didn’t work, Jeffy was going to be moping around for the rest of the summer.

I told her, “I’m getting cold. Race you back to the shore!” I took off and heard her behind me trying to catch up. She was very efficient in the water, better than me, and she got to shore first by half a length, even though I started first. Jeffy was there, cheering her on, and said, “She’s a good swimmer, isn’t she?”

I agreed that she was. I dried off and put on my jacket against the approaching chill of the evening. The guys had started a fire and I was glad to get close to it. Jeffy found a spot on a log near the fire and sat down, Marla close to him. I kept an eye on her to see what she would do. It was impossible to make a connection so I could inspect her epicenter until she focused on me, so I’d have to wait.

But I did notice that she leaned up against him to get warm, and eventually let him put his arm around her, and take her hand with his free one.

We sat all by the fire companionably as it got darker. Somebody started telling jokes, bad sixth-grade jokes, which were so uniformly childish and awful that everybody laughed nostalgically.

Jeffy said to me, “Hey, Carter, what’s your work schedule again, in case I want to hang out?” I told him, but that brought Marla’s focus back to me and I could set up a connection and check in her epicenter.

It was ... fuzzy, confusing, and filled with a sense of lust and possibilities, and also disorientation. She still had this attraction to guys, all guys, as potential means to satisfy her erotic curiosity and desire, but now it kept coming back to Jeffy, sitting next to her, who wasn’t even on her radar an hour ago except as a convenient placeholder.

She was still horny and, surprise, was thinking about that tongue on her clit that she imagined and wondering what Jeffy’s tongue would feel like.

Well, that was about as good as I can hope for now. I felt like I was holding his relationship together with duct tape and baling wire. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it might be enough to get them through another couple of days.

Jeffy excused himself to go take a leak in the woods. He didn’t say that, but all guys knew that’s what you’re going off to do when you excused yourself like that.

I got up and stretched and twisted to work out some of the kinks, and started collecting my stuff. I wandered up the trail, moving slowly, until I saw him heading back to the shore.

“Jeffy, I’m heading out. I’m tired.”

“Okay. What’d you think of Marla? Hot, huh?”

“Yes, she is, very. Play your cards right and tonight may be the night. I wouldn’t wait too much longer before you make your big move. I think she’s ready.”

“You do? I wasn’t sure. I felt like maybe she was having second thoughts or something.”

“Listen, man, I think I know what she’s looking for. She wants someone with an aura of sexual experience who can show her the way. You need to be confident without being too aggressive. Show no doubt. Act like you know this is what she wants, but get her to agree so she’s signed on. You have a condom with you?”

“No, I didn’t bring one because I was sure I wouldn’t get to use it.”

I took out my wallet and removed one of the condoms and handed it to him.

“Thanks, Carter, I hope you’re right.”

“Me, too. Let me know what happens. But tomorrow’s Sunday, so not too early, huh?”

He headed back to his dream girl. I found my bike and headed home. I silently wished him luck. Even if he was successful, I didn’t foresee this lasting much longer, but it would be easier for him to get dumped if he scored first. And that’s what she wanted to do anyway.

I got home around ten, still wearing my wet trunks which were starting to feel a little clammy, so I took a quick shower which made the world look more reasonable. I flopped on my bed and tried to read, but kept coming back to Jeffy and Marla.

At least I learned something tonight. To a limited extent, I didn’t know how much yet, I was able to influence one person’s thoughts about another person, not me. But again, that only worked if I could set up a connection, so I could linkcast. I was going to have to come up with some real data about linkcast longevity. I’d have to figure out a way to test that.

I gave the book another few minutes, but finally gave up. My mind was too distracted, so I got under the covers and went to sleep, thinking about what Karen would look like in a bathing suit.

The swimming must have tired me out, because I slept like the dead and awoke a little after nine, feeling uncharacteristically energetic. Coffee and a donut made it even better.

I took my second cup and another donut out back and sat in one of the aluminum lounges and contemplated the infinite until I heard Jeffy’s squeaky bike pedaling up the driveway in a spray of gravel.

“Over here, Jeffy.” He ran up and grabbed another folding chair and planted it right next to me and facing me. I could tell from the satisfied grin on his face what he was going to say, but you should never spoil the telling of the story. He just needed a little something to grease the skids.

I looked at him. “Speak, young Lochinvar.”

He looked confused, but spoke anyway. “Carter, from now on, when I need to figure out a difficult problem, I’m just gonna come to you first. You were so right, man! She was looking for someone with confidence in their abilities, she wanted to be convinced, and it didn’t take much convincing.