Chapter 10

There wasn't a damned reason in the world why we couldn't stay in Hawaii for three extra days, so we did.

We didn't get to visit many of the tourist traps or restaurants in Honolulu. It was mostly just Room Service and sex. Sally was incredible. It was like being on a honeymoon, although we hadn't mentioned anything about marriage or love — just the fact that this was a whole lot of fun for both of us, Sally had several years of lost youth to make up for, and she was bent on catching up very quickly.

I had been afraid she'd get sore. Hell, I was sore!

When we finally caught a plane three days later for San Francisco, we were warm friends. We ran into some delays at the airport because Sally's only form of identification was her out-of-date passport. On the passport photo, she was a sweet-looking seven-year-old.

Sally's circumstances were duly explained, some telephone calls were made to my father's old law firm, and finally Sally was permitted to board with nothing more than the promise that she'd have her passport renewed before trying to travel anywhere outside the U.S.

In the back of my mind, I worried that I was the only contemporary of Sally's that she'd yet encountered since age eight. Was this fair? Was I taking advantage? How was she supposed to judge young males if I was the only game in town?

Well, we'd worry about that later. For now, we both seemed entirely satisfied with the status quo.

San Francisco is a beautiful city, and although Sally had seen it before as a child, she was duly impressed on her return as an adult. San Francisco hotels would exhaust Sally's trust fund in nothing flat, so I invited her to stay with me temporarily in my apartment. I had room. Besides, neither of us was quite through exploring the Joys of Sex just yet.

The next several days were taken up with legalities. Control of Sally's family trust was turned over to her in accordance with her late parents' wishes. Accepting the advice of the law firm, she arranged to draw down a modest monthly income from it and reinvested the remainder. She would have enough money to attend a state university.

The tuition and residency rates at Stanford would, unfortunately, be somewhat beyond her means. However, I encouraged Sally to visit the University and to apply for scholarship aid. She was amazingly well-educated, considering her unusual upbringing. She was fluent in French, extraordinarily well versed in history, mathematics and English, and was as well-read as a person could be when most of the family library was twelve years out of date.

I imagined that the people at Stanford would find her story a fascinating one, and that her exotic resume might help her to secure scholarship aid. We arranged for her to take the SATs, and (despite some areas where she was disadvantaged by her recent environment) she did remarkably well.

Within a month's time, she received word that Stanford would welcome her fall enrollment, and would afford her a scholarship equal to three-fourths of tuition and fees!

There remained six weeks of summer before the new semester began, and Sally and I spent it productively. I arranged for her to get professional training on a computer and to learn typing and word-processing in preparation for her upcoming formal education.

On our own, we did some home schooling on current (and not-so-current) events in the world since the time of her family's self-imposed exile.

We also got Sally a medical examination, and although she was found to be in perfect health, the doctor nevertheless wrote her a prescription — for birth control.

It was an exciting time. By now, Sally's fears had subsided and she seemed to be enjoying almost every aspect of civilization. I had feared that the crowded streets and the noisy, insistent buzz of the city might be overwhelming for her. It was not. To Sally, everyday life was a trip to Disneyland.

But I was older and (I thought) wiser. I worried about stuff. One of the things I worried about was monopolizing Sally. Oh, I had managed to introduce her to a few casual friends, but I wasn't exactly a social butterfly myself. Most of the young people closest to me were from the law school and most were unavailable for the summer.

So Sally and I remained almost as isolated from the rest of humanity as we had been in our Honolulu hotel. That was fine by me — I'd never had it so good (or so regularly).

But was this the best way, for Sally?

True, I wasn't officially her guardian or her trustee. But I was by far the most influential person in her current life. It was all-too-easy for me to just ... own her.

I arranged for the two of us to have a quiet day at an Oceanside getaway. It was not quite Honolulu, but not bad at all. My principal interest wasn't in recreation. I wanted Sally's full attention while I confronted her with some of my concerns.