Chapter 4

Sabrina called me that night.

"Hi," came her sultry voice. I felt my dick start to stiffen from just that one word.

"Hi yourself," I said lamely.

"We have a little problem," she said softly.

"Name it and I'll fix it," I said. I'm like any man; when he sees a problem he wants to fix it.

Like any woman, when she sees a problem, Sabrina wanted to talk about it.

"We just need to talk," she said.

I felt the pit of my stomach lurch. Could she have tired of me so soon?

"We can't talk face to face, though," she went on.

I figured she wanted to let me down easy... and not deal with the tears and begging and moaning I would do if I was there when she banished me from the tribe.

"Sure we can," I said, my upper lip so stiff that any Englishman would have been proud of me.

"No, we can't," she said. "When I'm around you I can't think properly."

"Oh," I said, stunned.

"But I don't want to talk about this on the phone," she said.

It's just like a woman to say you can't do it this way, and you can't do it the other way, and those are the only two ways of doing it you can think of.

"You want to write me a letter?" I asked.

I know it was stupid. I'm a guy. Cut me a little slack.

"No," she said mournfully. "What are we going to do, Bob?"

I could think of a dozen things I wanted to do with her... to her. Six years of college had pounded enough intelligence into me that I know that wasn't what she was talking about, though.

"Do we have to... do anything?" I asked.

"This is all your fault," she said.

"Of course it is," I said heavily.

"I mean it!" she said, her voice rising. "I was finally getting used to the idea that... well that I didn't have a man in my life... that I didn't NEED a man in my life. And then YOU show up and... and..."

I heard quiet sobbing through the wires. I had wounded the Amazon Warrior princess yet again. I had reawakened something in her that she wanted to leave sleeping.

I made the most intelligent decision of my life, at that point. I'm older now, and I've made a lot of decisions since then. But stack them all up, along with all the decisions I ever made before that, and they pale to insignificance in comparison to the decision I made while I listened to those quiet sobs.

"I'll be right over," I said.

I didn't wait for her to forbid me. I just hung up and grabbed my jacket and hit the front door. I have no idea why I didn't get a ticket on the way over there. Maybe the donut shops were having a end-of-the-day sale or something.

I saw her head through the glass in the door as I stepped up to knock. She got the door opened before I could knock. In a perfect world, I would have swept her into my arms and confessed my undying love for her. I would have overcome her resistance and taken her like a cave man.

But, as I stated before, the world isn't perfect. In those few short moments I had been screaming across town like Mario Andretti, what I had been thinking of was the fact that there were all these other women in my life. And babies. There were all these babies, some newly made, some almost ready to take out of the oven. Sabrina didn't know about any of that, and I knew I couldn't hide that from her. It wouldn't be fair. Not to her. And, strangely, not to the other women. I don't know if it was something in my eyes that told her all was not well, or whether she was still trying to make distance between us. Men don't do well in these situations, generally speaking. For that matter, I didn't know if she was mad at me, or wanted me around. I just knew she was unhappy, and I couldn't let it stay that way. If there was going to be a break, it needed to be clean, so we could both heal afterward.

We made it to the living room without saying anything to each other. she sat me down on the couch, just like she had before, and sat angled toward me, not touching me, just as she had before.

"I told you not to fall in love with me," she finally said.

"I'm trying not to," I said. I wanted to delay the end as long as I could.

"Now I've gone and fallen in love with you," she sighed.

Gridlock. Mental gridlock. Deer-in-the-headlights-frozen-solid-and-can't-think mental gridlock. Hearing her say that was like being in the middle of an orgasm, except that all of my body was involved in the feeling, instead of just my groin.

Then, suddenly I could move again. I stood up and did the Snoopy dance, right in front of her. I think I chanted "YES!... YES!... YES!" while I did it. I stopped, panting, and she was grinning at me.

"You don't think I'm too old for you?" she asked.

"I think you're too beautiful for me," I said foolishly. "I think you're too smart for me. I think you're too much woman for me to ever even THINK about handling." I stood and looked at her. "But I just can't think of you as an... older woman."

"I take it you're not mad at me?" She smiled. "For falling in love with a young single stud who has his whole life ahead of him?"

Despite the thrill of this woman characterizing me as a "stud"... or maybe because of it, her comment brought to mind the life of my recent past... and the life of my future, that I had thought about on the drive over. I sat down heavily.

"There are things you don't know about me," I said. I straightened my shoulders. "Things that may change the way you think about me."

"Are you married, Bob?" she asked, her voice somewhere between steely and diamond hard.

"No, of course not," I said, frowning.

"Well, then, I can't imagine anything that would make me lose interest in you," she said. "Your girlfriend will just have to compete."

"I don't have a girlfriend, I said. "You know that."

"Why don't you just tell me what's bothering you, and then I'll decide... what I'm going to do with you." The pause in her sentence made me a little nervous.

Suddenly it was time. Time to confess how much of an alleycat I was... that I had bedded all those women... impregnated some of them... and then sauntered away from them like a cad.

Suddenly, I wasn't at all eager to make that confession.

"Well? she asked.

"Things happened," I started. "When I was doing interviews, some strange things happened."

She arched an eyebrow. "I'm not the first." It was a statement. She really was an intelligent woman, who could read between the lines.

"Not exactly," I agreed.

"But they were all married," she pointed out. Then she looked startled. "Except I wasn't married. Were there more like me?"

"No," I hastened to say.

"So you had sex with married women... while you were interviewing them."

That diamond was back in her voice. Things were not going well.

"It wasn't like that," I said. "Like I said, the circumstances were very strange."

"I think you need to tell me about those... circumstances," she said. leaning back against the couch. "And quit looking at Bernice and Rhonda until you're done," she added frostily. "That privilege is temporarily suspended."

I hadn't realized I was staring at the twins. I averted my eyes.

I told her about Tanya first. I told her the whole story, and how things happened, and how surprised I was. I finished by telling her how far along Tanya was.

When I quit talking she sat there for a minute.

"That's not so horrible," she said finally. "I mean you did a nice thing for them. I know what it's like not to be able to have children."

So I told her about Todd and Lizzie... and Rachel. She sat there again for a minute thinking.

"So this woman wanted to show herself to a stranger, and her husband thought that was sexy."

"Uh huh," I nodded.

"And the daughter... instead of going out and having sex with some boy... they used you to teach her what it was like?"

"I guess you could say that," I said. I was slightly heartened by her positive slant on things.

"And you don't see them any more?" she asked.

"They wanted to cool things off a little bit, I think," I said.

"Is there more?" she asked. That question didn't sound too positive.

I nodded miserably.

She stood up and paced, her arms folded under Bernice and Rhonda. I looked at her feet.

"Well, go on then," she said, her voice tight.

So I told her about my nudist friends, Kent and Lisa, and about their practice, and about how Lisa teased Kent with me. I gritted my teeth and told her about Nikki too, but made sure that she knew Nikki had a boyfriend.

She paced some more. She stopped, staring at me.

"I suppose that's not the end, yet." she said, tapping her toe.

"Not exactly," I moaned.

"Continue," she ordered.

Suddenly I was the slave again, except this time the slave wasn't being rewarded for anything.

Of course Mildred and Gertie were next. She sat back down, and her mouth sagged open a little as I spun that tale for her. I confess I waxed a bit poetic when describing how backwards that family was... how innocent. I made sure she knew that no one was quite sure who had fathered Gertie's baby. I felt like I was grasping at straws, but it was, after all, uncertain.

This time she just sat there staring at me, and said "Go on," like she just took if for granted there was more.

I was so unnerved that I used Jane and John's actual names when I told her about them. Her eyes widened and she held up a hand.

"I know her!" she said. "We work together in a charity organization."

"Oh," I said.

"I wondered what had happened in her life," mused Sabrina. "We don't chat all that much when we're together, but I knew something must have happened in her life to make her so much happier lately.

So I told the Amazon warrior princess why Jane was so much happier.

When I was done she just looked at me.

"She actually came to your apartment..." she said finally.

I nodded and, wanting to get it over with, launched into the situation with Micky and Susan. She got up and paced again. When I was done she whirled to face me.

"It sounds to me like these women will want to keep seeing you," she said.

"I get the same impression," I said meekly.

"When was the last time?" she asked.

I thought hard. I didn't keep track of such things.

"I don't know, maybe a couple of weeks ago?"

"You can't remember when you made love to two women at the same time?" Her voice rose an octave.

"They're just friends," I said, trying to weasel out of things.

"Friends," she repeated. "Can there possibly be anything else, Bob?"

I looked at the ceiling.

She sat back down.

"Go on," she ordered tersely.

I told her how I had found my brother and sister, and that we were working on trying to be a family again. I tried to get her to understand their taboo relationship... and my part in it... as the result of something very dark and sinister in our past, that was fought off with love.

She sat there a long time, this time, staring at the floor. Finally she looked up at me, question in her eyes.

"That's it," I said softly.

She stood up immediately.

"Thank goodness for that!" she said stridently. "I've had to pee for over an hour!"

She stalked off to the bathroom. I didn't know whether to leave quietly or not. I figured I deserved whatever was going to happen, and that I owed it to her to stay there for the flaying I was sure she was going to administer.

She was gone a lot longer than it takes a woman to go to the powder room.

When she finally came back, she sat down restlessly.

"So, let me get this straight," she started. "You've basically built yourself a harem, of sorts."

"Please, Sabrina," I begged. "It's not like that at all."

"OK, then, you've cast your seed far and wide, and indiscriminately made women pregnant, basically on a whim."

"I didn't PLAN any of this," I objected.

"How many couples did you interview?" she asked heatedly.

"I think the total is almost eighty," I said immediately.

"And you had sex with ten percent of them?" she asked, her voice high again.

I decided not to correct her. Including herself, I had had sex with eleven women. Depending on how you counted that, it could actually be considered more than ten percent.

"I guess so," I said miserably.

"And three of them... the lesbians and your sister... expect you to continue to... see to their needs?"

"Well, there's not actually any formal agreement," I whined.

"What if... Tanya was it? What if Tanya wants to have another baby? Are you going to get her pregnant again?" Her voice was either acid, or caustic, depending on how you wanted to look at it.

I didn't answer and she kept staring at me.

"Well?" she prodded.

"I guess, under other circumstances... I would have been willing to do that," I almost whispered.

"Other circumstances?" she was on it like a Terrier on a rat. "What other circumstances, Bob?"

"I didn't plan on meeting you," I said defensively. "I didn't plan on falling in love with you."

"You didn't plan ANY of this... if you're telling the truth!" she almost shouted.

"NO!" I shouted back. "I DIDN'T!" I calmed down, shocked that I'd yelled at her. "I didn't mean to hurt anybody... I didn't mean to hurt you."

She stood up, tall and strong. She was every bit the Amazon warrior princess at that moment, regal and commanding.

"I think you should leave now, Bob," she said, her voice low.

I slunk out. I didn't look at her. I didn't beg. I just slunk out like the dog I was. I knew, as I left, that I didn't dare glance over at Fred and Martha's house. Martha had warned me what she would do if I hurt Sabrina, and I believed her.

Over the next three days I thought about moving away from all this. I lost interest in the paper, which was only a quarter written. Suddenly I wanted to just stand behind a counter and ask people if they wanted fries with their burger. Someplace in Arizona, maybe. Someplace far away.

But I couldn't do that. I had just found Randy and Kathy, and I couldn't leave them like that.

That's where I broke down and bawled like a baby, while Kathy held me and rocked me back and forth on the couch. I had a month in which the best thing to happen in my whole life had happened - I had actually DONE the Snoopy dance - and the worst thing that could happen had trotted up, panting through bared teeth, and licked my face until I almost couldn't breathe.

Kathy didn't say much to me as I sobbed out the whole story. It was the first time she'd heard the details of my indiscretions too. She just rocked me and said that it would be all right. I stayed there that night, but I slept on the couch.

By day three of my now miserable existence, I had finally gotten up the energy to remind myself that I knew it wouldn't last anyway. She really was out of my class... not like Jane was, but in a similar fashion. I was never fated to be paired with an Amazon warrior princess. I was just a guy, trying to get through college, so he could figure out what to try to get through next. Most of us are that way. We just cope, day to day, and hope things don't get worse. We might make a few plans for the future, but nothing like reaching for the stars. There are those who do that... movers and shakers... but most of us aren't movers and shakers.

I had just sat down and pulled out the notes for the project. I had pen in hand, and was about to continue with writing the paper when there was a knock on the door. For some reason I thought about Geoffrey, the Doe's huge black bodyguard/chauffeur/problem solver.

When I opened the door, it wasn't an African tribal chief who I faced, though.

It was the Amazon warrior princess.

I stood back mutely and she breezed past me, her perfume leaving me weak-kneed. I closed the door. I was so surprised that I didn't even think about what the apartment must look like. I had let both it and myself go to seed a bit over the last three days.