Chapter 14: Ducks in a row

The following morning, as the radio news was telling us that the hot fine weather would finally break today, Wendy and I discussed the situation again, and she offered me some advice. "Get organised, James. Get your ducks in a row. [An interesting choice of phrase.] You can't just lurch from one unforeseen crisis to the next."

It was a sound suggestion. On the way to work I thought about how to implement it. I was very clear that I wanted to sort out the women I had got so far before I thought about capturing any more. It was a crying shame, though. I could see at least two highly fuckable young women in my carriage, but with great restraint I hung around the men and ugly women and got to work safely.

Once in my office I actually managed to get some work done before, as I had expected, there was a knock at the door.

Fran entered. She was transformed from the angry, frustrated woman that had left the office the night before. Her eyes sparkled, she was wreathed in smiles, she broke out at intervals in girlish giggles, and she somehow looked younger than her twenty-two years.

"'Morning Fran. You look well."

She flopped down in the chair and let her hair fall across her face. She blew some of it aside so I could see her expression, and giggled again.

"Oh, James," she sighed, and shot me a dazzling smile, "I feel marvellous. I knew it would be good but I never dreamt it would be like this. I feel ten times the person I was yesterday, I can't stop smiling and laughing, it's just wonderful. I'm so glad you chose me, darling. And as for last night — well, I daren't even think about it, I just go all goose-pimply. Do you know it was ten o'clock before I could even get off the bed?"

I asked her to tell me more about this. These post-coital trances were a consequence of FUCK that I needed to understand.

"Well," she began after a pause to marshal her thoughts, "after we went to bed, er, made love, er —" She hesitated. "James," she inquired, "what do you like to call it?"

"Well, Fran, at least in a private conversation I like to keep it simple and call it 'fucking'."

"Oh yes, of course," she agreed immediately. "That's the best word. I don't know why, but I never liked it before. After we fucked," she resumed, "I couldn't move. My whole body tingled like pins and needles only far more intense and it felt so lovely. My eyes were open but everything was so bright and I couldn't work out what I was looking at. And there was this rushing sound in my ears; I could hear other things, like when you were getting dressed, but they seemed far away. And there was this steady, regular thumping noise, too; I remember trying to think what on earth it could be."

"You were conscious, then?"

"Oh, yes. All the time, I think. I remember you kissed me when you left. I wanted to talk to you, get you to stay, but I couldn't speak or move a muscle. I couldn't even respond to your kiss."

"So after I left, you just lay there on cloud nine?"

"It was cloud ninety-nine," she corrected me with another glorious smile. "It was just bliss, utter bliss, it's the only word. Eventually I realised that the thumping noise was my own heart and slowly my eyes started to focus and the ringing in my ears got quieter, but for quite a while my eyeballs were the only thing I could move. As my feeling started to come back I realised I had some wet sticky stuff between my legs and I could feel it running down onto my bottom but I didn't realise what it was at first. And James, when I started to move, huge dollops of it just kept oozing out of me. When I stood up it ran all down my legs. James, darling, my beautiful James, how do you do that?"

I was taken aback to hear my modest and demure Fran discuss such things with this joyous abandon. Without waiting for a reply, she went on in the same vein. I got the impression she had been thinking about this a lot.