Chapter 13

"That was a good evening," Jason said to Vicky as he drove the pickup back across town late that evening. "Those two are just as crazy as all the stories."

"Yeah," Vicky said in a rather subdued voice. "And believe me, you haven't heard all the stories. You've just heard very mild versions of some of what happened at college."

"I sort of suspected there were some things I wasn't hearing," he nodded. "And what I heard tonight was wilder than anything I've ever heard about your time up there."

"In a way it was the high point," Vicky sighed. "And, at the same time, the low point. That bondage party, for example. That ground at me for years, it took me a while to admit it."

"It sounded like you had a good time," Jason said softly, suspecting he was getting near a touchy spot.

"I did have a good time at the time," she said. "Let's not get into the morning after, or the recriminations. Shit, I don't know how to describe it, but it really put me in my place."

"I don't understand," he said gently from the darkness behind the wheel.

She shrugged her shoulders and slid a little closer to him, although the seat belt held her back. "Look at it this way," she said. "You remember that I was a pretty popular kid in high school? A cheerleader, homecoming queen, lots of highs, lots of good times, right?"

"I saw some of that," he admitted quietly. "Toward the end, Christine was getting pretty bad, so I didn't see all of it, but still, yeah, you had a good time in high school."

"Like Emily, probably the best time of my life," she sighed. "So, I go off to college, figuring the good times are going to continue. I mean, I went out for cheerleading there, but when the time came to choose the squad, the girls picked were the skinny ones with big boobs. I was better at it than most of them, but I didn't have that tits-on-a-stick figure, so I was screwed before I started."

"I remember your mother saying you were pretty disappointed," Jason said gently as he slowed to turn a corner.

"Yeah, I was damn disappointed," she said. "That was strike one. So I figured I could still be popular, go to parties, hang out with people, get involved with clubs, be very socially active. Maybe it wouldn't quite be the rah-rah-peppy-cheerleader stuff it was in high school, but I could still have a good time. That didn't last very long -- I got stuck with the world champion wet blanket for a roommate."

"Melissa?"

"Yeah, she was short and fat and had a million zits," Vicky sighed. "She was a serious Christian, proud of it, proud of her virginity, and planned on keeping it for marriage, and she was damn determined to not let me have any fun just in case there was a chance she might somehow get polluted in the fallout." She was silent for a moment, then continued, "The first night we were at orientation, the day Dayna and Sandy met, and within an hour they were down in the lounge busking the crowd. Less than an hour after the first time Melissa and I met she was having a shit fit at me because I wanted to hang around and watch my friend play that sinful music."

"Oh, shit," Jason shook his head, "I get the picture."

"Yeah," Vicky sighed. "In time she loosened up. I've come to realize she was nervous, and that was how she reacted, trying to control her space. But in those first few days when everyone was making new friends and testing their space, I had to be pussyfooting around to keep her from blowing up in my face, and she could throw some really screaming shit fits. Dayna and Sandy got asked to play this mixer dance the first night; they made their reputation around campus right there. I got yelled at because I wanted to actually go to a dance in the first place. I went anyway, and really got yelled at when I got back. It was all I could do to keep from using my dirk on her, and I had it in the room with me. Oh, and she had a shit fit about that, my actually keeping a real knife hanging on the wall. Not a pocket knife or something, but a real weapon. So, hell, I realized I was going to have to back off to keep the peace. That was strike two."

"I could see how that could pull you down. You couldn't change roommates?"

"Oh, hell no, the administration considered it to be part of the socialization experience, the assholes. So, what happened was back in high school, I was one of the popular kids, went to the parties and the games and other social activities, while Dayna really was kind of a wallflower, this being before anyone realized she was really good with a guitar. We got to college, and Dayna was the one who was going to all the parties and hanging out with the guys. Me, if a guy happened to call our room, Quickdraw Melissa would land on the phone so quick it wasn't funny, and if it was a guy she'd hang up on him. I got so goddamn jealous of Dayna out screwing around it wasn't funny."

"So you didn't have much fun, then?"

"Oh, some," she shook her head. "But I paid the price. Dayna knew what was going on, of course. I guess I'd put her down a little in high school, you know how it is, and though I honestly think now she was being a good heart about inviting me to some places -- go along with her and Sandy -- at the time I thought it was just payback. I didn't often take her up on it, partly because I knew Melissa would have a shit fit, but some because I felt like Dayna was rubbing my nose in the fact she was the popular one now." She was silent for a moment before she continued. "The only reason I'm still friends with Dayna is that I finally came to realize that it just didn't matter to her, she was marching to her own drummer and really trying to help, but that didn't come to me right away."

"You look at things differently after a while," Jason said, more to try and fill a blank space in the conversation than anything else.

"Yeah," she sighed. "So, I got home after my freshman year, back to good old Bradford, and I was really bummed out, and wanted to play catch-up to balance off that really crummy year. So here I was, things were dead as always. So finally, out of sheer goddamn frustration, one night after I'd been home a couple weeks I called up John Engler and asked him if he'd like to do a movie or something. Now John was a nice guy in his way and still is, but it was pretty well understood around the class that the only reason he'd go out with a girl was if he thought there was a good chance to get into her panties. For me to call him up and suggest we go out to a movie was the same to him as saying I wanted to get laid so bad it wasn't funny. Well, I did, and we did."

"I knew you were going out with him some," Jason said quietly. "But that was the summer after Christine died, and I wasn't paying attention to much. I guess I was just glad you were having a good time."

"Oh, we had a good time," she smiled. "I don't know if the folks knew just how good a time we were having, but we did." She shook her head and continued, "Jason, I don't know if I ought to say this, but I've never told anyone much about it except for a little outline, but if there's anyone I can tell, it's you. Like I said, John had this reputation among the guys for getting laid a lot. There were, uh, two or three girls, I'm not naming names, who kind of hinted he wasn't all he was cracked up to be. They, uh, they were right, but it seemed like they were the kind of things that would get better with practice. So, we practiced. A lot. I mean, we tried just about everything in the books we could do, mostly at this little summer cabin his folks had on a little lake outside Fremont."

"Making up for lost time?" Jason grinned as he pulled into the driveway and hit the garage door opener.

"Well, yeah, but it was an education in itself, and when you get down to it I've never had such intensive or enjoyable sex before or since. We literally had a ball, we more or less conquered his problem, and we made good use of it. Now, you have to understand, this wasn't a romance, it was get together and screw. We never promised each other anything more than that. I think maybe I had the idea in the back of my head it might turn into something else, but that really wasn't what I was trying to do," she said as Jason drove into the garage, shut off the pickup's engine, and hit the opener to close the door. The light came on, and he could see she was looking rather downcast, but said nothing, figuring this was something she needed to talk out. He'd never heard much of this before, only how lousy college had been, never the real reasons why.

"Now, he'd been going to Eastern and he just hated it there," she continued. "What he said was it was right next to U of M; you had all these Michigan types running around looking down their noses at the Eastern kids, and I guess he had a roommate who Melissa would have gotten along with just fine. So, he wasn't going back, he'd already worked out a deal to transfer to Wayne State. Like I said, we hadn't made any real promises, but I guess I was thinking absence makes the heart grow fonder, and as soon as he wasn't getting laid regularly he might be interested in getting a little closer. As it turned out, he was walking across campus one day and ran across Mandy Paxton; she'd been one of the girls he'd had some fun with in high school. The story I heard was they had a cup of coffee for old times' sake, and they wound up in his little apartment off campus. She was real impressed he'd cleared up his old problem, and the next thing anyone knew they were living together. I'd guessed wrong; if I'd really wanted to keep him I should have transferred, too. But then, maybe I guessed right as she divorced him about the same time I divorced Augie. I still don't know very much about why. I'll guarantee you this, though: she got a hell of a lot better sex while it lasted than I did."

"And you're the reason why," he smiled, trying to hold back a snicker.

"Yeah," she said philosophically. "There have been some times I've been sorry about that, but while John can be a nice guy, he can also be a real domineering, anal-retentive perfectionist asshole, so it wasn't a total loss. Mandy did pretty good with him to go almost five years;, he only got a year out of his second wife and four months out of his third. Ems was telling me he broke up with this last girl he was going to marry, so it's just getting worse, not better. But he was just exactly who I needed that summer, and we were good for each other. I'll always be grateful to him for that. But anyway, you can guess I'd had a real attitude adjustment when I went back to school that fall."

"Sounds like it," he said quietly. "But you were back with Melissa again, right?"

"Right, but it was different," she said, with a ghost of a smile he could see on her face. "I told her right up front I'd spent my summer on my back, I liked it, and I intended to get more of it that year, and if she didn't like it she could damn well find a different roommate because I wasn't going to put up with her shit. Well, she stormed out of there, but she'd been such an asshole the year before that she couldn't find one person to switch with. I'd pretty well decided to torture her like she'd tortured me the year before." She let out a sigh. "I guess that was something I'd picked up from John, too, which is why I didn't get all that bent out of shape when he wound up with Mandy. Well, I kept my word. I didn't do it lots and lots, just enough to piss her off once in a while to remind her who the boss was. The partying actually started off pretty slow, since Dayna and Sandy were off at renfaires on the weekends for the first month or so, but once they were over with it picked up. Then the bondage challenge thing came up. Dayna came over to our room and explained what was coming down, and of course Melissa couldn't imagine such a thing. But then, Dayna pulled these rolls of duct tape and paper towels out of a bag and we started working out how to do this tie-up she'd dreamed up, and the next damn thing you know Melissa is down there on the floor helping us."