Chapter 6
The odds were against me, I knew that
Statistically, if you read the papers, all American girl were falling on their backs with their legs thrown wide, their cunts spongey and soaked with lubrication au naturel. There were more teenage pregnancies, more girls were losing their virginity earlier than their older sisters, and sex education was in all the schools. It appeared that a guy had nothing to do except go pick it up off the street
What he had better do was to read the statistics a little closer.
Half the girls were fucking, approximately, and of those half about a third were fucking regularly. What did that mean for me, a guy with his equipment ready?
Taking my six girls as the entire female population, it meant that of the six, one and one-third would screw with regularity. The one must have been Bonnie, but I didn't know yet who was the one-third.
But, reading the statistics, it also meant that half of the six, three, would not screw at all until they were married. Despite women's lib, female rights, the collapse of the double standard, half of them would not screw at all.
Bonnie and I had a serious talk when she parked outside the Harmony house that night.
She figured, "June was a virgin, far as I know. She just happened to be a little more ready than Kathy and Anne. They are virgins, too, I think, and I don't imagine they have plans to change that, unless you can change their minds for them. Astra, now she would screw anybody she felt like screwing, but if she wasn't in the mood, forget it. Meredith is funny. She's hard to figure out. I think she got it together with one guy, but he split over a year ago and is up in Alaska or some damn place. She dates a lot, but I don't think she screws. Not since the one guy."
And statistically, the one and two-thirds who might screw but not regularly, would only screw someone to whom they were engaged, or about to be engaged.
Things did not look good for me, despite my roaring start. I had already, in just the first day, picked off two of my targets, and one of them was one of the apparently untouchables.
Bonnie thought I should try another one of the virgins next, since they ought to take longer to crack. She thought I could always pick Astra up on the way out of town on my last day if necessary. If Astra was willing.
I disagreed. I thought Meredith should be next. I thought if I could get the leader on her back and my cock up her cunt that the others might lie down easier. Bonnie thought Anne should be next She thought Anne would be the toughest and would take longer to crack. She thought if I could get Anne that Anne would persuade Kathy for me.
I said, "I don't know, maybe nothing will work. Maybe me statistics are accurate. Maybe I've already gotten the two I am going to get and if I had any brains I'd just settle down with you for the weekend and on Monday pick up my car and get going."
"I'd like to encourage that kind of thinking," she said. "I would like to shack up with you for the whole weekend. The idea of having your good cock fucking me every which way makes my cunt drip right now."
I reached between her legs, slipped my fingers up the leg hole of her little panties, and sure enough her cunt was slimy and sticky. I'd like to have gotten into it again, for pleasure and also to fulfill my promise to fuck her again. I started to pull the waistband down.
She caught my hand. "Don't. You have to save yourself for the plan."
"Look," I said, "statistically I'm only going to get a the most one more of your friends. To hell with it let' fuck."
She kissed my mouth. "Are you ready again so soon?"
"I could come all weekend. I have one hell of a long summer ahead and nothing to fuck except porcupines."
"Are you sure you'll be happy up there, if you get all six of us?"
"I may not be happy, but I'd be happier."
She pressed her hand against mine to drive my finger; further up her cunt. "Fuck me then, just with your fingers. I like that."
My middle finger was already into her to the knuckle, but I slid my forefinger in beside it and started moving them both around in different directions. Bonnie squirmed on them and spread her thighs so I could touch more of her insides. My palm squeezed her hairy mound and my thumb caressed the inside of her left thigh. My two smaller fingers worked their way along the crack of her ass.
She fumbled my fly open, slid her hand inside my pants and wrapped my limp cock with her ringers. It began to surge and she eased it around until it was poking out my fly and beginning to grow as she stroked it. She lowered her mouth over the head and blew me up like a long hard balloon.
She licked the tip and under the head as her mouth closed around it. I felt her lips on the shaft Her saliva began to pour and soaked my cock, and with her lips squeezing tightly she slid back to the tip and then down further until she had half of it in her mouth. My hand kept fucking her cunt while she sucked me and it was almost as if I was fucking her. I think Bonnie would have enjoyed working with two guys at the same time, and maybe a third for her ass. But if she had had all three of those cocks she'd have wanted two more, one for each hand. Bonnie loved cock.
She ate mine as if it was the first decent meal she'd ever had.
I watched the street, but nobody in those little California towns, walks at night so we were not interrupted.
I started enjoying it more and thrust my hips up toward her face. I wondered if she would want me to pull out when I got ready to come. I looked around for something to catch my jism in but saw nothing. I slacked off, wanting her to do the guiding. She did not seem to hesitate but wrapped one hand tightly around the part she could not swallow and started pumping it.
I'd had a lot of fucking in the last couple days and I felt that I could go a decent interval.
I squeezed her mound with my hand. Girls are built with a wonderful handle if you can just get your fingers into them. I lifted her ass that way and she started breathing heavily through her nose. She clamped my wrist with her thighs and I felt her coming. More juices poured over my hand until it started to ooze down my wrist. Spasms seemed to pass along the walls of her cunt. She squeezed harder on my cock, pumped her hand fast up and down. My glans swelled, my penis pumping itself full, my own ass rose up from the car seat. Bonnie had taken the plunge off the abyss and she was going to take me with her.
I let go and flew out into the night air. There was nothing to catch us but we did not care.
I pumped fast with my hips, faster, thrusting my cock into her mouth as she clung to it sucking hard. I felt m) come splash in her mouth. It shot out of me in hard quick spurts and I felt her throat working to swallow it all as my cock swelled more and completely filled her mouth I kept shooting and she kept pumping and her thighs grasped my wrist in a tight vise, a wrestler's hold experienced only by men who have given women a fine strong orgasm that delighted every atom in her body.
We drifted back to the car.
She licked my cock clean. "I'm going to have that again before you leave town."
"Anytime you want it," I said. "It's yours."
The next day, I thought, would make my plan or break it.
I slept until noon. None of the girls, except Bonnie, would have dreamed of fucking before noon anyway. They'd think it not sensitive. Not romantic. So I slept, refilled the pump so to speak, and got up slow and easy and drove the sheriffs nephew's old pickup truck slowly toward Ernie's Service Station.
The girls were all there under the oak tree.
Some pimply-faced adolescent was getting his souped-up old Hudson washed. The jerk had taken everything charming off the car and replaced it with some kind of chrome-streamline junk. I didn't feel sorry for him that the girls didn't stop washing the car to talk to him. He was the kind of guy who would have hung around wishing they would ask him for a date, but if any of the girls had been so foolish he would have blushed from his toes past his wilty little prick to the top of his forehead where his long, modish hair hung in dirty straggles. They collected the two dollars from him and by the time he had whistled at them and started his revved-up motor they were sitting together listening to Astra strum her guitar.
I sat with them and we listened and talked and hummed for about an hour. It was nice to be in the shade, relaxed, with nowhere to go and no desire to go there. June smiled at me a lot but gave no indication to the others about what had happened in her father's garage, so I did not reveal anything myself-simply smiled back at her like I would have done to any pretty girl, not just to one whose hymen I had stretched only a few hours ago.
We talked about the Forest Service, mountain-climbing (it seemed that Meredith liked hiking and often went off alone into the Sierras-I imagined finding her back there and walking naked with her through the meadows until we lay down together among the wild flowers), living on the East Coast, living on the West Coast, how Astra hoped to spend one summer hiking along the Pacific Ocean from Baja to British Columbia (I imagined going with her on that trip, also) and finally we got down to nude beaches.
Kathy surprised everyone by admitting that she had gone to one once. Bonnie looked at me quickly to make sure I had heard the confession. Bonnie probably was thinking that Kathy might not be as hard to crack after all
But Kathy was not the next one. I did not mind, now that I had thought about the statistics. I was ready to tab whichever came next.
When the conversation started to slow down, I thought it was time to separate the herd before they got more car wash business. If I didn't move fast enough I'd be left under the oak tree by myself. I offered to go pick up some Cokes. "Somebody want to come along?"
I looked at Kathy.
Bonnie helped out by telling Anne, "Why don't you take a ride?"
Anne looked shy and shook her head.
I looked at Kathy again and she smiled. I did not think she would be the one, however. When she had told about going to the nude beach she said she had gone there on dare from a girl-cousin from Los Angeles. Neither of them had had the nerve to take off their bottoms, but the did get bold enough to take off their bikini tops for while. And they had been too embarrassed to look the boys anywhere except in the eyes.
Astra got to her feet, lifting her guitar by the neck. "I'll go," she said. She looked at Meredith, the boss. "Do you mind, Meredith? We're not very busy."
Meredith didn't smile, but tossed her long blond hair and pushed it over her shoulders with her fine, tanned fingers. Her lips were so kissable that I wanted to find out all about the guy who had left her for the cold climate of Alaska. He must have been one crazy idiot.
"Don't be too long," Meredith said. "We get busy later on."
"All right," Astra said.
Bonnie laughed when we got into the pickup. "If you're not back in half an hour, I'll go get the Cokes myself."
Bonnie and I made a good team. We could have beaten anybody in a relay race, tag-team, swimming meet, fucking match. I waved at the girls and backed the pickup around. Astra and I went driving off out of town, the grocery store in the other direction.
She strummed as I drove.
"Know any nice private places?" I asked.
"A few. Keep driving."
Her little breasts poked over the top of her guitar. I thought I could make out nipples through the light scarf she wore over them. She looked over at my eyes, then my mouth. Her face was young and smooth, as innocent as a peach that had not quite reached maturity. "I'll tell you where to turn," she said.
"Will you play 'Shenendoah' for me?"
"Sure."
It took us only about fifteen minutes to reach a hidden glen on the river that tumbled out of the Sierras to the ocean a few miles away. It was far enough out of the way, though, that it was unlikely that Sheriff Anderson would catch me swimming naked this time.
Despite her natural inclinations and her attitude, Astra was shy. I undressed by the pickup and put my clothes in the cab, then walked across the small sandy beach and stood with my feet in the cool water. The sun shone on every part of my body and the water was so clear and pure that the sun even shone through it and warmed my feet
Astra stood partly behind a tree to undress. Even though she was shy, she also wanted to be bold, so she stood slightly to one side of the tree so I could watch as she reached behind her back to untie the scarf. She let it fall. Her tits were small things, but even from twenty feet away they looked exciting and perfectly proportioned to her small body. The nipples were strong. She stepped out of her sandals and unbuttoned her cutoffs.
She let them hang open for a moment as if she were posing for some kind of centerfold photograph. Then she face came up and she looked at me standing in the water my eyes on her, my prick hanging soft but thick and long out of the dark patch of my pubic hair, and she gave me a fleeting little smile and let her pants slide off her hips. Almost without moving her body, she let them ease down further until they were free of her hips, and I saw that she wore no panties. I might have been right the other day when I watched her sitting cross-legged playing the guitar and imagined I saw a few wisps of cunt hair.
When I saw her thatch with nothing over it I wanted to bite it It was thick and curly and seemed to wink at me as she walked boldly away from the tree toward the water. Her thighs were as tan as her belly and only a thin white stripe marked where her bikini had protected her crotch from the sun.
We dove into the water together, laughing with relief and pleasure and anticipation of what was to come. It didn't take long.
We swam out as far in the river as we dared before the current would have caught us and dragged us downstream. Then we swam back into the gentle pool and splashed each other, swam around each other, getting closer each time. She splashed me, I splashed her, gently, and we dove under water, our asses flashing like seals in the sun. We started touching hands.
At least we were close enough for me to hold her wet face in both hands with my palms against her cheeks and kiss her lips.
She wasn't finished with tricks, though, and slid her ankle behind my knee and gave me a push. I fell back away, under water.
When I came up, spitting, splashing, she was laughing with her head thrown back, her hair streaming behind her, her teeth gleaming like pearls.
I dove underwater, swam quickly to her before she could get away, and grabbed her by the waist and legs. My head still under water, I pressed my lips against her pubic mound and felt her legs give way as her thighs parted. My hand slid in where my tongue wanted to go. When I stood this time she had no tricks left. She stood in the waist-deep water with my hand caressing her cunt and let me kiss her mouth.
Her own hand found my stomach and slid down to my stiff cock. She pressed it between both palms, then touched my balls where they had drawn up tight against my crotch. Then she slid her hands all the way out to the tip of my cock and brought her other hand against my ass.
I took my mouth away from her lips to ask, "Want to go on the beach?" "Yes, Tim."
Out of the water, I spread a canvas tarp that I found in the back of the pickup. It was about ten feet square and big enough for what Astra and I had in mind. I spread it half under some brush so we would have a place to duck into in case some local yokels came tooling along.
Astra waited patiently until I had smoothed out the corners. Then she kneeled in the middle and held her arms out for me. I brushed sand off my feet before stepping onto the tarp. Astra watched my cock, which had subsided a little from its throbbing state. It did not go down far enough for her sweet eyes to show any disappointment, however, and stood out from my crotch at gentle angle, its head halfway to my knees.
I stood over her for a moment. Astra moved her hand along my legs, her fingers working one after another up the inside of my thighs until they touched my balls. She lay her head against my crotch and her lips brushed the shaft of my cock. She lifted it and once again it surged with blood and strength and need. She rubbed its tough muscle against her soft cheek.
I kneeled to kiss the top of her head, her eyes, her nose, her mouth. My fingers found her nipples and rolled them both, one in each hand, while her hands moved from my crotch to my stomach and back to my balls.
As I eased her onto her back, her knees came up, parting slightly.
I turned and lowered my face into her muff. It was wet from the river and water glistened on each individual hair. When I parted her thighs, her slit came into view and opened as well. I spread her dark cunt lips with my thumbs and barely touched her cunt with the tip of my tongue. She shuddered all over.
She said, "No, Tim, don't do that," but she spread her legs further and lifted her firm little ass off the tarp. My tongue dove into her then like a miniature prick.
Her clit was hard and as throbbing as my cock. I licked past it, upside down, and rammed my tongue against the walls of her vagina. She tasted very much like June Anderson had the night before, but eating Astra in daylight was more delicious, more delightful, and she tasted more exquisite. And all the while she remained the same: she had some of the fresh stream taste in her, a little of the funkiness of a young girl, and the liquidity of a girl ready to fuck.
Her hands left my cock and joined over my head, the fingers laced together, as she pressed my face into her snatch. My nose rammed against one of the cheeks of her ass. My lips parted and nibbled against her vulva as my tongue darted in and out of her along her clit. I felt her body twist as she reached toward me with her own mouth, lifting one leg, I straddled her head with my knees and lowered myself slowly until she had sucked one of my balls into her mouth. She moved it around with her tongue, gently, then eased it out and sucked on the other. When she was finished with them, she kissed and licked along the underside of my cock where it joined my scrotum. She wouldn't take her hands from my head so she was not able to guide my cock into her mouth. Maybe she didn't want to do that anyway. Some girls are fussy that way. I was having too good a time fucking her with my tongue to care about that.
At least one orgasm raced through her body while I was eating her. I was glad to sense that I was not sure whether June had gotten her rocks off from my tongue, but I was glad I was able to spill Astra with something other than my fingers or my prick. I was not an experienced cunt-eater, but I was trying to learn.
As soon as her shudders stopped passing along her thighs, she relaxed her hold on the back of my head. I took my mouth from her cunt and kissed up her belly to her navel. Her ass kept wriggling as I swapped ends and knelt on my knees between her legs. I bent over to give her cunt a last licking and I enjoyed it from that angle too. She held my ears until I was finished, then I replaced my tongue with two fingers of my right hand. I darted them in and out of her like pricks as I kneeled between her legs, my cock as stiff as an iron rod. She kept running her hand up and down it and watching it with a soft glow in her eyes.
I leaned toward her and she guided it to where my fingers were fucking her. She touched my swollen head I against the soaking lips of her cunt I pulled my fingers out and looked down to see her slip the head easily inside and the folds of her vulva close happily around the nub.
I stopped to look at Astra and appreciate what I was getting. Her eyes looked longingly up toward me. Her long brown hair was spread in wet circles around her head. She took her hand from my cock and touched my nipples. Glancing down her body, I saw that her small tits were almost flat on her chest, but her nipples stood up at least half an inch, firm and brown like two wonderful eyes inviting me deep into the recesses of her body. Her stomach was slim like the other girls', without a trace of fat or sloppiness, straight and slim and firm, radiating California sunshine and orange juice and health. At the bottom of her belly rose that wonderful aromatic patch of dark hair, and below that spread her fine tanned thighs, which had pumped tricycles in the driveway, bicycles down the street, and wrapped her first lover's thin hips, and which were now enclosing mine. Hidden, out of sight from my eyes, but captured by the head of my cock, was her ripe cunt the hot secret of her body that my mouth had found.
I pushed forward with my hips and watched the hard shaft sink further into her hair, deeper, further, further and deeper, until my hair was merging with hers and her ankles were locked firmly behind my ass and my balls bounced in their tight sack against the bottom of her vulva, the top of her ass.
I tried to ease back out but she would not let me go. She clung to me with her legs and arms and rode my cock as I pulled my ass back. She kissed my neck and the side of my face. When she opened her mouth to suck on my ear, I was finally able to pull my cock out of her almost to the head so I could just as suddenly plunge it back in.
Her walls collapsed when I withdrew, parted as I came back, her firm young muscles gripping at me. She knew how to use them. My knees struggled for a firm hold so I could really work my ass, and when I found it, I started pumping up and down, fast, my cock swelling bigger the farther up her I plunged.
Her hands walked down my back as she grasped the cheeks of my ass the same way she had grasped my head. She pulled me hard against her. My pubic bone pressed against her mound as I worked my cock in her, twisting my hips to the side and plunging into her from that angle. As she shifted slightly to meet that thrust, I was back out and plunging in from the other side.
A wave of orgasm passed over me. I quickly slowed to a grinding fuck and when I closed my eyes I imagined myself alone on the mountain top with nothing to fuck or even look at except trees and the wave passed over me, was swept out to the ocean by the river. When I opened my eyes again I felt that I could fuck Astra all day. She was as good as Bonnie and exactly the opposite at the same time. She seemed both virginal and pure, though she was neither, where Bonnie had seemed like a fucker from the moment I first saw her. But Astra's cunt was just as attractive as Bonnie's and knew just as many way to hold onto a prick that was sliding in and out of her.
Suddenly I rose on my knees, lifting Astra with my thighs and my arms with my prick still buried deep. She gasped as it plunged further into her as her insides shifted. She came down on it like a gigantic mouth. I cupped her ass in each hand, spreading her cheeks. I felt underneath her to the bottom of her cunt and felt my own cock thrusting up in her. I worked each of my forefingers in on each side of my prick and Astra started crying. "Oh, Tim, oh, oh, oohhh, oooohhh."
Her feet caught the tarp on each side of me and she rode my front like a kid riding her father's knee for a horse. Her arms wrapped around my neck and she lifted and lowered herself fast on my two fingers and my prick. My fingers stayed with her, up and down, but my prick slipped in and out, in and out, huge and thick and exactly what she had wanted. Her juices flooded put over my prick, engulfed my hands and my balls. Her body shook all over. "Never," she cried, "never, never, before, never, like, this, never, always, now, keep it, keep it, oh, Tim, fuck me deep, fuck me, Tim, always, like, this, deep, deep."
It was time.
I took one hand away from her cunt and held her by the back of her neck and lowered her gently to he ground. I followed her down and lay over her, taking my other hand out of her cunt and supporting myself on my knees as I cradled her head in my hands and kissed her mouth. My tongue slid between her lips as my loins thrust hard up against her body and my cock plunged far up her reeking cunt and my balls and my hips tried to get inside her as I started coming.
I knew I was over the edge but I did not stop. I kept plunging with my cock, further and further, back and forth, back and forth as my orgasm mounted and started to let go. I felt it bursting out and pushed my cock far up into her and held it there with all the strength in my body as waves broke against my shore and my come pumped, pumped, pumped. My balls ached and my cock throbbed. My come pumped out of me, flooded her insides, splashed far up in her.
She caught my tongue with her mouth and sucked on it as if it was a cock that she hadn't been able to accept before. She sucked almost hard enough to get come out of it
Afterward, we swam again to clean our bodies of our loving.
The river was cool and felt like the pure mountains, innocence and youth and a long, drawn-out fuck under the sun.
She said, "Nobody ever kissed me down there before." "You must live among fools."
She held my cock and washed it "Nobody ever fucked me like that"
"You're easy to give a good fuck to."
Back on the tarp, we put on our pants and she strummed the guitar and sang "Shenendoah." Her small tits were lovely naked under the sun. They pointed toward the clear blue sky.
She asked if she could do to me what I had done to her. I said sure.
She unbuckled my belt and opened my pants. My prick was limp, though still respectably long. She took it in her mouth before it was hard. She looked up at my face and I encouraged her by stroking her cheek. The blood came back slowly but steadily and Astra got better at sucking it as she discovered that she liked it. She opened my pants more, with my cock in her mouth, and eased them off my ass.
She fondled my balls as she sucked, worked one hand between my legs and found the root of my cock and stroked that when my balls drew tightly up against my crotch. She held my cock with one hand, sucked and licked the tip, and then opened wide and sucked as much as she could take.
I lay on my back, my fingers in her hair, and let myself go. I did not try to hold back. I watched the sky and the almost invisible cumulus clouds millions of miles away and let her suck as much as she wanted. When I started coming she pressed against the root of my cock, her palm brushing fast against my tight balls, her free hand squeezing my cock. She took her mouth away quickly after the first spurt. The second shot over my shoulder then my come rose in mighty surges to spurt up across my chest and finally to spit out on my stomach.
Astra touched it with her finger, then licked her finger. She found that she did not drop dead, so gently licked off the head of my cock, then licked come out of my pubic hair. She licked up my stomach, cleaning and swallowing, cleaning me like an animal would do its lover, eating my come off my body and kissing me as she worked up to my mouth.
When we got back to the car wash, Meredith was hopping mad.
It was about 5:30 and the business that usually arrived at the end of the workday had indeed arrived and was stretched back to Ernie's Gas Station. The girls were all busy soaping and scrubbing and rinsing, and when we pulled in Astra said, "Oh, oh, am I ever going to catch it" She touched my crotch before she got out of the pickup. "It was worth it."
Meredith stopped what she was doing to yell at Astra. I sat in the pickup, trying not to grin.
Bonnie waved at me and June sort of winked. Astra lay her guitar under the tree, picked up one of the wash mitts and slipped her sweet little hands inside-that sweet little hand that had so recently been fondling my balls. Meredith seemed to know that and it only made her madder. When Astra paid no attention to her, Meredith stormed over to the pickup.
She wore her soapy mitt, and water and soap dripped down her smooth tan leg like come. She would not have seen any humor in that, so I did not mention it
"Did you have to keep her out all afternoon?"
"We went a long way."
"I'll bet you did. Don't you know she has work to do?" I just grinned. I couldn't help it any more. "How about the Cokes? You bring them?" "Forgot them."
"Sure you did. The least you can do is get out of that pickup and come help us."
She looked beautiful with that mitt on her hand, the soap dripping down her leg. Her thighs were strong and meaty, her cutoffs just slightly fringed, disappearing between her legs to where her mound was simply too perfectly formed to be obscure. Her shirt had worked out of her cutoffs on one side and hung down, but her tits looked just fine. And her face was mad, but it did not look like it would stay mad forever. I thought that she might be mad because Astra had gotten to fuck all after noon, while Meredith's man was far off in Alaska and his cock was not long enough to reach back home to satisfy his woman. Meredith did not look like the kind of girl who should be wasted in an orgy-like weekend. I began to think that she looked more like permanent meat, the kind you would like to eat a few days before you even got around to fucking it
She felt the guys in the waiting cars watching her. The girls had stopped work to see what Meredith was going to do. I could almost see the pressure building up.
She said, "Here's a free wash, no charge," and swung the soapy mitt against the windshield of the old pickup.
Then she walked back to the line of cars.
Somebody down the line yelled, "Atta girl, Meredith 1 Somebody else honked his horn.
Soap dribbled down the windshield and I couldn't see a thing. I sat mere, still grinning.
Meredith was mad that I hadn't taken her to the river and fucked her all afternoon. It was going to work out I thought. I was going to get Meredith, too. I thought if I concentrated on her, I could get her and leave the last two virgins to whoever happened to marry them.
As usual, my plan did not work out that way.
Kathy walked toward the car. She was the one with ankles that looked like they might get heavy, but whose large tits made up for any defects and always would. She carried a bucket of clean water and she rinsed the soap off the windshield so I could at least see to drive.
"Meredith gets mad," she said, "but she doesn't mean it"
I looked down her body to the thin line of white around the legs of her cutoffs. I imagined her leaving the house with longer pants, but as soon as she got in the car with the other girls she would change into what she would rather wear. She could get away with it, as long as her parents didn't come to have their car washed. She was probably careful not to invite them.
"Do you want to have supper with me?" I blurted out. I had never talked to Kathy alone and thought this might be my only chance.
She looked back at the other girls. Meredith was glaring at us, but both June and Astra were laughing. Bonnie was collecting money from one of the drivers and Anne stood off a little ways by herself.
Kathy seemed to think it over, then said, "Can you come back around seven? Is that too late?"
"Just right"
"Okay," she said in a rush before she could change her mind. "We might be finished by then. Anyway, I'll go. I'll call my folks, okay?"
"Sure," I said. "Whatever you have to do."
"Okay." She grinned, as if it might be her first date.
"Okay." I said, smiling back, reassuringly. Then I started the old pickup and drove away, leaving her standing there. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw her returning to the car wash, almost skipping as she went.
I drove back through town, having forgotten about Sheriff Anderson.
Bea was coming out of a grocery store with a box-boy carrying her things behind her. She recognized the pickup and I waved quickly, turning my head, so she might think I was her nephew.
I watched the rear-view mirror as I drove and she looked after the pickup until I was out of sight. She knew it wasn't her nephew. I hoped she didn't know who it was.