Prototype by Brian Hodge Page B

tiring of it, for it would never be the same twice. This realization pricked her heart with a tiny stab of loss: How many sunsets had she missed already in her life that she could never retrieve?
    Sarah propped her feet on the wooden railing; from her lap she took a bowl of apple slices soaking in a splash of white wine, and placed it in Adrienne's lap. "Be my wench. Feed me," Sarah said with a grin, then tipped her head back, opened her mouth expectantly.
    "You look like a baby wren," Adrienne said and played along. One cool, crisp slice after another, dripping with wine — she set each on Sarah's tongue and watched them slide past her lips. Drops of wine plinked soft as new rain and began to trickle down Sarah's cheeks. Adrienne leaned in with flickering tongue to kiss them away.
    "Are we creating a spectacle?" Sarah asked.
    Adrienne looked over her shoulder to the house and sliding glass doors, open now, looked at the small milling groups. No one was paying attention. "Yes," she said anyway.
    Sarah half-groaned, half-laughed. "Good." She returned the kiss with sticky, sweetened lips. "I knew I could turn you into an exhibitionist if I had enough time."
    Years before, when married, Adrienne would watch women who put on such public displays with men, and was usually tempted to suspect them of ulterior motives. Showing off, or using one man's attentions to attract another; something about them seemed terribly self-conscious, like exhibitions of plumage or twitching haunches during mating season.
    Now she was willing to accept that such things had been done, at least some of the time, simply for the carnal joy of it, and that she had been jealous of others' freedom to do something in full public view that she herself would never have done. Sarah had been more instrumental than anyone in changing her mind, just by being Sarah. She got like this whenever and wherever the mood struck; in private or not, it never mattered.
    They had met after Adrienne had been in Tempe for half a year, and had sat next to each other at an evening guest lecture at the university. Nothing short of broken legs would have kept Adrienne away. The speaker was once a student and protégé of Erich Fromm. Adrienne adored Fromm, whose theoretical stances on social psychology, along with the more mythically oriented stances of Carl Jung, had driven stakes into the heart of much of what she found lacking or simplistic in Freud. Jung and Fromm comprised the two mighty pillars on which she had built her own outlook.
    Adrienne had arrived as early as she could and sat third row center in the lecture hall. Two seats over sat a woman who doodled in a notebook and, minutes later, kicked off both shoes and propped her dirty bare feet upon the back of the seat before her. Adrienne could not decide if she was rude or just ill-bred.
    And what wide, strong feet they were, too. Adrienne couldn't help but stare, fascinated by the sturdy bone structure, the power in the high arch, the light tracery of veins, then the sudden thought of every place they must have carried this woman throughout her life. She was possessed of an abrupt desire to touch them, stroke them. The woman caught her staring, and Adrienne tried to look away, but too little, too late.
    "At my day job," said the dark-haired woman, leaning in, very deadpan, "I tread on grapes."
    "Oh." Adrienne was brought up horribly short, never before at such a loss for words. Shouldn't she say something , at least? "I shrink heads."
    She'd blurted it out before she realized it, and red could not even begin to describe the color blooming across her cheeks.
    The woman smiled, wide and delighted; Adrienne next caught herself staring at her full lower lip, as moist and ripe as some enticing fruit.
    "A genuine modern primitive," the woman said, reaching out to shake Adrienne's hand. "I never would have guessed."
    The lecture ended as, if not a total loss for Adrienne, then near enough, an hour and forty minutes of