Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man by Lawrence Block

unless science does something phenomenal. And while twenty-nine is also a hell of a good age, asserted by most authorities to be a woman’s sexual peak, there’s no gainsaying the fact that after a certain point in life the bloom begins to leave the rose, as the poets say. But question your femininity? Christ, I would never dream of doing that. Quite the opposite. Why, if memory serves, in that very letter I devoted quite a bit of space to unequivocal praise of your oral abilities.
    But just to make things as clear as possible, to make things Presidentially clear, as it were, perhaps I’d better tell you a little bit more about the Darien business.
    First off, when we got to Darien, nothing happened. (Now if this were a fantasy, something damn well would have happened. To put it another way, if I were allowed to write the script for my life, I’d smooth out a lot of the wrinkles.) But by the time the station wagon got us where we were going, it was somewhere around five or five-thirty and I had a headache and the girls were exhausted. Besides, they had to be in bed so that the nun who was in charge of their dormitory could wake them at seven-thirty. They had managed to sneak out after bed check, and now they had to sneak in before reveille.
    I wasn’t too thrilled about this, actually. They took me to a squat red-brick building in town and led me up a flight of stairs to a faintly furnished room and told me I could sleep there.
    “Who lives here?” I wondered.
    “No one.”
    “It’s only eight dollars a week, Larry, and we six chip in to pay the rent. It’s secret, you might say.”
    “It’s refuge from the storm, you might say.”
    “It’s a safe place to fuck, you might even say.”
    “Ah,” I said, nodding thoughtfully. I walked over to the bed and bounced on it. “A good bed,” I said. “Well used.”
    “And there’s just room for the seven of us,” I said.
    “Oh, we can’t stay.”
    “Can a couple of you stay?”
    “Not a chance.”
    “God on a pogo stick, can at least one of you stay?”
    “No way.”
    “It hardly seems fair,” said Mad Poet.
    They explained the situation, and fair or not it seemed to be The Way Things Were. They all assured me of their undying love and lust, and I necked them each goodbye in turn, and they went away and I went to sleep.
    Passed out, actually. But neatly, after having first removed my clothes and hung them ever so neatly in a corner of the floor. And then I popped into that snug double bed and pulled up the covers and slept.
    I hadn’t really thought I would be able to manage this last. I don’t honestly think I would have had the strength to fuck anybody just then, but the last thing I wanted was to have to sleep alone. I never much liked sleeping alone, and I particularly dreaded it that night. Exhaustion and India Pale Ale have a way of conquering that form of dread, though, and I went out like a burned-out bulb.
    I awoke very abruptly. There was this shadowy dream that I do not remember, and then I was completely awake and completely aware of a presence curled up behind me. I was sleeping on my side, body curled in a semifetal posture, and a body was similarly curled behind me. A very soft and warm body. I felt soft thighs cushioning my buttocks and firm breasts pressing into my back, and while I was trying to decide whether or not to let on that I was awake, a small hand came around my shoulder and fastened itself over my eyes.
    “Guess who,” a voice demanded.
    “Victor McLaglen. Do another.”
    A giggle. “Do you even know where you are?”
    “I seem to have gone to heaven,” I said. “The funny thing is that I don’t remember dying.”
    “Aren’t you going to guess? Or don’t you honestly remember?”
    “Ah, I remember. I remember everything. I have to guess which one you are, eh?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “What happens if I guess right?”
    “Then we can make love.”
    “What if I guess wrong?”
    “We still make love but I won’t