The Making of a Gigolo (14) - Erica Bradford

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26

Chapter Eight

The routine of classes calmed her down. Her interaction with Mr. Hornsby, on the musical, had made her a little less of a mystery to him, and she had been so happy that he was doing his part that her expected bitchiness had never really surfaced. That led to a very subtle change in the way she was treated in the teacher's lounge, because practically everyone had asked him what the dragon lady was like, and all had been told the same thing: "Not all that bad, actually. She's trying hard."

In reality, the only real change was that other teachers gave her a small smile now, instead of a blank face, and a few nodded as they passed her in a hallway or the lounge. Just that small change made the day more pleasant for all of them, though.

Then, after school, when she saw that one whole flat was completely painted and ready for the show, she felt even better.

Her feeling of progress and good will, however, vanished as she saw Bobby saunter into the auditorium. Most of the kids called out to him and he stopped to talk to a small cluster of them. She was discomfited by his mere appearance in the auditorium. She had assumed that after being run off from her house, he wouldn't show up here either. Had she heard the actual conversation going on she would have been furious.

"Hey, Mister D," said Tiffany. "How they hangin'?"

"Low and slow, Tiff," said Bobby. He was trying to learn the lingo these kids spoke. He wasn't always sure he was saying the right thing, but when he messed up the kids usually just laughed and had a good time with it.

"Where were you last night?" asked a boy named Jeremiah. "We got the storefront set done. It's so bad, I'm freakin' out about it."

"I had something else to do," said Bobby. "How's Mizz Bradford today? She seem upset about anything?"

"She's cool," said Linda Tarmigan. "She hasn't been trippin' or giving people the hairy eyeball or anything."

"Good," sighed Bobby. "We had a little argument last night and I was hoping she didn't take it out on you guys."

"Ooooo," said Tiffany, looking excited. "Are you sniffing around her now, Mister D?"

"Not hardly," laughed Bobby. "Not my type."

"Yeah," said Jeremiah. "She's foxy, but she ain't with it, you know?"

"I know," said Bobby, grinning. "I'd better get on down there and get to work."

"Cool," said Jeremiah. "Check you later."

Bobby went on to the stage. Erica was waiting for him there.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice cold.

"I was going to work on sets," he said, looking at her warily.

"We need to talk," she said.

"Okay."

She took him outside the double stage doors at the back of the stage. It was cool outside and she crossed her arms under her breasts. It only put them on display, but she didn't think about that. The cool air also activated her nipples. Bobby was aware of all this in his peripheral vision, but didn't look there.

"Why did you touch me like that last night?" she asked bluntly.

"It was either that or slap you," he said calmly. "I elected for that."

"You thought about slapping me?" Her voice went up a notch.

"Erica, you were freaking out. You weren't any good to him that way. He's depending on you now, and that started last night, whether you were ready or not. I had to get your attention. It worked ... didn't it?"

"That will never happen again," she said stridently. "Do not touch me again. Do we understand each other?"

"I understand you," he said. "I don't think you understand me, but that's not really important."

"Why do you say that?" she asked, still spoiling for a fight. "What don't I understand about you?"

"Look," he said. "We're getting along okay. Let's just leave it at that. We've got work to do inside, and while I don't mind having this conversation, the work inside isn't getting done."

"They got a lot done last night, and we weren't here then," objected Erica.

"Do you want me to stay or leave?" he asked. "Just tell me which one. It makes no difference to me."

Erica felt a stab of rejection, and shook it off. She had put him in his place. There would be no more ... trouble. The practical part of her knew she needed him here.

"Stay," she said.

He turned around and went into the building, leaving her outside alone.

Erica didn't know what to do. The rest of the evening had gone so routinely, after she ... corrected Bobby ... that it had almost seemed like nothing had happened. Then, when she got home, she saw that Bobby had apparently spent more time on the ramp, because it was much further along.

Will was awake and in good spirits. She'd been a little worried that he'd get bored, with nothing to do all day. It turned out he had gone out and sat on the porch and talked to Bobby while he worked.

"I don't know why you don't like him," Will said, as they ate a late supper together. "Of all the people I've met since I went into the hospital, he seems the most genuine to me."

"Let's talk about something else," said Erica. The fact was, she didn't have a good reason for not liking Bobby Dalton. Except that he was a man ... and had touched her breasts.

"Why?" asked Will. "Why should we talk about something else? You finally meet a decent kind of guy and you shove him away. When are you going to wise up, sis?"

"Let's not go into this again," sighed Erica. "I've done fine while you were gone. I'm perfectly capable of being successful without a man to try and take the credit for it. I don't need a man to succeed in life."

"Okay," said her brother, "but I can think of one way you'd be a lot happier, and it kind of requires a member of the opposite sex." The right side of his face smiled. It looked ghastly, because the left side stayed rigidly calm.

"The last place in the world I need to get information like that from is my baby brother," she said.

"I'm not so sure about that," he said. "I lost my virginity in high school, and then when I joined the Army ... well all that stuff they say about women liking a man in uniform ... it's true." He stared at her. "Unless I've lost all ability to figure things out, I bet you're still a virgin, Erica."

She blushed. "If you think I'm going to discuss the status of my hymen with my little brother, you're sadly mistaken," she said uncomfortably.

"I'm not a baby any more, Sis," he said softly. "And you're getting older too. Don't throw your life away because you bought in to some frustrated woman's idea that the world would be better off without men in it."

"It's not like that, Billy!" she said. She stopped. "Will," she corrected. "I'm still not used to calling you that. But the point isn't that I want all men to disappear. I just want to be able to be everything that I can be, and not have to beg a man to do it."

"I get it," said Will. "Maybe you should join the Army. I met lots of women in the Army who are doing the same things as men, and getting paid the same too."

"I don't think so," said Erica. "Look what the Army did to you."

"Bad luck," said Will shortly. "That's all."

They had let it lie there. They had watched TV together for a while, and he fell asleep in his chair. She didn't know whether to wake him up and tell him to go to bed or not. He'd be more comfortable in bed. It occurred to her that he might not be comfortable anywhere. He still took pain medicine, though he didn't talk about what kind of pain he was in.

She couldn't just leave him there, though. She needed to get to bed herself, though she wasn't looking forward to that. The thoughts she couldn't seem to keep out of her head, lately, were disturbing.

She sighed and decided to take a shower before she woke him up.

Erica got out of the shower and dried off. Her reflection in the mirror caught her eye. Her breasts till looked bloated and huge, of course. She wished there was a way to have about half of them removed. The rest of her looked more or less normal, at least in her own opinion. She shivered as the moisture evaporated off her skin, and watched as her nipples elongated and tingled. The urge to squeeze them was almost physical, but she resisted it. She shrugged into her bathrobe and ran a comb through her hair. Keeping it in a shag made it easy to take care of. She didn't spend hours on it, like a lot of other women. She didn't care if men were impressed, and she certainly didn't want to encourage them to look at her.

Will was still slumped in his chair, snoring slightly, when she went to get him. She pushed him to his room and shook his shoulder.

"Time to go to bed," she said softly.

He jerked awake and his whole body went tense, staying that way for a few seconds and then slowly relaxing.

"Okay," he mumbled.

"You want me to help you get undressed?"

"No," he said. "That's the last thing I need right now."

Erica stood up. That seemed like an odd kind of thing to say. He leaned forward, gripping the arm of the chair with his right hand, and lifting his left arm to point it down in that curious way that put the stump of his wrist on the left armrest. She winced as he pushed and stood to hop in short little jumps, not really going anywhere, but just keeping his balance. His body turned and he sat on the edge of the bed. His brown eyes surveyed her.

"I'm sorry about last night," he said.

Erica blushed. There was only one thing he could be talking about, and that was her walking in on him while he masturbated.

"I should have knocked," she said. "I didn't mean to embarrass you."

"Oh, you didn't embarrass me," he said.

She looked surprised.

"There was a nurse ... while I was in the burn unit," he said. "She sat and talked to me. They assigned nurses to do that sometimes, if they thought the patient was suicidal. It was supposed to make us feel like they cared about us, and that it didn't matter that we were grotesque to look at. She felt sorry for me. Anyway, one night we got to talking about my old girlfriends and her old boyfriends, and she ended up jerking me off. It got to be a kind of going to bed ritual for us. She even found another nurse to take over for her when she got reassigned."

Erica couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her little brother being ... serviced ... by women?! She wanted to be outraged, but the image of a man - it wasn't Will ... it was just a faceless man - all bandaged up and helpless, stuck in a strange place and in pain, was firmly in her head. And the woman bent over that man, using her hand to please him, wasn't some sexual slave. She was simply making him feel a little better, in very difficult circumstances. She couldn't see it any differently in her mind. Had someone told her a story like that before Will came home, she was quite sure she would have been outraged that a woman would debase herself like that. But, seeing Will, and hearing about his horrible return from the gates of death, enabled her to see that woman in a completely different light.

"It was about the only thing about the hospital that was good," said Will. "I really miss it."

There was another twist in the fabric of reality as he spoke those words. It was almost as if Erica was outside of her body, floating in the air, looking interestedly on, to see what her body would do. The floating Erica heard a man saying "I really miss a woman servicing me," and knew what her body should do. Her body should stiffen and she should deliver a lecture about how men objectified women, reducing them to a vagina, or in this case, a hand, that was destined to please the man. That was wrong! It enslaved women!

The floating Erica, though, was surprised at what the mind in her body did. That mind heard those words delivered in a wistful, yearning kind of way that really said, "I miss the closeness those women shared with me, when they could have walked away and left me alone and frustrated."

She blinked. What was she doing? There was no "closeness" involved when a woman masturbated a man. That was foolishness. It was all just raw emotion, and bodily functions. Instinct. That's what it was. It was what animals did. Humans were on a higher plane, and should be above that nonsense.

"None of those nurses looked like you, though," said Will, his eyes glinting.

Erica was jerked back to reality.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said. "I just wanted to apologize, because I was afraid I had disappointed you."

Among the roiling emotions that were bouncing all over Erica Bradford's body, the ones associated with that maternal instinct surfaced and shouted for order, telling all other thoughts to go away.

"You could never disappoint me," she said, as tears made her vision blurry. "I love you. I'll always love you. It doesn't matter how you look, or any of that. You're my brother and I love you."

"Thanks," he said. "I'm sorry about that shot about your virginity at supper."

"It wasn't a shot," she said. "For your information I am still a virgin, and I don't see anything wrong with that."

"Wow," he sighed.

"What's wrong with that?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. "Like you said, I'm the last person you should listen to about your sex life."

"What about my sex life?" she asked. She felt foolish immediately, seeing as how she didn't have a sex life. Not with anything other than her fingers, anyway.

"I thought you didn't want to talk about this kind of thing," he said.

"I don't," she responded.

"Okay, then," he said. The right side of his face smiled. "I'm going to bed now. That means I'm going to take off my clothes. Ever since those nurses gave me those ... um ... treatments ... it's kind of become a habit, I guess. So you should probably leave now, before I take my pants off, cause if you stay you're going to see way more than you want to."

Erica felt the heat of the blood that infused her skin over her upper chest and then crept up her throat to her cheeks, going even higher until her forehead felt hot. She turned and left.

"You want me to get the light?" she asked, stopping with her back to him.

"Please."

She flipped the switch, closed the door, and went to her room.

She sat on the edge of her bed, her hands in her lap. If she went to bed now, she knew she'd rub. Will was doing that, in his room. He was doing it right now, probably. Her nipples itched and wanted to be squeezed and pulled.

She knew better than to try to read in bed. She didn't even want to take her robe off and put her pajamas on, because her breasts would be bare for a few seconds, and she didn't think she'd be able to resist touching her nipples. That would lead to more. She stood, picked up her book and started to the living room, to sit upright in a chair, where maybe she could pay attention to the pages.

She flipped the light off and stood, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Then, stepping into the hallway, she started tiptoeing to the living room. Her feet stopped in front of Will's door and she couldn't seem to make them keep going. She also lost the internal battle to keep her right hand off of his doorknob, and felt almost consumed with shame as it turned the knob slowly ... silently. She didn't understand what was happening to her. This ... urge inside her ... it was something she had never felt before and it was something that made her hand tremble as it controlled her.

She managed to stand there, with the door open only two inches, for what seemed like ten minutes. She felt a tiny spark of hope that she had gained control, when she heard him moan. The door was suddenly open eighteen more inches before she realized her arm had pushed it there.

She felt a stab of almost hysteria as she looked at the bed, with the dark lump of her brother on it, and realized she couldn't see anything. Instead of feeling relief that this was all futile, she felt the overwhelming urge to go closer ... until she could see something.

"If you're going to watch, you may as well come on in." One of the things she thought of first was that her brother's voice sounded so normal, just as she remembered it, perhaps with a bit of maturity added. That conflicted with the shame of being caught spying on him.

"I wasn't watching," she blurted. "You sounded like you were in pain."

"I am in pain," he said. "That's one of the reasons I do this."

That didn't make any sense to her and she stood there, not knowing what to do.

"Are you coming in?"

"I don't know." She felt sudden relief at voicing her inability to make a sensible decision. It felt so good to just admit that she had no idea what was happening.

"I don't mind," he said.

That didn't make any sense either. The rational part of her mind let her curiosity be piqued. She stepped into the room, but didn't turn on the light.

"How can you not mind?" she asked.

He was silent for a few seconds.

"It's complicated, I guess. I'd tell you, but I don't think you'd like it. I know what you said about loving me and all that, but I still think you might be a little ... disappointed."

"I don't understand." That felt pretty good too, because she didn't understand ... not only what he was saying, but what she was feeling.

He moved on the bed, and she imagined that he was rolling to face her. She wondered if he was naked or not. That bothered her a little.

"You said you're still a virgin," he said. "But haven't you ever been really horny before? Like maybe when you were with a certain guy?"

"I've felt things," she said. "But usually the guy was being such a jerk that it wasn't something I wanted to explore."

"How about when you looked at some guy you didn't know, who wasn't a jerk yet?" he asked.

Bobby Dalton immediately popped into her mind. She didn't like that at all, because she wanted to believe he was a jerk too. The problem there was that he kept acting like a not-jerk.

"No," she lied.

He sighed. "I guess guys are different," he said. "I can look at a woman I don't know and get excited."

That fit with the "men are pigs" mantra that Erica had learned when she was about fifteen, and had almost religiously believed ever since. The problem with that was that there was no way she could think of her little brother as a pig. Another crack appeared in her feminist armor. If Will wasn't a pig ... that meant it was possible for other men to not be pigs too.

"I thought about that a lot while I was in the hospital," he went on. "I thought a lot about you, and all that stuff you believe, and whether I should feel guilty about getting boners for women I didn't even know."

That made Erica feel a rush of something like gratitude. She firmly believed in her feminist principles, and one of her goals was to teach men to believe in them too. That Will had picked up some of her wisdom made her feel good.

"I even talked about it with one of the nurses," he said. "I asked her if she felt like I was exploiting her."

"What did she say?" asked Erica, unable to suppress her curiosity.

"She said she was doing it because she wanted to do it ... to make me feel good."

"I don't get that," sighed Erica. She had heard something of the same argument about women who posed for pornographic magazines - that they were doing it because they liked it, or that it was just a job. She didn't buy that. A woman could earn money in ways that didn't depend on her sex or her looks. She believed they were being exploited, and just didn't know it.

"I didn't either," said Will in the darkness. "I mean she didn't even know me. And she was married too."

"No!" gasped Erica. "She cheated on her husband with you?!"

"She said it wasn't cheating. She was talking about how she loved him, and that the only reason she was doing that for me was because I deserved it. She said more, but I was about to ... um ... finish, I guess ... and it was hard to pay attention."

"I don't care what she said," snorted Erica, taking a step closer to the bed. "Doing that with some other man is cheating."

"I do remember another time when she was doing it again. She said that was all she could do ... that she couldn't kiss me, because that would be cheating."

"Sounds to me like she was confused about things," said Erica.

"Yeah, but she made me feel so good, Erica. I think maybe she kept me from going crazy."

"That's a little much, don't you think? I mean it's just a bodily function, after all."

"I'm not talking about her jerking me off," said Will. "Well, I guess I am, but it was way more than that. When she did that, I wasn't alone any more. I was still sick, and in pain, but there was this person in my life who cared about me and wanted me to feel good, even if it only lasted a few minutes. She wasn't in love with me. I knew that. I think maybe I fell a little bit in love with her. I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure what being in love feels like. But back then I was pretty sure I'd never get to feel what it was like, and what she offered me was like cool water after that napalm got on me. I'm serious, Erica, just knowing she'd do just that little bit for me, just because she cared ... it kept me from giving up."

The emotion in his voice convinced his sister that he believed all this was true. She wasn't so sure, but he believed it. She'd had orgasms, even though she'd fought them, and they were nice, even if they were taboo, but they didn't set her free from her troubles. If anything, they made her feel worse, later on.

"I miss that," he said again, his voice still wistful. "I'll never get to feel that kind of closeness again."

"Of course you will," she said automatically, taking another step forward. In the dark it was safe to be closer to him, and she heard the ache of pain in his voice for his loss. It was so safe that she sat on the edge of his bed. Her hand naturally went to convey comfort, but her fingers fell on scarred, lumpy tissue. She was touching his left shoulder. She couldn't help but feel the end of his stump, where her buttocks pressed, trapping it between them and his side. She clamped down on her emotions, keeping from jerking her fingers away from that awful skin. It was her brother's skin. She loved him, which meant she had to love that skin too.

"Don't try to bullshit a bullshitter," he said. "You and I both know no woman will ever look at me. Not without wanting to throw up."

"I love you," she said. She couldn't believe the depth of the emotion that surged through her as she realized that was true. Will was the one man she could love completely. "If I love you, some other woman can love you too."

"You're my sister," he sighed. "You have to love me."

"Those nurses," she said. "They loved you too ... in a way."

He was silent at first. Then he whispered. "Yes, that's true. I didn't believe that at first. I thought they only felt pity for me, but I knew better later."

"So don't give up now," she said.

"All I know is that it's a lot more fun when somebody else does it for you," he said.

She felt him move. Her eyes had become fully adjusted to the dark now, and the little bit of light coming in through the windows let her see him. She turned her head to see he was, in fact, naked. His right hand was moving at his groin.

"I'm sorry," he said, pain in his voice. "I can't help it."

"It's okay," she whispered.

"No, it's not," he moaned. "You don't understand."

"Help me understand," she said, feeling like she was in a dream. She was sitting next to her brother, who was masturbating, and ... she really didn't mind. It was the sole pleasure he had left in life. How could she object?

"You'd hate me," he groaned.

"I love you," she said. "I already told you that."

His hand flew away from his penis, to slap down on the bed. He was panting slightly. She resisted the urge to look directly at his penis.

"I just got here," he said, his voice raspy. "I thought I'd hate it, like I hate everything else ... but that's not true." He paused. "I don't want to screw it up."

"Will you stop that?!" she said, her voice rising. "You're here. You're going to stay here forever, with me. We can overcome any problem you have." She felt stupid for saying that. He had problems that obviously couldn't be overcome, no matter how much she ... or he ... wished it.

"Aren't you ever going to get married?"

She snorted. "I don't need a man to be complete."

"What about kids?" His voice sounded curiously intense.

"Children tie a woman down," she said, her memorized response to that question coming forward automatically. "A woman has to give up the best years of her life to take care of children. And for what? So some man can say 'See what I did?', all proud that he was the alpha male who corralled that particular mare. I don't think so! Why would I want to do that?"

"So our name could go on?" His voice was soft. "Mom and Dad are gone. You and I are all that's left, and I'm obviously never going to be a father."

Erica sat. She'd gone through a phase in her life when she had wanted to hyphenate her name. Instead of Erica Bradford, she had wanted to write it Erica Mayes-Bradford, because her mother's maiden name was Mayes. She thought it was unfair that her father got all the credit. That lasted only as long as it took her mother to remind her that Mayes was her grandfather's name, and that all names were paternal, in one way or another. That had made Erica more angry than ever. Men got everything ... even names.

She'd worked past that, over time, and had decided that names didn't mean anything at all. They were just tags to tell people apart. Now, though, as she heard that same haunting loss in her brother's voice, she thought about her last name. She had eventually come to realize that her father was a good man ... as good as any man could be, anyway. Her grandfather had died when she was eight, but all she could remember about him were his delightful hugs, and the wonderful stories he told her, and sitting on his lap while he read books to her. She had decided, when she was sixteen, that the reason she remembered almost nothing about her grandmother was probably because the poor woman had probably always been in the kitchen, or the laundry, slaving away to make life comfortable for the men in the family. Her mother had also destroyed that notion. Erica had wanted to know about her grandmother's accomplishments, thinking to write a paper about them for school. Her mother's response was that Erica's grandmother had run off with a traveling salesman, and they didn't like to talk about her.

"Why is that so important?" she asked. "It's just a name ... some letters strung together."

"Don't you want to be remembered?" asked Will. "Don't you want someone, some day, to say 'Remember Erica? She was great, wasn't she? I wish she was still here'."

That was a foreign concept, at first. Erica was seeking approval now ... here ... in the present. She wanted people to acknowledge her accomplishments while she was still alive.

"When I think of Mom and Dad," said Will, in the dark, "I can't help but remember Mom's meatloaf, that she was never satisfied with, even though every one she made was delicious ... and the way Dad used to never be able to find a screwdriver, when he owned fifty of the things. I want somebody to remember something like that about me some day, don't you?"

"I don't know," she said, feeling suddenly empty. "I try not to think about Mom and Dad. It hurts too much."

"I wish they were still here," he said softly.

"Me too," she agreed, tears coming into her eyes.

"That's what I'm talking about," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I'll never have kids who will wish I was there. You can, though. You can have babies who grow up to cry for their mother, and make you Mother's Day cards, and get in fights with you about cleaning their rooms. That's life, Erica," he said intensely. "I can't have it, but you can. I just don't understand how you can throw that all away for some idea that you're as good as a man. Okay, you are as good as a man. But what does that get you?"

"Respect!" she said instantly, as her memory provided the stock answer.

"And what does respect get you?" he asked.

She had no answer for that. That wasn't part of the argument.

"I'd take kids over respect any day," he said. He barked that odd sound that meant he was laughing. "That didn't come out quite right," he said.

For Erica, the odd thing was that, while she didn't feel those drives herself, the way he explained them made it possible for her to empathize with his need for them. His desire made sense to her, even though she couldn't put herself in that picture. She ached for him, down deep inside. She wanted to go find a woman and make her magically love him, so that he could have that dream. Her mind envisioned a blind woman, who wouldn't be horrified by looking at his half burned face. Her mouth said it before she had time to think about it.

"Maybe we can find you a blind woman to be your girlfriend."

Her mind caught up with her mouth, and she was horrified that she'd been so casually cruel. He didn't cry out, though. Instead his right hand came and pressed on top of hers, which was still lying on the destroyed skin of his left shoulder.

"Feel that skin under your hand?" he asked, his voice low. "Blind people see with their fingers."

"I don't know why I said that," she moaned. "I'm sorry."

"You said it because you're trying to make me feel better," he said. "I appreciate it, but I'm fully aware of the reality of my life. You don't have to do that."

"I can't help it," she said. "I love you."

"I know." He was quiet. "That's why I can't tell you ... some things. You're all I have left. If you threw me out I'd just curl up and die."

"Are we back to that?" she moaned. "You know I'll never throw you out. Just tell me what's bothering you. Get if off your chest and it will be over, and you won't have to worry about it anymore."

He was quiet for another minute, but she sensed he was working up to it, so she stayed quiet too, just leaving her hand on his shoulder.

"Do you know how old I was when I first started jerking off?" he asked.

"Of course not," she said.

"Fourteen," he said.

"Okay, so?"

"That was in 1969."

She didn't understand, and impatience nipped at her.

"Would you just get on with it?"

"It was pretty hard for a boy to get hold of a Playboy back then," he said. "Dad didn't have any."

"Of course not," said Erica, feeling the urge to chastise him for even wanting to look at trash like that, that dehumanized women.

"But I was really interested in seeing what a naked woman looked like," he said.

She sighed. "Okay, I can live with that. That can't have been bothering you all this time."

"I mean I really wanted to see a naked woman," he said. "And the only woman around I could do that with ... was ... you." The last word was a whisper she could barely hear.

"Me?" Her mind jangled. "I was never naked around you. What are you talking about?"

"I ... um ... well ... I sort of ... made a hole in the wall ... between our rooms."

"What are you talking about?" she said. "I never saw any hole."

"You remember that frame you had on the wall?" he asked. "The one Dad made for you, that had all your ribbons in it?"

She did. She still had that frame. It was two pieces of glass, that sandwiched the ribbons she had consistently won at the science fairs in school. She was proud of those ribbons, because they showed she was as good as any of the boys ... better than most, in fact. It had been made so that ribbons could be added to it by taking the back pane of glass off.

"Yes," she said. "What does that have to do with this?"

"I drilled the hole so I could see through the glass between two of the ribbons," he said. "It went into my closet."

"You spied on me?!" Her voice went up an octave.

"I didn't mean to," he said, his voice miserable.

"How could you drill a hole in the wall and not mean to spy?" she asked, her voice rough.

"I mean I only meant to do it once," he said. "Honest. I just wanted to see a real woman naked ... just once. I didn't think I'd ..." His voice trailed off.

"Think you'd what?" she asked, automatically.

"You were so beautiful," he sighed.

"I was fifteen, Billy!"

"That didn't matter," he said instantly. "You looked grown up to me. You were better than any Playboy I'd ever seen."

There were a multitude of thoughts that assailed Erica's brain, about then. One of them wiggled its way to the surface and claimed first shot. It wasn't the one that would have done that if she'd had time to think.

"I thought you said you couldn't get a Playboy," she accused.

"I saw them," he said. "But only briefly, when one of my friends got one and we looked at it. I couldn't really stare at it ... you know really see."

The next thought that claimed prominence was about just what, exactly, he'd seen.

"What, exactly, did you see?" she asked.

"Everything," he sighed.

That didn't really satisfy her.

"You saw this ... everything ... just one time?"

He was silent again for a while.

"No. I peeked again."

"How many times?" her voice had a dangerous edge to it now.

"You wanted me to tell you this!" he reminded her.

"How many times, Billy?" she insisted.

"I don't know," he tried.

"How many times?" she yelled.

"Every night until our folks died!" he yelled back.

There was a shocked silence in the room. He had watched her ... through a tiny hole ... for years!

"I was addicted," he moaned. "I couldn't believe how beautiful you were. You danced and sang sometimes. I didn't only watch you when you were naked, like after a shower or something. I watched you any time I could, because you were my ideal woman. Other girls paled by comparison. I couldn't help it, Erica!"

She realized her hand was still on his skin. She tensed, to take it away, but the pain in his admission stayed her hand. She had insisted, after all. She felt disgusted. Then she felt betrayed. His skin felt hot under her hand, and she imagined it burning. She jerked her hand away then, horrified that she could think of that at this moment, as if she was making the napalm into some kind of punishment for what he'd done.

"Please don't hate me," his voice pled.

Her hand slapped back down onto his chest, a few inches from where it had been. He grunted and she knew she had caused him pain. Her little finger was across the line that the body on top of him had made, when it took the brunt of the napalm that had not burned his right side. That skin, under her little finger, was smooth and soft. The skin under the rest of her hand was bumpy, lined, hard, almost plastic feeling. She shuddered.

"Please," he begged. "I couldn't help it. You were so beautiful. I loved you and I hated myself for peeking, but I couldn't not do it."

Disgust and betrayal gave way to another emotion that threatened to make her puke.

"Did you ever let any of your little friends peek?" she asked, her voice raspy with emotion.

"No!" He sounded genuinely horrified at the thought. "I could never have done that! I loved you. I adored you. Even on the worst day I knew I'd get to look at you, even if it was only a glimpse, and everything would be better. You were pure and sweet. I hated myself for doing what I did, but I had to do it. I think I would have gone crazy if I'd have had to stop."

"You did stop," she pointed out. "When you joined the Army."

"I bought every dirty magazine I could get my hands on," he said softly. "I tried beating off to those pictures. They were okay, but I always thought of ...." He stopped.

Erica's mind whirled as she finally got it.

"Me?" she whispered.

"I didn't mean to say that," he said.

"You masturbated while you peeked at me?" Her voice quavered.

"You were so beautiful," he whined.

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