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I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “How could it have been six months if you just broke up two weeks ago?”
“The abstinence was Tyler’s idea,” she said. “We were revirgining.”
“You werewhat?”
“Abstaining from sex for six months to reclaim our virginity before the wedding night.” She seemed to be thinking it over. “At least, supposedly that was the purpose. In retrospect, I think he just didn’t want to have sex with me.”
As my present anatomical state would indicate, it was kind of hard for me to believe that any man with a beating heart would willingly abstain from sex with a ready and waiting Clara Zapata. I wondered if Tyler was one of those macho assholes who only enjoyed sex when it felt like a conquest, like it was 1958 and he was getting a girl to surrender her virtue.
But enough about Tyler. I was much more interested in Clara’s perspective on the matter.
“So what did you do for...” I paused, searching my mind for the right word. “Fulfillment?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she said. “Look at me.”
I looked at her. I liked what I saw. But I had no idea what I was supposed to be seeing. “I think I’m missing something.”
“I ate,” she said. “A lot.”
I glanced over again. I supposed she was what overcritical people might politely call “curvy.” But I, for one, was a big fan of curves, particularly in comparison to the living, breathing female skeletons I’d spent my multi-million-dollar life around. Despite a breathtaking amount of medical evidence refuting their benefits, visible ribcages were still all the rage among the weekends-in-the-Hamptons crowd.
“Is it alright if I get a little personal here?” I said.
“More personal than you are right now?” she said, glancing down at nature, which was still very much at work.
“Not quite as personal as that,” I said. “But still pretty personal. To women, at least.”
“I see,” she said. “All right then. I’m on a thirty-day cycle, the cramps are pretty bad, and my favorite brand is Tampax.”
“Thanks for the info, but it’s actually more personal than that.”
“Wow,” she said. “He wants details. Okay, here goes. Slender on days one and five, super-absorbent days two through four.”
“Good God, woman, not that personal!”
She pretended to puzzle over what could possibly be on my mind. “I was nineteen and he was twenty-one?”
“How about you just let me ask my question?”
“Sorry,” she said. “Go ahead.”
I took a moment to steel my nerves, then decided to just spit it out. “How much do you weigh?”
I got the response I expected. A heaping pile of silence served with a smattering of death stare.
“Why?” she said. “Do you think I’m overweight?”
“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. Doyouthink you’re overweight?”
“I’m certainly not skinny.”
“What’s so great about skinny?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Ask the entire world. They seem to think very highly of it.”
“Last time I checked, the entire world is a complete moron. Don’t you read internet news?”
“I don’t need to read internet news to know that I’m above average weight for someone my size. All I have to do is look in the mirror.”
