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"It is very pleasant," she said She rolled over suddenly and my hands were on her breasts "Oh, Evan," she said "Oh, Evan, I love you"

Her ers hurried with buttons and zipper I slipped out of my clothes and lay down beside her My hands returned to her breasts She thrust her hips forward, urged the warainstat once, arguing with one another The loudest of them all said, "Look, du a saint"

I kissed her mouth I kissed her throat I kissed her little brown breasts She s opened and her thighs beat at htedAnother little voice, a last little voice, askedinto, and what I was getting into was Plum, and it was very nice, very nice indeed

Afterward I put some more sticks on the fire and we shared the raphically in the firelight She bit into the melon and the juice trickled down her face and onto her body

She looked marvelous

"Well," she said, between mouthfuls "That wasn’t so bad at all, was it?"

"You lied"

"Did I?"

"A woin"

"It seehtfully

"It seeled by sexual frustration ‘When a woman is accustomed to sex, it is a hardship to do without it’ Teller of untruths"

"It was a pre-truth" She giggled suddenly and melon juice cascaded onto her breasts "You would not have done it otherwise, would you?"

"I don’t know"

I reached for her She squirht her and she threw her arot all over us, but we didn’t notice this until quite a while later

When she said, "You wouldn’t have done it if you knew Or not right away, it would have taken h to provoke you as it was And I wanted us to do this It is silly not to, don’t you think? We are all alone in the ether, and are we not close now?"

"We are," I agreed

"And you love me, don’t you, Evan?"

"Uh-huh"

"And it does not disturb you that I am of color?"

"Of course not"

"Or that I am fourteen?"

"Fourteen?"

She put her hand on ry withon fifteen Everyone who is fourteen years old is well on the way to being fifteen It is the natural order of things"

I didn’t say anything She curled up against me and her head nestled in the crook of rass and leftover love She said sleepily, "Fourteen, fifteen, just nuoes around the earth"

"I think it’s the other way around"

"Oh All right I think I will go to sleep now I love you Good night"

She went at once to sleep, as she was apt to do I lay awake breathing her s in the distance I felt an unwelcome kinship to them I told myself I was a dirty old ht would not be repeated

And I told ht, and so on each , as we screwed our way into the heart of the country

Chapter 6

The weather was really fantastic I had expected it to be too hot, it being sue point of a New York winter I had figured that too hot was just right It wasn’t, though, not where ere It was hot but not too hot, and it rained for about an hour a day, and the general climatic conditions were rather like Southern California

People move to California at an extraordinary rate, while hardly anybody ever goes to Modonoland You ht think there are reasons

There are reasons

More reasons, in fact, than one can shake a stick at A cloud of biting flies, for exa a stick I don’t knohere the cloud of biting flies came from, or why, but in the middle of an otherwise unble flies are wont to do Flailing at the at theo away seemed overly passive

Plum said, "Run!"

"It’s no use They can move faster than we can They-"

"Run!"

She ran off to her left at full speed, wagging her hands at the flies as she did so I ran after her The flies, like the poor, were alith us

"This way!"

She darted I followed There were soap in the trees, and there was a still pool through the gap in the trees Plued in I followed The pool was about four feet deep with a soft stoneless botto, and the flies decided tothem away from my face, they settled on my hand