nds were still on my shoulders,
where they'd been all along, only he was holding me at arm's distance
away from him, and looking at me curiously.

"It really was, wasn't it?" he said.

"What?" I tried to say, but the sound didn't come out. I took a breath
and "Was what?" I croaked.

"The first time." He smiled suddenly, and it was like the sun coming
up in the morning, and then his arms went all the way around me. I
don't know whether he moved over on the seat, or I did, or both of us.
"Oh, baby, baby," he whispered in my ear, and then there was the
second time.

The second time was like the first, and also like dancing, and some
ways like the bathtub. This time none of me melted away; it was all
there, and all close to him, and all warm, and all tingling with
sensations. I was more completely alive right then than I had ever
been before in my life.

After we stopped kissing each other, we stayed very still, holding on
to each other, for a while, and then he moved away just a little,
enough, to breathe better.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to get out of the car. I
didn't even want to be separated from him by the two or three inches
between us on the seat. But he was sitting next to me now, staring
straight ahead, not saying anything, and I just didn't know what came
next. On television, the kiss was always the end of the scene.

He started the car again.

I said, "I have to ... my car ... I...."

"We'll come back," he said. "Don't worry about it. We'll come back.
Let's just drive a little...?" he pulled out past my car, and turned
and looked at me for a minute. "You don't want to go now, do you?
Right away?"

I shook my head, but he wasn't looking at me any more, so I took a
breath and said out loud, "No."

We came off a twisty street onto the highway. "So that's how it hits
you," he said. He wasn't exactly talking to me; more like thinking out
loud. "Twenty-seven years a cool cat, and now it has to be a crazy
little midget that gets to you." He had to stop then, for a red
light--the same light I'd stopped at the first time on the way in.
That seemed a long long time before.

Larry turned around and took my hand. He looked hard at my face, "I'm
sorry, hon. I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

"What?" I said. "What do you mean?" I hadn't even tried to make sense
out of what he was saying before; he wasn't talking to me anyhow.

"Kid," he said, "maybe that was the first time for you, but