Free Caroline's Daughters by Alice Adams Page A

away. Of course she could, no way to stop her. Why not? She did not need a thousand, really, and for that matter she certainly did not need to get laid, not back then. She was doing it with someone or other on far more nights than not, in those days. What was known as sexually active. Very.
    Possibly this John knew a little of what she was thinking. He was fairly smart, for a doctor.
    After dinner they went up to that crazy penthouse nightclub, and they danced. One dance. And then, perfectly easy, they went down just one floor in the big elevator outside. To his very large room. And almost immediately to bed, just some fairly perfunctory kissing, then undressing (he undressed her, an old-fashioned touch that Jill quite liked).
    The interesting thing was that she had figured him exactly right. Precisely the touches that she had thought he might like really gotto him, he went a little crazy. Very likely he hadn’t done it for quite a while, a sick wife, or something. Maybe just no time, doctors over-schedule themselves so much these days.
    Another interesting thing was that it was great for her. In fact so terrific—
major
—that she could remember it still.
    Afterwards, as she was leaving, there was none of the usual, “I’ll call you, I must see you again, very soon.” Nothing like that, which was almost funny, and also a big relief. They both knew what they were doing. The Game.
    Later guys were also okay, most of them. Almost all from D.C. or New York, a couple from L.A. Mostly over fifty, mostly too overweight. Nothing quite as special, ever, as what happened with her the first time. Still, the situation, the sense of what she was actually doing, turned Jill on quite a lot. She did not choose to probe too deeply into why she found all this so exciting, she didn’t need to. She was always primed with a little good white powder, but it wasn’t just that, she knew, that turned her on.
    How shocked her sisters would be! Even Fiona, but especially Sage and Portia, on what Sage would call feminist grounds. (Sage talked a lot about Feminist Grounds, as though all the feminists owned some enormous state park.) And some feminist Sage is, letting that lousy Noel get away with all that he does. And Portia is probably gay, Jill has for some time thought that. Portia has seemed not to like men at all, unless they were gay, except for the creepy kid she hung out with sometimes. Harold? Yes, his name is Harold.
    Does she herself like men? Jill has wondered that, and she has been forced to conclude that she does not, or not very much. What she does like is sex, she likes screwing a lot, and she needs men for that. (She has done it with a vibrator, which works, so to speak, an instant O, but not much fun. Much more fun using a vibrator with some guy.) She wants men around to make love with and therefore she has to humor them, to put up with what she considers their basic simplicity. Even smart men are basically very stupid, is Jill’sconclusion. Which is not exactly a feminist point of view, or is it? On feminist grounds, she is probably way off.
    When she told one man about the Game, a lover named Crimmons, of all nerdy names, he got incredibly turned on. Crimmons was married of course and a senior partner in her law firm. At first she wondered why she was telling him all that, it was not exactly politic, but then, when he got so excited about it, wanting more and more, wanting every detail, she knew why she had told him. Just for that. His turn-on.
    Now she will have to take a Dalmane, thirty grams. If it just puts her to sleep right away, it is now 1:30, so if she sleeps until 7:30 she will be okay for a meeting at 8. She hopes. She can skip the call to Fiona, she knows it’s her turn to call and if she doesn’t Fiona will call her. But Fiona can talk to her machine.
    Jill is so thin that the ingestion of almost any food makes her feel bloated, as though whatever she had eaten were protuberant