“How was the trip?” he asks, smoothing my hair.
“Great,” I say breathlessly, thinking about how much fun we’re going to have.
He holds open the door and I slide onto the front seat. The car is old, from the 1960s, with a polished wooden steering wheel and shiny nickel dials. “This your car?” I ask, teasingly.
“It’s Peter’s.”
“Peter?”
“Teensie’s husband.” He starts the engine, puts the car into gear, and pulls away from the curb with a jolt.
“Sorry,” he laughs. “I’m a tad distracted. Don’t take this the wrong way, but Teensie’s insisted on giving you your own room.”
“Why?” I frown in annoyance, but secretly, I’m relieved.
“She kept asking me how old you were. I told her it was none of her damn business, and that’s when she got suspicious. You are over eighteen, aren’t you?” he asks, half jokingly.
I sigh, as if the question is beyond ridiculous. “I told you. I’m a sophomore in college.”
“Just checking, kitten,” he says, giving me a wink. “And don’t be afraid to stand up to Teensie, okay? She can be a bully, but she’s got an enormous heart.”
In other words, she’s an absolute bitch.
We swing into a long gravel drive and park in front of a shingled house. It’s not quite as large as I imagined, given the enormity of the houses I saw along the way, but it’s still big. What was once a regular-sized house is attached to a soaring barnlike structure.
“Nice, huh?” Bernard says, gazing up at the house from behind the windshield. “I wrote my first play here.”
“Really?” I ask, getting out of the car.
“Rewrote it, actually. I’d written the first draft during the day when I was working the night shift at the bottling plant.”
“That’s so romantic.”
“It wasn’t at the time. But in hindsight, yeah, it does sound romantic.”
“With a touch of cliché?” I ask, razzing him.
“I went to Manhattan one night with my buddies,” he continues, opening the trunk. “Stumbled across Teensie at a club. She insisted I send her my play, said she was an agent. I didn’t even know what an agent was back then. But I sent her my play anyway, and the next thing I know, she opened her house to me for the summer. So I could write. Undisturbed.”
“And were you?” I ask, trying to keep the apprehension out of my voice. “Undisturbed?”
He laughs. “When I was disturbed, it wasn’t unpleasant.”
Crap. Does that mean he slept with Teensie? And if he did, why didn’t he tell me? He could have warned me, at least. I hope I won’t discover any other unpleasant facts this weekend.
“Don’t know where I’d be without Teensie,” he says, slinging his arm across my shoulders.
We’re almost at the house when Teensie herself appears, strolling briskly up a flagstone path. She’s wearing tennis whites, and while I can’t speak for her heart, there’s no mistaking the fact that her breasts are enormous. They strain against the cloth of her polo shirt like two boulders struggling to erupt from a volcano. “There you are!” she exclaims pleasantly, shielding her eyes from the sun.
She plants herself in front of me, and in a rush, says, “I’d shake hands but I’m sweaty. Peter’s inside somewhere, but if you want a drink, ask Alice.” She turns around and trots back to the courts, waggling her fingers in the air.
“She seems nice,” I say, in an effort to like her. “And she has really big breasts,” I add, wondering if Bernard has seen them in the flesh.
Bernard hoots. “They’re fake.”
“Fake?”
“Silicone.”