'I want to know you, seriously,' I told her. 'But you didn't want me to be serious. You wanted me to be funny.' She smiled, and then she let my hand move up to her breast and rest under it.
'Well, it's OK to be a little more serious than you're being now,' she said. 'You have to at least talk to me a little. I mean, you must wonder why I'm doing this.'
'I do, I do,' I said, and she laughed at that.
'Well, I don't know, really,' she said.
'I know,' I said. 'You don't like big people.' She blushed, but now she let me hold both her breasts; her hands, light on my wrists, took my pulse.
'You're not that small,' she said.
'But I'm shorter than you are.'
'Well, yes, but that's not so small.'
'I don't mind being smaller.'
'God, I don't either,' she said, and ran one hand along my leg, where I had her feet trapped. 'You've certainly got a lot of hair,' she said. 'I'd never have guessed it.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Oh, it's all right.'
'Am I your first nonskier?' I asked.
'I haven't been to bed a lot, you know.'
'I know.'
'No, you don't,' she said. 'Don't say you know when you don't. I mean, I once knew someone who wasn't a skier.'
'A hockey player?'
'No,' she laughed. 'A football player.'
'He was still big, though.'
'You're right,' she said. 'I don't like big people.'
'I'm awfully glad I'm small.'
'You play things, don't you?' she asked. It was a serious question. 'Those tapes. There's really nothing on them, is there? You don't do any one thing, you said.'
'I'm your first nobody,' I said, and fearing she might take me too seriously, I leaned forward and kissed her - her mouth dry, her teeth shut, her tongue lost. When I kissed her breasts, her fingers found my hair; they hurt me a little - she seemed to be pulling me away.
'What's wrong?'
'My gum.'
'Your what?'
'My gum,' she said. 'It's stuck in your hair.' Nestling eye to eye with her nipple, I realized that I must have swallowed mine.
'I swallowed mine,' I said.
'Swallowed it?'
'Well, I swallowed something,' I said. 'Maybe your nipple.'