She'd told the truth: I couldn't imagine. I saw her with boys her age -- at the time, about twelve. I saw her with men. I saw her with women. I saw her with girls. I saw her with boys and girls. And men and women. And men and girls. And men and boys. And women and girls. And lots of girls. And lots of boys. And lots of women. And lots of men. The footage was grainy and the transfer to videocassette hadn't helped. No matter. The camera-person had been good and possessed stamina. I watched her fuck and suck and sometimes fuckandsuck and saw her lick and be licked and take it in front and behind and in the mouth and all combinations of all three. I saw her play with herself, with others, with many others, saw them play with her. I watched her use a dildo, two dildos, a dildo and a person of one sex or another and toward the end I watched her do everything at once and then some, things that turned my stomach, things that belong in the bathroom and not in the face and on the body of a drugged child. And she seemed to enjoy it all and at the end was asking for more. At some point, part of me got numb and I began to analyze. Even then, the abnormal size of her clitoris had gotten a lot of attention. Even then, she'd been sexy. Seeing her cumming gave me a hard-on and she came a lot. The hard-on was cured during the part where she was impaled -- for want of a better word -- on two rather large cocks at once. Because when they were done, there was some blood on each of the dicks, which meant she'd been hurt and that meant she'd been pained and that pissed me off. They'd known she was being hurt and continued using her. Abusing her. And she'd begged for more. Pleaded. Wept. For more. Even in the grainy footage, it was obvious she was stoned out of her skull. As lovely and sweet as her twelve-year-old body had been, there was always the knowledge that this was a person and had not chosen any of this. Some of the other girls and one of the other women were lovely, too. One of the girls, in particular -- heavily Chinese by her looks -- was unbelievably sexy, though she couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen. She seemed to really enjoy licking cunts and clits and seemed to get off -- eventually -- on having a cock rammed into her cunt or on sucking a cock till the cum overflowed her sweet lips. And I had to wonder what her story was, too, even as my hard cock poked up between the folds of my robe. At the end of the tape, I turned off the TV and switched off the VCR and sat there in the dark, smoking a cigarette and drinking cold Irish coffee (which, when hot, is terrific and when cold is awful). Just as I stubbed out the butt, the doorbell rang. I roused myself and went to the kitchen to buzz her into the building. I took the keys from the door and went into the hallway, still clad in my robe, and looked down through the space between the flights of stairs. She stepped into the light of the first floor lamp, three storeys below. She looked up at me, holding a shopping bag in each hand. The flowers of a stalk of celery stuck out of the top of one bag. "Do you want me to come up?" Her voice seemed to echo from near and far, as if at the edge of a sheer drop. I held the keys out and dropped them three storeys. They fell at her feet. "Those are my keys." She stared a moment longer and then tears welled up and one fell down her perfect, lovely cheek and then she nodded and picked up the keys and I waited just inside the door to my home. She didn't need the brass keys to enter. She already had the keys because my door was open. She stood there holding the two shopping bags. "You watched?" "Every second." "And you want me?" "Just as much." She stepped into my foyer and put the bags down. She closed the door and turned to me. "You were shocked?" "No." "You could imagine -- " "I could imagine, but some of it I do not like to imagine." "And some you do?" I thought about it, then nodded. "Yes, some of it turned me on. Not all, but some." She considered this for a long time. "Listen, what are we supposed to do with all this stuff?" I asked. She almost giggled. "You are going to cook." "Me?" "I can not; I am a lousy cook." "I know," I said gravely and then she laughed and then we were hugging each other. Finally she said the food had to be stored or it would go bad. I grabbed the two bags and carted them into the kitchen. She was behind me. My alleged cat, hearing someone at the door, mugged our ankles in the dining room and we had to stop and pay toll (in belly and jowl rubs) before we continued. As I put the food away, she said sometimes it was difficult to be away from her kid for so long. Even when Sabrina went to stay over at a friend's house, she missed her desperately. I nodded. "Your kid is terrific." "And she is growing into a woman." "A beautiful woman. As beautiful as her mother." She handed me a yellow pepper for safekeeping in the crisper. "And sexy?" I stored the peppers, closed the refrigerator and faced her. "Yes, she is getting to be sexy, and acting sexual, too." She held my gaze for a long moment. "It worries me she may be too much like her mother." "She could do worse." "No -- she is too young!" "To do the same things at the same age, yes, she's too you. But I think you're terrific." I pulled her toward me, but she pulled away. "You would like to puck her?" "In a year or so, if she keeps developing the way she is, my cock and balls will want her -- but my head and heart run me, not my dick. She's a kid, a young child becoming a woman and too damn young, no matter how much she turns me on. And she will and does turn me on! I won't pretend she doesn't!" Livinia stood like a statue. "She is a woman and lovely and sweet and I like her and I am a man and I am going to react to her, and that's the way it is! But that does not mean I have to do whatever my gonads tell me -- and I like to believe I am more than a cock and balls...or is that all you think I am?" Her eyes were very wet. "Well? Is it? Am I just a dick to you?" She was silent. "Am I, dammit?" She shook her head, slowly, then firmly. "Can you trust me in this?" I forced calmness into my voice. "I don't know..." "Livinia, I want you to be my lover and my friend. But I want no part of that if you re going to be uneasy about this." She looked at me for a long time. Then she nodded. "I -- I will trust you." I pulled her into my arms and this time she came willingly and pressed her face against my shoulder and shook as she wept. After a little while, I said, "Livinia, I'm hungry. Can we please eat some dinner?" I felt her nod. We disengaged and she excused herself to the bathroom and then scurried to the bedroom. By the time she came out, I had put the water up to boil some rice and was cleaning and chopping some veggies and had the microwave nuking some frozen chicken cutlets to sliceable tenderness. "What do you want me to do?" She was in my blue robe again. Her eyes were puffy and red. The rain had ended sometime earlier, but the humidity had made a mess of her hair. She was a mess. She was gorgeous, standing there in my kitchen and I thought of what I'd seen on the tape and what we'd done together and what she'd told me and the day's enjoyment... ...and her sister... ...and many, many other things and I was very glad she was there. "Mmmm, I'd like you to wash and clean the celery and tell me where you've been for two hours." "I was shopping." "I know that. But in two hours, you had time to harvest and grade the produce. Shopping took about a half hour." "I will tell you...Daveed, we are making a lot of pood to eat." "I've seen you eat." She laughed. I stepped over to her and put my finger against her lower lip and pushed it into her teeth. "'Food'," I said. "Vood." I shook my head. "Food." I took my finger away and she duplicated it. Watching her lips on her finger gave me another hard-on. She smiled and sidled up close to me. I didn't scream. Her hand went into the folds of my robe and gripped my cock. "Are you ravishing me?" She smiled and pulled lightly on my cock. "Mmmmm -- I like this penees." "It likes you." "Perhaps I should practice my speech with it." "Not until after we eat some dinner." "Oh, you are able to wait?" "I am VERY hungry." She released my cock, pushed my robe back into place and resumed washing celery. "You would not be willing to wait if my sister was doing that with your pe -- with your cock." "Right now I would." She turned and faced me, hipshot, and look of skepticism and challenge in her face. "Oh? You would not like to puck my sister?" That snapped it. "Dammit, woman, you ask me if I want to puck your little girl and if I want to puck -- to fuck -- your little sister, now what the hell is it with you? It's you I want and that's why you're here!" "So, you say my little girl turns you on but my little sister does not?" I took out the brandy and a glass, dumped a slug into the glass and downed it. Then I did it again, all the time thinking that this was a really terrific thing to do on an essentially empty stomach -- five belts of brandy and deal with a stressful situation. For an encore, I could try hitting myself in the head with a ballpeen hammer. "Okay," I said and put down the glass. "Okay. Now listen up. Your sister is beautiful. She has an amazing body. She is a wet dream come true. If I found her naked in my bed, I would not, repeat, not kick her out. But I asked you to come up here, twice, and it's you I want in my bed. If you can't handle that and this is going to keep coming up, I think we better call it a night, okay?" "But suppose -- " My patience ended right then and there. I stalked out of the kitchen, got her tape from the VCR, her coat from the bedroom closet and slung her clothing over my arm. "What are you doing?" "No, it's what you're doing: Getting dressed and getting out. I told you twice and that's it. Leave." She took her stuff and laid it on the bed. "I -- I am sorry. I was testing you to -- " "Testing me!!???!" I reminded myself that she might have reason not to trust a man easily. She nodded and looked down. "I had to be sure about you before I told you the rest." "The rest? What rest?" While Alicia was away at school, she had learned about some things from the upper-class girls who comprised most of the students. She had learned, notably, that it could be as much fun to play doctor with a girl as it was with a boy. And she'd taken to it. On one of her visits home -- two years after Sabrina was born -- she'd asked her older, more worldly wise sister about doing it with men. Alicia already knew about the birds and bees, but she had some misconceptions. Livinia cleared them up as best she could. She asked Alicia a few questions and was a bit shocked at what she learned. At fourteen, and already fully developed and then some, Alicia had never been with a man. She'd quickly been subsumed into a little clique of lesbians and they'd told her horror stories of what men and boys would do and what it was like... "She started to doubt and she asked me," Livinia explained. And then she genuinely shocked me. She had played doctor with her sister when she was twelve. "She liked the way I made her feel and she did it to me." Essentially, they had masturbated each other, but when Alicia came home, she was fully experienced with women. Livinia slowly drew her out and Alicia confessed that she had always like enjoying slippery pleasures with her older sister. And she remember clearly that Livinia's clitoris was so large and lickable... Before the evening ended, they were sucking and licking and fingering each other. "I shock you?" I nodded. "Yeah, a little. Two girls doing it -- well, that's not so odd. It's almost innocent when it happens naturally and it's kind of exploring and curious. But this other time, you both knew what you were doing." And how. After that, every chance they got on Alicia's holidays, they slipped into each other's arms (and pussies and mouths, etc.) She stopped and looked at me. I suddenly understood. Well, five shots of brandy on an empty stomach dulls the wits, so give me a break. "You still do it." She nodded. "You did it while she was visiting." She nodded. I saw the light. "And the reason it took two hours to buy thirty minutes' worth of groceries was -- " She nodded. "Are you angry?" I shook my head. "Jealous." "Of her or of me?" "Both. Is Alicia jealous?" "Both." That took a few seconds to sink in. I was kind of thrown. I mean, look, I'm not some stud women fall all over. Good-looking, maybe even handsome, but Kevin Costner doesn't lay awake at night worrying about competition from me. In fact, a recent survey showed that nine out of ten women would have no trouble at all restraining themselves from ripping off their clothes and approaching me on their knees, and the tenth woman surveyed was selling it for drugs. "What are you thinking?" I swept the pornographic images from my head and shrugged. "You are going to have to work things out with Alicia. If I have to choose, I choose you." She smiled shyly and nodded at the floor, then held her hand out to me. "Thank you." I guess I kind of blushed. She was thanking me for finding her more desirable than a beautiful young woman who'd always preferred women to men. This was like being thanked for preferring a 'Vette with a tank of gas to a Jag XKE with an empty tank. Either one is gorgeous, but you know the 'Vette will start when you turn the key. I took her hand and led her back to the kitchen. I resumed preparing food. After a few moments, she asked to use my phone. I assented, of course. She went into my home office and made her call. The conversation was in Tagolog. "I wanted to check and see if my kid was okay." "And?" "She is." "Good. Say, have you ever been to a baseball game?" She confessed ignorance about the Arcana Majora of baseball and we talked about the kinds of games that were popular in the Philippines and she kept glancing at the clock. At ten minutes to ten, we were talking about the price of housing going up despite a so-called depressed market -- and she changed the subject. "Daveed, a little while before, when we talked in the bedroom, you said something. Do you remember?" "Most of it." I explained about the brandies. She laughed. "What in particular, lovely Livinia?" I was about to start heating the peanut oil in the wok. "Please do not be mad at me, but I -- " The bell rang. "Who the hell -- " She went to the button and pressed it, then went to the door and called down in Tagalog. I remembered the phone call she'd made and freaked out. I put down the peanut oil and hurried to the entrance door of my apartment. "I'm not dressed for your kid to see me -- " I protested. "Not my kid," she said. "My kid is staying with Evelyn." "Who -- " "My sister. Do you mind? I had to be sure about you before I told you the last thing." What could I do but stare and nod, my mouth hanging open, as I considered what she'd said. Her sister? The last thing? What "last thing"? [more]