"That's why you jumped me?"

"No, not really. I was h.o.r.n.y and you're hot. But that's a good post-facto reason."

"I see. You know, you haven't actually f.u.c.ked my brains out," he said.

"Yet," she said. She retrieved her backpack from beside the bed, dug around it in, and produced a strip of condoms. "Yet."

He licked his lips in antic.i.p.ation, and a moment later she was unrolling the condom down his shaft with her talented mouth. He laughed and then took her by the waist and flipped her onto her back. She grabbed her ankles and pulled her legs wide and he dove between her, dragging the still-sensitive tip of his c.o.c.k up and down the length of her v.u.l.v.a a couple times before sawing it in and out of her opening, sinking to the hilt.

He wanted to f.u.c.k her gently but she groaned urgent demands in his ear to pound her harder, making satisfied sounds each time his b.a.l.l.s clapped against her a.s.s.

She pushed him off her and turned over, raising her a.s.s in the air, pulling her l.a.b.i.a apart and looking over her shoulder at him. They f.u.c.ked doggy-style then, until his legs trembled and his knees ached, and then she climbed on him and rocked back and forth, grinding her c.l.i.t against his pubis, pushing him so deep inside her. He mauled her t.i.ts and felt the pressure build in his b.a.l.l.s. He pulled her to him, thrust wildly, and she hissed dirty encouragement in his ear, begging him to fill her, ordering him to pound her harder. The stimulation in his brain and between his legs was too much to bear and he came, lifting them both off the bed with his spasms.

"Wow," he said.

"Yum," she said.

"Jesus, it's 8AM," he said. "I've got to meet with Luke in three hours."

"So let's take a shower now, and set an alarm for half an hour before he's due," she said. "Got anything to eat."

"That's what I like about you Hilda," he said. "Businesslike. Vigorous. Living life to the hilt."

Her dimples were pretty and luminous in the hints of light emerging from under the blinds. "Feed me," she said, and nipped at his earlobe.

In the s...o...b..x-sized fridge, he had a cow-shaped brick of Wisconsin cheddar that he'd been given when he stepped off the plane. They broke chunks off it and ate it in bed, then started in on the bag of soy crispies his hosts in San Francisco had given him. They showered slowly together, scrubbing one-another's backs, set an alarm, and sacked out for just a few hours before the alarm roused them.

They dressed like strangers, not embarra.s.sed, just too groggy to take much notice of one another. Perry's muscles ached pleasantly, and there was another ache, dull and faint, even more pleasant, in his b.a.l.l.s.

Once they were fully clothed, she grabbed him and gave him a long hug, and a warm kiss that started on his throat and moved to his mouth, with just a hint of tongue at the end.

"You're a good man, Perry Gibbons," she said. "Thanks for a lovely night. Remember what I told you, though: no regrets, no looking back. Be happy about this -- don't mope, don't miss me. Go on to your next city and make new friends and have new conversations, and when we see each other again, be my friend without any awkwardness. All right?"

"I get it," he said. He felt slightly irritated. "Only one thing. We weren't going to sleep together."

"You regret it?"

"Of course not," he said. "But it's going to make this injunction of yours hard to understand. I'm not good at anonymous one night stands."

She raised one eyebrow at him. "Earth to Perry: this wasn't anonymous, and it wasn't a one-night stand. It was an intimate, loving relationship that happened to be compressed into a single day."

"Loving?"

"Sure. If I'd been with you for a month or two, I would have fallen in love. You're just my type. So I think of you as someone I love. That's why I want to make sure you understand what this all means."

"You're a very interesting person," he said.

"I'm smart," she said, and cuddled him again. "You're smart. So be smart about this and it'll be forever sweet."

She left him off at the spot where he was supposed to meet Luke and the rest of his planning team to go over schematics and theory and practice. All of these discussions could happen online -- they did, in fact -- but there was something about the face-to-face connection. The meeting ran six hours before he was finally saved by his impending flight to Nebraska.

Sleepdep came down on him like a hammer as he checked in for his flight and began the ritual security-clearing buck-and-wing. He missed a cue or two and ended up getting a "detailed hand search" but even that didn't wake him up. He fell asleep in the waiting room and in the plane, in the taxi to his hotel.

But when he dropped down onto his hotel bed, he couldn't sleep. The hotel was the spitting image of the one he'd left in Wisconsin, minus Hilda and the musky smell the two of them had left behind after their roll in the hay.

It had been years since he'd had a regular girlfriend and he'd never missed it. There had been women, high-libido fatkins girls and random strangers, some who came back for a date or two. But no one who'd meant anything or whom he'd wanted to mean anything. The closest he'd come had been -- he sat up with a start and realized that the last woman he'd had any strong feelings for had been Suzanne Church.

Kettlewell emerged from New Work rich. He'd taken home large bonuses every year that Kodacell had experienced growth -- a better metric than turning an actual ahem profit -- and he'd invested in a diverse portfolio that had everything from soybeans to software in it, along with real estate (oops) and fine art. He believed in the New Work, believed in it with every fiber of his being, but an undiverse portfolio was flat-out irresponsible.

The New Work crash had killed the net worth of a lot of irresponsible people.

Living in the Caymans got boring after a year. The kids hated the international school, scuba diving amazed him by going from endlessly, meditatively fascinating to deadly dull in less than a year. He didn't want to sail. He didn't want to get drunk. He didn't want to join the creepy zillionaires on their s.e.x tours of the Caribbean and wouldn't have even if his wife would have stood for it.

A year after the New Work crash, he filed a 1040 with the IRS and paid them forty million dollars in back taxes and penalties, and repatriated his wealth to an American bank.

Now he lived in a renovated housing project on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, all upscale now with restored, kitschy window-bars and vintage linoleum and stucco ceilings. He had four units over two floors, with cleverly knocked-through walls and a spiral staircase. The kids freaking loved the staircase.

Suzanne Church called him from SFO to let him know that she was on her way in, having cleared security and customs after a scant hour. He found himself unaccountably nervous about her now, and realized with a little giggle that he had something like a crush on her. Nothing serious -- nothing his wife needed to worry about -- but she was smart and funny and attractive and incisive and fearless, and it was a h.e.l.l of a combination.

The kids were away at school and his wife was having a couple of days camping with the girls in Yosemite, which facts lent a little charge to Suzanne's impending visit. He looked up the AirBART schedule and calculated how long he had until she arrived at the 24th Street station, a brisk 20 minute walk from his place.

Minutes, just minutes. He checked the guest-room and then did a quick mirror check. His months in the Caymans had given him a deep tan that he'd kept up despite San Francisco's grey skies. He still looked like a surfer, albeit with just a little daddy-paunch -- he'd gained more weight through his wife's pregnancies than she had and only hard, aneurysm-inducing cycling over and around Potrero Hill had knocked it off again. His jeans' neat rows of pockets and Mobius seams were a little outdated, but they looked good on him, as did his Hawai'ian print shirt with its machine-screw motif.

Finally he plopped down to read a book and waited for Suzanne, and managed to get through a whole page in the intervening ten minutes.

"Kettlebelly!" she hollered as she came through the door. She took him in a hug that smelled of stale airplane and restless sleep and gave him a thorough squeezing.

She held him at arm's length and they sized each other up. She'd been a well-preserved mid-forties when he'd seen her last, b.u.t.toned-down in a California-yoga-addict way. Now she was years older, and her time in Russia had given her a forest of smile-lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She had a sad, wise turn to her face that he'd never seen there before, like a painted Pieta. Her hands had gone a little wrinkly, her knuckles more prominent, but her fingernails were beautifully manicured and her clothes were stylish, foreign, exotic and European.

She laughed huskily and said, "You haven't changed a bit."

"Ouch," he said. "I'm older and wiser, I'll have you know."

"It doesn't show," she said. "I'm older, but no wiser."

He took her hand and looked at the simple platinum band on her finger. "But you're married now -- nothing wises you up faster in my experience."

She looked at her hand. "Oh, that. No. That's just to keep the wolves at bay. Married women aren't the same kinds of targets that single ones are. Give me water, and then a beer, please."

Glad to have something to do, he busied himself in the kitchen while she prowled the place. "I remember when these places were bombed-out, real ghettos."

"What did you mean about being a target?"

"St Pete's, you know. Lawless state. Everyone's on the make. I had a bodyguard most of the time, but if I wanted to go to a restaurant, I didn't want to have to fend off the dating-service mafiyeh who wanted to offer me the deal of a lifetime on a green-card marriage."

"Jeez."