"You are a fool! You are a little, brainwashed fool! This is 1983, for God's sake. What's it take to bring you up to date. Women have been fighting for their rights, Junella. Go buy a newspaper. They talk about it all the time. It's okay for us to come now when we fuck, and it's okay for us to say that we don't like getting our lips split wide open just because we don't want to go out with a guy. They call them laws, Junella, and they're meant to protect us."

"Bullshit. They'll punish Johnny, maybe, if he does something to me, but there isn't a thing in the world that'll protect me if he decides that I'm two-timing on him. He'll kill me, Mary Beth, and you know it."

I knew it too.

It had nearly happened once before.

I'd thought about leaving Johnny… and I couldn't. I mean… I loved him… I thought.

I loved his cock. I know that.

But there were things that he'd do to me that I just didn't like too much.

Like the time we were at the Kwikburger, and he was drunk as usual, and we were eating hamburgers and drinking our milk shakes, and Hank and Bill and T-Bird pulled up next to Johnny's car.

Now, the Kwikburger is just about the only spot in town where you can go after a date, unless you want to drive over to Center City, and no one did that on a week night, so there were a lot of cars there… and I knew just about everyone.

"What's happening, folks," said Hank, sticking his head in the window on my side.

"Just having a little snack," I said, being polite. I wasn't real fond of Johnny's friends, but I knew better than to make a big scene about it.