Something was up, maybe.

Not me, certainly: I was wilted. Nancy was going to have to learn to respect me as a person-for the rest of the night, anyway.

Meanwhile the crowd in and around the pool was beginning to thin. Nancy begged off around two-thirty and by that time there was only half a dozen of us left. My dragon lady was one. Her blond hunk of manhood was another, only now he was in the water with a blond hunk of womanhood whose own hunk she had managed to lose, along with the top of her bikini, and two small but perfectly shaped boobs bobbled in the water like apples, pink apples, if there is such a thing, or even if there isn’t. I didn’t much care either way. I was too wrung out to care. Not so the two blonds: they climbed out of the pool giggling and one chased the other into the shadows.

That left me alone with her.

Which was not good. A harmless conversation, idly struck… and the ballgame was over. Of course there was a whole pool between us; better an ocean. I needed to stay just some anonymous bearded guy who she had never really looked at close, otherwise the entire deal was blown.

But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the water. Staring at it, the surface rippling with the slight breeze, the torch lights shimmering eerily in reflection.

And then she got up and went up the open stairway to the second level, where her apartment was.

I stayed behind. I was, to say the least, relieved. And now that I had the pool to myself, I could have a nice, private swim, which is a daily ritual of mine, whenever possible, anyway.

I dove in.