Cindy had insisted on the shower. She wanted her one and only night with a TV star to be perfect. And that's why she kept slathering, because a TV star like Ken Norris (my God, was he handsome!) would be used to women who served themselves up like pastries. And a lot of work went into pastries. A lot!

As she tilted her head back, letting the water blast at her face, she congratulated herself again for being sensible, for mentioning right in the middle of a kiss what a stickler she was for protection, given all the grave diseases around these days. And promptly he'd waggled a little plastic box at her that listed all the scientific stuff that had been sprayed on to this particular form of latex protection. Why, this stuff would do everything except kill crabgrass!

So, feeling safe now, and feeling clean now, she started to step from the shower, knowing that he was probably tired of waiting for her. The last she'd seen of him, he'd been sitting on the cramped built-in red couch in a black dinner jacket, pouring some more scotch into a drink he said looked "too much like a urine specimen. I like 'em a little darker than this." And looking so dreamy saying it!

She knew that men liked women's hair wet so she didn't do anything more than dry it with a towel and wrap the towel turban-style around her head. Then she stood naked in front of the steamed-over mirror and wiped the critical areas clean so she could get a quick appraisal of herself. For a Kansas City girl who'd never slept with a TV star, she looked-why be unbecomingly modest? — pretty nice. In fact, very nice.

She checked one breast and then the other. They had begun to sag a teensy bit, but sag at least in an interesting way, and then she checked her bottom which had begun, but not so interestingly, to droop, and then she checked her neck, which bore not a trace of impending middle age. She had the neck of a sixteen-year-old.