The memory evaporated and she abruptly became aware, as she gazed down at Stan's letter, that she was crying again. She read the last phrase over and over again, "My body needs yours, just as yours must need mine. Our sex life has been so great, beginning with that first night by the Spence…"
She sat up upright, feeling shame overwhelming her. She had never told him – never wanted him to know – but she never, not even once, had come close to achieving a climax. In her mind she knew positively she was one of those women who are frigid, unfeeling. And she knew, with an unshakable certainty that she would never never tell him the truth… that, instead of being "great", sex was strongly abhorrent to her…
CHAPTER TWO
When Grace went down to the swimming pool a few minutes later, Judi was already in the water cavorting with 50 year-old Ricky Karl. She really didn't know how the girl stood him. Although once allegedly a professional basketball player, the man's muscles had long since turned to fat. He was gross, insulting, crude and vulgar, and had an air about him which implied he could buy anyone or anything. As far as Grace was concerned, he was a criminal and should be in jail. It was common knowledge that, among other things, he was one of the area's biggest bookmakers. And it was also common knowledge that he carried a reserve policeman's badge from a nearby city and thus, presumably, was untouchable. He ingratiated himself with the police, giving them gifts of expensive shirts and sweaters taken from one of the warehouses that he rented to a major men's chain store. It was rumoured that he could fix anything, also rumoured that he had staged a burglary of one of his own warehouses in order to collect insurance. He was, in fact, a symbol of everything bad… something diametrically opposed to what Stan was fighting for in Vietnam.