Call it revenge, getting even, even love, but the end result is the same. Lucy Barrett lost her virginity that night in David's third-story studio apartment in Alexandria. It was all over so quickly she could hardly remember it now; of course, being perfectly soused might have affected her memory a bit. And looking back, she felt not the slightest recriminating pang, not one. She took David home to their Valley Farms house the very next night and treated Kate Barrett to a bit of her own medicine. Of course, John Barrett's charming widow was too much the southern aristocrat to make a scene in front of company, even if the guest was, in her own words, «some degenerate hippie creep and probably an addict as well.» The real scene came later, when David dropped her off at half past three in the morning, but Lucy came out ahead on points at the end of round one by turning up the very next afternoon for five o'clock cocktails at the Club with David firmly in tow. Long hair, sandals, dirty jeans, and all. That was the real beginning of a running battle between the Barrett womenfolk that had dragged on for over a month. Kate Barrett with her «gentleman friend» and Lucy with her hippie.

«Hi, baby, been waiting long?» Lucy was so caught up in her reminiscing that she failed to hear David pull to the curb, and that was no mean oversight with his MG.

«No, just a couple of minutes,» she lied to save conversation. «Let's get out of here, David. I'm just not in the mood for school today. I slept through the business accounting class and I was supposed to see the Dean about being late this morning, but I just cut out.»

«Okay, baby, I think you should have split from that lousy place a long time ago. Who the hell wants to go to school to learn to be a file clerk?»

Lucy reached inside and opened the latch of the tiny sports car and then climbed into the passenger seat, doubling her long legs to get them inside. David leered down between them at the snatch of white as her panties showed momentarily. «Hmm, nice beaver shot there, sweetheart,» he said with a phony Bogart lisp.