“Fun with a marine? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“You know I have eclectic tastes,” Virginia rejoined, then continued, “Well, I started out by just looking in the window, smiling at him and letting him ogle my bosom.” Virginia paused to light a bong, draw on it and inhale deeply.
“Then what happened?” Veronica asked, taking the pipe from her.
“Then I went and got my sign and began to march back and forth in front of the window.”
“Jesus, Virginia!” Veronica laughed.
“I know it was mad, but I couldn’t resist. Well, naturally he came out and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing? But before I’d even drawn a breath to answer, this righteous defender of the military industrial complex starts telling me to move along or else. Or else what? I challenge, gratified by the shade of brick red he’s starting to turn under his tan. God, he was pissed at me,” Virginia laughed.
“So then what happened?” Veronica asked, finally expelling her long held breath. She pulled the white zip, micro-mini dress out of the Bonwit’s bag and held it up to herself. “How do you like this?”
“I love it, but just listen to this. Guess what this joker says next?”
“Tell me.”
“He threatens to spank me!”
“He what???”
“I knew that would get your attention.”
“Why do you know that?” Veronica reddened.
“I’ve read all your Grove Press novels. Your Man With A Maid. Your Frank and I. Your Sadopaidea. I know what you’re into.”
“So you’re saying that he spanked you? Right there in the street?”
“I really should have beat a retreat but I was having too much fun baiting him. We got into this argument about me not showing proper respect for the corps and after that it was mere seconds until he lost it.”
“So he spanked you?”
“Wait a minute, let me change the record and I’ll show you,” said Virginia, eagerly exchanging Are You Experienced for Surrealistic Pillow on the turntable. “You have to hear this one too.”
“Oh, White Rabbit. I’ve heard that one. It’s great. Show me what?”
“Look at this,” said Virginia, pulling up her skirt and displaying her skimpily pantied bottom cheeks to her sister. “Can you see how pink I am? And this happened at least an hour ago.”
Veronica saw that her sister’s bottom blushed radiantly pink from hip to hip.
“He really spanked you in the street? Over his knee?”
“Oh it was horrible,” Virginia laughed. “First of all, it hurt like fuck all, and then I absolutely hated myself for getting excited.”
“Excited? You got excited? Where do you come off getting excited? I’m the one who’s into it!” Veronica protested.
“It must have been a direct result of reading those books,” Virginia admitted.
“So who broke it up?”
“No one. He spanked me until he got tired. And that took a while. We collected quite a crowd of horny guys spilling out of the bar across the street to watch. I probably would have cried if I wasn’t so damned stoned, but I’d dropped half a tab of acid before I left the house and it started kicking in half way through the spanking. Weirdly, in my mind I eroticized the whole thing while it was happening and actually started humping his lap. I swear I felt his hand going between my legs for a second too. But then again, I may have imagined that.”
“Jesus, is it still coming on?”
“You bet it is.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then I made the mistake of looking into the face of the crowd and that was a lot more frightening than the Sergeant. That made me cry. Especially when they started sprouting tentacles, fins, claws, scales and jack in the box heads.”
“You know you should never drop acid when you’re going to be in an insecure environment. What’s the matter with you?’
“Do you see how red I still am?” Virginia pulled her tiny panties up between her cheeks to fully display her pinkened bottom.
“Ginny, don’t you know any better than to fuck with a marine?”
“I like fucking with marines. They always know how to use condoms,” Virginia blithely replied, pulling several other mini dresses out of Veronica’s shopping bag and holding them up to herself in the mirror.
“So, where did you say this recruitment center was?” Veronica asked idly.
“On Charles Street, just before you get to Beacon, across from the pub. Why, what are you going to do?” asked Virginia, following Veronica into the front bedroom.
“So how old was this spanking marine?”
“Hard to tell. Maybe thirty-five or even forty.”
“Cute?” Veronica went behind a painted screen to exchange her jeans for the white dress.
“Would I get in grabbing distance of someone who wasn’t?” Virginia retorted, opening the bedroom windows wider, as it seemed to be getting hotter and more humid as the afternoon waned.
“Are you going out tonight?”
“Yes,” replied Virginia, “to see a foreign film in Cambridge. Want to come?”
“No thanks. Stay out late, okay?”
“Veronica, what ever you’re thinking, you’d better reconsider,” Virginia cautioned. “Spanking may be fun to fantasize about, but I found out that in reality, it hurts!”
“Mmmmm, you poor thing,” Veronica ignored her sister while regarding her freshly frocked form in the full-length mirror. “Somehow it seems so cosmically wrong that you were the one to get spanked. Do you think this intuitive person has more than one spanking in him, or did you use it all up?”
“Are you kidding? He was getting off on it. I could feel!” Virginia asserted, leaning out the windowsill and gazing down on cobble-stoned Revere Street below. “In a big way too,” Virginia added.
About an hour later in the Charles Street Pub, Sgt. Flagg wondered what it was about him that day that suddenly pretty young women were flirting with him on first sight. First there had been the blonde brat with her peace sign, insolently baiting him until he had no choice but to turn her over his knee, which event had been remarkably enhanced by being witnessed by ten rowdily enthusiastic onlookers pouring out of this bar. Now, here was a delectable brunette in the shortest skirt he’d ever seen, perched on a stool not five steps away and looking straight into his eyes in a way that could not be misinterpreted.
On the way over to talk to the girl in the white dress and high-heeled sandals, the sergeant was stopped to have his hand shaken vigorously by two different imbibers, in two different states of inebriation.
“What was that all about?” Veronica asked him as he slid onto the vacant stool beside her.
“Oh, they’re just wise guys,” said the weather-beaten marine, extending his rough hand to shake her small, well manicured one. “Doug Flagg,” he said.
“Veronica Grady,” she replied, allowing him to squeeze her hand briefly.
“What are you drinking?”
“Cosmopolitans,” she replied.