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"I can't wait to see it when it's done. I like the stuff you've done, Alice, as much of it as I've seen, I mean."

He sat on the sofa and nodded as he looked around. "I can believe someone could have hidden up here for some time. Not without help, of course," he added.

"It wasn't always that. My aunt and my mother used it as their sort of clubhouse."

"Oh yeah? Why not? I would have." He smiled. "I would now," he said.

"That wasn't the exact sofa, but there was one here and they used it to pretend they were in a car, traveling, seeing America."

"Would you like to do that?"

"Pretend?"

"No, silly. See America?"

"Why not? Who wouldn't?"

"Right. I've been to a few places for vacations," he said, leaning back. I drew closer, envious.

"Where have you been?"

"We've spent part of the summer up at Cape Cod. We've gone to the Finger Lakes, once to Wyoming and lots of times to Florida during the winter break, of course. My mother wanted to see Nashville, and once we visited some relatives in Chicago. How about you?"

I shook my head.

"Not anywhere as much as that. New York City." "That's it?"

"And my aunt's place in New Paltz."

"No wonder you sit on the sofa."

"I didn't say I do that. I said my aunt and my mother did," I said sharply.

"Wouldn't be terrible if you had," he replied, undisturbed by my reaction. "C'mon," he said, patting the spot beside him. "I'll take you for a ride."

I hesitated.

"Just for fun. Remember, I don't bite."

"I don't think so," I said, shaking my head.

"Stop being so afraid of everything," he warned. "You'll never get those answers about yourself you're looking to get if you remain so timid and afraid."

I had heard that before--and recently, too. He was truly like a marksman hitting the bull's-eyes, I thought. Again I wondered if it was all part of a clever seduction. I inched closer, then he reached up for my hand and I sat beside him. He put his arm around my shoulders, drew me closer and kissed my cheek and then my lips before leaning back and pretending to have one hand on a steering wheel.

"Okay," he said, "we're entering Provincetown, Cape Cod. It's at the very tip of the cape. You look to your left and right and you see the dunes . . . it looks like desert going on and on to the ocean. Now there are houses and soon we're entering the village. Smell the sea?" He took a deep breath. "Do you?" He looked at me, and I laughed.

Was this exactly what my mother and Aunt Zipporah had done sixteen years ago?

"Isn't it breathtaking? We're going to eat fresh lobster tonight. Look up at the sign above that restaurant . . . The Lobster You Eat Today Last Night Swam in Cape Cod Bay."

I laughed again and again he kissed me, only this time it was a longer kiss, one that drew me into him, one that relaxed my shoulders and softened me enough to turn. His hand went down my back. He pulled away to kiss my nose, my closed eyes, and then my lips again.

"Alice," he said, but he wasn't just saying my name. He was calling to me, calling to something deep inside me, to a longing, awakening the sleeping curiosity that came in dreams and quiet moments, the curiosity about my own body and the way it struggled to discover and find answers about itself.

His hands were at my waist, moving under my blouse, gliding over my ribs to my tightly held breasts clamoring to be free. He fidgeted only for a moment behind my back to undo the bra, and then I moaned under the first touch of his fingers over my breasts and nipples. I closed my eyes as if I couldn't watch because if I did, I would stop him from lifting my blouse away, from bringing his lips to my breasts, from letting him take off my blouse and my bra and then from feeling his lips working a path of

kisses down to my waist as he unzipped my skirt.