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'I love you,' she tried to tell me, but she was laughing too hard.

'I want you,' I told her, but I was laughing so hard that I sneezed -- right in the middle of telling her that I wanted her -- and that broke us up for a while longer. It was like that as long as she kept her back to me and we lay together like the stereotypical love spoons, but when she turned to me, when she lay on top of me with her breasts against my chest when she scissored her legs around me -- everything changed. If it had been too funny when we started, now it was too serious, and we couldn't stop. The first time we made love, we were in a more or less conventional position -- 'nothing too Tantric, please,' Franny had asked me. And when it was over, she said, 'Well, that was okay. Not great, but nice -- right?'

'Well, it was better than "nice" -- for me,' I said. 'But not quite "great" -- I agree.'

'You agree,' Franny repeated. She shook her head, she touched me with her hair. 'Okay,' she whispered. 'Get ready for great.'

At one point, I must have held her too tightly. She said, 'Please don't hurt me.'

I said, 'Don't be frightened.'

She said, 'I am, just a little.'

'I am -- a lot,' I said.

It is improper to describe making love to one's sister. Does it suffice to say that it became 'great,' and it got even greater? And later it grew worse, of course -- later we got tired. About four o'clock in the afternoon Lilly knocked discreetly on the door.

'Is that a maid?' Franny called.

'No, it's me,' Lilly said. 'I'm not a maid, I'm a writer.'

'Go away and come back in an hour,' Franny said.

'Why?' Lilly asked.

'I'm writing something,' Franny said.

'No, you're not,' Lilly said.

'I'm trying to grow!' Franny said.

'Okay,' Lilly said. 'Keep passing the open windows,' she added.

In a sense, of course, Franny was writing something; she was the author of how our relationship would turn out -- she took a mother's responsibility for it. She went too far -- she made love to me too much. She made me aware that what was between us was all too much.

'I still want you,' she murmured to me. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. When I entered her, she winced.

'Are you sore?' I whispered.

'Of course I'm sore!' she said. 'But you better not stop. If you stop, I'll kill you,' Franny told me. She would have, too, I realized later. In a way -- if I had stayed in love with her -- she would have been the death of me; we would have been the death of each other. But she simply overdid it; she knew exactly what she was doing.

'We better stop,' I whispered to her. It was almost five o'clock.

'We better not stop,' Franny said fiercely.

'But you're sore,' I protested.

'I want to be sorer,' Franny said. 'Are you sore?' she asked me.

'A little,' I admitted.

'I want you a lot sore,' Franny said. 'Top or bottom?' she asked me grimly.

When Lilly knocked at the door again, I was on the verge of imitating Screaming Annie; if there'd been a new bridge around, I could have cracked it.

'Come back in an hour!' Franny yelled.

'It's seven o'clock,' said Lilly. 'I've been away for three hours!'