As she turned and moved away I noticed bare breasts. She came fully into view and I saw that she was jaybird to her heels. A good body-possibly a bit wide in the fundament but with long legs, a slender waist, and mammaries that matched mine . . . and I’ve had no complaints.
I quietly cursed to myself. I knew quite well why I had called the captain: to forget three men in the arms of a fourth. I had found him but it appeared that he was fully committed.
He appeared, dressed but not much-a lava-lava. He looked puzzled, then recognized me. “Hey! Miss . . . Baldwin! That’s it. This is sonky-do! Where are you?”
“At the port. I punched on the off chance of saying hello.”
“Stay where you are. Don’t move, don’t breathe. Seven seconds while I pull on trousers and shirt, and I’ll come get you.”
“No, Captain. Just a greeting. Again I am simply making connections.”
“What is your connection? To what port? What time is departure?”
Damn and triple damn-I had not prepared my lies. Well, the truth is often better than a clumsy lie. “I’m going back to Winnipeg.”
“Ah so! Then you are looking at your pilot; I have the noon lift tomorrow. Tell me exactly where you are and I’ll pick you up in, uh, forty minutes if I can get a cab fast enough.”
“Captain, you are very sweet and you are out of your mind. You already have all the company you can handle. The young woman who answered my call. Torchy.”
“Torchy isn’t her name; that’s her condition. She’s my sister Betty, from Sydney. Stays here when she’s in town. I probably mentioned her.” He turned his head and shouted. “Betty! Come here and identify yourself. But get decent.”
“It’s too late to get decent,” her cheerful voice answered, and I saw her, past his shoulder, returning toward the pickup and wrapping a lava-lava around her hips as she did so. She seemed to be having a little trouble with it and I suspected that she had had a few. “Oh, the hell with it! My brother is always trying to get me to behave-my husband has given up. Look, luv, I heard what you said. I’m his married sister, too true. Unless you are trying to marry him, in which case I am his fiancée. Are you?”
“Good. Then you can have him. I’m about to make tea. Do you take gin? Or whisky?”
“Whatever you and the Captain are having.”
“He must not have either; he’s lifting in less than twenty-four hours. But you and I will get smashed.”
“I’ll drink what you do. Anything but hemlock.”
I then convinced Ian that it was better for me to find a hansom at the port where they were readily available than it was for him to send for one, then make the round trip.
Number 17, Locksley Parade, is a new block of flats of the double-security type; I was locked through the entrance to Ian’s flat as if it were a spaceship. Betty greeted me with a hug and a kiss that showed that she had indeed been drinking; my curly wolf then greeted me with a hug and a kiss that showed that he had not been drinking but that he expected to take me to bed in the near future. He did not ask about my husbands; I did not volunteer anything about my family-my former family. Ian and I got along well because we both understood the signals, used them correctly, and never misled the other.
While Ian and I held this wordless discussion, Betty left the room and returned with a red lava-lava. “It’s formal high tea,” she an-
nounced, with a slight belch, “so out of those street clothes and into this, luv.”
Her idea? Or his? Hers, I decided, before long. While Ian’s simple, wholesome lechery was as clear as a punch in the jaw, he was basically rather cubical. Not so Betty, who was utterly outlaw. I didn’t care, as it moved in the direction I wanted to go. Bare feet are as provocative as bare breasts, although most people do not seem to know it. A female packaged only in a lava-lava is far more provocative than one totally nude. The party was shaping up to suit me, and I would depend on Ian to shake off his sister’s chaperonage when the time came. If necessary. It seemed possible that Betty would sell tickets. I didn’t fret about it.