“Please, look again. Closer.”
Stranahan screwed the Remington shut and laid it across his lap. He sat up straight and looked directly at Tina’s breasts. They seemed exquisite in all respects.
She said, “Are they lined up okay?”
“Appear to be.”
“Reason I ask, I had one of those operations. You know, a boob job. For the kind of modeling I do, it was necessary. I mean, I was about a thirty-two A, if you can imagine.”
Stranahan just shook his head. He felt unable to contribute to the conversation.
“Anyway, I paid three grand for this boob job and it’s really helped, workwise. Except the other day I did a Penthouse tryout and the photog makes some remark about my tits. Says I got a gravity problem on the left side.”
Stranahan studied the two breasts and said, “Would that be your left or my left?”
“Mine.”
“Well, he’s nuts,” Stranahan said. “They’re both perfect.”
“You’re not just saying that?”
“I’ll prove it,” he said, thinking: I can’t believe I’m doing this. He went to the pantry and rummaged noisily until he found what he was searching for, a carpenter’s level.
Tiny eyed it and said, “I’ve seen one of those.”
“Hold still,” Stranahan said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Just watch the bubble.”
The level was a galvanized steel ruler with a clear cylinder of amber liquid fixed in the middle. Inside the cylinder was a bubble of air, which moved in the liquid according to the angle being measured. If the surface was dead level, the bubble sat at the midway point of the cylinder.
Stranahan placed the tool across Tina’s chest, so that each end rested lightly on a nipple.
“Now look down slowly, Tina.”
“ ‘Kay.”
“Where’s the bubble?” he said.
“Smack dab in the center.”
“Right,” Stranahan said. “See—they’re lined up perfectly.”
He lifted the ruler off her chest and set in on the bar. Tina beamed and gave herself a little squeeze, which caused her to bounce in a truly wonderful way. Stranahan decided to clean the shotgun one more time.
“Well, back to the sunshine,” Tina laughed, sprinting bare-assed out the door.
“Back to the sunshine,” Mick Stranahan said, thinking that there was no sight in the world like a young lady completely at ease with herself, even if it cost three grand to get that way.
At four-thirty, the red Formula full of husky boyfriends roared up. Stranahan was reading on the sun deck, paying little attention to the naked women. The water was way too shallow for the ski boat, so the boyfriends idled it about fifty yards from the stilt house. After a manly huddle, one of them hopped to the bow and shouted at Mick Stranahan. “Hey, what the hell are you doing?”
Stranahan glanced up from the newspaper and said nothing.
Tina called out to the boat, “It’s okay. He lives here.”
“Put your clothes on!” hollered one of the guys in the boat, probably Tina’s boyfriend.
Tina wiggled into a T-shirt. All the boyfriends appeared to be fairly agitated by Stranahan’s presence among the nude women. Stranahan stood up and told the girls the water was too low for the ski boat.
“I’ll run you out there in the skiff,” he said.
“You better not, Richie’s real upset,” Tina said.
“Richie should have more faith in his fellow man.”
The three young women gathered their towels and suntan oils and clambered awkwardly into Stranahan’s skiff. He jacked the outboard up a couple notches, so the prop wouldn’t hit bottom, and steered out toward the red Formula in the channel. Once alongside the ski boat, he helped the girls climb up one at a time. Tina even gave him a peck on the cheek as she left.
The boyfriends were every bit as dumb and full of themselves as Stranahan figured. Each one wore a gold chain on his chest, which said it all.
“What was that about?” snarled the boyfriend called Richie, after witnessing Tina’s good-bye peck.
“Nothing,” Tina said. “He’s an all-right guy.”
Stranahan had already let go, and the skiff had drifted a few yards beyond the ski boat, when Richie slapped Tina for being such a slut. Then he pointed out at Stranahan and yelled something extremely rude.