all happy to see him in the driver’s seat,
and it wasn't until she downed her third drink at the restaurant
that she finally appeared to get over it. While Brian knew that the
happy couple hadn’t seen much of each other recently, he didn’t
know that it had been almost three months since they'd actually had
sex. Out of the corner of his eye, Brian could see that during
dessert, Laura began feeling Rob’s crotch under the table. She
either didn't care that he noticed or figured he couldn't tell.
Then after dinner, on the way to the bar, Brian was convinced that
she performed a hand job on his friend as they sat huddled next to
each other in the back seat. He couldn't see it, per se, but he
could certainly hear it in Rob's cracking voice as they struggled
to make small talk during the ten-minute drive.
Jillian began working on her manuscript around
10:00 p.m., but she couldn’t get the term, "landing strip," out of
her head. In her mind, she flashed back to Victoria’s presentation
down there. When she finally shook Victoria’s prepubescent look
from her head, she stripped and took a good look at her own
neglected area. And while she wasn’t completely out of control,
Jillian thought she was probably—at the very least—in need of an
update.
When Jillian performed an
Internet search for "landing strip" and
found that the very first result was not an airport landing strip
but a Wikipedia bikini-waxing page, she had to giggle. She marveled
that even some of the most innocent phrases are slang for a body
part or a sex act and can lead to some very un-kid friendly
results. Eventually, though, she found exactly what she was looking
for, including explicit pictures, and picked up advice on trimming
and shaving that most sensitive of areas. She also viewed a lot of
pictures of variations on the landing-strip concept and picked the
one she found most appealing.
After collecting all the needed supplies, she
took a hot bath and performed her hair design work. When she was
done, she was pleased. It felt clean and new, and she felt
instantly different, almost as if she were ten years younger. The
experience inspired her to write a scene about Dallas spying on
Katrina while she gave herself the very same sensual trim job.
Jillian wrote for two hours and then lay in bed unable to sleep.
After another thirty minutes, she took an Ambien, hoping it would
do its usual trick.
At the bar, Rob and Laura drank and hung all
over each other, while Brian had a pretty miserable time, fully
sober. Brian did down one birthday shot with the horny couple at
the bar, but he spent the majority of his time sipping cokes and
looking out the window. The bar was mostly empty and contained only
a few moderately attractive women who didn’t seem very interested
in speaking to Brian. Neither did Rob and Laura, who were busy dry
humping in a corner booth. Other than occasionally handing him a
twenty and asking for another round, there was no other
interaction.
When the couple reached seven drinks each total,
three at the restaurant and four at the bar, Brian pulled the plug.
When Rob asked for another drink, Brian looked at him. "Why don’t
you let me drive you to her place so you two can just do it
already?"
Rob looked at Laura, they gave each other a
matter-of-fact nod, and the three of them climbed into the car less
than two minutes later. The couple returned to the backseat, and
Brian couldn’t see either of them in the rearview mirror for the
entire trip. They were lying back there, doing who-knows-what, and
the sounds they made prompted Brian to crank up the volume on the
radio.
Brian remembered the route
back to Laura’s, and when he reached her dorm's parking lot, he
simply stopped the car, turned off the radio, and adjusted the
mirror to avoid any glimpse of them. He waited, never looking back,
while he heard some whispers, rustling, and giggling, and then the
car door opening. He watched Rob and Laura zip and button