Sigrid came back to North with us and hung up her heavy coat. The room was hot. She looked great in her slacks and red flannel shirt. I made coffee.
“Tom says nude cappuccino is great,” Sigrid said.
“It is. Maybe later. What´s up?”
“Couple of things. First. I want to tell you and Mary about some stuff that happened over Christmas.” She set her coffee cup on the shelf.
“I don´t know, but I guess you think I´m in some religious group that takes the Bible literally. I´m not. I´m just a vanilla Christian, but pretty observant, I guess. I want you to know about what happened these last few days.
“Hold on, Sigrid. This sounds like beer talk. And I´m going to get more comfortable,” Mary said. She got beer for all of us and peeled off her sweater, leaving her in slacks and a lacy camisole. I took off my heavy wool skirt and folded it over the back of a chair. That left me in my body suit. Sigrid was bare under her shirt, hung it over her shoulders. She took a pull at her beer.
“Well, when I got home, I showed Will´s drawing to mother and dad. They loved it. Next day when I got up it was hung in the living room. I said, ‘Hey, what´s this?´ Dad said, ‘It´s you, just as you said last night. Your mother and I like it a lot, and we want to look at it while we can.´ I asked about visitors and stuff, and they told me, ‘You posed nude for it, you live with it. We like it because it´s you and it´s beautiful. ´”
“Really put it to you, didn´t they?” I said.
“Uh-huh. I´ll say. But they were right... Well the next few days, we´d sit in the living room in front of my picture – you couldn´t not see it. And we´d talk.
“Guys, the virginity business isn´t my religion so much. They reminded me that I decided to be a virgin when I was 12 and had just started Junior High. The guys were all over me. That´s when I made the promise.”
“I did something like that. Kids in my school called me The Virgin till my junior year.”
“Were you?”
“Not since I can remember.”
“Well... Anyway, that was how I got through Junior High, and by then I´d folded it into my whole life. Mother and Dad made me see that I had made the whole thing a lot bigger than I needed to. It was a good decision for me, and I plan to stick to it, but it´s not a requirement of my religion, it´s my own idea.
“Glad to hear you say it,” Mary said.
“They also told me they´d set me up last summer with that trip to Sweden. They knew Aunt Karin would teach me some reality, talk some sense to me where they couldn´t. I had a long talk with her by telephone after that. It was great. We went over a whole lot of other stuff, and I really came out of it a lot smarter, got a really good look at myself. Being with you guys and posing for Will has been a real big event for me.
“You remember I asked if I could join the group? Well, now you´re getting a bigger place, I want to do that even more. I want to make a proposal. I want to help with the work and planning for the new place. Tom says there´ll be a hell of a lot of work, and I´m one more pair of hands. And, for the business, when it gets going, I can do the bookkeeping.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“I want to study with you, too. Starting right away. I won´t hang around when things get heavy; I´ll just leave. I won´t be around Saturday nights; Tom´s told me about movie nights. But I want to be with you, I want to study with you, I want to be a part of what you have.”
“What about when we move?” Mary asked.
“Tom and I talked a real long time this afternoon. We´re going to get married. When you move in, more or less. We´ll get married here, just the bunch of us. You are all invited and I hope you two will hold me up when the time comes. Later on, Tom and I´ll go home and have a wedding for the rest of the world.”
“Great, Sigrid. That´s wonderful,” Mary said.
“I like it so far,” I said. “It´s suitably devious. But what about forsaking all others? Are you going to be what you said before, ‘a fully functioning member´? As for me, I don´t care one way or another, but if you want to stay out of all the fun and games, there´s going to be some stress.”
Mary said, “Anne´s right. Four guys and three girls is a pretty complicated mix. There´s enough potential for stress built right in. If you´re going to take part in our general bare-ass uproar and refuse the three other guys there´s trouble guaranteed.”
“I won´t. I´d like to have some time with just Tom. Sort of a honeymoon, I guess, or maybe on-the-job-training. But then, I want to be a full member. I don´t want any kids for a long time, not until we´re out of school and settled.”
“Where is Tom on this? I know he´s agreed, but...”
“You want to know how much of this he really agrees with. And how much if it is stuff I´ve flim-flammed him into.”
“Yeah,” we both said.
“Fair enough. You´re right to ask. We started talking about this right after Christmas. He asked me to marry him. I told him I´d asked to join the group. He said he wouldn´t agree to it unless I was going to accept the whole thing. ‘Not fair,´ he said. My folks and I went over it, sitting in front of that picture of me looking for what isn´t there. And I decided Tom was right. We´ve been talking it out ever since, and he agrees with my proposal if everyone else agrees to it. I really don´t think I´ve held anything back from him or from you.”
“Neither do I, Sigrid,” I said.
“Let´s put it to a vote Friday afternoon. What do you think, Anne?”
“Yeah. I hate suspense.”
.oOo.
“So, how´d it go?”
“I think it´ll be fine. They are so wonderful, you know. Right from the day you met me, they´ve accepted me and made me a friend. It´s almost hard to believe.”
“I told you at the outset they´re two remarkable women.”
“Makes me wonder whatever happened to jealousy.”
“I asked them once. Anne told me, ‘jealousy´s an aspect of ownership´. She said she doesn´t want anyone to own her, and she will not own anyone else. Mary just sat there and nodded her head.”
“I guess that´s it, then. I like it: it works for me.”
“So what else happened – anything?”
“Stop leering at me like that.”
“Well, you are glowing like a lighthouse. Like you do when I eat your pussy. I know sure as hell you got it on with them.”
“Well, I told you about the first time I talked with them…”
“How you came on to Mary. Yeah.”
“Well, tonight we were sitting there – I had my top off, Anne was just wearing a body suit and Mary was in a camisole. And, when they agreed we should put the idea to the group, I got up and sat in Anne´s lap and kissed her. Next thing I knew, Mary was in it, too. We were smooching for a while, and then Anne – you know how she is – pulled back and said, ‘Sigrid, the only thing you´re a virgin at is fucking,´ and she made me get up and they took me into the bedroom. I ate them both and they made me very happy. Um, the button´s in the back.”
“I love the way you look when you´ve come.”
“Works for me, too. Give me that.”
“Turn around. Sit on my face.”