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"Have you ever wanted to be a virgin again?"

"God, no," I say, then look at her and grin,

"What's the matter, Verbie? Sex with Walter gone sour?"

"What sex? We haven't had sex in six years!" she says, looking at me and shrugging. She takes a gulp out of her cup.

"So you're thinking you might as well be a virgin."

She's got this great lazy smile. She shrugs again and lowers her lips to her cup. Then she looks up suddenly,

"Actually I was thinking more like starting over."

"I'm not sure it can be done like that," I say, and we laugh.

I glance up at the clock before I realize. Coffee breaks seem to grow shorter with the approaching winter. I pull my sweater closer and button it. The heat hasn't been turned on yet, and the room has a chill.

After a few minutes of sipping, she says, "You remember the first time?"

"Oh, yeah. Doesn't everybody?" I grin at her.

"It's a little like remembering when Kennedy was assassinated, don't you think? It's a time that's kinda seared into your memory. You remember what you even had on. What the person you're with had on."

She has conspiracy in her voice, so I assume she's inviting intimacy.

"Blue Jeans," I say.

But she doesn't notice this. She seems lost to herself, so I ask, "You remember where?"

"Oh, yes, of course." she says, looking at me, but not smiling. "I was in my bedroom. With Walter, of course. Who else? And the radio was on. They were playing 'My Girl.' And then the announcer interrupted and said he was shot in a motorcade in Dallas."

"Verbena! I don't mean the assassination..."

"Oh," she laughs in a burst. "You mean....." She clears her throat but them looks at me and stops, "Hey, I asked you first. Come on, girl, out with it."

"Well, okay. I remember we both were wearing blue jeans because he zipped down, but I had on the button kind, and I was glued into them. It was a mess, him trying to get his pants down, him with his pecker sliding back and forth over his zipper. A miracle it didn't get sawed off before he finished me,"

She's laughing but I look up to see embarrassment in her eyes.

"Am I shocking you?"

"Nooo," she says too quickly. "I've just never heard you talk like this."

"Well, in all these years of working together, you and I haven't really talked like this before. We can stop anytime you want to," I say but I feel stranded.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm such a prude. I've never fucked anybody but Walter."

Her eyes flicker when she says "fuck."

I think she's proud she was able to say it without hesitation and with toughness in her voice.

"You're kidding! Nobody but Walter?" I yell out.

She shakes her head 'No.'

"I'm sorry!" I say, and we both go to pieces.

"It's a shame, isn't it," she says, still laughing. "I don't have a thing to compare it to."

We laugh some more, sip our coffee and settle down. Then she says,

"It was different for me. Walter wanted to, while we were engaged, but I insisted on not doing it until after we were married.

Oh, don't look at me like I'm from outer space. I was a purist back them. I ate everything from one bowl for six months once, meditating for 20 minuted before each meal. Six months! You try that. It isn't easy.

I didn't buy Cokes because Coca-Cola owned the vineyards in California that were exploiting the migrant workers who were picking the grapes there. I gave it all up one morning when one of my college professors lectured on America Incorporated and told us that Scott toilet tissue was owned by the American Can Company! I couldn't stop shaking my head for a month.

Who the heck can stay on the straight-and-narrow when things are that mixed up?"

"I never wanted to be married," I say after a pause. "But I didn't want to be a virgin all my life either. I was embarrassed that I'd never slept with anybody and I was scared I never would. What was I? In my twenties? I mean, Heavens! so I just let it happen to me when I came upon it, so to speak!"

We laugh together again.

"Who was it?" she asks. Then adds quickly, "You mind my asking?"

"My best friend's husband," I say, while I watch her stop drinking, and put her cup down silently in her saucer.

"No!"

"Oh, yes," I catch myself saying easily. "He's still in the sanitarium, as far as I know. He ate himself up with drugs."

She is staring at me. I feel a strange alienation. I look at the other tables. Wilcox's secretary is laughing lightly with another woman from accounting. Her cigarette makes floating zig-zags from her nails to the ceiling.

"Good Lord," Verbie says.

She doesn't say anything else for a while. Then,

"How did it happen? Or do you want to talk about it?"

"Hell, why would I care?" I say, feeling oddly disconcerted with how this is going, but not stopping the flood in my head. "He doesn't remember his own name, let alone mine."

She starts to say something, but I rush on,

"I thought he was nervous about her appendectomy. He called me up from the hospital, and I went over to hold his hand.

There never had been a thing between us. Ever. At all. But there was an attraction. Not sexual, in other ways. When Susan'd work late, he'd call sometimes, and I'd go for bike rides with him and drink at their apartment. She wanted it that way. I went with her too. Did similar stuff. But my visits with him got more frequent toward the end, and more dangerous.

Once we went on his Harley after dark down an abandoned runway as fast as his bike would go, and half way to the end, he tuned off the headlights. We just smashed through the night like that."

I feel breathless, my voice pushing out too much air. Her palm is resting lightly over the top of her cup which she hasn't lifted since I started answering her question. She looks at me like she can't place me. I have this overwhelming desire to say something that will change her. I want to move her, I think, but more still, I want to gain ascendancy, so I say,

"Another time, I rode on his front car fender down the highway going 60-70 miles an hour, out of my mind.

Nothing holding me there but luck and my might. I was buck naked. He was fully clothed behind the wheel, of course. He got his hard-ons doing that stuff.

I don't know what I was doing. I really don't. For me, it was never sexual. It feels more like suicide.

"Then this night I'm telling you about, he calls me from the hospital, and I go over to their apartment and the minute I walk in the door, bang, he hits me straight on--not with anything, just his hands, slapping me around and I am so in shock. I don't even know what's going on until the jeans business and then his penis is going hard against me, right there on the floor, and all I remember is him getting up and saying,

'A virgin. How could I be so lucky. Broke your cherry, kid.'

Verbena's hand has reached her mouth and her fingers are pressing against her lips. Her eyes are dark, glistening, and I feel giddy, out of control. I swallow cold coffee and my hands are shaking when I bring up the cup. My breath is coming out unevenly, like a shutter, and I look over at her, smiling some,

"When I go to the bathroom and sit on the stool and wipe ~~" I say this right to her wide-open face, "there's some blood, but nothing major. And I'm glad, actually glad it's over, and I'm not a virgin anymore."

"Oh, girl," she says in a whisper.

Her hand extends out to mine across the table, but I am frozen, my fingers pressing some place behind my cup.

I don't look at her for long. I stare out at the empty table and chairs where the others have been. So I say,

"I guess maybe I want to be a virgin after all. God knows, I've spent a lifetime trying to get unscrewed."

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