he dropped his underpants, turning to the shower bay that was right there in the back of the Gooseneck alongside the small stove and a pile of horse gear and Anne’s chair.
Anne’s mouth dropped when she saw his male perfection from behind. The broad shoulders were so brown and muscled that as he reached for the taps she could see the mechanics of his divine body beneath his skin. The way his waist tapered into narrow white buttocks that topped muscled thighs, sculpted as perfectly as the statue of David. Across his back and his side were red welts and bruising. Along his knee she saw a deep red scar that ran in an arc down his shin.
‘Why do you do it to your body? Why do rodeo?’
‘Why do people base jump?’ he said, scrubbing soap onto his chest. ‘Why do people race cars? Or surf giant waves?’
‘Males seeking mindless adrenaline, through egotistical risk-taking,’ she answered.
‘Not only males. You take risks.’
‘I do not.’
‘Why do you risk your life taking them dangerous party drugs? Why do you jeopardise that tiny little body of yours that’s no bigger than a widget and your busy brain that’s too noisy to think straight?’
She sat up, surprised at his question, insulted by his comments.
He ducked under the spray of the shower and began to soap his legs, turning his head to her. Waiting for an answer. She saw the colours of his clown face run in rivulets down his tanned body.
‘How do you know I take drugs?’
He began to scrub his face with a flannel, and she watched his shoulder blades move beneath his smooth skin.
‘Your eyes are dulled by something, and it isn’t the hardship of life. You’re as spoiled as Paris Hilton. Nope. You take them drugs. I can read it in your energy. You ain’t balanced.’
‘Oh, great. Judged by a clown. What would you know about my energy?’
‘It’s aggressive for one thing,’ he said in his southern drawl. ‘And your energy is all prickly like.’
‘Are you trying to talk metaphysics with me?’ she said, flabbergasted by this strange conversation she was having with a naked rodeo clown.
‘Would it surprise you if I was? How else does a rodeo protection athlete do his job? We have to know a bit of kinesiology, a bit of quantum physics, a bit of ethology so we can read the bull. How else do we keep ourselves and the bull rider alive unless by knowledge of energetics and our own intuition so we can keep two steps ahead of the bull? And on the ranch, how else does a cowboy gauge the movement of a herd of cattle or the inner ways, the emotions, of his horse? It’s all energetics. With some critters, the softer you are, the more powerful you are.’
‘Then why torment those poor bulls and horses?’
‘Torment! Those animals are bred for it, trained for it, fed and conditioned for it. They are athletes too. They have long lives, long careers and they love it. You can’t make a bull buck, same as you can’t make a horse buck. You’ve no doubt heard the expression that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. It’s the same with this game. If they don’t want to do it, they just don’t do it. But the animals that do want to do it, they’re chasin’ the same rush as us. We’re a team, them animals and us.’
‘I don’t need to hear your pro-rodeo spiel,’ she said, realising she’d been staring at his buttocks and back for a long time. She took another big slug of rum. ‘I’m just here to ask questions for my assignment.’
‘Well, that’s a shame,’ Randy said, turning to face her as the water streamed over his toned body. ‘I thought I could’ve changed your mind about aggression in men. Most of us cowboys are gentle types. Gentle with horses, gentle with women. Family men.’
When Anne saw his face for the first time clean of make-up, she almost fainted again. He was so good-looking, so beautiful, it felt to Anne as if she had looked into the eyes of a god. Cleaned of the face paint, Randy had looks that stole hearts. His skin was smooth and tanned, his jet-black hair framed a manly square-jawed face, his teeth were white and perfect and his sensuous mouth was now moving into a slowly evolving grin.
‘I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Boxright, but if you stay at university too long, you’ll forget about real life. And you may miss your calling as a mother.’
‘Excuse me!’ she said, red-faced, and angry yet again at this arrogant, yet incredibly delectable, man before her.
‘You use this too much,’ Randy said, tapping his temple with an index finger. ‘When you don’t get around animals much, lots of folk forget they are animals. You are an animal, and you gotta go with your instincts as the female of the species, not against them.’
‘My instinct is not to have children yet … I’ve got a whole…’
‘Would your instinct be to hop into this shower with me, as an animal, say, not as a woman, a student and a feminist? As an animal?’
‘No, it certainly would not!’ she said.
‘That’s a shame. You might only have fifty eggs to lay.’
‘Pardon? Fifty eggs to lay?’
‘That’s all you might have left inside there.’ He gestured to her stomach region. ‘So if I were you, I’d be gettin’ in touch with your animal instincts. Can you get me a beer, by the way? I wanna wash my hair. If you’re feelin’ fine to stand and all.’
As Anne got up and reached for a beer out of the tiny fridge, she felt anger simmering within her. She knew he was teasing her. She knew he was playing her. A cowboy as good-looking as him, and clearly as smart as him, could get any woman he wanted.
She thought of Simon, of his spindly legs and flaccid computer-geek arms. His glasses that had fogged when they first kissed. The way he liked to tie her up and hit her with his computer cords. He was weird with sex. She had thought it might grow to be fun, but as time went on, Anne had found herself withering within as a woman. As a lover. No amount of academic reading or study on the matter seemed to ease or help the situation.
‘I have a boyfriend, you know,’ she said defensively.
‘That’s just a social construct,’ Randy said. ‘You know back in the day when we all lived in caves, women mated with many men, at the same time. That’s why nowadays men are visually stimulated by watching copulation, because essentially, we are all still animals. It was the strongest sperm that the female was after, so to get a whole bunch of it from different males meant the strongest would fertilise her egg. Mother Nature helping human survival. And, I’m tipping, it’s the same today. If women were more like animals and forgot about the money and what life is supposed to be according to the TV, they’d pick the kinder males for most of their love action.’
‘And where on the rodeo circuit did you come up with your ingenious anthropological insights, Mr Carter?’
‘You’re not the only one who is university educated, ma’am, with respect,’ he said with a quick tilt of his head and a lift of one eyebrow.
As she handed Randy the beer, their hands touched. She felt water splash onto the front
