god, Carl-Adam, forget what I just said and do go easy with that thing!” she cried.
Chapter Two Lupe’s Latin Lovers
“That was quite a story you wrote about our party for the paper,” Lupe Freeman accused Hector Green, dropping into a chair opposite him at the Vassar canteen.
Like Lupe, Hector was an arresting parfait of Latin and European influences, but this did not dispose her in his favor as much as it might have done before reading his article, which had reported, (with undue sensationalism), on a small, well behaved B&D play party, hosted by her best friend Diana and herself.
“You didn’t like it?” he murmured in the accents of Manhattan, not looking up from his laptop.
“Were you even at the party?”
“I came late,” he snapped, looking at her for the first time and then regretting his curtness.
“I’ll bet.”
“So, what didn’t you like?” Sudden arousal rendered his whole demeanor soft and conciliatory.
“You invoked the whips and chains cliché, yet there wasn’t a whip or a chain in the house. Is it possible that in your stupendous ignorance you actually don’t know the difference between a flogger and a crop?”
“Teach me!” Hector flashed her his most persuasive smile.
“Highly unlikely,” she replied, getting up, “but I will say this: You write badly enough to work for my father.”
“Really? Who’s your father?” Hector zipped his laptop into its case and followed her out of the Retreat and into the corridors of Vassar’s oldest dorm, Main Hall, erected in 1865, in replication of the Tulleries.
“Ron Freeman,” she replied.
“Really! This is an honor.”
With Hector adhering to her, Lupe walked one flight up to the Blue parlor.
“I figured you’d admire my father.”
“So, you don’t like my journalistic style?”
“I do not.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lupe.”
“Where did you get that name?”
“My mother is Mexican. Saturnia X. I’m sure you’ve heard of her.”
“The sexual performance artist from the 80’s? You have some lineage. From you I will stand corrected.”
“Good.”
“You say that on a dismissive note,” Hector said, allowing her to precede him into the graceful room.
“Good day, Mr. Green.” Lupe sat down on a vine carved loveseat and opened a hardbound volume of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela.
“Don’t be like that,” he urged, sitting beside her. “Meeting you, I want to learn to be kinky.”
“You’re making me sick.”
“Lupe, be nice,” he scolded her, “after all, we have so much in common.”
“What?” She stared at him.
“Well, I’m half Puerto Rican to your half Mexican.”
“That’s sexy, but not necessarily the basis for intimacy. And here’s my friend, so I hope you’ll excuse us,” said Lupe, seeing Diana enter the room.
“Please make Lupe tell me what she’s into,” Hector implored the slender brunette who now joined them.
“Who are you?” the new petite girl asked, perching on a chair opposite them and noticing the devastating contrast between Hector’s tawny hazel eyes, golden brown skin and jet-black hair.
“Don’t talk to him,” advised Lupe, getting to her feet, “he’s that tabloid journalist who writes for the Vassarian. Now with a hard-on.”
“The muckraker who mocked our party? How dare you address us?” Diana tossed him a censorious glance before following Lupe out.
But Hector didn’t give up easily and sensing a tendency in Diana to accommodate, he sat down opposite her in the dining hall the first time he saw her alone.
“Hello. Remember me?” he reached over the table to shake her small hand. She smiled at him briefly then went back to working her Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle. “Won’t you help me with our Lupe, kind and beautiful Diana?”
“Help you do what?”
“Get her into bed.”
“Why should I do that?”
“Because I’m smitten. She’s so Latin, yet so white, just like me. Her father is my publishing idol and her mother is a goddess of porn punk. We’re so compatible I’m picking out china.”
“She already has quite a serviceable boyfriend, Mr. Clarence Gerard.”
“Oh. Him!” Hector received this news gloomily.
“I’m sorry.”
“The fact that the odds are against me only makes me more eager to try.”
Diana shrugged.
“If you’d tell me what she’s into, I’m sure it would help,” he urged seductively. As lightning flashed and thunder pealed outside the panoramic windows of the dining hall, Diana nearly succumbed, but the clatter of the chilly Autumn downpour woke her to her first loyalties.
“Even if I told you, you wouldn’t understand what it meant or how to use it.”
“Why not? Give me some credit for brains. I am here on full scholarship.”
“Then shouldn’t you be studying?”
“Just tell me what makes Lupe Freeman tick.”
“If Clarence Gerard found out for himself so can you.”
“You see if I don’t!”
Meanwhile, Lupe had dedicated the weekend to Xavier Duarte, the powerfully attractive young male who had slipped his phone number into her hand as she stood penitently in the corner at The Vault the previous week. They had spoken on the phone only once but e-mailed several times since their brief moment of eye contact in that notorious B&D hell mouth. Finally intrigued beyond bearing, she had agreed to go down to the city to meet him, partially in the spirit of adventure, and partially to arouse the jealousy of Clarence Gerard.
Xavier, in the light of day, was closer to thirty than twenty, moodily stern and inclined to take himself
