He stood before the large mirror and smoothed his dark hair back, turned his head from side to side to make sure his handsome face was still getting better with each passing day.  He let his eyes check out the rest of his body and was reminded to pull back his shoulders and stand erect.  He spoke aloud, but in a low volume.  “You are a real heart breaker, James,” he said to his reflection. 

Dr. James Wyatt knew he was a great looking guy.  He had always been the sought after stud and he had to sometimes remind him that his ego might get the better of him if he let others know he knew.  But try as he might, he sometimes let his self assurance show.  Some women, and most men, were intimidated by him.  “That’s their problem,” he thought to himself.  “I’m simply going to enjoy the rewards of my good looks.  Right now, I have to get ready for the best challenge I’ve faced in a while.  I want this Jazz woman.  She’s just my type.  If she turns out to be what I think she is, I’ll make her my wife.  A professional like me needs a woman with her sophistication and sexy good looks.  She can serve to not only keep me happy at home but she can also be a real asset to my social and professional careers.  Take that fantastic body and dress it right and every man in town will have renewed respect for me.  I can land a partnership with one of the better professional groups and get the hell out of the ER death trap.  There’s a heck of lot more money in removing rich people’s gall stones than taking bullets out of poor white trash with no insurance. 

He turned sideways and checked out his physique in profile.  He had entered the men’s room a few minutes ago when he saw that woman approaching who had dismissed him an hour ago.  She hadn’t been very friendly, he felt.  All he wanted, so far as she knew, was to check on a patient, like any dedicated young physician would.  When he had left the three women by the path, he would have left the park except that the sky told him he would never make it back before the rain hit, so he parked on the side of the pool away form the campers and entered the refreshment and bath house facility to wait out the weather.  The storm had hit but was mercifully brief, though intense.  When it had passed he was leaving but then saw Gin coming toward the place.  He had ducked into the men’s room to avoid a meeting with her. 

He heard Gin and Jazz talking outside the door of the rest room.  He thought he recognized her voice and eased the door open just a bit to see if indeed the buxom lady had entered his life once again.  There she was, looking even sexier than he remembered.  He stood there with the toe of his boot holding the door ajar and listening to the exchange.  He also saw Terri approach from the direction of the ladies room and listened to the angry words that led to Gin popping the petite girl across the mouth.

He felt proud of Jazz when she took Gin’s arm and led her away from the scene.  “That’s the kind of social skills I’m talking about,” he thought.  “At least I won’t have to teach you everything you need to know to make me proud to be seen with you.  At least I’m not going to have to re-enact Pygmalion with you.” 

His thoughts turned to Simpson.  That surprised him.  Why was he thinking of Simpson at a time like this?  Simpson would understand his need to be with a woman and the need for him to be married.  He had never hid his bisexuality from Simpson.  While he didn’t flaunt it, Simpson knew he occasionally dated a woman.  Simpson even understood his need to keep their relationship in the closet.  “Maybe,” he thought, after I marry Jazz, I will limit my meetings with Simpson a bit.  Wouldn’t want to get caught too soon in our marriage.  Not until I’ve indoctrinated Jazz and gotten her used to the world of James Wyatt.  Then we may even get into some threesomes.  Naa.  Simpson would never go along with that idea.  He’s too hung up on me.”

 Terri disappeared back into the ladies room to repair the damage to her lip.  Dr. Wyatt pushed the door open and stepped across the hall to the drink machine.  He noticed the digital display flashing the word “select.”  He pushed the button labeled Dr. Pepper and bent his designer biker suit as he retrieved the can that came noisily rolling out.

“I think it would be a good thing if you and I sat down and calmly discussed this entire matter, so you can maybe understand how important this morning was in my life.” He said.

“Sure, we can discuss until we run out of words.  We can be as calm as you want us to be.  So long, that is, as you answer my question.  Did you and Terri have sex during the night?”

“It isn’t that simple.  It isn’t important except that it is an example of things that have happened to me all my life.”

“I beg to disagree.  It is just that simple and it is important.”

“How so?”

“It’s simple because the question requires only a yes or a no.  You either did or you didn’t.  It’s important because you told me nothing happened, when I asked you earlier.  I took that to mean you didn’t have sex with her.  Now I’m asking again and you don’t seem to want to answer me.”

“I do want to answer you.  You have no idea how much I want to answer you.  But I want to answer in my own way, with a full explanation, so you’ll know me and know where I’m coming from.  I want us to know each other.  After this morning, I want more than anything for us to know each other.”

“Okay, you win.  So tell me in your own way.  Explain to me how you can sleep with a prostitute then, within hours make love to me with no protection.  Explain to me how you can hold me in a way that seemed to love when you had just done the same with a girl that does it for money.”

“I can see you don’t intend to make it easy to talk with you.”

“I’m so sorry.  But right now I’m pissed.  Right now I want to strike out.  But do go on.  Explain things to me.”

“This morning, believe it or not, was the second time in my life that I ever made love to a woman.

“Say what?”

“All my life, I have wanted to know what it was like to make love with a woman who was making love with me for the right reasons.  The first time I had sex it was with a prostitute.  She was there because I gave her some money.  She had no other reason to be with me.  I was just another customer.  Every time after that, it seemed that’s the only kind of woman I could make it with.  The few times I was able, had the nerve, to get into bed with one, I found I was totally incapable of doing anything.  It was just like last night, with you.  I think it may have had something to do with my mother.  She was a very old fashioned and very religious woman.  She taught me that sex was a disgusting act that only sinners did, unless it was to produce a child and only then was it okay.  She said sinful men were cursed with an unnatural desire to do that to women and that all woman hated it but some tolerated it for their husbands.  When I hired a prostitute I was sixteen and she was in her twenties.  I knew the score.  I knew there was no love, no passion, and that her smiles were only smiles that a cashier might give a customer because it is required of her.  Therefore, I felt no guilt or shame.  When I got a girl to go to bed with me who was not doing it for money, I guess my mother’s words haunted me and I was unable to do anything.  The guilt and shame overtook me.  After that, I concentrated on my work and avoided normal woman.  When I wanted sex I went to Theodore and hired a working girl.  I had no problem with them.  Lucky for me I made good money customizing bikes and playing piano and teaching music.  When I wanted a woman, I could afford the best.  Then I met a woman in New York that I thought could change all that.  I thought I would be able to make it with her.  We moved in together and we tried and we tried.  She said she loved me and each time she did, I would lose whatever beginning I was experiencing.  After a few months, she had an affair.  She told me she had needs and I wasn’t taking care of them.  I remember the day I found out about it.  I asked her to tell me if it was true and she confessed.  She told me who it was and what they did and the whole works.  Somewhere during that conversation, I no longer regarded her as a lover, but rather I saw her as just another prostitute.  That day was the first time I ever took a woman to bed and had sex without paying for it.  Meanwhile, before I moved to New York, there was a girl, much too young for me, that I told myself I would one day have as my own.  I loved her but I never told her so.  I wanted to wait for her to become of age.  When I made love to the woman in New York I left her the next day.  I no longer had the same feelings for her.  I also left New York.  I came back to Alabama and set up my shop there and played music in Mobile.  The girl I had left behind had grown up but I was too timid to even approach her.  I had no reason to believe she was interested in me as anything more than a family friend.  Because of my fear of failing with her, I didn’t even ask her out.  I went back to my prostitutes.  There was one working girl in particular that I went to regularly.  We became good friends and she taught me a lot about women and what they like.  She, as it turned out, was a friend of Terri and they had even worked together.  I found that out last night.  Terri had a husband, who was also her pimp.  He lived off the income she brought in from her work.  I built a fine bike for him.  He made the last payment on the work with a check that bounced.  I went over to his house and sort of let him know I would collect the $500 any way I had to.  Before his deadline to pay me arrived, somebody killed him and his bike disappeared.  I was a suspect because I had a motive.  Terri was also a suspect because she inherited the bike and she showed up on that bike the day she joined our group.  She had followed us from Alabama.  I guess she felt she could lose herself in a crowd and nobody would notice she was on a bike that was being hunted by the police back home.  She’s probably right, because that bike would stick out like a sore thumb if all the other bikes were not around.  I had only seen Terri once before in my life.  The day I went to try to collect my money from her husband I saw her then but was not introduced to her.  When she showed up in the group she had picked up the Indian girl, Nadu, along the way and I didn’t recognize her.  I did recognize the bike.  After Merritt was raped, I somehow wound up with her and Nadu looking for the man that took Mickey off into the woods.  The cops showed up and Terri and I saw no reason to have them question us so we hid out in the woods until the cops left.  We got to talking and I found out she was friends with Georgia, my friend back home, and I don’t know, being with her was like seeing Georgia again and one thing led to another.  I didn’t hire her for sex but she offered it to me.  She’s looking for a sugar daddy and she knew I had money and, well, I knew what she was up to so it was as if I had hired her.  No different.  Something happened to me during that time.  I came to realize how I felt about you.  She wanted me to become her regular boyfriend but I told her I wasn’t interested.  She got pretty angry and we had some words.  But I left her in the woods and went for a shower and came back here to sleep.  When I woke up and found you there, I somehow knew I had changed.  I knew I was no longer going to have that guilt and shame curse hanging over me.  That’s when I made love to you.  It was, like I said, the second time with a non-pro.  I don’t want anybody else any more.  Just you.”

She had listened quietly to him.  Tears had begun to trickle down her cheeks as he talked.  He wasn’t sure if they were tears of pain for the hurt he had caused her or if the tears were over the story he was telling.  He hoped that by telling the embarrassing, humiliating truth, she would be able to forgive him and give him a second chance.  They sat silent for a long time.  She occasionally used the heel of her hand to rub the tears from her cheeks.  She fished out a tissue and blew her nose.  Finally, she spoke in measure sentences.  “I don’t know what to tell you.  I think I need some time.  I’ll see if Jodi will let me ride in the truck for a while.  I have to decide if you are telling me the truth or if this is more lies.  I don’t have much experience with relationships.  I know what men think when they look at me.  I avoid entanglements with them because I can’t trust them very much.  But I was beginning to feel a great deal for you.  When you had the problem the other night, I felt you were not like other men, men who see me as a sex object.  But I have to be honest.  It bothers me a great deal that you jumped at the chance to be with that tramp.  You had no right to come to me and bring whatever she has with you.  She’s not just a tramp.  She’s a dirty tramp.  There is no telling what disease she may have picked up.  I can’t say where you and I are going from here.  All I can say is that I’m going to take some time to think things over.”

“I understand how you must feel.  I will respect whatever you decide.  I have to say, though, that now I’ve found you I don’t want to lose you.  If you never want to go to bed with me ever again, I’ll understand that also.  But if we can just be friends or even lovers, that will be enough, even if we don’t sleep together.”

“Of course not.  You can always run off to find a professional.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.  I only meant that I will live without any woman until I can have you.  Now that I know what it’s like to feel the real thing, lovemaking rather than just sex, I won’t be able to settle for less again.”

Dr. Wyatt sat astride his bike, his helmet on and the smoked face guard in place.  He felt safe inside the head gear.  He could let his eyes go anywhere and the world would not know at what or whom he was staring.  Just now he was watching Jazz as she walked along the wet dirt path that served as a road through the park.  She was carrying a duffle bag and a purse.  He wondered if she was leaving the park or simply moving from on biker’s camp to another.  He hoped the whore had caused enough trouble so that she was leaving her boyfriend.  This could be his chance.  She would be on the rebound and he could be lucky enough to have perfect timing.

He waited until she was only a few feet from him.  “Jazz?” he said.

Jazz had been lost in thought and hadn’t noticed the stranger on the bike sitting next to the puddle strewn road.  His voice, calling her name, startled her.  She looked at his tinted face mask and stopped in her tracks.

“I was hoping I would encounter you,” he said.  He casually removed his head gear.  He wanted the effect of his handsome face to lend full weight to the surprise she would feel.

“You’re Doctor, uh, the Doctor.”

“Wyatt, James Wyatt,” he said in his best James Bond voice.  “I met you at the hospital this morning.”

“What are you doing here?  How did you find me?” she was pleasant but unsmiling.  Something about him frightened her a little.

“I treated your friend Merritt.” He smiled.  “I was worried when she didn’t come in today as I asked her to.  We really need to do a little more testing.”

“She didn’t?” Jazz asked.

“Actually, I came out this morning but I got a rather cool reception from some of the ladies.  They didn’t want to tell me where she was.  But when she didn’t show up for the tests I thought I would ride back out.”

“I didn’t realize you were also a biker,” Jazz returned his smile.

“Oh yes.  A man needs his toys you know.  I have a small plane and a boat as well. I chose to ride my bike because I was told Merritt was part of a bikathon or some such thing.  I guess there’s a lot you don’t know about me, just as there’s much I don’t know, but would like to know, about you.”

“Oh?  Why?”

“I don’t mean to be forward,” he looked down and tried to look bashful.  He knew how that endeared him to woman, “but when I met you I saw something that sets you apart from all the others in this merry band.  You are an exceptional lady, with qualities I would like to get to know better.”

“Oh?” was all she could say.  She wasn’t prepared for a man coming on to her.  She was too fully engrossed in what had taken place between Sudz and her.

James thought back on the long talk he had had with Terri.  He had waited for her to emerge from the ladies room so he could talk with her.  He asked Terri how well she knew Jazz.  Just as he suspected, Terri and Jazz, according to Terri, went back many years.  When she learned he was interested in Jazz but was concerned she had a regular boyfriend, she was eager to help him lure her away form Sudz.  Having been rejected by Sudz, she wanted nothing more than to interfere with the relationship between him and Jazz.  James played that card and asked if he could do anything to help Terri reach her vengeful goal.  That’s when Terri opened up and told him all he needed to know to win Jazz over.  According to Terri, Jazz liked her men to dominate her, even to the point of some pain.  Jazz had a favorite fantasy she had shared with Terri wherein a handsome man literally captured her and took her away and tied her up in a room where he would visit her regularly and use her roughly.  Terri had described the fantasy so vividly, he had no doubt that the two women, back when they were friends, had talked endlessly about such matters.

He leaned forward, giving Jazz his most charming smile.  “Look, Jasmine.  I would like very much to have some time with you.  It is growing late in the day.  Would you like to go someplace and let’s have a bite to eat and maybe a drink?  Then, if we hit it off, maybe I could take you up in my plane.  It’s really quite beautiful to look down on the city lights at night from 3,500 feet.  I can see that you aren’t married.  Is there anyone in your life to prevent you from getting acquainted with me?