d’ya do for excitement in Ontario?” someone asked, stretching out the name, “Vaaaaan-coooooover.”
“You mean when I’m not going to school?” she countered brightly, suddenly joining in to the light and playful atmosphere of the party. “This is more like it,” she thought to herself, “after all, I am nineteen.” Aloud she said, “Oh, not much.”
“Aye, c’mon,” someone else chided, “you must do something for fun.”
Sandy couldn’t help but smile. “Of course,” she teased. “We go to clubs, or go to the beach.”
“I can just imagine,” another voice put in. “Tight tops, gyrating to the loud music...”
“Yeah,” someone continued, “bright lights flashing against tight bodies.”
“You make it sound dirty,” Sandy complained, teasingly.
“Yeah.”
“What about the beach, eh?” Sandy could almost hear his desirous imagination colouring his voice. “Skimpy bikinis splashing in the surf.”
“You don’t get much in the way of surf in Ontario,” Sandy laughed. “We just lie about and tan.”
“That all?”
“Yeah, or play volleyball,” Sandy added, nostalgic for a moment, wondering what her friends were up to at home.
She was wrenched back to reality as someone next to her laid a hand against her butt and remarked, “Probably not the only balling you do, eh wot?” The room exploded in laughter. Hiding her shock, Sandy pushed the hand away, and chided, “Now, now, don’t be rude.” Rationalizing, Sandy told herself it was just harmless flirting. And the hand on her butt was not really a grope, just a friendly pat. The hand on her shoulder was not threatening, she insisted to herself, just sociable. “This is the way boys in a group behave. No need for alarm.”
Sandy wondered aloud where the rest of the women were. “Oh, they just popped out for a few things. They’ll be back in a bit.” In the ebb and flow of the conversation, Sandy wondered again and again why she was the only woman there, but her attention was repeatedly redirected by a squeeze or a nudge, as someone cracked another dirty joke or made some suggestive remark. As much as she denied it, Sandy couldn’t help but see that the tenor of the place was becoming increasingly lewd and crude.
Furthermore, the now persistent suggestiveness was becoming more and more focused on her. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so quick to respond to their flirting,” Sandy noted silently. “Now they think I’m just a good-time girl.” Her brow furrowed as she considered her quandary. “I hope I haven’t dug myself too deep of a hole?” Still, Sandy was not willing to even consider what such a hole might contain. “I wish Lindsay would get back.” The conversation swirled around her, its innuendo mounting relentlessly.
Over the top, the rollercoaster plunged madly into the depths, fear and foreboding wrestling her psyche into submission. And if Sandy was already frozen with apprehension then, the next moment petrified her.
“Ever fuck a Scotsman?” asked a voice beside her, a hand gently grasping her bicep.
Fear and surprise seemed to smother her. “Don’t be afraid,” Sandy coached herself. “They can smell fear.” Aloud she just muttered, “Never,” and pulled away. Disoriented, Sandy attempted to move out of the crowd of bodies, heading for the edge of the room. Someone stayed with her.
“Well, we’ll have to do something about that,” came the chortled reply, its voice thick with beer and lust. Sandy could no longer kid herself about that. He suddenly sounded crazy horny. Muscling her five foot six frame through this forest of rugby players would, in other circumstances, have been a joke; still, Sandy shouldered her way past, pushing at them – rubbing against them, she realized in horror – until they reluctantly allowed her passage. She could feel them painting her with hungry expectant looks, as she attempted to escape.
Along with the terror pressing down on her, twisting her
Dorothy L. Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh