Curious Wine Read Free

golf in six weeks, to be exact. You’ll have to come out of the convent sometime, dearie. Just to take care of the bodily necessities. How long do you think you can go without sex?”
    “Forever,” Diana said grimly.
    “Not you. You’re not that kind of woman. You need somebody loving you.”
    “Wrong. After Tommy I didn’t have sex or even want it for months and months, more than a year. The whole time I lived with Barbara. Everybody I dated got only the pleasure of my company.” Diana squinted through the darkness, her headlights picking up walls of snow sheared into stratified layers by snow plows, and the symmetrical shapes of pine trees.
    “Not wanting sex isn’t a bit strange after what you went through with that drunk. I was like that after Joe the schmoe. But it’s easier to do without in your twenties. Women need it more when they get older. Forty-two isn’t such a bad age, either, I can tell you. Although I wouldn’t mind being thirty-three again.”
    “Thirty-four.”
    “Thirty-four. You’re so attractive. I don’t even like to let you near John, if the truth be told. Though he tells me he prefers his women well-padded, thank God. I’ll tell you now that it’s over with Jack, at least I hope it’s over, I don’t know what you saw in that piece of male fluff. Good- looking, yes, but that’s all. Not much wonder he’s done everything but throw himself under the wheels of your car to get you back. He’ll never have anything like you again.”
    “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Diana said evenly, steering the car carefully around the curves, watching for ice patches in the road.
    “Anymore? You haven’t talked about it at all. I don’t know what you think friends are for. You’ve done your mourning for him, six weeks is more than he deserves. But no, nine hours to Tahoe and all I get is your long face. I felt like stopping the car and performing a mercy killing.”
    Diana laughed.
    “That’s better. Are you still taking the pill?”
    “Yes Viv. Yes, mother.”
    “Jason at work is panting after you.”
    Diana shrugged.
    “What’s wrong with him?”
    “He bores me.”
    “So why are you taking the pill, my little nun in a convent?” Irritated, Diana did not answer.
    “Well, it’s intelligent, whatever your reason. You might meet someone up here.”
    “If I do, I don’t intend to hop into bed with him.”
    “Phooey. I was in bed with John two hours after I met him.”
    Diana glanced at her friend in amusement. “John’s lasted longer than any of your other… enthusiasms, I will say that.”
    “Why shouldn’t I do what I feel like doing? All the men do. I’ve done my biological duty, I’ve produced a child. Now my vagina’s strictly for fun. Nothing is forever, Vivian’s learned that much after her two disasters. Wait’ll you hear the joys of divorce San Francisco style from Liz. Twenty years, for God’s sake. If I ever thought two people would go to the undertaker together it was Liz and George. Till George leaped out of his shorts over some hot blonde thing in his office. God, men can be such bastards, such pricks.”
    Diana had reached the intersection of Highway 50, and she waited for an opening in the Saturday night traffic streaming toward the casinos.
    “You need a love affair, Diana. A good love affair.”
    Diana pulled onto the Highway. “I had one. Jack was more fun than anyone I’ve ever known. I never knew what he’d do next. He was like a man-child to me.”
    “I’m sure,” Vivian said with ill-disguised sarcasm. “I mean a real love affair. Mind-blowing sex, all you do is go to bed and come till you’re vanilla pudding.”
    Diana laughed. “Viv, you’re bad.”
    Vivian grinned lasciviously. “It’s good to be bad.”
    “I can’t believe how built up it is now,” Diana said, gazing at glittering blinking miles of neon along Highway 50.
    “I always thought your feeling for Jack was more protective than anything else. I can’t