It was only the second occasion that we had been alone together and the first real opportunity we'd had to speak since he had arrived the previous eve...ing. Since then, he'd spent most of the intervening time in intimate contact with my wife. In theory there must have been a number of relevant topics, about which we could have meaningfully conversed. In practise, I was too embarrassed and too self-conscious to broach the subject. I assumed Carl would be similarly reticent. However he seemed. And then she climaxed from her own hand. It was exciting, but it was merely a promise of what was to be. And Steve wasn't there to hold her as she drifted off to sleep.Meanwhile, they reached a compromise on schools; more accurately, they put their problems off. Steve applied to Albion, and to the Illinois Institute of Technology as a might- get-in. Shannon applied to the U of I as well as to Albion. Neither really applied to a "parachute" school, although Shannon thought of the U of I that. “I’ve three daughters. We can have five courses, each by a different fair hand. Here comes one of them now.”Hannah was in late middle age and this girl was twenty-something. They were both fair-skinned and had the same black, wavy hair, but the girl was lighter, more delicate. Less of her old lady’s country character, more of the urban upbringing. Dark hair on her arms, which immediately made me feel protective. A woman shouldn’t have to deal with such things. I, on the other hand, had very. .. I don't think she'd be offering me Vodka ... but is it water? In for a penny ... in for a pound. I nodded.It was water. Odd taste though. I was asleep in seconds.Some time later, I awoke to a man leaning over my bed ... he had the accoutrements ... the paraphernalia accumulated in the normal performance of ones occupation. The black bag with assorted implements of the profession ... the stethoscope one used to see doctors carry ... a hospital badge of identification clipped to the white coat.