it was also rather handy-no pun intended-to have access to one's own personal sex shop during long periods of enforced abstinence... such as the last eight years of my life.

"and," tracy responded with a rueful shake of her head, "her gifts love you. often quite literally."

"that's all right, somebody has to," i answered back, horrified at the bitter inflection that had crept into my voice.

but tracy, bless her, just stroked a gentle hand over my hair that turned into a tiny one-armed hug, saying nothing.

"hands off my woman!" crowed a hard-edged voice from the front door. grizelda!

"oh, sorry," i apologized, backing away from tracy.

"i meant for tracy to get off you," grizzie said, swooping toward me to pick me up in a bodily hug, my own well-endowed chest clashing with her enormous fake bosoms. i hated being short at times like these. even though i loved all five feet and eleven inches of grizzie, and had more than my fair share of affection for her ta-ta-riddled hugs, i loathed being manhandled.

she set me down and grasped my hands in hers, backing away to look me over appreciatively while holding my fingers at arm's length. "mmm, mmm," she said, shaking her head. "girl, i could sop you up with a biscuit."

i laughed, as tracy rolled her eyes.

"quit sexually harassing the staff, grizzly bear," was her only comment.

"i'll get back to sexually harassing you in a minute, passion flower, but right now i want to appreciate our jane." grizelda winked at me with her florid violet eyes-she wore colored lenses-and i couldn't help but giggle like a school girl.

"i've brought you a little something," she said, her voice sly.

i clapped my hands in excitement and hopped up and down in a little happy dance.

i really did love grizzie's gifts, even if they challenged the tenuous grasp of human anatomy imparted to me by mrs. renault in her high school biology class.

"happy belated birthday!" she cried as she handed me a beautifully wrapped package she pulled from her enormous handbag. i admired the shiny black paper and the sumptuous red velvet ribbon tied up into a decadent bow-grizzie did everything with style-before tearing into it with glee. after slitting open the tape holding the box closed with my thumbnail, i was soon holding in my hands the most beautiful red satin nightgown i'd ever seen. it was a deep, bloody, blue-based red, the perfect red for my skin tone. and it was, of course, the perfect length, with a slit up the side that would rise almost to my hip. grizzie had this magic ability to always buy people clothes that fit. the top was generously cut for its small dress size, the bodice gathered into a sort of clamshell-like tailoring that i knew would cup my boobs like those hands in that famous janet jackson picture. the straps were slightly thicker, to give support, and crossed over the very low-cut back. it was absolutely gorgeous-very adult and sophisticated-and i couldn't stop stroking the deliciously watery satin.

"grizzie," i breathed. "it's gorgeous... but too much! this must have cost a fortune."

"you are worth a fortune, little jane. besides, i figured you might need something nice... since mark's 'special deliveries' should have culminated in a date by now."

grizzie's words trailed off as my face fell and tracy, behind her, made a noise like xena, warrior princess, charging into battle.

before tracy could launch into just how many ways she wanted to eviscerate our new letter carrier, i said, very calmly, "i won't be going on any dates with mark."

"what happened?" grizzie asked, as tracy made another grunting declaration of war behind us.

"well..." i started, but where should i begin? mark was new to rockabill, a widowed employee of the u.s. postal service, who had recently moved to our little corner of maine with his two young daughters. he'd kept forgetting to deliver letters and packages, necessitating second, and sometimes third, trips to our bookstore, daily. i'd thought he was sweet, but rather dumb, until tracy had pointed out that he only forgot stuff when i was working.

so we'd flirted and flirted and flirted over the course of a month. until, just a few days ago, he'd asked me out. i was thrilled. he was cute; he was new; he'd lost someone he was close to, as well. and he "obviously" didn't judge me on my past.

you know what they say about assuming...

"we had a date set up, but he cancelled. i guess he asked me out before he knew about... everything. then someone must have told him. he's got kids, you know."

"so?" grizzie growled, her smoky voice already furious.

"so, he said that he didn't think i'd be a good influence. on his girls."

"that's fucking ridiculous," grizzie snarled, just as tracy made a series of inarticulate chittering noises behind us. she was normally the sedate, equable half of her and grizzie's partnership, but tracy had nearly blown a gasket when i'd called her crying after mark bailed on me. i think she would have torn off his head, but then we wouldn't have gotten our inventory anymore.

i lowered my head and shrugged. grizzie moved forward, having realized that tracy already had the anger market cornered.

"i'm sorry, honey," she said, wrapping her long arms around me. "that's... such a shame."

and it was a shame. my friends wanted me to move on, my dad wanted me to move on. hell, except for that tiny sliver of me that was still frozen in guilt, i wanted to move on. but the rest of rockabill, it seems, didn't agree.

grizzie brushed the bangs back from my eyes, and when she saw tears glittering she intervened, grizelda-style. dipping me like a tango dancer, she growled sexily, "baby, i'm gonna butter yo' bread..." before burying her face in my exposed belly and giving me a resounding zerbert.

that did just the trick. i was laughing again, thanking my stars for about the zillionth time that they had brought grizzie and tracy back to rockabill because i didn't know what i would have done without them. i gave tracy her own hug for the present, and then took it to the back room with my stuff. i opened the box to give the red satin one last parting caress, and then closed it with a contented sigh.

it would look absolutely gorgeous in my dirty drawer.

we only had a few things to do to get the store ready for opening, which left much time for chitchat. about a half hour of intense gossip later, we had pretty much exhausted "what happened when you were gone" as a subject of conversation and had started in on plans for the coming week, when the little bell above the door tinkled. my heart sank when i saw it was linda allen, self-selected female delegate for my own personal persecution squad. she wasn't quite as bad as stuart gray, who hated me even more than linda did, but she did her best to keep up with him.

speaking of the rest of rockabill, i thought, as linda headed toward romance.

she didn't bother to speak to me, of course. she just gave me one of her loaded looks that she could fire off like a world war ii gunship. the looks always said the same things. they spoke of the fact that i was the girl whose crazy mother had shown up in the center of town out of nowhere, naked, in the middle of a storm. the fact that she'd stolen one of the most eligible rockabill bachelors and ruined him for life. the fact that she'd given birth to a baby without being married. the fact that i insisted on being that child and upping the ante by being just as weird as my mother. that was only the tip of the vituperative iceberg that linda hauled into my presence whenever she had the chance.

unfortunately, linda read nearly as compulsively as i did, so i saw her at least twice a month when she'd come in for a new stack of romance novels. she liked a very particular kind of plot: the sort where the pirate kidnaps some virgin damsel, rapes her into loving him, and then dispatches lots of seamen while she polishes his cutlass. or where the highland clan leader kidnaps some virginal english rose, rapes her into loving him, and then kills entire armies of sassenachs while she stuffs his haggis. or where the native american warrior kidnaps a virginal white settler, rapes her into loving him, and then kills a bunch of colonists while she whets his tomahawk. i hated to get freudian on linda, but her reading patterns suggested some interesting insights into why she was such a complete bitch.

tracy had received a phone call while linda was picking out her books, and grizelda was sitting on a stool far behind the counter in a way that clearly said "i'm not actually working, thanks." but linda pointedly ignored the fact that i was free to help her, choosing, instead, to stand in front of tracy. tracy gave that little eye gesture where she looked at linda, then looked at me, as if to say, "she can help you," but linda insisted on being oblivious to my presence. tracy sighed and cut her telephone conversation short. i knew that tracy would love to tell linda to stick her attitude where the sun don't shine, but read it and weep couldn't afford to lose a customer who was as good at buying books as she was at being a snarky snake face. so tracy rang up linda's purchases and bagged them for her as politely as one can without actually being friendly and handed the bag over to linda.