A towel wrapped around her long dark hair, Rhiannon Jones stepped out of the bathroom.
"Hey, Rhia," her roommate called from the living room.
Rhia started at the sound of Dorothy's voice. Ducking back into the bathroom for her robe, she padded down the short hall. "Hey yourself," she said. "I thought you were planning a late night."
Dorothy laughed. "I was hoping for a late night but it was not to be." She twisted around on the couch to look at Rhia. "I thought you were planning the same. Or are you just cleaning up after Round One?"
Rhia made a face. "Yeah, right." Belting her robe loosely, she came and sat on the couch.
"Oh, lord, another groper?" Dorothy asked. "You always take a shower after a groper-date."
"Yep, another one," said Rhia with a sigh. "I swear, Dot, I'm starting to believe the entire male population within a hundred miles consists of guys whose only idea of making love to a woman is to grab her tits at the first opportunity."
"An interesting hypothesis, Ms Jones," Dorothy said in a professorial tone. She was a graduate student at Blank University and often taught classes for her professors as part of her degree program. "Do you have data to back it up?"
Rhia giggled. "Well, Professor Warner, I do have a number of case studies. They aren't written up yet, of course, as I am still in the experimental stage of this research."
"I see. However, the raw data tends to support this theory about the foreplay technique of the local male population?"
"Yes, ma'am, it does."
Dorothy stroked her chin in imitation of Professor Sanderson, her thesis advisor. Rhia was taking a freshman course from him and knew the gesture well. "Hmm ... interesting. What sort of control have you been using in your experiments, Ms Jones?"
"Control, Professor?"
"Why, certainly. After all, it is hardly scientific to use only a female subject whose ... ah ..." Dorothy cleared her throat. "Whose physical pulchritudinousness ... yes, I think that is the word ... is so attractive to the male libido as to cause the reaction you describe. You will need to include a female subject who is less of a ... babe."
The two roommates burst into giggles. Dorothy got up from the couch. "You want a beer, Ms Jones?" she asked.
"Thank you, Ms Warner, I would," Rhia answered.
Dorothy and Rhia's dormitory had been built in the 1920s as an apartment building. The suite of rooms they shared was one of the top floor apartments, reserved for graduate students or faculty members in need of temporary accommodations. The suite consisted of two bedrooms, a living room and a tiny but adequate kitchenette. Rhia, a freshman, should not have been given such a plum but there had been a mix-up in room assignments that left her with nowhere to live. She'd been sitting in the Housing office when Dorothy arrived and the older student had graciously offered to take Rhia as a roommate.
Dorothy went to the refrigerator and got two bottles of beer. She opened them and turned to go back to the couch, but stopped. Rhia had taken off the towel and shaken out her wet hair. She sat sideways, one long leg curled under her, her robe hanging loose. Dorothy sighed and smiled. She had been smitten almost at once by her unexpected roommate's beauty. Rhia was the least self-conscious person Dorothy had ever met. Hardly an exhibitionist, she nevertheless did not mind Dorothy seeing her in various states of undress.
"We're both women," Rhia had declared the first time Dorothy blushed at being caught staring. "And anyway, it's nothing you haven't seen before."
Dorothy had refrained from pointing out that Rhia's face and figure were like nothing she'd ever seen before. Tall and curvacious, the freshman had a figure that made heads turn wherever she went. Her dark hair, her blue eyes, her bright smile, all these added to the stunning impression Rhiannon Jones made.
Handing Rhia a beer, Dorothy sat opposite her, unconsciously mirroring Rhia's position. They clinked their bottles and drank.
"So the new club was a bust, was it?" Rhia asked.
"Yeah, just another meat-market."
"Too bad, I know you were looking forward to a little fun."
Dorothy shrugged. "Fun's where you find it, I guess," she said. "To be honest, I'm not sorry. I kind of like our evenings at home."
Rhia smiled. "So do I," she said.
The evening passed in conversation and beer and laughter. Somewhere in the middle of her third bottle, Rhia, who was not used to drinking, looked at Dorothy and asked, "What exactly did you mean before about my pulchritu ... pulchri ..."
"Pulchritudinousness?"
"Yeah, that."
"I meant that maybe it's not fair to the guys you go out with that you so damn gorgeous."
"What?"
"I mean, let's face it, Rhia, you're a babe, so naturally guys sort of lose their minds when they get near you."
"But ... but ... I don't tease them."
"You don't have to." Dorothy took a swig of beer. "It's not your fault, honey, it's just the way you're built." She gave Rhia a leer. "And, baby, you're built."
"Oh, great, so if I want to have a nice, quiet date I should ... what? Have surgery and become a ... a ... non-babe?" Rhia's vocabulary had suffered a little from the beer.
