Rick Jennings

Pet shop pussy

CHAPTER ONE

Pamela Harper lay alone in her bed with the awareness, the growing concern and concomitant anxiety, that her life was basically empty. No matter how hard she tried to structure it, to give it a unifying sense of order or purpose, she sensed that without someone next to her to share her dreams, her goals and aspirations, life wasn't really worth a dime.

How many mornings have I awakened like this… with nothing, just a career, but no one alongside of me? This question and others passed across her mind. She looked up and stared at the ceiling as if she was searching for an answer, a solution to the emptiness in her heart.

Love was the problem, and at twenty-eight it seemed to be her biggest concern. The daily hassles of making a living, of running a business and making ends meet, were not nearly as disconcerting as the fact that she was not in love. Indeed, she was acutely aware of the last time she had felt anything akin to romantic involvement, and that had been more than five years before, right after she had graduated from college.

But the past five years she referred to as a desert, a wasteland.

Men had come and gone, in and out of her life. Had she been a woman who was basically unappealing, physically as well as mentally, she would have been able to give herself a much needed rationalization for her overwhelming sense of loneliness. But there was no way for her to convince herself that men didn't turn somersaults over her.

And that too was a problem, keeping them off of her, getting them out the door before things really took on a leering shade of carnal red. Like what had happened last night, for example. She thought of that now, glad too that it was Sunday morning and she didn't have to get out of bed and get the shop open and ready for customers.

On Sundays she had a neighborhood boy clean out the pens and feed the animals, so she didn't have to worry about getting up and rushing out of her apartment. That was what Dick Truman had told her, too. "You don't have to get up early tomorrow, Pam, so what's the big hassle, anyway?"

It had been less of a question than a statement. No, time hadn't been the hassle. Only Dick Truman, anxious to have her on a silver platter like a roast suckling pig. He's the pig, she said to herself, shuddering at the thought and then wondering too if she just might be frigid… or maybe even just a little bit frigid.

After all, Dick was certainly an attractive guy. But he was too pushy for her, too much of a hard-drinking bruiser. He didn't have a gentle touch and that had turned her off from him, from the very first.