Some birthday, he thought, back at the trailer, and still seasick enough to be unable to lie down. Some fucking lonely birthday. Except for the three years in the Air Force, Warlock had always received the meal of his choice on his birthday. No presents. No nothing. After the fried chicken hysteria he wasn’t hungry but the day of his birth was only half over. And that jerk Fardello was forcing him to live in a trashy mobile home when he should be in a suite at the Pier House where beautiful women sunbathed topless. Diana wouldn’t be singing him her lilting version of the old favorite, “Happy Birthday.” And more important, Diana always proffered the unusual gift of letting his sexual imagination run playfully on this special day. The only limitation was pain, which neither of them enjoyed. He chuckled at the memory of the previous year when at his insistence she had tied him to the bed and put him through Amazonian sex tortures. Then, at the stroke of midnight, she had declared the game over, saying that Gretchen needed to talk to her. He had shouted himself hoarse as she dressed and walked out. He heard the car start and Hudley had come in and barked at him for private reasons. She was quite the jokester, driving around the block before her return and more unfettered fun.

The memory was giving him a hardon aided by a thirteen year old girl sunbathing on a patch of lawn next to the neighboring trailer. She couldn’t be any older than that but he escalated his notion of her age to make his fantasy legal. He had been in Key West four or five days and didn’t know any girls, though there was a dim, alcohol clouded memory of the first night’s waitress. Debby? Donna? Doris? Shit. Now the girl got on her hands and knees to smooth her blanket, aiming a round little hinder straight at his window. He released his hardon out into the foetid air of the trailer. Why not? Pants dropped to ankles. Unluckily, orgasm caused a momentary dizziness and he grabbed the drapes to avoid falling. The drapes didn’t hold and he fell backwards to the floor in an onanistic mess of drapes and jism. His head narrowly missed a possibly fatal blow from the coffee table. A lesser man could become depressed, he thought, trying to find something positive in the situation.