What if I don’t mean it? I asked myself. Judi was ready to bark up the wrong tree.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?”

“Why would I be mad at you? I’m not mad,” I told her. “But I do have some other phone calls to make.”

“Are you sure?”

“What, that I have other phone calls to make? Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about you being mad at me for not sleeping with you.”

I said, “Now how are you gonna go from how happy and proud you are that we were able to sleep together for two nights without doing anything, and then turn around and start feeling guilty because the celibacy thing didn’t rub me too well. I mean, that situation is your life, not mine. So I don’t have that much to say about it.”

“But you respect my decision to do it, right?”

“I had no other choice. I wasn’t gonna rape you.”

“Rape me? So you wanted sex that bad?”

“Evidently not if I stopped trying so easily.”

“Mmm,” she grunted. “I can’t believe you even said that.”

“All men think about taking it on occasion. Trust me.”

“All men?” she repeated for clarity. “All men who have a sex drive and like women.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say, Terrance.”

“Yeah, well, have you ever honestly thought about going out with a guy just because he has money?”

“Now you know you can’t ask me that. I’ve been a national runway model. We’re surrounded by men with money.”

I told her, “The point is not whether you would do it or not, but that you’ve thought about it. That’s all I’m saying. We all think about it.”

Judi listened to me as I continued.

I said, “Men think about sex as urgently as women think about security. And that’s a fact.”

“So holding out sex on a man is the biggest crime in the world then, huh?” she teased me. I could hear the chuckles in her voice.

I said, “You already know that. That’s why they call it the power of the capital P. Women already know how to get to a man. That’s been going on since the beginning of time.”

I said, “But I really do need to go.”

“Where are you off to next?” she asked me.

“Chicago.”

“Oh, I haven’t been there in awhile now, ever since I decided to take my hiatus from modeling.”

“Okay, well, that’s where I’m off to next.”

I was eager to hang up the phone. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

Judi said, “Have fun, but not too much fun.”

“All right, so I’ll call you when I get back,” I told her.

I was trying to end the phone call on a good note. But when I was just about to hang up with her, she asked me, “Why can’t you call me while you’re out there. You think you’ll be too busy?”