23
THE BILLIONAIRE
“Hi, Sally,” John said, interrupting the lengthy pause. “So, you’re still
keeping things in order around here?”
“Yes. After all, I promised. There’s some fruit there. It’s been washed.
Have some. It’s for you.”
“Ah, yes… For me…Well, okay, let’s go in together, and we’ll have some-
thing to eat.”
John pulled aside the curtain and let Sally go ahead of him. She went in,
squatted down to pick up the bowl and put it on the table next to the framed
photo.
There were no chairs in the little house, so John took a seat on the rug.
Reaching for a bunch of grapes, he brushed against Sally’s shoulder. She
turned, their eyes met, and Sally took a quick, deep breath. A button on the
dress atop her firm breast came undone when she breathed in sharply. John
took Sally by the shoulders and drew her to him. She offered no resistance.
Quite the opposite: she pressed herself to him with the entirety of her burn-
ing body. And she did not resist when John slowly and carefully laid her
down atop the rug, or when he caressed and kissed her lips, and her breast,
or when he…
Sally was a virgin… Never before had John been intimate with a virgin,
nor was he ever again. And now, forty-five years after that last encounter
with Sally, John Heitzman suddenly understood, that this was the only time
he had ever experienced truly beautiful, mind-blowing intimacy with a wo-
man…Or rather, with a girl whom he made a woman.
Afterwards, they fell asleep for a short while. When they awoke, they
talked about something. But what? John Heitzman strained his memory. He
really wanted to remember at least part of this conversation. And he did.
Sally was talking about how wonderful life was. She told him how her
father was saving up to buy her a plot of land, and that he might, if there
was enough money, build her a little house. Sally herself would do all the
landscape design on the plot, would put in a lot of different plants and
would live there happily, raising her children.
John made a mental note then to help Sally. “Amazing,” he thought to
himself back then. “All this girl needs to be happy is some plot of land and a
