"Be careful, Junie, you ain’t old enough to handle that yet."

"Don’t sell the boy short, Brim, remember how you were at his age." Mercer Cooke and the other men at the table laughed. The teenaged Glen Murray, called Junie, had been caught gawking by his uncle at one of Miss Zenobia’s party girls.

Cooke held out a couple of dollar bills to the teenager. "Mix me a Jack and coke, would you, youngster? And fetch me a hamhock sandwich too, son. Slap some hogshead cheese on it too." He saw and upped the raise by ten dollars.

"Okay, Mr. Cooke," Junie said, his cheeks still warm. The liquor and such was on a sideboard and he took care of the drink order. Then he went off toward the kitchen in the antebellum restored colonial mansion. This meant leaving the parlor where the game was going, dealer’s choice. This also meant having to pass by the girl he’d tried to peek at on the sly when she walked past. Well, she must be at least four years older than him, he figured, which made her 20 and, he supposed, a woman. For she was certainly more experienced than he was.

"How come they calls you Junie?" The girl he’d been transfixed by asked when he entered the area off the parlor that Miss Zenobia called the foyer. A fancy ballroom chandelier hung from its ceiling. And this space was bigger than what Junie had for sleeping at his uncle’s place.

She and the other one, whose name was Tanya, were sitting on a couch in the room containing the two pool tables and the plasma TV. They were playing the AlienQuake II video game on the set. Tanya blew a megadroid’s head off, earning her bonus points. Both of them were dressed in silky undergarments and short untied satiny robes. They looked like honeys fresh from a BET rap video. How could he not peep that when she’d walked into the parlor to whisper something to Valentine Lewis, one of the players?

"’Cause you was called junebug when you were small?" the girl-woman asked, invading Junie’s reverie.

"My mother and older brother were both born in June," the smitten teen answered.

"And so were you?"

He got lost in her eyes. "No. September."

She frowned and chewed a little on her lower lip, and a rainbow of lights popped inside his head.

"This is Missa, she just stared this week," Tanya said, her thumbs furiously working the control’s toggles.

"Glad to meet you," he managed without stammering. "I’ve got to get something," and he scooted away. He could hear them whispering as he went, and they laughed that laugh that fine females do when they know they’re messing with a dude’s mind. At least his cheeks weren’t warm again.