Let's go shopping and consider our options.

The next morning while unpacking and putting away, I pondered Lisa's news that she wanted to try sex with another woman. Like, really wanted it, so just thinking about it made her hot to trot. I wondered how long she'd been that way.

As the morning wore on toward noon, the day warmed up into another scorcher. Even with Lisa's dark chestnut hair tied back, it still drooped, dull and lank from the heat. I mopped my forehead once every couple minutes. What could have been just tedious became draining. Finally we looked at each other, one damp red face to the other.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Lisa asked.

"Yes, but maybe we should wait until it's dark to go skinny-dipping," I teased.

"You!" Lisa said, and threw a ball of crumpled newspaper at me.

"Oof!" I said. I clutched the ball of paper to my chest and hammed up a fall onto the couch.

"I meant, maybe we should go get lunch somewhere air conditioned."

"OK, coach," I said. "I better change my shirt."

"Ick, me too," she said, "I don't want to catch a chill if they have it set to 'refrigerate'."

We peeled off our shirts and wiped up with damp washcloths. Of course, I stood where I could watch Lisa in the mirror. It never failed to give me a tingle in my pants when she raised her arm and made her breasts stick out. Little or big, Lisa's were the cutest I'd ever seen, very shapely little apples. I looked down and adjusted my shorts. Unfortunately, looking down gave me a flank view of her shapely rear end. Fortunately, we were soon on our way.

The car at least was air-conditioned, and I began to feel more human and less like a boiled lobster.

"So," I asked Lisa, "have you been thinking about what we talked about last night?"

"Mm-hm," she said.

"You interested in thinking about how to make it a possibility?"

"Mm-hm. You have an idea?"

"Let's pick up one of the free weeklies and have a look at it over lunch. Maybe we'll get some ideas from the ads," I said.

"I guess it couldn't hurt to look," Lisa said.

"With all the gals in summer dress, it should be a good day for looking at other things," I said.

She looked down shyly.

"Hey, at least I should get an idea of your 'type'," I said.

We parked in a covered space at the mall and walked in, between the shops. Despite Portland's frequent clouds and drizzle, this mall was open to the sky with sheltered walkways on each side next to the shops. Today, of course, it was hot and a little muggy. We stayed in the shade of the covered walkways and were happy for the cool drafts blowing out of open shop doors.

We got a couple of iced lemonades so we could stroll for a bit while we decided where to have lunch. Next to the lemonade stand, I snagged a copy of the local alternative weekly and rolled it tightly into my hand so I could move my arm freely.

As I'd hoped, there were lots of women showing themselves off in summer dress -- short cutoffs, breezy little skirts, brief tank tops and cropped T-shirts. If I'd been by myself, it would have been a leisurely picnic for the imagination. As it was, I was following Lisa's eyes. From what I could tell, she seemed to be drawn to the the more active-looking women -- a tall blonde on inline skates wearing a sports bra and red running shorts, a pair of sturdy-looking young women in numbered baseball shirts worn loose over cutoffs, a pony-tailed redhead in white high-tops, a white terrycloth visor, a portable stereo, and a bright green halter and shorts.

We wandered into an open courtyard in the mall. The blonde skater was there, sitting on a bench next to an ice cream store with her skates kicked aside. I admired her tongue work on her ice cream cone. She seemed intent not to lose a drop of the gooey ice cream, melting in the heat. Lisa seemed to find her just as interesting as I did. As we paused, the pony-tailed redhead passed us and disappeared into a shop called Diana's. I looked up at the display window to see that it featured sexy sport clothes for the adventurous athlete. Frederick's of Hollywood meets Reebok? I thought.

"Are you hungry," I asked Lisa, "shall we do lunch and the personals, or do you want to watch the people some more?"

Lisa blinked, breaking her gaze on the wet pink tongue on the ice cream cone. "Oh?" she said.

"Yeah, and check out that store, Diana's," I said. "I think you'd look really hot in that blue number in the window."

Lisa looked around and said, "Well, right now I'd like..."