BUCHAREST
Anja and Betty strolled down an aisle of the chemist's shop, picking out some last-minute items they needed for tomorrow's trip to the Romanian capital of Bucharest.
Anja's grandmother or bunicΔ in the old language, had been born there, but the family had fled when she was seven, as the Soviets took over at the end of World War Two. Her grandmother's father had led them to the American sector of Germany and then eventually to England. Anja's grandmother had been a renowned beauty, but stayed single a long time, caring for her own grandparents and then parents, before marrying another Romanian refugee. This bloodline still showed clearly in Anja, with her thick, mahogany hair and full eyebrows over large, expressive eyes.
After years of BunicΔ's stories about the old country, Anja was finally going to see it for herself, alongside her best friend and worst troublemaker, Betty.
Anja thought Betty had insisted on this late shopping stop to pick up a travel-sized tube of toothpaste or the like, but she should have known better from the buxom blonde. The kind of trip Betty had in mind would have severely shocked BunicΔ Marisa, but was becoming abundantly clear as she stopped them in front of the condoms and personal lubricants.
First she took four tubes of K-Y jelly and put them in the basket Anja was carrying.
"Just how much of this do you think you'll actually use?" Anja asked with a mixture of humour and horror.
"It's not about how much," her randy friend answered. "It's about making sure it's always handy. Who knows where Vlad will want to impale us?"
Vlad referred to Vlad the Impaler, the notorious Romanian nobleman who had enemy prisoners impaled on wooden stakes on the battlefield to terrify the Ottoman soldiers who were marching north into Wallachia in the 15
th
century. Vlad was also known as Vlad Dracula and is said to have been a partial inspiration for Bram Stoker's famous vampire, four centuries later.
When they'd first decided to go to Bucharest, they'd kicked around the idea of making a day trip up to visit Bran Castle, which many people referred to as Dracula's Castle, even though Vlad had never really been there. From then on, Betty had referred to all Romanian men as Vlads. She'd also declared that the Romanian box on her Fuck-Around-the-World list was still blank and she was looking forward to being impaled on Vlad's stake. Of course, it would be a stake of flesh and blood, not wood; though hopefully stiff as wood.
"One for your purse, one for mine, one for your bedroom, one for mine," is how Betty accounted for the four tubes of lubricant.
Anja's mouth hung open speechlessly. 'For My purse and My room?' she thought. No wonder her randy friend had put this off to the last minute -- she obviously didn't want Anja thinking about it too long before it was time to go.
Now looking among the condoms, Betty started placing several small packages into the basket. "What kind do you want?" she asked Anja.
Anja answered in a disbelieving tone, as if she now thought Betty might be playing a prank. "Again, how many do you think we'll really need?"
"Well, we'll be there seven days, so I'd better get fucked at least seven times." She'd already put two 3-packs each of three different kinds of rubbers into the basket.
Anja was no vestal virgin and was certainly open to the idea of a romantic interlude during their stay, but,
at least seven times
, combined with the 18 condoms already in the carrier gave her pause.
"Seven days, but only six nights."
"Then I'll have to get fucked twice on one day. At least," she added with her famous dirty grin.
"Well, then why not just get a big box? It will cost less," Anja responded sarcastically.
Completely straight-faced, Betty replied, "Because when you hand a man a small box, he just thinks you're a well-prepared woman of the world. If you ask him to take a rubber from an economy pack, he'll think you're a slut. We don't want anyone thinking we're sluts, do we?"
Both women laughed, then took their purchases to the checkout. Anja blushed when the old chemist looked at them queerly over the tops of his half-rim glasses.
But Betty gave him a saucy look in return and said, "You don't think bad of us because we make them wear protection, do you? They seem to come just as hard with a rubber as without."
The old man's jaw dropped and he almost did the same with their change.
"Oh, you are so bad," Anja told her friend as they walked out.
"You'd better believe it," Betty replied.
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