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Eventually, Catherine revealed to each new man in her life the most intimate secrets of her previous lovers.
"Did I tell you I once dated a man with only one testicle?" she would ask, raising a finely plucked eyebrow.
"The left one. He lost the right when he was a Boy Scout. Soap Box Derby accident. The stick stuck."
Or:
"There was this one guy who always cried out
'Mama!' during sex. At the top of his lungs, 'Mama! MA-ma!
MAMA!'" She would shake her head. "He slept with a night light, too."
The details weren't always sexual or even physical, and if she laughed while telling her stories, she laughed without malice. Despite the frankness of her memories, Catherine's tongue was no sharper than her features
-- the soft cheekbones, gray-green eyes and button nose that still lent her face an aura of youthful
naiveté, even now as she edged into her late twenties. It was a coy mix of innocence and worldliness she had discovered many men found seductive, and the corners of her mouth seemed always on the verge of a wry smile. She was small as well, a wisp of a woman really. While some friends had commented with a hint of caution that she was just skin and bones, Catherine preferred to think of herself as lean and limber, and she adhered to a regimen of morning workouts at the gym and Slimfasts twice daily to cultivate that girlish figure. Despite the expense (especially on a receptionist's salary), she had her hair done each week and highlighted regularly. She kept her clothes well pressed too, and her lingerie always matched, whether anyone would be seeing it or not. If she sometimes caught a glimpse of dark circles under her eyes, she concealed them easily with a little powder and blush. She wore fake fingernails to cover the places where she often bit them to the quick.
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