It was s sleepy baby girl. Dick grinned when he saw the baby being placed in the baby cot. That’s right, put the little brat, the little crybaby, the scheming little enchantress out of the way for the night.

‘Shhh…’ Serene cautioned for silence, ‘be quiet now. Mustn’t wake the baby.’

Dick grinned. Dick grinned because he was part of the conspiracy to keep the baby out of the way for the night. That meant that they were going to have some fun that night. Serene, Danny and him… Dick.

They used to hop into bed every night. All three of them. And he would snuggle between her silky thighs and roll into Danny’s powerful arms, and pant hungrily as he watched Danny reach over to caress Serene’s cheeks, and kiss her neck tenderly. On many occasions, things would get really physical, really hot.

That was, until the little tot came.

The little brat changed everything. When the baby first arrived, Dick wondered why the others fussed over it so fastidiously. After a few days, Dick realised that the baby could not walk. Poor creature! Babies amongst Dick’s kindred had no problem walking soon after birth. The baby was lame. That was why the others treated the baby with such care. Dick resolved to be more sympathetic to the baby’s plight.

They plonked the baby girl in the middle of the bed. Everyone had to move about gingerly to avoid squashing it. Danny and Serene would not let Dick hop into bed with them any more. But over the months, the baby wriggled its legs, started to crawl, climbed onto its two hind legs and rolled about the house in its baby walker. Still the others invested all their attention towards the baby. The interest they took in the baby’s first garbled words, its first tottering steps, and the daily variations in the colour of baby’s faeces simply defied all logic. Needless to say, Dick stopped being sympathetic to the baby.

But on those occasions when Serene put the baby away…

‘How was your trip, darling?’ Serene asked casually.

She was Cleopatra, slithering across the rivers and seas to her monumental Rome. Her monument was pondering over the backdated newspapers of the past week on the sofa.

‘As usual. One whole week of meetings.’

‘Was it hot in Bangkok?’

She brushed her fingers over Danny’s ears and gently massaged his neck muscles.

‘Hmm…’

Danny tossed his papers aside and closed his eyes.

‘Very hot in the day. But very lonely at night.’

‘Didn’t your Thai counterparts,’ she kissed his neck, ‘take you out to paint the town red at night?’

‘No.’

He buried his face in her bosom.

‘Everyone had a family to go back to.’

‘Is that so?’ she asked, with a twinkle in her eye.

He looked up at her for a moment.

‘The baby’s asleep,’ she said with a smile.

He smiled. Dick knew that smile. It was a naughty smile. A Kevin Costner smile. Mischievous. Sheepish. As they got up from the sofa, Dick bounded happily for the lighted bedroom, landed squarely across the bed and watched the other two’s approach.

Danny waited at the doorway while Serene climbed into bed and bundled Dick into her arms to make room for Danny. As Dick sank luxuriously into her bosom, the lights went out and his doggy eyes could see the dark figure of Danny approaching and stripping off his pyjamas. As Danny slid onto the bed his bare, naked body glistened. A Robin Hood wriggling behind his water fall. A hand groped about Dick’s furry body until it found Serene’s hands. Dick found himself sandwiched and squeezed in a sensurround of tactile stimulation. But when Danny tried to roll over to get even more intimate with Serene, Dick decided he had had enough. After all, when the elephants make love, even the grass gets trampled upon!

So with a little yelp, he wriggled out of the entwined bodies and bounced onto the floor out of harm’s way. He scampered around the bed and found himself staring face to face with the Crack of Mount Doom. No fissure in Middle Earth could excite more passion or invite greater calamity. Dick turned around to settle down at this place on the sheepskin rug. But the lovers’ excitement was too infectious to ignore. So he scurried to the bedside to watch the symphony triumphing into its fourth movement. It was over all too soon.

What happened to the exquisite expectations of the first movement? The gentle exploration and intimate communications of the second movement? And the slow but irresistible buildup of the third?

There was a time when Danny was like a conductor nursing his orchestra through the four movements, bringing to life every musical nuance and caressing every harmonic sensitivity. He would climb into bed boldly for the first movement. The clothes were undone by the second movement. Dick had to scamper out of the way somewhere in the third movement. With the approach of the symphonic climax in the fourth movement, Danny would throw his head about, bow and strain his back and shoulders passionately like a screeching violin and unleash the torrent of music so thunderous that the entire bed shook with its intensity.

And Serene? Serene was the music score, the embodiment of all the inspiration and art in fair white fabric, fanciful lines and contours.

That was a lone time ago.

The bed stopped shaking. Danny turned around without bowing. He was playing to an audience that had stopped clapping. He flopped onto his back, exhausted by a score whose music he had played too many times before.

Dick had often wondered at the strange intimate habits of the other two. Amongst his kin, it was simple. The males and females left each other alone until the females went on heat. When the females were on heat, they wrapped themselves in this wonderful fragrance that was irresistible to the males. Hence the males were in tune with the biological rhythms of the females.

But Danny and Serene! First, Serene was fond of wrapping herself in layer upon layer of fabric and all sorts of strange and alien scents that concealed all her secret fragrances. Secondly, Danny seemed to be driven by his own biological rhythms rather than Serene’s. Talk of waste of precious resources and bad timing! All the perspiration and energy expired and so little achieved.

Dick climbed onto the bed to lay beside the couple, grateful that the baby was in the baby’s room. He looked at Serene. She was even more of a puzzle. He was not even sure whether her biological rhythms were similar to his kin’s. A gentle moan here. A few sighs there. And that was the height of her female passion. After a session of lovemaking, she often lay wide awake, listening to the uneven snores reverberating in the bedroom. Dick could not tell from her passive form whether Serene enjoyed the whole exercise.

But she seemed satisfied. The insecurity of one week alone at home with no one but Dick and the baby for company while Danny was gallivanting somewhere in Bangkok had been dispelled. She rested her cheeks against Danny’s shoulder and drifted off into her dreams.

‘Did you miss me?’ Serene murmured into the darkness.

There was a sleepy pause.

‘Yes.’ The darkness answered.

H