by Julia Kent
“On?” I chirp, finally finding a voice and the will to move, pulling myself up off the ground on legs so numb, I might as well have bathed in Novocaine.
“You’re high as a kite.” Disgust ripples through his voice, but he stops himself mid-breath, his head cocking slightly. “Wait a minute. You’re really familiar.”
Beastman turns and interrupts. “You said you didn’t do film, Mal. Maybe you lied? This guy’s seen you in something?”
“Mal?” Will says, eyes narrowing, mouth firmly set in anger. Then he softens. “Mallory?”
Spatula inserts himself between us, Will dropping my shoulder. He waves his phone in Will’s face. “I have a signed rental contract. We paid the deposit to rent this place for today and tomorrow, fair and square. It’s all done through the online booking agency, and–”
Red and blue lights flash, fast, into the house from outside, the cut-off screech of sirens finally breaking through my awareness.
“Tell it all to the cops,” Will growls at him. “You broke so many rules.”
Oiled up and panting, Beastman stands tall, spine straight. His, uh, beastdom stands even straighter. “You got a problem?”
Will Lotham was quarterback for the Harmony Hills Hornets. He’s a tall one–six two, one eighty, nothing but muscle and flow. All his stats come streaming back into my brain like I’m a computer program. My eyes cut to Will and I'm guessing he's added twenty pounds of muscle since we graduated, so I have to adjust my Will Lotham database. He is thicker.
But Beastman is big and hairy and glistening, and in a match between the two, the odds are ever in favor of the guy who smells like coconut oil and looks like Hagrid’s porn twin.
Until Will cocks his arm and decks him.
Beastman goes down.
And no, that’s not a porn joke.
Because he brings me down with him.
All three hundred or so pounds of slick muscle hit me like a rock slide, shoving the entity that is Mallory Monahan into the floor, the anal-bead string wedged between my ass cheeks as I deeply regret the wrap dress I chose for professional style. All the wind knocks out of me as his oily skin slides against my clothes, my arms, my face, and soon I’m pinned beneath a man who doesn’t know the difference between a euphonium and a euphemism, but does know one thing.
“Mal” is another word for bad.
And this, my friends, is the very definition of bad.
“Son of a bitch,” Will swears, shaking his hand out, the air moving as he winces, Beastman toppled on his side, Spatula pressing his hands against his ears.
“Crystal jaw, man,” Spatula mourns. “That’s why he couldn’t keep on with the WWF wrestling.” Eyes darting to the window, Spatula looks at me, then Will, then down at Beastman.
Will bends down, offering me his good hand. “You’re Mallory Monahan. From Harmony Hills? Class of '09? I knew you were familiar. Jesus, look at you. From valedictorian to this.”
If I could breathe, I’d answer him.
And I would lie. Wouldn’t you?
But I can’t breathe, so I just sit there, twitching, Beastman’s hairy, oily skin turning my humiliation into a perverted deep-conditioning treatment. I try to rise, but my face is crotch level with Will, mouth open in an O of surprise.
Do I really look like a blow-up sex doll when I do this? Beastman’s words flit through me as the room starts to dim, his weight seriously making it impossible to get oxygen in me.
I look up at Spatula, trying to ask for help. All he does is hold up his phone up and press his finger against the glass screen.
“You are not taking photos!” Will bellows, dropping my hand and moving toward Spatula, who sprints out of the room. Will’s suit jacket flaps as he runs after him.
All the beards race out the front door. Within seconds, two car engines start, tires peeling out as I stand there, arms and legs turning to ice blocks.
My high school crush thinks I’m a porn star.
I am found like this by the cops, seconds later, as Beastman wakes up, hand going to his crotch, crying out, “I’m ready for my close-up!”
And that is when I faint.
Here’s the problem with fainting: Sometimes it only lasts a few seconds.
Damn it.
Here’s the other problem with fainting: Will is now standing next to the cop, telling him in a firm voice, “I think she needs Narcan. She’s high and unresponsive.”
I sit up again, surprised I can do it. Beastman is on the other side of the room, hands cuffed behind his back, his jaw an angry red on the left side. Red knuckles attest to Will's aching hand as he talks to the cop in a clear voice, unafraid to be heard.
“I don’t need Narcan. I’m not on anything,” I protest.
“That’s what they all say,” the cop mutters, giving Will a raised eyebrow and a look I really resent.
“I am not on drugs. I am not a porn star. I came here because I saw a job on Craigslist for a professional fluffer, and that’s what I do for a living.”
Blinks. I get blinks. Lots and lots of blinks.
Nothing but blinks.
A female cop joins us and as I look up at her, I realize she’s my next-door neighbor’s daughter, Karen Minsky.
My mom is going to hear about this in seventeen minutes.
You know how I know?
Because that’s how long it took for word to get back to her when we were busted at a house party by–you guessed it–Karen Minsky, when I was a junior in high school.
“You’re a fluffer?” Will chokes out. “The valedictorian of my high school class is a fluffer?”
“A house fluffer!” I say, indignant. “I make everything look better!”
“I’ll bet you do,” Karen says, pulling out a long zip tie. “Keep your hands where I can see them, Mallory, and we’ll do this the easy way.”
“You’re arresting me?”
“We found drugs in the other room, on top of the illegal occupancy and lack of a filming permit for–”
“You can’t arrest me! You used to babysit me! You used to bribe me with an extra root beer if I didn’t tell my mom your boyfriend came over and watched horror movies while I was asleep!”
“That was then, and by the way,” she says, giving me a dark look, “you blabbered about it and got me in trouble.”
“You and John Ralston let me watch Saw 3! I was six!”
Will is observing me with a calculation that makes my skin crawl, and not just the epidermal layer coated in Beastman’s coconut oil. I sniff the back of my hand.
I hope that’s coconut oil.
“She’s not high,” Will announces.
“How do you know?” Karen asks.
“Anyone who can bring up a twenty-year-old grudge like that,” he snaps his fingers, “isn’t high.”
Karen lets out a long sigh, the kind with an exasperated groan at the end that they must teach in police academy. “Good point.” She frowns. “But I kind of want to arrest her anyway.”
“For what?” I demand.
“Being a pain in the ass.” She turns to Will. “You’re the homeowner. We’ve got all the major characters out there, including some guy who insists his name is Spatula. Spatula Mangucci.”
“He’s the cream pie expert,” I explain, trying to be helpful.
More blinks.
“Cream pie?” Will reluctantly asks, a muscle in his jaw pinging. Is he trying not to laugh?.
“You know. For the cooking show...” My voice winds down as I realize what I’m saying. “Wait a minute. This isn’t a cooking show. It’s porn. It’s a porn set.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “So why would he talk about cream pies on a porn set?”
Karen’s eyebrows touch the brim of her police uniform hat. “For a valedictorian, you’re not very smart.”
Laughter twitches at the edges of Will’s lips. “But you’re funny.”
“Huh. Beastman said that, too. Right when he told me I needed to use spit to be a fluffer.”
&nbs
p; Karen shakes her head and sighs. “Can I arrest you for being too stupid to live?”
“Pretty sure you’d have to arrest half the planet, officer,” Will says, frowning deeply at me. “You really don’t understand that you took a job on a pornographic movie set? One that’s operating illegally in my parent’s house?”
“This is your house?” My turn to challenge him. “It’s not the same house you lived in when we were in high school.”
I get a sharp look in return. “How would you know? You’ve never been to my house.”
I can’t admit that I made my mother drive past it 8,000 times in ninth and tenth grade, taking a detour through his neighborhood, and then driving myself the last two years of high school.
“Uh, you know. Everyone knows where everyone lives in a small town,” I say lamely.
He’s not convinced. Here’s the thing about Will Lotham: He’s a Rhodes Scholar. You know that annoyingly well-rounded person in high school, the National Merit Scholar and football star recruited by a Big 10 school he ended up turning down in favor of an Ivy, the one who got all the Veterans of Foreign Wars accolades and was Order of the Arrow and in Eagle Scouts, too? The one who got the lead in the school play every year, founded a food pantry for people with tree-nut allergies, and who used his ninth-grade science fair project to patent a new technology for turning mud into antibiotics in Eritrea?
Yeah. They annoy the hell out of me, too.
Notice how Will keeps mentioning I was valedictorian of our high school class?
That’s because he was salutatorian.
Second best.
To me.
Right now, though, would not be the smartest time to mention that, because it appears he is the only thing standing between me and a criminal record.
An aggrieved sigh pours out of him. “My parents bought this place a while ago. Sold the house on Concordian. Mom wanted more land and a pool.”
I just nod.
“And then they moved to Florida for half the year after Dad’s cancer scare.”
My heart pitter-patters with sympathy.
“I’m sorry.”
“He’s fine. But they dumped this place off on me to manage. The market’s still lukewarm in this price range, so we’ve been renting it through an online clearinghouse.” A sour look covers his face. “Why am I telling you all this? Anyhow.” He gives me a look that says somehow it’s my fault he’s spilling his guts. “The neighbors tipped me off to ‘unusual activity.’ I came here expecting a rowdy house party. Not–” He looks pointedly at the anal beads on the floor. “–this.”
“Then that makes two of us,” I offer up. “I didn’t come here expecting ‘this’, either.” I mimic his finger quotes. “I’m a house fluffer. I fluff pillows. Not penises.”
“You’re a house stager?”
“Stager. Fluffer. You know.”
“And you’re pretty sheltered,” he adds. “I’ve never heard the term 'house fluffer' before. Stager, yes. Fluffer, no.”
“And I’d never heard of fluffer as a porn term,” I say with a rush of heat to my face.
“Fair enough.”
“Nothing about today is fair, Will.” Saying his name to his face tastes like ice cream with toffee pieces and hot fudge.
“Maybe your friends were right.”
“Right?” I peer at him, eyes dry, my mouth parched from stress.
“Remember that day in the parking lot? When they painted your windshield?”
“You remember that?”
He holds his hands up like he’s imagining a marquee. “Mallory Monahan. Most Likely to Become a Porn Star.”
Oh, God. He does remember.
A light laugh comes out of him as he shakes his head, eyes hard. “I assumed that was a joke.”
“It was!” I sputter. “A total joke! I’m not — ”
Karen returns, fingering the zip-tie cuffs. “Am I taking her in?”
It’s tempting to say yes right now, to escape this unending humiliation.
But I may be embarrassed, but I’m not stupid.
“Please,” I say to Will. I’m super close to begging. “Today has been awful, and I just realized I’m not getting paid. There goes three hundred bucks.” My shoulders drop in defeat. “And I gave them good feng shui advice about the living room.” I look up, troubled by that misaligned furniture. “All that work for nothing.”
Karen leads us into the living room as Will huddles with her, their voices just whispers that make me feel even more ashamed and needy. Technically, Will should not have a say in whether the cops arrest me, but in small towns, this is how it works. The wealthy family has pull. Notice how he punched Beastman and no one’s talking about charging him with assault?
And I really did rat Karen out twenty-two years ago, so she has a reason to hold a grudge against me. After watching twenty minutes of that horrible horror movie, I peed the bed in fear for a week before telling Mom what happened. I thought she got her payback when Karen busted that house party when I was in eleventh grade, but I guess not.
While Will and Karen chat at the front door, I make myself useful, pushing with my shoulder to move the sofa. They stop talking and watch me as I grunt.
“What are you doing?” Will finally asks.
“I know why you can’t sell this house,” I blurt out. “It’s not the lukewarm market. It’s your energy flow.”
“Energy flow?” he chokes out, face half amused, one eyebrow up.
“Are you arresting me or not?” I ask Karen. “Either release me and let me go home to lick my wounds, or take me in and make this day suck even more.”
“Lick,” one of the other officers says with a snicker.
“Suck,” Karen snorts.
Great. My permanent record is in the hands of the cop equivalent of Beavis and Butthead.
“I don’t want any charges pressed against Mallory,” Will declares, giving me a look of kindness that takes me back to my teenage self, when he could have melted my heart with one one-hundredth of that power. “It sounds like this was a case of wrong place, wrong time.”
“Wrong industry,” I agree.
“I don’t want to add another wrong, so let’s not read her her rights,” he tells Karen, who tucks the zip-tie handcuffs into her belt and gives me a stern look, as if she’s telepathically making sure I understand I’m getting away with something.
“Thank you,” I say to him, tears finally emerging, a wave of relief surfacing on the churning ocean inside me.
“You’re welcome,” he says as I leave, his body a wall I have to pass as he opens the front door. Reflex makes me inhale, his scent similar to high school, yet different. His cologne is more sophisticated, but the essence of Will Lotham is still there.
Still strong.
Still hopelessly out of reach.
I’m halfway to my car when I hear him shout, “Mallory!”
I turn around. He is standing on the top step, his arm pulled back in perfect quarterback form. “Here! Catch!”
The object sails through the air like he plotted out y = -x² and followed the parabolic curve.
I fumble, but complete the pass.
No. Not that kind of pass. I wish.
I take the dog's chew toy–okay, string of anal beads–he threw at me back to my car, turn the key in the ignition, and drive away.
With my phone charging this time.
5
You know how I know I live in a small town?
When the garbage man shouts through my open window: “Hey, Mallory! Heard you finally found a new job! Nice ass!”
My pillow doesn’t act as a good shame silencer, sadly.
The beep beep beep of the truck backing up, pivoting to leave the cul-de-sac where I’m renting someone’s in-law apartment, adds insult to injury.
I’m up now.
There are only two good things about being unemployed: my time is my own, and I can sleep in.
Tom the Trash Dude just ruined one of those.
Seventy-six of them.
I rub my eyes and try to focus. That can’t be right. Normally I have four or five, and three of those are links to ketogenic recipes for bread from Perky, who doesn’t understand (or care) that gluten-free brownies aren’t free carbs that don’t count because she has celiac disease.
I open the notifications.
I click the first one, expecting a recipe for some low-carb piece of juicy meat.
And I’m right.
Only it’s a picture of Beastman on top of me, shiny and exposed like a bodybuilder, my face squarely in Will’s crotch, mouth open like Kathleen the AlwaysDoll.
I close the link.
I bury the phone under my pillow.
And I blink.
I did not see that. That picture does not exist. Nope.
If I tell myself I did not see that, then it didn’t happen.
Bzzz.
It’s Mom, my mother types in her text that appears on the screen that says MOM at the top.
I know, Mom. I’ve told you a thousand times, I double thumb back. You’re in my phone as Mom.
I knew you needed money, honey, but this? she replies, adding a high-five emoji, followed by Oops! and a frown.
I sit up so fast, I fall off my own bed, the phone sliding onto the floor, staring up with the blue glow of shame.
What do you mean? I reply.
The picture of you with two men, she answers. One is very naked.
What picture? I text back.
The one all over the local news, she says, adding a ghost. Mom really needs to up her emoji game.
“There's a picture of me on the news?” I gasp, scrolling quickly to find the expected text from Perky.
And there it is.
As a photograph, the pic is actually not half bad. You can tell Spatula knows how to frame a scene.
If anyone should, it’s him.
On the left, you see nothing but gleaming, oiled-up, tanned skin in bulging rolls of muscle that make Beastman look like a human challah bread that was brushed with egg and butter, then baked.
I’m in the middle. Kinda. Sorta. He’s behind me, his crotch on my hip. It was snapped as the dog toy – er, anal beads pushed against my ass, so we’re twisted in more ways than one. He’s almost on his knees.
