Fluffy

by Julia Kent

  Fiona twirls a finger around one ear while looking at Perky, who is now busy typing on my laptop.

  “You don’t have to be silent about it, Feisty,” I snap, using an ancient nickname for her.

  She laughs. “Haven’t been called that in a long time.”

  “Probably because you haven't kickboxed a linebacker into unconsciousness in a long time,” Perky reminds her.

  “He deserved it! Chris Fletcher was such a jerk.”

  “He pulled your bra strap. You drop kicked him.”

  “The only way to deter a bully is to take him on, face to face.”

  “Which you did.”

  “Two weeks of detention and a stupid nickname was totally worth it.”

  “Whatever happened to him?” I ask, curious.

  Fiona turns a fiery shade of red, eyes jittery. “Who knows?”

  “I know,” Perky announces. “I have magic powers!” She presses her fingertips against her temples. “O oracle, bring the essence of Chris Fletcher to me.” Yogic breathing comes out of her. She’s breathing in for four through the left nostril, out for eight through the right. This is possible only because she broke her nose in tenth grade, and ever since, she’s had a deviated septum.

  It’s not the only part of her that deviates.

  “You Googled him,” Fiona says flatly.

  “I did,” Perky admits.

  “He owns a gym two towns over,” Fiona grunts. “His sister's son is in my class.”

  “You teach Fletch's nephew?”

  “Shut up.” Fiona checks Perky with a strong shoulder.

  “All this talk of Will and porn stars made me think of Fletch!” Perky mocks.

  “That’s your trigger? A porn star made you think of Fletch?” Fiona is disgusted. So disgusted, she's forced to take another bite of her chocolate chip cookie.

  “No, silly. Will Lotham did. The porn-star thing was just extra.”

  “Let’s stop talking about Chris Fletcher and get back to Mallory Monahan, porn star,” Fi grouses. Her eyes narrow as she looks at me. “Call me Feisty again and I’ll call you Fluffy forever.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  Perky holds her hands up like she’s an emcee for some 1930s vaudeville show. “Fluffy!”

  I groan. “You guys suck.”

  I get a self-satisfied smirk from Fiona that turns into compassion quickly as she gets back to business. “Don’t worry. My brother Tim is an SEO specialist. He can help us scrub all this.”

  “Scrub?”

  “You know. Online reputation management. That’s what he does.” Fiona points to Perky. “Remember? Tim helped her and her parents when the two dogs humping mess happened.”

  “Online reputation? I thought he worked for big companies, making sure their websites float to the top of searches? I didn't know he was still in that business.”

  “It turns out the real money comes from manipulating the rankings of really embarrassing dirt on people. He makes loads of money on the side now, removing tweets and Facebook posts about indiscretions.”

  “Indiscretions?”

  “Everything from sex tapes to drunk tweeting an old flame. Or the guy who was fifteen and sent naked pictures on Snapchat, but now he’s twenty-one and trying to get into law school and those pics are haunting him.”

  Perky nods. “He got a bunch of melon memes removed by claiming they were causing economic harm to the melon industry, and that melon farmers might sue.”

  “That’s a thing? They believed him?”

  “The stupider site owners did, and that’s what matters.”

  “But your boobs are everywhere. I’ve seen that meme on MySpace, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m less scandalized to hear that my boobs are on MySpace than I am to hear that you go there, Mal. Why?”

  “It was an accident. Came up in some search recently.”

  “I’m going to ask Tim to get my boobs off MySpace. We didn't even think to go that far back when Mom and Dad hired him to clear my picture off the internet.”

  “Why bother if no one goes there?”

  “I don’t know. Just to feel like I’m doing something.”

  I turn to Fiona. “You’re saying Tim could help me if this goes too far? Because I really, REALLY don’t want people to be able to type ‘Mallory sex tape Beastman spit’ into Google and find those pictures. That’s who I’ll be for the rest of my life!”

  “Tim can help. But let’s look at old Beastman, first,” Perky interrupts before Fi can answer.

  “What?” I’m so confused.

  She goes into the big porn-video database and types one word: Beastman.

  “Holy smokes, he’s done a lot of movies!” Fiona gasps.

  Perky’s eyes narrow as she points to one on the page. “He looks familiar.” Click. “Oh! That’s why.” She starts laughing.

  “Because you watch so much porn, you’re on a first-name basis with the stars?” I ask.

  “No. Because he’s the spokesman for AlwaysDoll.”

  “Her name is Kathleen,” I mutter under my breath.

  “How do you know that?”

  “He told me I look like her.”

  Fiona starts coughing uncontrollably.

  “When I do this,” I explain, making my mouth a perfect O of shock.

  Eyes ping-ponging between the laptop screen and my face, Perky gives me an appreciative look. “You do! It’s as if they used you as the prototype model.”

  “I’ll take Jobs Mallory Never Wants for a bazillion dollars, Alex.”

  Fiona pulls herself together and gasps, “You said he looked familiar, Perk? You a Beastman fangirl?”

  “No. It was an internet boycott I was part of. The AlwaysDoll manufacturer was using slave labor to make the dye for the plastic labia.”

  “Always looking out for consumers, aren’t you? You’re like the Consumer Product Safety Commission for sex toys,” Fiona deadpans.

  “Slave labor is heinous, no matter what it’s used to make,” Perky declares. “And besides, the one-liners wrote themselves.” She sighs. “That was back when Twitter was all about brevity and wit. Once they expanded a tweet to 280 characters, it all went downhill.”

  “Right. That’s why Twitter lost its shine,” I reply, my tongue so far in my cheek that it might as well be coming out my earlobe.

  “I do have to give AlwaysDoll credit, though,” Perky says. “They have a robotic clitoris as part of it. The guy has to get her aroused to the point of multiple clitoral orgasms before her vaginal walls clench around him while he's pumping away. Social engineering at its finest.”

  Fiona nods with deep approval. “That’s progressive.” Pondering for a moment, she then adds, “And extremely practical. It’s a public service, even.”

  “Their entire engineering team is made up of female electrical engineers,” Perky continues. “But if you go on enough men’s rights forums, you can find the hack code to disable that function.”

  “Can we get back to my porn problem? I would rather talk about anything but this,” I say as I finish my coffee.

  “I am so glad you can finally admit you have a problem,” Fiona says to me. “It’s the first step.”

  “In what?”

  “Healing.”

  “The only thing I need to heal is my bank account.” I stare at the bottom of my empty cup. “And you sound like my mom. Speaking of Mom, I’m about a month away from having to give up my apartment.”

  “That bad?” Perky’s only half paying attention as she clicks on pictures of women on their knees, the videos frozen on still images that make me realize I really, really don’t like mayonnaise, but especially when it’s all over a woman’s face.

  “I’m going to have to move back in with my parents.”

  “No!” Both of my friends have the decency to be horrified by proxy.

  “Yep. The scourge of being a millennial.”

  “I thought avocado toast and not buying cars was the scourge,” Fiona says. She
holds her coffee aloft. “And buying overpriced coffee.”

  “We’re blamed for everything. I’m jaded. Name a social problem and we’re like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. We’re always one degree from it being our fault.”

  “We have a lot of power we don’t use,” Perky mutters as she stares at anuses pulled open by speculums. “Aha!”

  I have never, ever been more terrified by a single word.

  “What is ‘aha!’ worthy?” Fiona inquires, looking about as scared as I feel.

  “I found the perfect Beastman porn clip.”

  A hushed silence surrounds us like a crowded elevator after a particularly loud fart that cannot be blamed on any specific person.

  Except in this case, Perky’s it.

  She clicks Play.

  Fiona snaps the Mute button.

  The movie starts, Beastman completely naked and oiled up on a bed that looks like something out of a set for The Flintstones. It’s supposed to look like a carved boulder, but instead it looks like a slightly decayed mushroom.

  And speaking of mushrooms...

  “He’s got quite the tip!” Perky admires.

  I cover the screen with my palm. “Turn it off!”

  “No!” she snatches the laptop away from me, my hand moving down, thumb running deep along a few keys.

  Meanwhile, Beastman starts going at it on screen.

  “He’s mounting her from behind!” I gasp.

  “That’s called doggie style,” Fiona says, as if she’s teaching me the names of the continents.

  “I know what doggie style is!”

  “Well, don’t get mad at me. You didn’t know what a fluffer is. I thought I was being helpful.”

  “Oooooh, baby, you’re so tight,” says a man’s voice, deep and intense, choked with sensuality. It sounds like he’s speaking from above us, right here in the room. “Yeah, I’m gonna make you scream.”

  We all look up and toward the door.

  No man.

  Toward Raul.

  He’s not speaking.

  Toward the laptop.

  “You want Daddy to give it to you, huh?” the man says again, the sound now reverberating throughout the entire coffee shop. About ten people, including one woman with a toddler, are looking around the store, puzzled.

  Raul’s jaw drops.

  Funny. He looks just like a male version of an AlwaysDoll.

  “Who is saying this?” I screech, looking around wildly. The sound is coming from everywhere.

  Fiona points to Beastman’s mouth. “It’s him!”

  “I’m impaling you, baby. How’s it feel to be impaled?” Panting breaths make it clear he’s super into being Vlad the Impaler.

  Fiona’s finger brushes against his moving lips on the laptop screen. “See? His lips are moving in time with the words.”

  “Perky! Oh my God!” I scream. “What did you do to my computer?”

  Smack! Smack! “You like it when I ride this big wet ass, don’t you?” Beastman says to his onscreen costar, grabbing her throat from behind.

  Raul starts fanning himself with a coffee-drink menu. The woman with a toddler covers his ears and picks him up, rushing for the door. A cluster of teen boys grins and looks around, following the sound like they're on a scavenger hunt.

  Beastman pulls out, bends down, and–

  “Ewwwwww!” we three whisper in horror.

  I peer closer as I frantically push every keyboard button possible. “Is he licking her there?”

  “Now we know why she has a big wet ass,” Fiona marvels.

  And then:

  “Baby, I wanna taste you,” Beastman moans. The woman turns around.

  No.

  No!

  “Not ass to mouth!” Perky hush-screams as Beastman kisses his costar. “Never ass to mouth!”

  Two things happen as she says it.

  One: Will Lotham walks in the front door.

  Two: I successfully turn off whatever weird wireless glitch has patched my laptop’s sound system into the coffee shop’s Bluetooth stereo speakers.

  “Turn that off!” Raul says, snapping my laptop closed as the sound system dies out. “I cannot believe you’re watching porn at work, Perky.”

  “I’m off the clock, so technically it’s not ‘at work,’ even if it’s physically at my location of work,” Perky says, going pedantic.

  Will leans against a support joist and crosses his arms over his chest, listening. Unlike yesterday, he’s wearing casual clothes, jeans that mold to his body with just enough looseness to give him freedom of movement, but tight enough to make me all hot and bothered. The knuckles of his right hand are red, a little raw. Must be from punching out Beastman. Ouch.

  A simple green button-down shirt, tucked in, finishes the Old New England Money look. His hair is a little messy, the wind outside likely responsible for the dark waves to have gone rogue.

  And he’s watching us with the practiced eye of a man who is taking in a scene before acting.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I challenge him, blushing furiously.

  “Learning that you never go ass to mouth.” One shoulder goes up in a shrug as he looks at Perky, who has the decency to blush.

  “It’s a good lesson to internalize,” she tells him as she shrugs back.

  “Haven’t you caused enough damage?” I huff, shoving aside all feelings of shame, which is Sisyphean but I’m a hopeless optimist, so I try.

  “Me?”

  “Who released that photo of us?” I demand, holding back from calling Spatula by his name.

  “I tried to get him to stop! The damn guy was too fast. Cops took him into custody, but he’s out now, and I guess he sold it to a porn site.”

  “So you do know about the photo?” Fiona asks him.

  “Is there anyone in town our age who doesn’t know about it?” Will snorts. Our eyes meet. If I weren’t so angry, I’d see a little hint of compassion in those gorgeous, blue-green eyes. “I tried, Mallory. He got away.” He holds the stare for a beat longer than he should.

  “It’s not your fault,” I admit, transfixed. “I can’t believe this, though. There goes my career.”

  “I’m not exactly thrilled about my reputation, either,” Will declares, eyes moving to the drink board behind the counter. Narrowing his gaze, he seems to stop scanning. I follow his line of sight and guess he's a macchiato man.

  “But you’re a guy,” Perky says, her voice tinged with venom. “A successful one. This will be spun by the media as the up-and-coming real estate business wunderkind putting an end to obscenity in Anderhill. You’ll be treated like a crusader, driving out all of the impure influences that threaten our great region.”

  “What about me?” I ask breathlessly, caught up in Perky’s rant.

  “Oh, you’re a whore now. Forever. You’re toast.”

  “Avocado toast,” Fiona says, patting my hand.

  Will’s eye roll is epic, and strangely powerful, an intoxicating look of dismissal that makes me think all of this might not be so bad after all. “It’s a single picture on a cheesy pornography-industry gossip site. It got around to people our age in town. Big deal. It’s not like many people are going to see it.”

  I look at him. “My mother texted me about it. She saw it in her Facebook feed.”

  He winces. “Damn.”

  “Yeah. When something goes viral enough for the Gen Xers to see it, it’s over,” Perky adds.

  “I don’t want to be a meme!” I cry out.

  “Because that would be the worst thing ever,” Perky says in a flat, sarcastic tone.

  “No. Projecting your porn over the sound system of a family-friendly coffee shop is the worst thing ever,” Fiona says, ducking behind me, hiding her face with a menu. “I think that mother was one of the parents of a child in my preschool class.”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask Will, shaken out of my embarrassed stupor, suddenly defensive. It’s fine for my friends to make fun of me for accidentall
y projecting porn all over the coffee shop, but Will isn’t my friend.

  He doesn’t have the privilege.

  Hands in his pockets, going casual in a way that makes me tingle from the tops of my ears to the ends of my toes, he says the words I fantasized about hearing for all of my formative adolescence:

  “Actually,” Will Lotham says, “I’m looking for you.”

  6

  I love the scent of old movie theaters. They smell like all of the happy people from the past converging in one place to let their imaginations be sparked by a shared experience.

  You know what they smell like, though, during the first show of the day?

  Old ladies.

  The ten a.m. showing at the local second-run cineplex is filled with old women and unemployed losers like me. For three dollars a ticket, we can watch a movie you'll be able to find a month from now on Netflix.

  But hey–it’s an outing. An escape.

  A procrastination technique that supports a small, local business.

  I need to procrastinate. Hard.

  Because I have a job offer I really, really need to refuse.

  At the coffee shop yesterday, Will told me to check my email. This is what I found:

  I like how you started to re-arrange the living room. That feng shui theory sounded ludicrous, but then again, I’m superstitious enough to bury a statue of St. Joseph when trying to sell a property. I need someone to handle staging for our company. If you’re willing to do a one-month trial as a consultant, I’ve got a gig for you. No coconut oil, and sorry–clothing isn’t optional.

  The words weren’t the problem.

  It was the smirk.

  And the fact that I’m so desperate for a job, I’m actually considering his offer.

  The bastard.

  As if it’s not enough that I crushed on him for four years, he also had to save me from being arrested, and now he has the power to give me a consulting gig that saves me from eviction.

  See? What a jerk.

  If I close my eyes and transport myself back to that moment yesterday, I can feel him. Not through touch. That would involve going further back, to the porn incident.

  No.

  I can feel the essence of Will, the space inside myself I created fourteen years ago, a habitat deep in my core where he lives. Sounds creepy, right? Like I’m lowering a bucket full of lotion to him. But hey, it’s my imagination. My brain.