by C. D. Payne
“He just left for the airport,” Sheeni added. “He says he’s working on some big gas merger down there.”
“He’s working on a merger all right,” I replied. I told her about Mrs. K’s marital rupture and recent decamping to the desert.
“This may prove propitious,” Sheeni remarked. “It could give me some crucial leverage over him. I didn’t dare use the Mexican liaison against him because I didn’t have any proof.”
“Sheeni, I thought your father was devout and moral and born again and all that stuff.”
“He claims to be, Rick. First he was born again and now he’s entering his second childhood.”
“Sheeni, if your parents’ marriage goes on the rocks, maybe they’ll cut you some slack and we won’t have to go to France.”
“Don’t count on it, Rick. You don’t know my mother.”
“Well, I do—sort of.”
“Not really, Rick. Believe me, the woman you met in Mexico was my mother on her very best behavior.”
Now that is a truly scary thought.
7:00 p.m. I’m all dressed for the dance—the second such occasion of my high-school career. I’m still not taking the partner of my choice, but I do get to go as a guy this time. I hope the gym is well-ventilated. This clammy eelskin doesn’t seem to breathe very well. At least my cancer shoes are already comfortably broken in. Evelyn the retired sawmill hand showed me how to wear my fedora tipped rakishly to the side. He says he had one just like it in 1943. It could be the same hat for all I know. He says he likes my suit, but hopes I don’t get picketed by outraged eel lovers.
Well, I’m off to meet Fuzzy and The Date from Hell. Wish me luck, kids.
SUNDAY, April 18 — Herewith is an honest accounting of last night’s events, slightly abbreviated only to lessen the trauma:
Fuzzy DeFalco in a new black suit introduced himself to me in his late grandmother’s driveway and asked to see my driver’s license. He was somewhat short-tempered from having to ask Trent to move his “damn Acura.” I could tell my pal wasn’t happy about turning over the keys of his beloved Falcon to a complete stranger.
“Boy, you don’t look 18,” he said, handing me back my fake ID. “How long you been driving?”
“Oh, for years and years,” I lied, grinding unknown gears as I started the engine. We lurched out of the garage, down the driveway, and into the street.
“Are you sure you know how to drive?” he demanded.
“Relax, guy,” I said to all parties in the car as I tried to rein in my hyperventilating lungs. I never imagined drivers could see so little at night. Why aren’t cars equipped with vast racks of powerful floodlights?
“I guess you must like Sonya, huh?” asked Fuzzy, by way of making conversation.
“Of course not. But it was girls ask boys and she nailed me. Is that a dog over there?”
“No, it’s a Volkswagen. And you just blew through a stop sign. Who told you it was girls ask boys?”
“You mean it wasn’t?”
“Nope. Looks like you got duped, Rick.”
“Damn! Well, now I don’t feel so bad about spending only $12 on her corsage.”
Fuzzy eyed my fading bouquet in its plastic wrapping. “Looks like they rooked you on that one too.”
“How much did you spend on yours?” I asked enviously.
“Ninety-five bucks, Rick,” he said, cradling the elegant ribbon-tied presentation box in his lap. “But the orchid stems are dipped in real 24-karat gold.”
Lana and my date were waiting impatiently in the living room of Sonya’s modest home, from which all parents had been banished to avoid embarrassing introductions or tedious photo-snapping. Like a modern-day Cinderella, Lana looked genuinely enchanting in strapless pink satin, now accessorized by the Tiffany of corsages. She smiled and said she liked my hat. She had highlighted her nascent cheekbones with rosy blusher, a beauty ploy Carlotta was never quite able to pull off. Less successfully made up in her customary purple tones (her eye-shadow actually glittered), Sonya appeared to have single-handedly cornered the world market in lilac chiffon. She frowned when she saw her corsage and my suit.
“Gee, you shouldn’t have. Hey, Rick, this isn’t a costume dance, you know.”
“Peasants,” I grunted to Fuzzy. “Some people wouldn’t recognize a $4,500 Armani eelskin suit if it bit them in the ass.”
“Don’t get too close, Sonya,” joked Fuzzy. “Those could be electric eels.”
My phone rang as corsage pinning was in progress. Saved by the bell, I let Sonya finish the job while I took the call.
“Where are you now, Rick?” whispered My Love.
“I’m at Sonya’s house,” I replied. “We’re about to leave.”
“How does she look?”
“Well, I can’t really talk now.”
“Why not? Are you holding her hand?”
“No.”
“Are you holding other parts of her?”
“That doesn’t happen until we get to the dance. Thank you for calling. Good night.” Click.
“Who was that, Rick?” inquired Sonya, attempting to straighten her wilting flower.
“Oh, just a friend—an elderly shut-in trying to relive her golden high-school years.”
Piling into Fuzzy’s Falcon, Sonya mashed herself right next to the driver, while Lana cuddled in the back seat with Fuzzy and produced a spliff the size of those giant novelty cigars. Fuzzy held a lighted kitchen match to its end while Lana puffed away madly. It was like trying to get a campfire started. Eventually, the aromatic log was ignited, and we passed it around. I took a drag and felt my brain engorge like an elephant’s cock. I gripped the steering wheel and concentrated my expanding mind on the view out the windshield.
“God, how fast am I going?” I cried.
“You haven’t started the engine yet, honey,” Sonya replied.
“Right, I knew that,” I said. “I was just testing you.”
Fortunately, the school was only four blocks away. Somehow we made it there in one piece. I parked the car on an unoccupied shrub; the prodigious joint made one last circuit, then Fuzzy snuffed it out while Lana dispensed breath mints. The spicy sweetness overwhelmed my hypersensitive taste buds. I gripped Sonya’s fleshy hand and loped giddily toward the gym entrance. “Dance!” my reeling mind raved, “Gotta Dance!” I felt like the klieg lights had been switched on in my soul, and I had stepped into a lavish MGM Technicolor musical. I was a young Frank Sinatra and Sonya was a larger-than-life Debbie Reynolds—OK, much larger than life.
Inside was another tour de force of the decorative arts. Tonight’s theme was “Plenty Amid Privation.” As we throngs of expensively garbed revelers jostled our way past the dateless ticket-takers and vigilant chaperons, we left the First World and entered a lovingly re-created Third World slum. Faux cardboard shanties lined the walls of the gym, and freshmen dressed as ragpickers scavenged through heaps of faux garbage. Or perhaps it wasn’t so artificial after all; something sure smelled rank. I prayed it wasn’t me in my eelskin suit. One of the ragpickers, I noticed, was Dwayne Crampton giving a not very credible impersonation of a starving peasant. On a low platform made of rusty corrugated steel, a live but diseased-looking grunge band was thrashing out “music” at a volume that rattled the fillings in my teeth.
“God, this place is a dump,” I thought I heard Fuzzy scream.
“I want something to drink!” bellowed my date.
“Me too!” screamed Lana.
Fuzzy and I located a debris-strewn table, settled in our dates amid the trash, then made our way toward the faux tumble-down refreshment shack, scrawled over with angry “Yanqui Go Home!” graffiti. After waiting in a lengthy line, we were served four tin cans of red fruit punch ladled up from a 50-gallon drum labeled “XXX Herbicide.” Among the servers were Janice Griffloch and Barb Hoffmaster, both dressed as blue-bereted U.N. relief workers. On the return trip we pushed our way through an irksome rabble of freshmen mendicants clamoring for alms. Th
e pushiest beggar was authentic Third-Worlder Vijay Joshi, whose sandal-clad foot I managed to trod upon forcefully. That will teach the wanna-be plebeian to wear open-toed shoes to a formal dance.
Reunited with our dates, we sipped our watery punch and attempted conversation.
“What band is it?” screamed Lana.
“It’s the Ringworms,” shouted Sonya. “God, they’re bad!”
I’m not sure, but I think that was intended as a compliment.
I felt my phone vibrate in my pants. All I could do was switch it on and let My Love experience the ear-pummeling sonic ambience. Conversation was out of the question; I switched it off when Sonya grabbed my hand and dragged me out on the dance floor. My hat I left at the table. We danced frenetically to discordant aural blasts that went on and on and on. The indefatigable Ringworms didn’t play “songs,” they generated nonstop malignant noise by the hour. Occasionally they would sing something into their microphones, altering the nature of the din but conveying nothing intelligible. Cole Porter had nothing to fear from these dudes. Nightmarish as they were, they did save me from my worst dread. The uncompromising Ringworms did not play slow songs.
I saw many familiar faces among the revelers, but no Bruno Modjaleski. Candy Pringle was there playing the field in a backless and strapless black sequined dress further enlivened by a plunging neckline. It was an all-time traffic-stopper and something that would never have gotten past the door in Miss Pomdreck’s day. The dress was a hot topic in the boys’ restroom, where the consensus was that its daringly disparate parts must have been glued to Candy’s naked body.
My phone rang while I was on a break in that room.
“Hi, Rick. What are you doing now?”
“Oh, hi, Sheeni. I’m taking a leak.”
“Is Sonya there with you?”
“No, this room provides a measure of sanctuary.”
“I’ve never spoken with a fellow at a urinal before. Are there other guys doing it too?”
“Yes, I’m surrounded by a veritable Niagara Falls.”
“Are you allowed to peek at your neighbor?”
“That’s frowned upon, Sheeni. One usually studies the wall and contemplates life. There, I’m zipping up now. How’s your evening going?”
“I’m not having nearly as much fun as you are, Rick.”
“Don’t bet on it, kid.”
“Did Sonya like your suit?”
“Oh sure,” I lied. “She can’t keep her hands off it.”
“And where are your hands, Rick?”
“Up to my elbows in lilac chiffon!”
My Love hung up. Some people can’t take a joke.
Returning to the noise pit, I danced until the sweat pouring off my head made my eelskin glisten in the throbbing light. At one point, I found myself cavorting near Trent and his lovely wife.
“Nice suit, Rick!” Apurva shouted approvingly.
“Nice dress!” I shrieked back. I liked the way curving forms were moving rhythmically under the silken fabric of her scarlet gown. I hoped little Trent Junior was enjoying the agitation. Movement on a more massive scale was taking place close by under lilac chiffon, but I did my best to avert my eyes—though many around me seemed absorbed by the awesome sight.
Even the Ringworms have to stop eventually, if only to let their amps cool off, and before we knew it, we were tottering across the parking lot—our stunned senses still jangling—toward Fuzzy’s car and its dormant spliff. Fuzzy lit another kitchen match, I started the engine, and soon I was navigating down dim streets through a cloud of vision-obscuring but sensory-expanding vapors. Fuzzy was charged with directing me to his house, but since he was preoccupied by Lana’s reefer and ruby lips, I drove there unerringly on my own, as Sonya pasted her still-perspiring bulk to my right side and dug familiarly into my pocket to pull out my vibrating phone.
“Hello,” she giggled, “Sonya Klummplatz here! Yeah, lady, the dance is over and, man, was it a blast. We got all hot and bothered with a bad case of the Ringworms, and now we’re going to Fuzzy’s to have a tiny bite to eat and cool off in his very own heated pool. Hey, Lana, pass me that puff. Oh, and don’t worry, Fuzzy’s parents are down in Millbrae at a conference on concrete. Sounds pretty boring to me. What? Sorry, you can’t talk to Rick, because my guy’s driving the car and I’m driving him to distraction. Maybe you should go to bed now and let us young people get on with it. Hey, Rick, your old lady friend hung up on me. And she didn’t sound that old!”
Not great news, but possibly good for my image. Fortunately, nobody thought to ask how I had found my way to Fuzzy’s imposing concrete mansion on my own. I squealed into the drive and slammed to a stop just inches from a cement retaining wall. We piled out and trooped into the darkened house, where an elaborate cold buffet was laid out in the poolside family room. Fuzzy popped some cold beers and told us to dig in. Needless to say, my date was first in line.
“Hey, Frank,” I called, “what’s that alien spaceship outside in your yard?”
“That’s the bubble my dad has installed every winter over the pool,” replied Fuzzy, handing me a beer. “They’ll take it off next month for the summer. Say, how did you know my name was Frank?”
Bad slip by Rick. I better watch it.
“Oh, I think Sonya mentioned that. Why do they call you Fuzzy?”
“Search me, Rick. I guess it’s a nickname.”
We filled up our plates and toted everything outside to the gleaming silvery bubble. I could hear the hum of a small fan somewhere that kept it inflated. We passed through a zippered airlock and entered the giant cocoon. Wisps of steamy vapor rose from the luminous blue water—as the pool’s underwater spotlamps illuminated the fabric dome with a wavering liquid light.
“Totally cool!” exclaimed Sonya, plopping down at a poured concrete table and motioning for me to take the cement cube beside her.
Fuzzy put down his food, grabbed a rope by the pool edge, and fished out a tethered floating thermometer.
“I had the heater on all day,” he remarked. “Lana likes it like bath water.”
“What’s the temperature, darlin’?” asked Lana.
“96 degrees,” he replied proudly. “A new world’s record.”
Nothing like a little light reefer to make a guy feel peckish. After two return trips to the house for snack refills, I sat back on a concrete chaise longue, belched contentedly, and sucked on my third beer.
“OK, swim time!” bellowed Sonya. “Everybody strip!”
I was the last guy out of his clothes, but then I had seen all the others naked before. Lana didn’t scream when Fuzzy revealed his furry self, which led me to conclude she was no stranger to his intimate parts. A guy can’t help but get a warm feeling knowing he’s helped a pal secure a fulfilling sex life—especially with someone so nicely put together as Lana. My own naked date checked me out when I at last dropped my thrift-shop underpants.
“God, Rick, how do you stay so skinny?” she demanded.
“I burn a lot of calories hanging around gorgeous chicks,” I slurred. The beer was getting to me.
Sonya shoved me playfully into the pool, and I nearly drowned in its soothingly warm water. It was like immersing one’s entire body in a giant wet vagina. Not a bad way to go. Sonya pulled me up from the depths by my hair and kissed me as I coughed pool water into her eager mouth. What was that other odd sensation? Oh, I was being groped. This went on for a long time, then I heard Fuzzy and Lana climb out of the water on the other side of the pool.
“Good night, guys,” called Fuzzy. “You can crash in the guest room if you want.”
“Good night,” I heard Lana say. “See you tomorrow.”
The rest was a little hazy. I remember brisk towel-rubbing of parts public and private, Sonya pushing together some chaise cushions beside the pool, my stating that I had too much respect for her as a person to take advantage of the situation as someone unrolled a condom over my improbable T.E. I remember Sonya muttering something abou
t not intending to remain a virgin forever and my being elected by unanimous consent as the deflowerer designee. Then she told me to lie back and pretend I was Trent Preston, which I remember thinking was a pretty low blow as a hand guided me to where enough of me wanted to go that I was able to function in an acceptable manner to all parties concerned until I heard my little phone ring somewhere in the distance and suffered a major sexual shutdown probably induced by guilt but maybe it was the beer and the reefer and my throbbing head. And then it was over and Sonya said it was a night she knew she would never forget. I may not either, but God knows I intend to try.
We got our clothes back on, I took Sonya home (no good-night kiss), and parked Fuzzy’s car in front of Trent’s house (his Acura was blocking the drive). The keys I dumped in Trent’s mailbox. I got home in the dead-of-the-night, post-motorcycles quiet, and immediately blacked out.
5:50 p.m. No call from Sheeni. I carried my phone around all day too. I suspect she’s mad at me. I’d call her to find out for sure, but I don’t dare risk having her expensive cellular phone ring within earshot of her parents and get confiscated. Fuzzy called sometime after noon and asked if I wanted to come over and help finish up the buffet.
“Is Sonya going to be there?” I asked.
“No, sorry, Rick.”
“Fine. I’ll come over.”
“You got a bathing suit?”
I told Fuzzy I didn’t; he said he’d lend me one of his.
“You got wheels, Rick?”
I said I had a bike and would be there in 15 minutes.
Fuzzy looked surprisingly well rested in red swim trunks probably intended to coordinate with his russet body fur. I changed into some baggy tan swim trunks in my pal’s guest bathroom, then he and I took our beers and plates down to the pool bubble.
“Where’s Lana?” I asked, helping Fuzzy move the cushions back on the concrete chaise longues and taking a seat.
“Her brother picked her up at Sonya’s. The story was she spent the night over there.”
“Good thinking.”
“Sonya’s bragging she nailed you.”
