SEX ON PISMO BEACH by Tweet

by ATLANTIC LIBRARY PRESENTS Jackie Christian

  “Want some pussy?”

  “Holy shit—wasn’t it Sigmund Freud who believed women had teeth in their vaginas?” Adam quipped.

  “It’s called the Red Panty Rape Stopper,” January told him. “And because I won’t green light Warm Leatherette Industries to get behind releasing it in the United States—Noble Sinatra and his mother, Caprice, want me removed from the head of the executive suite. They’ve put out a hit on me.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know,” January replied without revealing the video monitoring system that she’d had Tiger disable.

  Adam got quiet. He was prepared to pay top dollar to handle anyone who dared fuck with the woman he loved.

  “Once we get back to America,” January assured him, “I won’t have to worry. Buck knows some black gangsters in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. They’re called the Anacostia-South Side Nigger Beret and they don’t fuck around. I’m going to hire their top members as my new bodyguards.”

  “Those are very dangerous criminals, January.”

  “Those are bodyguards—street style.”

  “You got that right,” May Day chimed in. “Anacostia-South Side Nigger Beret are some cold, evil-hearted motherfuckers but who else is going to protect my child from the mafia?”

  “I have some connections with the U.S. government,” Adam offered, seriously. “I’d rather be the one in charge of protecting you.”

  January didn’t say anything for now. She’d make that decision once she grilled him adequately about just what kind of protection he could get for her through the government. When it came to cold gangster ass killers—nothing topped the U.S. government.

  “But first and foremost,” Adam said. “I want you and May Day to pack your things and come back with me to Cantabria.”

  “Adam—I don’t want to be in the same house with your wife.”

  “You’re going to have to right now, January. I’m not leaving you and your mother in Madrid.”

  “Y’all both are scandalous,” May Day remarked as a curl of hemp smoke left her mouth in a cough.

  The way that May Day put so much feeling into the way she’d made the remark stopped them in their tracks, because when two people are so deeply in love, they just assume that everyone should approve.

  “I don’t think its right,” May Day said, softly.

  The Family

  Though January Knuckle-Joy had been to the illustrious Santander City and El Sardinero Beach regions of Cantabria more times than she could count, she had never set foot in that most exclusive hamlet of the world’s vacation elite known as Village Castle Colony.

  As Adam took January’s hand in his and the limo glided down the last long stretch of Chinchon Road; lush valleys of blue-green echo forest and heart-stopping Cantabrian mountain ranges gave way to an unspoiled white sand coast framing the most naturally beautiful beaches in all of Spain. Literally, it took January’s breath away. But then, up ahead, was the Crown family’s modest palm and stucco mansion and back to earth she fell.

  Seeing the novelist Bliss Carrington, Adam and January had expected. But the sight of Otis and Queenie Crown, not to mention Adam’s younger brother Winston, came as quite a shock.

  Bliss Carrington Crown handed Adam a wad of pre-signed divorce papers the moment he entered the mansion’s foyer hall. When she saw that he’d disrespected her by bringing his mistress with him, she nearly threw up. But then again she could sense that they hadn’t been fucking yet and that played with her mind. From here on out, she no longer wanted Adam—he’d totally disgraced her—but she did want to make sure that January didn’t get him.

  Bliss, thin as ever, hurried away from them.

  “Lucian,” Adam said to the butler he’d adored since childhood. “This is Miss January and her mother May Day. Make sure they’re given the royal treatment for me.”

  And then, as they entered the grand drawing room, the round of fake grinning began. Otis and Queenie lighting up their faces at the sight of January and raving with such welcoming cheer: “I knew your sister—you’re just as beautiful as she was!”

  “And you are?”

  “I’m May Day—January’s mom.”

  “Well goodness saint goodness…you have got to be kidding! You look as young as she does!”

  Deliberately, May Day said, “I had her when I was fourteen. But of course you folks already know that.”

  They pretended to be miffed, but all May Day could think about was her sweet precious February speeding off a cliff and pregnant at the time.

  “We were so saddened by your daughter’s accident,” Queenie said from her best mourner’s face. “Thank god you had such a beautiful one left behind to help you get through it all.”

  And in that moment, both Otis and Queenie relished their visions of a future funeral for this new colored snatch, January. They simply couldn’t get over the nerve of this bitch to step up in Bliss’s territory like she didn’t know the difference between a marriage bed and a prostitute’s urinal.

  “Mother and father—I know that you’re being polite. But I don’t want either you or Bliss to think that it was my intention to be so insensitive by bringing the Foster women here. January and I will not be sharing a room or doing anything that would disrespect my marriage vows or this family. The reason I brought January here is because I felt I had no other choice. Back in Madrid, someone tried to kill her.”

  “No!” Queenie Crown shrieked, incredulously.

  “Yes,” nodded Adam with eyes on Bliss apologetically. “Gunmen shot at her and her mother in broad daylight. I feel they need protection while the Spanish investigate.”

  May Day Foster was looking at Otis Crown in that moment. Immediately she got a chill. These fuckers killed February, she thought as she gasped putting her hands over her mouth in shock!

  Queenie looked at the woman, asking “Is there something wrong, dear?”

  May Day let her hands drop to her side as she shook her head. Some bit of sweetness in the woman’s voice coupled with sincere concern from Otis made her think that she might be wrong. All she knew now was that she wanted Adam with January. To get back at the Crown family and what she had always sensed about their rich snobby asses—she was going to start encouraging it.

  January announced directly in Bliss’s direction, “I’ve already made arrangements to get a flight back to America. But like Adam said, the Spanish detectives have asked me not to leave just yet. Bliss—I’m so sorry about this.”

  Adam looked to his wife and said, “I’m sorry, too, Bliss. I’m not asking you to stick around if you feel uncomfortable.”

  Well I’ll be damned, Bliss thought; the fucking nerve of this arrogant cad. Now that she’d handed him the divorce papers, she wondered if she shouldn’t spring her big surprise at that moment. No, she decided, she’d wait.

  Fixing her eyes on January, she replied, “That’s quite alright, Adam. Perhaps I won’t be the one uncomfortable.”

  But, alas, before anyone could be made uncomfortable, Otis Crown put on his best diplomat’s face and said, “Now that we’ve all greeted Miss January and now that you’ve explained why she’s here, Adam—I have to ask you all to leave.”

  “Leave?”

  “Yes, my son. Regardless of what the circumstances are—I won’t have a Crown daughter-in-law disrespected on Crown property this way. Not only has Bliss been a loyal and loving wife to you, but she is pregnant with your first child. And believe it or not, some of us Crowns still have class. I suggest you find someplace else to guard the beautiful but grossly unethical Miss January Foster Sinatra Knuckle-Joy.”

  Firm resolution mixed with fatherly kindness made it impossible for anyone to challenge Otis’s position.

  In a brooding rage that January was still alive, the old man watched the threesome leave the house and climb back into the limo. Like a church owl spying a far away field mouse, he shoved his fingers in his pockets, anxious
for the mob’s follow-through.

  Bliss came to her father-in-law’s side with tears of grateful silence. He had defended her honor; for that she’d always be grateful—but she also had some news. Sheepishly, she announced, “Those papers I handed Adam in the foyer, Papa and Mother Crown—they were divorce papers.”

  Queenie’s expression said that she wouldn’t accept it.

  But that’s when Bliss realized that it was time to drop her biggest bombshell. “Mother Crown—I went to a clinic in Santander as soon as my jet landed in Spain…”

  Queenie erupted with a scream.

  “…I aborted the baby.”

  Fast as a flash, the elegant older black woman flew at Bliss, brutally slapping the living daylights out of her!

  Otis grabbed his wife, shoving her back, but Bliss had already fallen to the floor holding the side of her face in agony.

  “I had to do it, Mother Crown,” the lonely Australian wife cried from the rug, sorrowfully.

  “Then you’ll have to undo it!”

  Of course the words were insane, but as Otis helped Bliss up from the floor, the neurotic mother-in-law shocked her even further by saying, “You do it, Otis—get her pregnant.”

  Complete horror flashed into Bliss’s crystal blue eyes, yet between Otis and Queenie, it was as though they were in a board meeting discussing business.

  “Winston’s younger,” Otis suggested.

  “But he and that darling Russian wife of his just gave us a Crown baby, Otis. And besides—Winston’s never been able to keep a secret from his older brother. Not to mention he might not approve of this. Oh god, he’d think us perverts…”

  “Now Catherine, calm down,” Otis said using Queenie’s real name. “Catherine…”

  “The Crown grandchildren have got to be by the right mothers, Otis! She’s got to give us a baby!”

  Bliss began shaking her head, profusely. She believed that there were some things that decent people just didn’t do.

  ~*~

  Grand Casino, Santander

  Adam Crown deposited January and May Day in the lavish State Official Suite at the Grand Casino Palace.

  “We really can look after ourselves,” January told him, but the fact that he insisted on protecting them anyway was scoring mega points with the strong black beauty. He hired a round the clock security force and took a suite across from theirs where they could easily reach him if they needed to.

  “So much of this is about February,” May Day told her daughter as the Spanish maids were serving them turtle shells full of lobster meat and diced fruit salad on a bed of pasta. “He lost February and now he’s afraid of losing you, too.”

  January wasn’t listening. She was still hanging on Adam’s words from twenty minutes earlier: “I want to take you dancing tonight, the Pirate’s Ballroom, seven o’clock. Say yes.”

  “Yes,” she’d whispered and now in a daydream, she was holding the rugged contours of Adam’s handsome face, their mouths kissing soulfully, her head going back as her body submitted to the sweeping tenderness of his passionate touch; the invisible silkiness of love’s web spinning itself around the clock January’s imagination—filling her breasts with warmth, stroking her heart with girlish excitement and wetting her, gently.

  Be wet, his almond eyes were calling in the daydream, his fingers swiftly removing her wedding ring and the hardness of his chest pressing against hers until the sound of his heartbeat transcended her thinking, chasing away all fear and loneliness.

  Soft and steadily, Adam entered her body—but was it her body?

  “January, are you listening?”

  January was looking out from the skyline ocean windows, her stare scanning the miles of sandy white see-through beaches. She said, “Having Adam is like having her back, mama. He comes around and magically—I stop missing her.”

  “Her love is a part of him. It lives through him because he never let it go. She’s alive in both of you.”

  “I think that’s true, because sometimes, I feel like February isn’t dead, mama. It’s as though I can feel her still alive; breathing inside me; the will of her desires tangling up with mine.”

  “I get that feeling too, sometimes. I try to stand up or I’m walking to get the mail and it’s like I’m pregnant with her. I feel her kicking inside me but I don’t tell anybody. God knows and that’s all I need to know that it’s real. When you’re a mother, your children can never die—even if they do die.”

  January smiled. “February always was your favorite, mama. There’s no need to deny it, because I’m not mad at you.”

  “You’ve been saying that since you were five.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “With twins it’s impossible to have a favorite,” May Day claimed. “But you know how your sister was. She wasn’t the strong realist that you are January. It was almost like February was your baby sister and not a twin.”

  And indeed, growing up in the ghettoes of West Philadelphia, the thing that January had hated about February was her fragile, needful demeanor.

  At birth, doctors had told May Day that one of the girls might have suffered some minor brain damage from the forceps used to pull the tiny twins out of her womb, but May Day hadn’t wanted to hear it. Her own mother, Granny September, was a religious woman from North Carolina who told her, “Don’t you claim that mess from the universe, honey child—you rebuke in! In Christ’s name, you rebuke it!”

  And no matter the questions inquisitive little January had began asking as the girls got older and older, that’s just what May Day had done.

  “I don’t hear any voices in here, February,” January had said to her sister when they were taking a bath together at the age of six and a half. “We’re the only ones in here.”

  “But listen…” February had implored her sister. “Listen real close and you’ll hear them.”

  Their mother’s house had been the little brown 800 square foot two story in the middle of West Jefferson Street right off Lancaster Avenue. It featured rats in the walls, frozen toilets in the winter and a rickety staircase; yet overwhelming all that was the fact that the hardworking May Day was determined to own and not rent and had made it into a house full of love for her girls.

  Later on with their mother going from convalescent Nurse’s Aide to Registered Nurse and pulling shifts at University hospital, teenaged January had been the one to make sure she and February were properly dressed for school in the mornings.

  It was January who kept their white and black school uniforms washed, ironed and creased to perfection for attendance at what kids in the neighborhood alternately called “The Castle on the Hill” or “The Prison on the Hill”—Overbrook High School. And it had been January who chopped the onions, boiled the chicken wings and measured the hot sauce for the steaming bowls of Top Ramen soup noodle packets they had for dinner whenever their mother was pulling a double.

  Being that May Day was only thirty years old when her girls reached sixteen; they watched their mother go through numerous boyfriends. But the one who lasted the longest and the one they like the best was a tall, basketball-obsessed auto mechanic who went by the nickname Rim Shot. It was Rim Shot who tutored the girls in Algebra until they went from “F’s” to “A’s”; Rim Shot who taught them to appreciate finely cooked steaks; dark, handsome but completely honorable Rim Shot who became the first man to tell them they were beautiful; and Rim Shot who insisted that they pick up a basketball and learn the grace and precision of making a “rim shot” whether they liked the game or not. He got them addicted to jogging the river paths on Kelly Drive and Franklin Field, insisting that they always keep themselves fit and healthy.

  And when some of the black boys at Overbrook began teasing the girls about their hair (“nappyheads!”) and devaluing them over their complexions (“dark skinned girls need to go back to Africa”)—it had been Rim Shot to take January’s side in trying to make May Day realize how these boys at school were affectin
g February.

  “She’s trying to be white, mama, so those ignorant self-hating dark dudes will treat her the way they do the redbones.”

  “No, she’s not—my baby’s going through a phase. Y’all leave my baby alone.”

  “But that’s just it, mama. We’re sixteen now; we’re not babies.”

  “You need to tune out these music videos that February watches twenty four-seven,” Rim Shot told May Day. “That retarded colorstruck bullshit is retarding your child’s brain!”

  “You and January leave my baby alone!”

  February had dyed her hair a bright orange-red-auburn color that looked ridiculous against her gingerbread complexion. From long distances, the red hair gave her that orangutan look that so many dark skinned black women achieved in trying to lighten their complexions with unnatural hair colors. February also saved all her summer job money to afford a pair of hazel-green contact lenses, soon refusing to be seen without them, while the wiser and braver January had taken Rim Shot’s advice and gone natural with twists, dookey braids, soft springy Afro-bushes and a bronzer to accentuate her lushly beautiful cocoa smooth skin.

  Though many black boys in the neighborhood downed January for not conforming to the “anything is better than black” beauty standards of the music videos they’d grown up on—it had been January that they respected and didn’t try to fuck with. Not only did January boldly embrace her black beauty, but she had a certain “look” that she gave to all “people of color” who couldn’t get with it, and nobody in Philly who claimed to be “keeping it real” wanted to be looked at with that look.

  When February finally went platinum blonde, upgraded her green contacts to baby blues and started getting beat up by the girls at Overbrook due to silly things such as hinting that she was too embarrassed to accept the school’s free breakfast/free lunch program, January had been the one to step in and kick the shit out of anyone who dared pick on her sister.