Kumquat

by Jeff Strand

  Up ahead, we hear guitar music. Amy picks up the pace.

  It's a street musician, sitting in a lawn chair, an open guitar case on the sidewalk in front of him for tips. It's hard to tell how old he is because of his voluminous facial hair. He's strumming away even though there's nobody else around.

  He notices us, smiles, and nods.

  I don't recognize the song, but Amy clearly does, because she bobs her head in perfect time to the beat and mouths the words. He's pretty darn good. We stand there until he finishes.

  I take a dollar out of my wallet and toss it into the guitar case.

  "Thank you, sir," he says. "Got any requests? The more obscure the better. I know everything. I'm a human iPod."

  Amy grins. "Cowlick Shaved?"

  "Of course."

  "For real? Nobody knows Cowlick Shaved."

  The musician begins to play and sing an acoustic version of a song that I clearly recognize from the CD Amy played at the beginning of our trip. He sings the first verse, then switches to another song. Within a few minutes, we've had a twelve-song medley of the Cowlick Shaved oeuvre.

  "You're a genius," Amy says.

  I have no idea how obscure the band really is, since almost all bands are obscure to me, but I'm still blown away by this musical achievement. I toss a twenty into the guitar case.

  "Thank you, thank you. I'm Jack Tin. Any other requests?"

  "Do you mind if we stay for a while?" Amy asks me.

  "Not at all. I'd love that."

  We sit down on the sidewalk in front of him. "You pick the next one," Amy tells Jack.

  Jack launches into an up-tempo old song that even I recognize. I'm not positive that the song is actually called "Daydream Believer," but that phrase is prominently featured throughout.

  This guy is really good. He should be playing stadiums, not on sidewalks for a food-poisoned audience of two.

  Amy leans her head against my shoulder as we listen.

  He finishes the song, and I take out my wallet again. I've already set the precedent of a twenty-dollar tip, so I toss another twenty into the guitar case, though I will downgrade to a much smaller denomination if we stick around for another song.

  "You've just bought yourself a full concert," Jack informs us. "Stay as long as you'd like."

  He plays another extremely catchy song that I half-recognize, then asks if we want to hear an original. Of course we say yes. He tells us that the song is called "I'm All Like You."

  "You're all like, let's look in each other's eyes.

  I'm all like, we'll soar into the skies.

  You're all like, let's watch the sun go down.

  I'm all like, we'll never wear a frown.

  You're all like, and let's hold hands.

  I'm all like, and get gold bands.

  You're all like, tell me who you love.

  Just tell me who you love.

  And I'm all like, you.

  I'm all like you."

  Even somebody like me, who doesn't know crap about music, understands that these are pretty weak lyrics, but I don't care. It's my favorite song ever.

  After a couple more verses he finishes "I'm All Like You" and goes into another song that may or may not be an original. We sit there on the sidewalk, listening to our private concert.

  About eight songs in, he starts to look thirsty, so I go buy him a frozen strawberry lemonade.

  We listen for about an hour and a half. When our concert is over, I toss a hundred dollars into his case, and we promise to follow him on Twitter. And as Amy and I walk back to the car, I think that I've never had a more perfect night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  "Admit what you've done! You've altered time!"

  "All I did was tell my past self to lose the mullet! I had no idea it would have such far-reaching consequences!"

  --Exit Red, Season 1, Episode 2

  We're back on the road.

  But not for long, because as soon as we cross the state line into Connecticut Amy asks if I want to get a hotel room for the night. She asks this in such a way that even a truly dense human being such as myself can figure out that a room with a single bed will suit our needs.

  I don't stop at the first hotel we see, but I also don't spend an excessive amount of time searching for different options. We go to a convenience store and buy a box of condoms from a college-aged guy who looks kind of bitter about having to work behind a register while people like me are doing things that require prophylactics.

  We do not lunge at each other as soon as we enter the room. We take the time for thorough tooth-brushing and mouthwash-swishing. And then we each take a shower. I almost suggest that we share the shower, but of course showering together is the most overrated of sensual activities, at least in my experience.

  Then we lounge around in the bathrobes that the hotel has thoughtfully provided, sipping vending machine caffeine-free soft drinks.

  Amy looks kind of nervous.

  "I'm kind of nervous," she admits. "I talk a big game, but I haven't been with anybody since my husband."

  "That's okay. We don't have to do anything."

  "Oh, I'm not looking for an escape route. We will be fornicating. We will be fornicating our groins off." Amy puts her hand over her mouth, stifling a laugh. "Did I really just say that?"

  "You sure did."

  "Can we pretend I didn't?"

  "Yeah, but I didn't think it was such a bad comment."

  "It was awful. It would probably have stopped you from getting any if you'd said it."

  "I'm glad I didn't, then."

  "You should be."

  We sit there for a moment. This time the silence is not quite as comfortable as our previous silences. I feel like I should be making a move. I wish I had a move.

  "Kiss me," Amy says, eliminating the need for a move.

  I take her up on this offer (okay, technically it was more of a command) and put my arms around her as we kiss. Gently at first. Not gently for very long. Within moments we're ravaging each other, kissing with intense passion, tongues fully involved.

  Soon we're lying on the bed, and I'm on top of her, and then she's on top of me, and then I'm back on top of her, and we haven't broken the kiss, and I'm vaguely aware that all of this rolling around could result in us falling off the bed, in which case the kiss would probably be broken in mid-air. Right now I don't really care.

  Okay, I care a little. Breaking our necks would be a really extreme cock-block. So I devote ninety-eight percent of my attention to Amy's lips and two percent to monitoring our position on the bed so that we remain unharmed.

  We stop to catch our breath, and I almost blurt out I love you but I stop myself in time. I don't want to do anything that will make her say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, dude--I'm just here to get laid!"

  We've successfully caught our breath, so we resume the kissing.

  She grinds against me. I'm rock-hard.

  I guess that's not completely true. If you bashed a rock against my penis, my penis would lose. It's more accurate to say that I am fully erect.

  I don't have the endowment of a porn star, but my equipment is of average size and girth (if my Internet research is correct) and I don't think there's anything about my physical size or my behavior that would have led Amy to believe that I have a huge dick. She won't be disappointed. It's fine.

  She rolls off of me and unfastens her robe. I unfasten mine as well. We remove our robes and toss them onto the floor.

  I realize that I am biased at this particular moment, but she has the most visually appealing breasts I have ever seen. I have not a single complaint about their appearance. They are absolutely stunning.

  I'm staring at them. It's okay. In this situation, it's polite to stare. I think.

  Amy sees that I am filled with admiration and brings them closer. "Like what you see?"

  "I do."

  Am I drooling? I may be drooling a bit. Staring is fine; drooling is kind of off-putting.

  I'm not in
clined to look away from her breasts, but there are even more elements to this visual feast, so I lower my eyes. This provides no evidence as to whether she is a natural blonde.

  "Okay," says Amy, "I did do maintenance down there, but that doesn't mean I planned for this to happen. I fully intended to stick to the no-sex rule...but, you know, it's still good to be prepared."

  "You would be astounded by how little that bothers me."

  "Kiss me some more."

  We resume our kissing, this time with our nakedness pressed together, which improves an already fantastic experience. Our hands slide over each other's bodies, and her breasts feel even better than they look. Her nipples are rock-hard...again, not in a literal sense.

  I'm not sure how long we kiss. Long enough that my fingers have thoroughly mapped out all of the breast terrain. Occasionally she reaches down and strokes my penis, which almost makes me want to let out a girlish giggle, though of course I go with a manly moan.

  She rolls off of me again. "Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who goes down on who first?"

  "Works for me."

  "Is it supposed to be whom?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "Maybe we should look it up."

  "It's definitely whom."

  "Are you certain?"

  "Positive."

  Amy raises an eyebrow. "Having sex does not free us from proper grammar. If I used the wrong word, I'd never be able to look you in the eye again." By the time she finishes speaking, I am licking her breast. "Okay, I'll make you a deal. Keep doing that for a while, and we'll pretend I used the correct pronoun."

  I accept her terms.

  Her left breast has not received nearly the amount of attention as the right one when Amy pulls away. "Rock, Paper, Scissors. Now."

  I play scissors. She plays paper.

  "I win," Amy says.

  "Scissors cuts paper."

  "I can understand why one might think so."

  "You're cheating."

  "How odd. That doesn't sound like something I'd do."

  "I guess if you had a big enough ream of paper and dropped it on a pair of scissors, it might--"

  Amy puts her finger on my lip, shutting me up. "We'll continue the comedy routine when you're done. If your tongue isn't too numb."

  She rolls onto her back and opens her legs. Instead of diving straight for the target, I kiss my way up her left leg. And then I dive for the target.

  As I lick, she makes up for my lack of speech ability at the moment by unleashing a fast-paced monologue that is so unbelievably filthy that I can't quite believe what I am hearing. It is the raunchiest, nastiest, least politically correct bedroom talk I've ever heard, and that includes the actors in pornography. Though I did not expect that our conversation would be a highly literate wholesome discussion of thematic devices in classic novels, I certainly didn't think I'd hear the c-word.

  If I do this wrong, I can't blame a lack of feedback.

  I mean, she is really, really, really filthy.

  I'm not saying that I disapprove. But I keep thinking "Oh my God!" The number of asterisks that would be necessary to make her comments family-friendly is staggering.

  Meanwhile, she squirms, writhes, arches her back, and sends out various other physical indicators that she is having a pretty good time.

  Then Amy touches my head. No! Not the tap! Not the I appreciate your efforts, but it's time to move on to something else tap! I know she hasn't climaxed yet, because she would have said something. I thought this was going so well.

  She runs her fingers through my hair. Oh, good. It wasn't the tap.

  I continue.

  It doesn't take her much longer to reach orgasm, and I was correct when I predicted that she would notify me of its arrival. She comes loudly, violently, and with generous use of profanity. I hope there are no children anywhere within a six-room radius.

  I'm motivated to go for multiples, but this time I do get the tap. "Kiss me," she says, out of breath.

  We kiss for a while, and then she moves downward. She looks up as she kisses my belly. "I totally cheated at Rock, Paper, Scissors," she confesses.

  "That's quite all right."

  Moments later, I'm in her mouth.

  Her passion for giving matches her passion for receiving. I have never had a blowjob delivered with such enthusiasm or attention to detail. Usually the attitude I encountered was Well, I suppose this has to be done. Amy is giving it her all, though her ability to make filthy comments is compromised.

  She pulls her mouth away. "I want you inside me," she says. It's a surprisingly discreet comment from somebody who was graphic enough to fuel a hundred NC-17 ratings.

  I agree that this is a fine idea. The process of putting on a condom is completed with a surprising lack of frustration over the difficult-to-tear wrapper, and then I'm lying on my back and she is lowering herself onto my penis.

  As soon as I'm all the way inside of her, I realize that this encounter may be notable for its extreme brevity.

  I'm sure she's not expecting forty-five minutes of vigorous pounding, but it would be nice if my number-of-seconds-lasted count made it into double digits.

  Think about something else.

  Think about something else.

  Think about something else.

  I think about ice fishermen.

  Ice fishermen, shivering in the cold.

  Big ugly ice fisherman, their thick beards covered with frost, eating from a can of beans while they stare at the hole in the ice and wait for a--

  Nope, didn't work.

  The decreased sensation from the condom may have bought me an extra second or two, but it's all over for me. I let out a loud moan of ecstasy as I climax. My orgasm is so intense and extended that I suddenly worry that the condom won't be able to handle the volume of ejaculate. Then it occurs to me that I am most likely not the one guy in the world who can exceed the maximum capacity of a rubber and I stop worrying about it and just enjoy the moment.

  Amy lifts off of me. "That was expeditious," she says, grinning to let me know that she's fine with it.

  "Sorry."

  "No need to apologize. We were both really horny. Our second session will last longer."

  Our second session does indeed last longer. Not as long as I would like, but of sufficient duration for somebody who never pretended that he was awesome at the act of lovemaking.

  I've never understood exactly how you keep count of the number of times you have sex in a night. Obviously, if you follow a fuck/cuddle/fuck/cuddle pattern, it's easy to figure out, and I assume that the male orgasm is generally used as the identifier of where one session ends and the next begins, but if my orgasm leads directly into me pleasing her with my fingers, and I'm hard again before that's done, does that count as once or twice? What about orgasms that aren't derived from intercourse?

  Anyway, we use three condoms, but I think we do it four times before falling asleep in each other's arms.

  When I wake up, Amy's head is resting on my chest. She's been drooling, which I think is kind of adorable. I don't want to wake her, but I desperately need to go to the bathroom and I think she'll be much less receptive to bedwetting than premature ejaculation.

  I try to ease myself away. There's some light streaming in from a gap between the curtains. We really should have made sure they were closed all the way. I hope nobody watched us. Or if they did, I hope they watched a session other than the first. I don't want to find myself on an amateur site, Quick Shootin' Dudes.

  As I slide out from underneath Amy, her face leaves a thick red streak.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  "This is all one big cosmic joke."

  --Exit Red, Season 5, Episode 13

  I gasp and slam my hand over my mouth.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  This can't happen.

  She's okay. She's fine. Everything's cool. There's nothing wrong. It's a bad dream, or I'm seeing this wrong, or it's my blood. I've bled this weekend. It could be m
ine.

  "Amy...? Amy...?"

  I can't panic. Her life may depend on me not panicking.

  Is she breathing? Is she breathing?

  I can't tell if she's breathing.

  Why isn't she breathing?

  Amy opens her eyes.

  She raises her head a bit. The bottom half of her face is caked with blood.

  I'm not going to freak out. Absolutely not going to freak out.

  "Amy?"

  "Todd?" Her voice is slurred. "Why are you crying?" She touches her face. "Oh, shit."

  I scramble out of bed. "You're going to be okay," I promise her. "I'm going to call an ambulance and everything is going to be okay." Where the hell is my cell phone? What did I do with it? Shouldn't it be on the nightstand?

  In my pocket. I left it in my pants pocket.

  Where the hell are my pants?

  Amy's breaths are quick and shallow. She gestures to the hotel room's real phone. Yes. That's a much better solution than frantically searching for my cell phone.

  I pick up the phone and dial 911.

  Why is it taking them so goddamn long to answer?

  "911. What's your emergency?" a female dispatcher asks.

  "Hi, I'm at the..." What hotel are we at? Didn't we make fun of the name last night? Wait, it's right there on the phone. "...Hotel Marinara. 1500 Westhand Street. I need you to send an ambulance."

  "And what is the nature of your emergency, sir?" The woman is cool, calm, professional. It's not her first day on the job. That's good. I didn't get a newbie. That'll help.

  "My girlfriend. I think she had a brain aneurysm. I mean I think it ruptured."

  Amy shakes her head but doesn't actually say anything.

  "Okay. Please stay calm, sir."

  I thought I was. "I will."

  "Paramedics are on their way. Which room are you in?"

  I don't remember. I glance at the phone, but Amy says "214."

  "214," I tell the dispatcher.

  "Your name, sir?"

  "Todd Bryan."

  "And the name of your girlfriend?"

  "Amy Husk."

  "Is Amy conscious?"

  "Yes, she is."

  "Yes, I'm what?" Amy asks. She still sounds kind of disoriented. "What am I?"