by Julia Dumont
“Oh, shut up, you liar!”
“No, I’m serious! I missed you the entire time I was married. Nobody comes close to you, Sin!”
Cynthia had heard this all before.
“Yeah,” she said, “what about Lolita? You found her and brought her here, right? She wasn’t in on your little scheme, right?”
“Yes, well, that’s true. But I only did it to make you jealous. You were here, loving up Doctor Feelgood!”
“But Max! You are the one who broke the rule … who went out of your way to do it in front of me!”
“I know, I know, but you’re getting off-topic. We were talking about my marriage. You know what the tipping point was? The straw that broke that particular camel’s back?”
“Oh, I don’t know … that you were a fucking liar with her too?”
“No, Sin. Do you remember when the Shutters time ended and we were saying goodbye?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Do you remember what we gave each other?”
“What, you mean the pain and heartache? Yeah, I remember.”
“No, I’m talking about something else. Remember we each had one shirt we wore the whole time we were there? We hardly ever wore anything, but when we had to, like if we went to the café, we’d just wear our one shirt. Well, when we left we wanted to be able to still smell each other, you remember? So we swapped. I gave you my green t-shirt and you gave me that blue tank top.
She obviously remembered. She still had it hanging in her bathroom. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.
“Well, I guess you must have thrown mine away a long time ago. But I still have yours. I guess I’m more sentimental than you. I know it sounds stupid, but I kept it in a pocket of my suitcase for when I traveled. My suitcase always smelled like you. It was like one of those, what do you call them, you put them in underwear drawers?”
“Sachet.”
“Yeah, that’s right, a sachet. That tank top was like a sachet … a Sin sachet. Until she found it.”
Wow, thought Cynthia, I thought I was weird. She had to admit, though, she was touched.
Chapter 33
Cynthia looked around. They were surrounded by drunken delirium. The partiers were in varying stages of undress——some skinny-dipping, some dancing, some just rolling around in the sand.
Margie was dancing with a group of people also dressed in animal costumes. Cynthia didn’t have the heart to tell her mother that this was a group of Furries (those fetishistic folks who dress up like animals to get off). When Cynthia looked around at all the other costumed lunatics dancing and grinding and worse, she figured, What the hell. What’s the difference? She was happy that her mother was having fun for once and not just stalking her.
Cynthia got another call. Straight to voicemail. She noticed Dr. Paul Willowby was slow dancing with Lolita, but not looking particularly pleased about it. For one thing he was propping her up. Her face was buried in his neck and her hands were all over his barely covered Tarzan-ness.
Then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, King, the Great Dane, appeared before them on the beach, looking very much unlike man’s best friend. More like this particular man’s worst enemy. If the over-protective canine had arrived a little earlier, Max would have been his target. Poor Paul was a victim of bad timing. King flashed a tiny percentage of his terrifying dental arsenal and growled at Paul in the kind of low tone that is all a really powerful dog needs to get his point across. Not showy, no wasted effort, just extremely economical and effective … sort of the Clint Eastwood whisper of the canine world.
Paul froze. He was absolutely terrified.
Lolita bent down and patted King’s huge head. “Sweetie,” she said, “you know how we talked about this.” Then, pointing to the doctor, she continued, “Meet Paul. He’s a new friend of mine.” But this only backfired. The dog growled ten times more intensely. King inched toward the horrified doctor, who backed away, shaking and stumbling in the sand. King was like Cerberus——but instead of guarding the gates of hell, he seemed to be guarding Lolita’s gates of heaven. It was impossible to know his exact motivations. He was a dog after all.
In any case, this Tarzan was no Hercules. He had not slain his children——he didn’t even have children, and therefore did not need to expiate any crime. He had not been on a journey of death-defying labors and he was not about to start now. Not for anyone, let alone this undeniably gorgeous, but nonetheless flaky floozy in distress.
Cynthia watched all this from a distance, feeling sharp pangs of guilt and regret. What a mess. She looked at Max. He’d had a hand in screwing this up. And she liked Paul. He was a good guy. A little uptight, but bright and undeniably attractive. And sexy. She had imagined falling for him. She’d thought this had potential to be serious—a true, lasting love. She could not let it just slip away.
She left Max’s side, moving through the crowd toward Paul, hoping to save it, hoping to at least make it clear that they would see each other again. Give it another try.
“Paul!” she implored him, “I am so sorry about all this. It’s been kind of a weird night.”
Paul’s head snapped around in her direction. “Kind of a weird night?” he said, with a look of equal parts terror, disdain, and incredulity, “Cynthia, you are all completely nuts: you, the killer-canine here, that asshole-beardy-sunglasses guy, the friend, and your mother. Or should I say the creepy cartoon dog? Hello? Even with that wacky voice she was doing, I’d recognize her anywhere. I mean, how could I not after listening to her babble on through thirty-two breast exams? I am out of here!”
“Really?” asked Cynthia. “Are you kidding me? Nobody disparages my mom! Not nobody, not no how! That’s my job!”
Nothing makes you appreciate a mom more than someone else not appreciating her. And so what if we’re a little loopy? That is not going away anytime soon. I need a man who is comfortable with loopy.
Paul exited the scene post haste——walking briskly, looking over his shoulder nervously at King a few times——with nary a so long, farewell, auf wiedersein, or adieu.
Cynthia watched him leave. She was angry, but the anger was laced with regret for what might have been. She made no attempt to stop him.
She looked at Lolita, shrugged, and said, “Another one bites the dust.”
“Right … but wait,” said Lolita, confused and teetering slightly, now that the doctor was no longer holding her up, “the creepy cartoon dog is somebody’s mother?”
“Yup, mine,” said Cynthia, pointing across the way, where her cartoon-dog mom was tangoing with a six-foot gerbil in a tiny Speedo. “Go introduce yourself.”
Lolita squinted in Margie’s direction and grinned. However unconsciously, she was always on the hunt for a new mother. She stumbled——as directly as she was currently capable of——across the dunes in Margie’s direction. She nearly fell down a couple times on the way, but she did eventually make it.
The surreal, massive, blowout of a party——simultaneously nightmarish and the stuff of which great memories are made——was still in full swing. Adriana Vivani and her band were playing loud and hard. Her gauze was beginning to unravel.
Chapter 34
“Listen, Sin,” said Max, sidling up to her, “could we at least just go for a quiet walk or something?”
“As pissed as I am at you,” she said, “I must admit, that sounds better than staying here.”
They wandered off along the windy beach. It was a lot colder away from the fires, so, although she considered it, she didn’t object when he grabbed a couple of abandoned blankets and wrapped one around her.
They climbed to the top of a bluff to get a bird’s-eye view of the mayhem. They watched an ant-sized octopus chasing a tiny Thomas Jefferson who was chasing a tiny Marilyn Monroe——who may or may not have been a girl.
“So, Sin,” he asked, removing his sunglasses and beard. “What’s it all about?”
“No clue.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll tell you one thing. Those fourteen days we spent in room 14 have got to be fourteen of the very best days anyone has ever spent on this crazy granite planet.”
She smiled but she was glad it was too dark for him to see her smiling. Her phone rang. Again, straight to voicemail.
Max laughed. “I am with you. Shut the rest of the world out. It’s just you and me, baby. I mean it.” He leaned back, and sent his phone sailing way out over the sand toward the ocean.
“Jeez,” said Cynthia. “As they used to say in acting class, you really sold that line. Totally committed. It’s not like you.”
“Oh, stop it, Sin. I’m determined to be genuine here.”
He spread the other blanket out on the ground. They sat down, then leaned onto their backs and gazed at the stars for a while.
“Wow,” he said. This was followed by a very, very, very long pause before he added, “This is one gorgeous, messed-up, freaking-old universe.”
Cynthia laughed out loud.
“The Earth itself has been here for four-and-a-half billion years,” he continued.
“Where are you going with this, professor?” She actually knew exactly where he wanted to go. She just wasn’t sure how he would try to get there. It was actually kind of fascinating.
“If you were one of those crazy creationists, you’d think the Earth’s only been around for six thousand years.”
“Looney tunes,” she said.
“But even that’s a long time compared to us. We’ll only be around for another fifty or sixty.”
“In your case, only about fifty or sixty seconds, if I have anything to say about it.”
“Well, I was just thinking,” he said, unfazed. “It wouldn’t be all that difficult, we have it within our power.”
“We do?”
“We do.”
“To do what, pray tell?”
“To put together at least another perfect fourteen days.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yeah, what if we only had fourteen days? What if those crazy end-timers are right and the world only has fourteen days left? I don’t know about you, but I know exactly how I would want to spend them. I mean generally. You and I both know there would be a good deal of improvisation involved. What with markers and socks and so on and so forth.”
Cynthia smiled wider and even though she knew he couldn’t see it, she was sure he knew she was smiling.
Then Max said, “I think we owe it to the universe and ourselves, don’t you?”
She knew it was coming. Bingo: he made his move, slowly rolling over to kiss her.
She stopped him cold with a palm to the lips.
“What?” he asked. “You don’t want to let the universe down, do you?”
“No. But do you think there’s a lumber yard open?”
“Sin, we’re on a bluff in the wilds of Malibu. In the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, well I have an urge to buy a two-by-four.”
“Oh, right. Tell you what, I’ll pick one up for you tomorrow.”
“Nails too?”
“Rusty old nails. Teeming with tetanus.”
“Okay. Good. That would do nicely.”
“I am your piñata, baby. Okay, so, may I kiss you now?”
“Yes, you may kiss me now.”
They kissed.
“Max, remember that time when we were making love and you started saying a new slang word for vagina with every in and out? It made me so hot!”
He couldn’t believe she was bringing this up, but remembered that she really had loved it. He smiled.
“Yes.”
“Could you please do that again? Pretty please?”
Ahh … I’ve gotten to her, he thought. I knew she’d come around. “Coming right up,” he said, moving over her.
“Wait,” she said. “First, let me just hear the words for a while. Let’s close our eyes and take off our clothes. No looking, no touching. I want to savor this.”
Max laughed and instantly closed his eyes.
He loved that she liked this kind of thing. He’d made a career of wooing with words. Women love words. There is no better foreplay. And it appealed to his ego. He was flattered that she put this stock in his verbal agility. He pulled off his jacket and shirt. He flopped onto his back again and kicked off his shoes, socks, pants, and everything else.
“Are you indecent yet?” he asked, tingling with anticipation.
“As a jaybird,” she replied.
They both lay still for a moment. It was wild and ancient up there with the sound and smell of the sea, the music fading in the distance. “Wow, Sin,” he said, “the wind is rushing through places I’m pretty sure it’s never rushed before.”
“I know,” she said, “it’s amazing——like a million magic fingers.”
“Kind of chilly, actually,” he shivered. “Also kind of sand-blasty.”
“Invigorating,” she replied. “Now, if you don’t mind, Little Cynthia needs serenading.”
Chapter 35
“Right,” he said, starting in, his voice sweet, low, and a little shaky from cold. “Let’s see … pussy, punani, poontang. Muff, muffin, beaver. Honey-pot, bits and pieces, lady business, coochie, cuntzilla, cha cha, na-na, cho-cho.” The wind picked up, blowing hard through the beach grass. Max’s litany of x-rated synonyms—twenty-three and counting——somehow became indistinguishable from the rhythm of the surf.
After a while, he realized he was running kind of low: “…party pantry, pretty kitty, sweet puss, spasm chasm, fuzzy box, juicy fruit, sugar shack, tunnel of love, snacky pie, tasty tulips, hot pocket, humdinger, happy clam, Ursula Undress, angel food cake, Georgia O’Queef, Hostess Ho-Ho. Um, let’s see … clitosaurus? You know, Sin, I hate to say it, but this is getting a little tedious. Unless you want me to get started on a titty fest, but that could really go on forever. You know——sugar tits, sugar plums, Grand Tetons, balloons, boobies, bassoons, bra buddies, moo-moos, melons, marimbas, gazingas, gazongas, gazoingas. I don’t know, Sin. Sometimes actions speak louder than words.” With that, he rolled over, lips puckered … the rest of him ready for love.
Unfortunately for him, though, all he embraced was air. He flailed for a moment, grasping at sand and grass, but Cynthia was long gone. As were his clothes. Max sat straight up, studied the situation for a moment, and then howled like a sickly coyote: “Nooo! You’re leaving me again?!”
Chapter 36
Cynthia had already made her way down the bluff and was trudging briskly through the sand when she heard his cry. She smiled——he more than deserved it. She had left his wallet next to him in the sand. She just wanted to get him back; she wasn’t criminally cruel. She had discarded his clothes randomly along the path. He would find them. Well, he would probably find them. She felt good, marching into the stiff, fresh, ocean breeze.
Max wailed again, this time with a liberal dose of comic righteousness: “WE SHALL MEET AGAIN! AND I SHALL CONQUER EVERY LAST ONE OF YOUR DELICIOUS EUPHEMISMS!”
Cynthia laughed out loud. This was pure, unadulterated Max. She knew that to be heard over the wind and surf, he must have been yelling at the top of his lungs. She also found it admirable that he retained his sense of humor even under the most trying circumstances.
“You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” —Plato
That quote had stuck to Cynthia like glue. It was probably the only thing she remembered from Philosophy 101. It made a big impression. In this plugged-in, tuned-out, turned-off age, there simply was not enough play going on. She realized her role with Second Acts should not just be matching people, but to be a proselytizer of play. When it came to romance, she was pro-imagination, pro-repartee, pro-verbal-and-physical banter, with a large dose of teasing, tweaking, and surprise. Of course, she would never push her clients as far as Max and she had gone … just far enough to fuel each couple’s quest for romance and passion and commitment. Or whatever it was they were looking for.
For good or bad, Max and she were on a whole other plane. They would never be a conventional couple with conventional commitment. She was okay with their own brand of spontaneous sexual combustion … for now. Their only vow was to the wildness of their uncontrollable and moth-to-flame attraction. She had tried the not-in-my face route, but apparently even that was too orthodox, too normal. She had taken the bull by the horns tonight when she realized that, in addition to the passion, their relationship had evolved into a kind of sexually charged tit for tat like teenagers. It was in evidence when she walked out on him at Shutters the other day—the sock-on-cock episode—but it had always been there. It was a weird sort of one-upmanship. And one-upwomanship. At its best, their bond was built on adventure, in and out of the bedroom. At its worst … well, she was in the mood to accentuate the positive. Why? Because she wanted to, that’s why. To an outside observer, what they had gone through, what they had done to and for each other, was far beyond the pale—clearly I-never-want-to-see-you-again behavior. But Cynthia knew that stealing Max’s clothes and leaving him lounging in the buff was not only a triumphant way of standing up for herself. It also ensured that they would in fact see each other again. It would only excite Max more. After his extravagant transgressions, she had taken aim and followed through with a power shot of her own. He could not possibly resist returning the volley. And of course neither of them could possibly resist the uncontrollable, scorching-hot, crazy-making passion that erupted whenever they were in the same time zone.
But Cynthia was stronger now, stepping into her own. She didn’t need Max to be happy. She could enjoy their passion and walk away. This was something new for her, and she wasn’t going to allow Max, or anyone for that matter, to take her off her path—her passion for romance-making, her Second Acts.
