The Emperor’s Palace Buffet House inhabits the gutted carcass of a K-mart that died when I was six. It’s been ten years since I’ve been inside and that star crossed night was a hell of a time that turned into eight years of hell. The cabbie lets me off as close to the front doors as possible, owing to an unruly crowd gathered outside. He keeps the change from my twenty with a smile and heads off to his next fare while I contemplate the scene before the source of mine. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for a desperate message waiting to be found in the oubliette that is my answering machine. Hearing the words playing back in my memory I shoulder my way through the crowd. People throw me dark looks like lightning bolts while others step aside at the sight of a fat guy in a tailored tuxedo – a sight seldom seen at the Emperor’s outside of Prom nights and it’s August.
Clear of the crowd I check myself in the front door. There’s a sign over my decidedly dapper reflection's starched white shirt proclaiming “Closed for Private Function” in a ten point font. The saffron garbed door flunky clutches his clipboard like it was an automatic holstered low on his hip and gives me the stink eye. I grin and give him my best cool-guy voice. “I’m expected.”
He’s unimpressed. “Name?” he orders.
I almost give him One-Nut and check myself in time. “Ronald Weaver.”
The clipboard comes up like a timed drill. He flips a sheet over and grunts. “You’re late.” I don’t expect him to wait for a reason and he doesn’t disappoint me. With a sharp about face he pulls the door open and steps back for me to proceed. I wave to the crowd, rubbing my belly as the smell of a million greasy meals wafts ambrosia into their disgruntled faces. There are a few protests before the door closes and I look back to see the door flunky’s hand on the automatic clipboard. I’m hoping none of them thinks their lives are worth the buffet when the desperate voice from my answering machine assaults me softly from the bar.
“I was starting to hope you wouldn’t show.”
“I can turn right around and leave if you want me to, Manon.”
There’s no time to wait for a response. She comes flinging herself into my arms and I wrap her up like a gift from the gods. She steps back to get an eyeful, not hating what she sees. Her laughing lights up her yes and they might have been dyed to match the short green dress she’s wearing. Manon is five-foot-fuck-all of gimme-some-of that wrapped around one of the sweetest hearts ever to pump life through meat. For this girl I’d stick what’s left of my little monster into a box of starving rats and she knows it.
“I can’t believe that you got my message,” she says, hugging me close again.
“Happy Birthday Manon,” I tell the lavender scented darkness of her hair. "I hope I'm a good present 'cause I didn't get you anything else."
She draws herself back, takes my hand and leads me towards the bar. “I was worried you wouldn’t get my message.”
“I almost didn’t.” I accept the cigarette she offers and glance towards the only occupied table in the whole place. Maybe ten people sit around it in uncomfortable silence. “Looks like Madame Tousseau’s over there.”
“They’d be more fun made of wax,” Manon grumbles. The saffron garbed bartender looks like the door flunky’s big brother only with an automatic pistol holstered under a sweaty arm pit but he makes two rye and gingers appear as if by magic when Manon waves her hand. A quick check of the room shows at least six other armed guards and it wouldn’t surprise me to find more. I know enough about Manon’s family to guess their significance. “Your Mamere must be here?”
I watch her face fall and wish I could call the words back down my throat. “She’s ill. Too sick to make the trip from Montreal.”
“Then who ranks having the heavy artillery?” I ask.
Manon smiles sadly and sips her drink before answering. “It was my mother’s idea. Doctors say Mamere might not last the week and no one wants to take chances that someone wouldn’t try kidnapping an heir apparent to get their hands on a juicy ransom.” She swirls the ice cubes in her glass to make a drunk’s favourite music. “I’m just here to celebrate my birthday with you.”
I raise my drink to her. “Here’s to a happy thirtieth.”
We touch glasses and some of the sorrow leaves her eyes. “My God, I hope so.” She nods to the bartender who reaches for our drinks and they follow us to the table where I seat Manon to the right of an over dressed woman at the head of the table. No one says anything while I seat myself, trying not to notice the cold looks I earn for sitting. There are a dozen of us all told. When our drinks are served and the server is out of earshot the overdressed woman nods to Manon with a benevolence born of bullshit.
“Mother,” Manon says like the word never meant love, “may I present to you and our gathered family, my dear friend Ronald Weaver, PHd.”
“Enchante,” the head lady offers a bejewelled hand which I touch. “I am Manon’s mother. My name is Eunice Champlain. My family and I welcome you to Manon’s birthday supper. I apologize that the surroundings are so poor.”
I can taste the flavour of the entire evening’s conversation on her words and sense Manon stiffen beside me. I decide to change the recipe a bit. “Our definitions of poor must differ wildly. I’ve never seen the Emperor look so fine.”
Madame Champlains smile doesn’t waver. “She assures us that great measures have been taken even if I can’t see them myself. I have been assured that the food is good.”
I give her smile back two-fold. “Sure, good and salty, good and starchy, good and cheap.” I raise my glass and Manon’s follows. “Vive l’Empereur.” The toast earns me a lion’s share of dirty looks from everyone but Manon who smiles and thanks me with her eyes. I’m here to make sure that she has a happy birthday and to hell with the rest.
“Shall we,” she says and I’m there to help her up off of her chair.
“Shall we what?” wonders a fat lobster faced man from the opposite side of the table.
“Strap on the old feed bag,” I flip back over my shoulder, already on my way.
“Who is to serve,” the red faced man wonders to his companions who shrug. “I am not accustomed to menial drudgery.”
“Then don’t eat.” I don’t know if he hears me but Manon and I have our plates already so he can screw himself for all I care.
The buffet concept is not lost on everyone else. Manon and I drift between steam tray islands, happy marauders on the high cholesterol seas while the others look down their noses like tourists put to shore on a third world food spill. It’s a plush spread by Emperor standards with more savoury meat dishes than I’ve seen in one setting. We heap our plates high with the choicest delicacies and make our way back to the table while the others pick and complain.
We sit and the red faced man casts hopeful eyes at the fruits of our first trip into the great unknown. I’m trying to make every morsel out to be the most delicious thing to ever hit my tongue and drive the poor man mad. The others are returning with their own plates and he throws the same imploring glances their way. He might be the unremarkable family dog for all the attention anyone pays him.
Manon’s playing right along with me. “The barbecued short ribs are so tender," she says before taking an orgasmic bite as proof.
“Pick up some of the sweet and sour chicken wings on your next trip,” I add. “You won’t be sorry.”
Red face sputters indignation all over the man across from him who lashes out at the behaviour. “God damn it Martin! Does mother still wipe up under you as well?” Martin goes even redder and stalks off for the islands not so blithe to the bounty.
Manon and I spend the better part of a half hour stuffing ourselves and ordering rye and ginger by the pitcher. Everyone else – except the young lady to my right – has deemed the food ultimately unpalatable despite Martin's scarfing massive helpings. Manon’s so busy drinking and ignoring her family’s snide comments to introduce me to my spoon-side companion, parts of whose face are familiar enough that I can’t put a name to the rest. Mme Champlain’s notices my divided attention and puts on a face pasted over with spite.
Her eyes find Manon. “My daughter,” she says the word like it never meant love, “has never told me how you two met.”
It’s an open invitation to play the dancing bear and I accept. “Funny story, we were at school together – apparently. In four years I never saw her until her Eddie section’s Christmas party. It was supposed to be a private function but I’d signed up for the drinking contest.”
I pause for a sip and await the inevitable question – supplied by my spoon-side companion. “Drinking contest?”
I nod. “Section 14's Forty under 14. It was tradition of some kind and there weren’t enough future liver transplant cases in her year to fill the roster. So they posted a sign up form and I wrote my name. I won, of course. And while you’d think that fact alone would draw any woman’s attention, it was my victory cigarette that brought us together.”
One of the aunts crows indignation. “Manon! How could you smoke?”
“Ma tente, let him say.”
Another sip during the exchange to savour the moment. “She didn’t smoke back then but she did save my life?”
Madame Champlain ships the inevitable this time. “She saved your life?”
"Yup, see, I’d kinda’ sorta’ cheated by growing my beard out before the contest. I let a little of each shot dribble down to get absorbed and when I lit my victory smoke up goes the beard in a pop of blue flames and the sickly sweet stench of burning hair and tequila. So, before the panic can start playing my brain like a chump this really cute chick down the bar tosses a pitcher of beer in my face – the contents anyway.”
“Manon!” bleats the other aunt, “drinking beer from a pitcher.”
“Ma tente, I was there with friends!”
I don’t mean to gap out but it's hard to forget one of those friends was Carol. It was Carol whose purse-slash-rucksack produced the lady shaver I used to mow my ruined whiskers. It was Carol who used a pair of scissors from same to even out my scorched hair. It was Carol who’s suggested we all go out to the Emperor for food after the bar. It was Carol who did me greasy in the men’s room and Carol who I gave my heart to and Carol who left when she couldn’t see me as more than half a man.
Everyone’s looking at me. “Anyway, that’s how we met.”
I recognize the anti-climax on their faces from long experience. Manon knows that something’s wrong in my head and forces the attention away. “Marie-France was there too.”
There’s the name to the rest of the face beside me – Marie-France. Someone surely paid out the nose for some brave plastic surgeon’s private jet to make me forget her. Remembering gives me a rare glimpse back through oblivion to see myself sitting between Carol and Marie-France and saying how I was a thorn between two roses. She had blushed and left the table.
“And once again I’m a thorn between two roses.” This time she does not blush or leave the table. Instead I’m treated to a stockinged foot running up my shortening pant leg. I hope it’s Marie-France and not the aunt across from me and gulp down the rest of my drink to cover my discomfort.
“Is drinking to excess still your habit?” asks Uncle Martin around the rim of his eighth glass of wine.
“Whenever it’s warranted,” I say topping myself off with the pitcher.
Uncle Martin nudges his unnamed brother. “ Maman never should have let her choose what school to attend. Look at what she’s reduced to.”
“Me!” chokes Manon. “Why you simpering...”
“Hush, child.” Mme Champlain hardly whispers and spares Uncle Martin by directing Manon's wrath at herself.
“I will not hush and I am not a child!” She yells like a spoiled little girl and I stay out of it. “This is my thirtieth birthday supper! I am an adult! I earn a living doing something I love! And I choose my own friends!”
Uncle Martin has recovered enough to rejoin the fray. “Like this one here,” he says dripping contempt on the plastic wrapped table cloth, “who lights himself on fire and doesn’t speak to you for years. Are you so poorly tried that you cannot find anyone of stature to present at our table? I’m glad my mother is not here to see this.”
Manon wants to ream him out, opens her mouth to do it and flings herself away from the table in silent tears instead. No one’s eyes follow her. No one rises to go after her until I stand up possessed of a chill calm that still can’t freeze my tongue. “Would you step outside with me Monsieur?”
Uncle Martin’s eyes bug out a bit. “I beg your pardon?”
“Beg your niece’s pardon. Answer my question with a question again and I’ll put a chair leg up your ass. Would you step outside with me?”
Maybe he’s thinking about the chair leg and that’s why he gives me the answer I'd expected. “There are ladies present.”
“And the best among them has left the table while the one she loves most is absent – no offense Marie-France.”
Mme Champlain sees fit to intervene. “You may absent yourself. We have no further business with you, Mr. Weaver.”
“And you may kiss my ass, Madame,” I say and stay long enough to watch her face pale with rage. Regardless, the only thing left to do is collect a weeping woman from the ladies’ and get her away from this scene that she can enjoy her birthday. I hear footsteps following me and my fist is up when I turn around.
It’s Marie-France. “I’m coming with you. I have my car.”
My grin shows teeth. “Let’s go to the bathroom.”
Marie-France stops me just short of going into the ladies' myself. I suddenly want to regale her with the story of a similar misadventure but the door closes behind her before I can get a word in. And before I can begin to regret it they're back out - Manon a little wet around the eyes and Marie-France with a wicked gleam in hers.
"Sorry about that, Ronnie," she says and takes my hand. "I really didn't intend to drag you into my own private hell."
"No worries, chere," I say, tilting her chin up so that she can see the sincerity in my eyes. "I always wondered what it might be like to grow up rich and powerful but aside from the armed goons it's just like growing up poor."
Manon tries not to smile, fails and leans into me for support. When I move to hold her, Marie-France moves to hold us both and it's an official group hug. We stand that way for a handful of heartbeats until Marie-France moves a step back and turns her wicked gleam on me.
"Take us to a real party," she says.
"Done. How do we ditch the goon squad?"
"Like this," Manon says and strides boldly to the bartender. Marie-France and I are swept along in her wake. He grins at her determination and bows his head when she talks at him. "I want to leave."
The bartender's grin grows to shit-eating proportions. "The Lady thought it might be so. I am under orders to let you pursue happiness today."
Now it's my turn to lead the way. I take a pretty girl's arm in each hand and head for the door. The crowd outside is dispersed and the way ahead is all clear. 'Where's your car?" I ask Marie-France who's fetching keys from her designer clutch.
"Right there." She pushes a button on her key chain and the resulting beep and flash of headlights draws my eye to a BMW z4 Coupe in the centre lot.
I'm not much for cars but even I can appreciate this low slung beast on wheels. "I just hope it fits me," I quip when the two doors dawn on me.
"Shotgun Ronnie's lap," Manon says when Marie-France starts handing her the keys. I haven't had enough to drink that I miss a cross little look flash on the driver's face.
I summon enough courtesy to wait until Marie-France has her own door open before piling in through mine. Manon wiggles onto my lap, slips off her shoes and daintily lays her feet on the dash. I half expect her cousin to object but she just starts the engine and looks past Manon to me. "Where to?"
She takes direction well and were out of the city in ten minutes. With my attention divided between telling her where to turn and Manon's sweet heart shaped ass urging the ruin in my pants to stir it's a surreal ride. 'We're not headed into the country, are we?" Marie-France asks worriedly when I direct her onto the highway on ramp but I've already thought of the car.
"It's a good road all the way there to a level gravel drive," I tell her and her hands relax visibly on the wheel. "And not far. Ian's place is just outside of town.
The farm is easy to spot from the highway all aglow in a sea of country dark. Every light in the big old house is on and there's a crescent of parked cars shining headlights into the filed but the fire's not started yet. Marie-France guides her Beamer gently onto the gravel drive and even with the windows up we can hear the music thumping from a hundred yards away. A few sullen stragglers glare at us through our opulent conveyance and one guys gives us the finger. The girls are nervous.
"Are you sure that we're okay here, Ronnie?" Manon asks.
"We're okay here," I assure her. "I learned how to drink on this place. Ian's had it for his own since his folks died starting the fire of '04 but it's always been the place to get shit faced."
"A bonfire party?" Marie-France sounds like the gleam is leaving her eye.
"Only for the hoi-poloi, chere," I tell her and Manon wiggles with glee at the ready-to-party tone in my voice. "There will be slightly more sophisticated entertainments in the manor. Park on the basketball court."
The car draws a curious crowd and if they care where we park no one lets on. I recognize a few faces and spot one straining under the weight of home brews on ice. Each of the girls takes an arm as I make a bee-line for the drinks. We catch them up quickly and the guy doing the heavy lifting turns when I call out, "Hey, Scammer, slow up a bit."
He turns fast enough to nearly drop his tub and his eyes light up at the sight of the girls. "Yo, Ronnie man. Thought you had another do tonight?"
"And miss a Fleming fire party? Check your head man, you may be concussed." He laughs while his eye's shift between checking out the girls, getting an eyeful of both. "Here, let me help you with that, " I say and his relief is shortlived whenI only remove three bottles from the ice. "So, what's on the burn this year?"
"Oh, we've had donations from all over the county, pile's almost as tall as the house. Plus, Ian's uncles brought twenty five gallons of old paint and the same of gas. It's gonna' be a good burn." He enjoys telling the story so much that he actually takes his eyes off of the girls long enough to look over his shoulder towards the unlit fire. "Come get a spot before the good ones are gone."
The invitation ios directed more at Manon and Marie-France than me but I answer for them. "We're fine here, thanks. I don't want them too close when that goes up. Just tell Ian that I made it, if you see him."
"Sure thing, One-nut." Scammer knows that he's been dismissed but he's too jazzed to let on. He turns back toward the pile of lumber, paint and fuel waiting to become the 2010 Fleming Bonfire while I open beer for the girls.
"Interesting guy, " Marie-France observes as her trudges away under his load. "But why'd he call you One-nut."
"Long story," I tell her while Manon preens for the crowd of onlookers. She's about to start an intimate relationship with her beer bottle when six and a half feet of man comes towards us from the fire site. "Ah, " I say with just a hint of regret, "here comes the pig-fucker himself."
Before the girls can ask what the hell I'm on about, Ian's got his arms around me and my feet leave the ground. "Weaver, you fuckin' guy! Scammer told me you were here with two gorgeous women and I didn't believe him." He sets me down none too gently and tips Marie-France a wink. But when he looks at Manon, his eyes glaze like he's had a ten pund sledge between the eyes. "Who's the little goddess?"
Manon blushes prettily while digging an elbow deep in my ribs. "Ian, this is Manon Champlain-Ducepe. Manon, this great hulk..."
"Yack, yack, yack..."
"Is Ian Fleming, our host." They shake hands and I can tell that they won't be letting go of each other for a while. "It's Manon's birthday today."
Ian's drinking a jug of homemade wine, tips it effortlessly up into his mouth, wipes it with a huge red haired fore arm and stares. "We then, mam'selle, how 'bout a tour of the place?"
"Yes please, " she breathes as she takes his arm to be led through the throng. Marie-France and I aren't spared so much as a backward glance.
"Well kid," I say to her, "it's just you and me."
She smiles. "Finally."
Really? "How's that beer treating you?"
"I'd prefer some herbal refreshment," she says taking my hand and pulling me close.
"That's not going to be a problem here," I say and wrap my arms around her waist. "This whole place was built on dope."
"Not homegrown shit," she says while nuzzling my ear. "I've got some good stuff. Is there anywhere we could be alone."
"Yeah, sure...no problem." She's tugging on my belt and I need to get my brain back up to my head when I see the farmhouse's blue painted back door. There's a laundry room just through it and down the stairs that would be perfect. Taking Marie-France by the hand I scan the crowd for any sign of Manon and lead the way. The door's open and there's sounds of some seruious merry-making but I take her right down stairs to the laundry.
"Does that door lock from the inside?" she asks, surveying the place.
"Yup," I say and it's done while I wonder at my luck.
Marie-France has already got one spun in her purse and I've got my light ready when she raises the spliff to her lips. She puffs and passes, easing herself up ionto the dryer, not trying to straighten her skirt which hikes up her thigfhs like an eager shirpa. We trade off in silence for a while before I take a seat on the washer next to her.
"So why did that guy call you One-nut?"
I toke before I talk, wondering if she really needs to know and half relieved that she's asked before finding out the hard way. "Because it's true."
"You mean that you have only one testicle?"
"Yup," I pass the joint back top her with a trembling hand. "But it's better than most of the other nicknames I've been saddled with since the accident."
"Like what?"
"Oh, Half-man, Half-sack, Burntballs, Frankencock, Roasted Weiner instead of Ronnie Weaver..."
"What happened?" passing the roach back to me and leaning back against the wall so that her brasts press against the sheer fabric of her blouse.
"You really don't know? It made the news and everything."
"Would I be asking if I knew?"
I toke a little more and decide not. Thinking about the past like this always makes me cringe a little but I'm fuzzy-headed enough to pretend like it doesn't matter. "It happened about four years ago. I got this lighter from my girlfriend..."
"Carol?" Marie-France asks rescuing the neglected roach from my fingers.
"The same. So she gave me this lighter, really just a fancy ass piece of jewellry, for my birthday and it's great. I carry it with me everywhere, people ooh and ahh whenver I bring it out, all that good shit. So one day I'm walking up Main Street, I've just lit a cigarette and I feel a hot spot in my pocket against my leg. It's high summer so I don't think much of it until I smell smoke. I look down and my pocket's on fire. And before I can pat it out or shuck my pants there's this loud snap-pop like a gunshot and I feel my right nut disintegrate. I'm on the ground twitching, too shocked to make a noise and five poeple step over me before anyone stops to call for help. But there could have been a surgical suite set up right there on the sidewalkb and it wouldn't have made a difference."
I usually throw the story off fast so that it doesn't sound like the most traumatic event in my life - casual like. Marie-France is just staring with the last scrap of joint smouldring between her fingers so I pluck it back and finish it off for lack of anything better to do. "That's terrible," she says as her eyes shift ever so slightly down towards my crotch.
I puff the last light out of the spliff and flick it into the corner. "This is the easiest telling I've ever done. But yeah, it was terrible. Third degree burns on your cock isn't something that you can pretend easn't terrible. Right testicle evaporated, surgically inserted cathertre, salves and unguents enough to drown a baby in and all the while never knowing if I'd ever be a functioning man again."
"And are you a functioning man?"
I smile, "More or less. I can get it up and make gravy but I'll never have kids. And it looks a gory mess to boot."
"Is that why Carol dumped you?"
"Yes and no. What it really came down to was that there was no common ground between us, just a gap we bridged on our backs." She looks like she wants to hear more but that's the only answer she's gonna get.
She accepts it and fold her hands in her lap. "I never liked her."
"Carol was a hard person to like and easy to love." Marie-France finally pulls the hiking hem of her skirt back down over the tops of her thighs and I scramble for anything else to say before she ditches. "I'm hungry." Good one.
Marie-France reaches for her clutch - so different from Carols old carry-all - and fishes out a pair of fortune cookies. "I took these after you left the table," she hands me one bfore cracking hers open eagerly.
I follow her lead, stuff both halves into my mouth, playing the clown so I don't have to think about anything else to say. She nibbles one half of hers while looking at the fold of paper she found inside. "So what's the wisdom of the ages?" I ask with a mouthful.
She smiles and reads, "'The only constant in life is change.' What about yours?"
I choke on the cookie paste in my mouth when I see my fortune. It's the same one I read ten years ago back at the Emperor. "'Happiness is sitting right next to you.'"
Her memory is as good as mine, "It's the same one you got the night we met."
"Yeah, " I mutter, " we - Carol and I - had a laugh about it before..."
Her memory is too good. "Before she followed you into the bathroom."
"That's right, buit that was then and now it's you sitting right next to me."
She smiles at that, a little sadly. "I was sitting next to you that night too."
And of course she's right, I just hadn't even considered her because of how she looked back then. It's not easy looking her in the eye but I mange it. "I was a different person then, a real jerk and Carol was easy...I was just going the easy way..."
She stops my mouth with a finger on my lips. "I was a different person back then too. But at least now we know that the only constant in life is change...the cookie told us so."
"Is that the same message you had back then too?" I ask in hopes that the subject will change from what a creep I was.
"No," she says, "that one said 'Even an ugly duckling can become a swan.' It was that message and your thornh between two roses comment that made me decide I wanted plastic surgery."
"I'm sorry about that comment and the way we - Carol and I - laughed about it. I was drinking and..."
"And nothing. You put your arm around me when you said it and it was the first time a man I wasn't related to ever touched me. You didn't say it mean, you just really weren't saying it to me. I realized then that guys like you would only ever look at girls like Carol and my cousin. I cou;dn't go through life like that."
I'm stuck on something she said, "Guys like me?"
She smiles shyly. "You know - smart, funny, sexy guts. I didn't want to be the girl who only gets attention when guys find out about my family's money. I want someone to love me and not invest in me."
"But, Marie-France..."
"But nothing." There's enough heat in her voice now to melt away any protest I could make. "You can say anything you want about inner beauty and personality and it would all be so much bullshit. I was an ugly duckling who wanted to be a swan and my money helped me make that decsion. I'm a whole new person from the girl you met that night...from the girl who didn't have the nerve to follow you into the bathroom."
I nod. "I didn't recognize you when I sat down tonight, not until Manon said your name."
"And you made the same thorn beween two roses comment."
"And you didn't blush or run away either." I remmber something else. "That was your foot unjder the table."
She smiles. "Mmm-hmm...I knew that you meant it this time."
She leans into me, eyes closed, lips parted, hem rising. I'm drawn to her like a straight line and find myself kissing a woman for the first time in two years. It starts lightly but soon intensifies to the point where her tongue becomes daring and traces my lips. The monster in my pants stirs and I break away. "Marie-France..."
Her eyes are glinting with kind of hunger that a fortune cookie can't touch. "I can help you forget her, Ronnie. I can make it better." She slips off of the dryer and slides over to stand between my legs, her hands on my chest. "I can make you happy."
Her hands are moveing - before I can say anything - down to my belt. She's locking eyes with mine, undoing the buckle. She licks her lips in case I had any mistake about her intentions. I should stop her but only to keep her going eye to squinting eye with my toasted trouser snake. But she's already got my fly down, already plucking at the stiff business in my boxers when I close my eyes. I can feel myself released to the air and hear her indrwan breath. "I'd understand if you don't..."
But she engulfs me with her mouth and words escape me even as she mumbles around my member. I look down to watch her head bob and lips do some of the greatest work I've ever seen. She's taking me deeper than anyone before and there's no one else in the world but the two of us. And when her pearly lacquered nails scratch the tops of my thighs I groan and die a little inside her mouth.
After I'm empty and twitching she slides her head off of me and smiles. I avoid looking at what's broken between my legs and concentrate on that smile. She rises up to me, pulling me forward, lips parting...
And spits my load back into my face. I scrub a hand across my eyes as she caws laughter. I'm blinded by spunk and clawing for my fly when I slip off the washing machine. The laudry room door opens and shuts while I'm tucking the truckered out monster away and all I can do is hope that it's not someone coming in to see what's gone down. I find something with a groping hand that might be roll of paper towl, tear off half a mile's worth and start mopping madly at my face. Hopefully there's nothing stuck in my beard but I need to know what the fuck that was all about.
I make one last swipe at my face and follow Marie-France out of the laundry room but it's way too late. News of the crazy French girl tearing off in the Beamer is already starting to trickle back to the house when I get oustide. There's a huddled shape on the steps leading up to the back door and it's Manon with no Ian Fleming in sight. If I'm secretly glad that she got ditched too it doesn't show on my face when I sit down next to her. I'm really just hoping that she wasn't in on any kind of set up with her cousin.
She just smiles. "So you got ditched too, huh?"
"Yup, where's Ian?"
"Oh, out in the barn fucking some pig." She says it like she's fetching the mail or some shit. "Did you know that it's custom to wrap your cock in electrical tape before fucking a barnyard animal. Over the counter condoms just dont cut it."
"I had no idea, to tell you the truth," I'm trying to make her smile bigger. "My experience with bestiality is limited to small mammals - hamsters and such - but then again you do end up wearing them like a condom."
She's not really listening to me. "He said I was a goddess." She lays her head on my shoulder.
"Yup, I heard that too."
"Why do I always have to go and run off with some boy?" she asks like I didn't just take skull from her cousin in the laudry room.
"Search me, Kiddo. Whay do I always fall for crazy chicks?"
Silently we agree that we're both fucked and get up to find somewhere better than the stairs to be. The fire's lit and looks ready to consume the world but there are too many people whooping and hollering, trying to get close without burning their hair off. I can't take that scene right now. Instead I commandeer a bottle of homemade wine from a passed out reveller. Without knowing how we're getting back to town we start walking. I just hope we don't get halfway there and start wishing we'd stayed on the stairs.
The gravel shoulder of the road slopes down into marshy ditched so I only take the inside when a car passes. I'd rather have her muddy and mad at me than bloody and dead after all. The wine's gone fast and when the bottle hits the ditch she's leaning on me for support. I'm content with the contact and the rhythm of walking when she decides to shatter the night with a question.
"Why do you call Carol every night at eleven and hang up when she answers?"
"What are you talking about, Non-non?" I ask with feigned innocence.
"Carol told me that she subscribed to call display because someone kept calling her at eleven o'clock every night. When I asked her how to get ahold of you she just said to try the number she sees. She didn't know if it was you or not and when I called it I half hoped it wouldn't be your voice in the answering machine."
"Do you want an honest answer to that question?"
"Just spare me your bullshit and, yes, answer honestly."
"Okay, I will, if you answer one of mine." It's a firm offer and she nods agreement. "Fine, after the accident, Carol used to always try for me when the news came on a t eleven. I wasn't ready for it and she'd stalk off to satisfy herself with the shower head. So I call her every night at eleven hoping to hear water running in the background."
She nods. "You're fucked. But it is your turn to ask me a question."
I can't help but sound suspicious. "Why did you want me out with you tonight?"
She stops walking without letting go of my arm and stops me in my tracks. She's looking up at me and I can see myself reflected in the moonlight trapped in her eyes. There is nothing stuck in my face. "I sometimes think about that night you set yourself on fire and how good you look without a beard. I wonder what kind of life I would have had if you hadn't signed up for a drinking contest. I wanted you at my birthday supper so that Mamere could meet you and say how charming you are, then maybe you'd remember and quit pining over a woman I was always jealous of." I think she's done but there's more. "And I wanted you to see how good I look inthis dress."
She does indeed. "You'd look better without the dress."
"And you'd look better without a beard."
I smile. "I'll shave if you shave."
She smiles back. "Way ahead of you, Ronnie."
I have to laugh at the dare in her voice and hope she doesn't take it the wrong way. "You're the perfect end to a shitty night. Did you know that?"
She pulls me down to her height and gives me a gentle kiss on the mouth. It's our fisrt kiss and too perfect for words. "Let's go," she says when it's over, "we have a lot of ground to cover."
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