Boy Minus Girl (12 page)

“I hate to break it to you, but girls like you don’t exist in Harker City.”

“That a fact?” she says. “You know, you’d be surprised how many girls have tendencies.”

“Even if Kristy Lynn has ‘tendencies,’ she’ll never admit it,” I say. “I mean, her dad is head deacon at our church, and her mom is choir director.”

“But Kristy Lynn doesn’t strike me as the religious type.”

“Look, Charity, I just think it’s very dangerous for you to ‘approach’ this in any way, shape, or form.”

She scoffs. “C’mon, I’m not going to shove my tongue down her throat during home ec class or anything. Give me a little credit here.”

“I’ve lived in this town my whole life,” I say. “If it was to get out that you put the moves on a girl, it would be disastrous for you and your family. Harker City is not St. Louis. Not by a very long shot.”

“I appreciate your concern,” she says, smiling reassuringly. “And I have no intention of doing anything stupid. But Kristy Lynn, she’s—”

“Your type?”

“I admit I find her very cute,” she says.

“Really.”

“I gather you don’t.”

“I don’t go for the manly types,” I say.

“Ha ha. You know, Les, I really admire the way you stepped up to the plate and went after me like you did. I mean, it showed real gumption. Actually, you made me realize that if there’s someone I’m interested in, I have to stop thinking it to death and just go for it.”

“There you are!” says a familiar voice.

I turn as Howard—what’s he doing here?—strides toward us.

“Well, well, well. What an amazing coincidence. Mind if I join you?” he asks, smiling big.

Before I can protest, Howard nudges his big ass into the booth. He waves at Shelleby, calling out, “A large Dr Pepper for me! Charity, you want anything? My treat!”

“Howard,” I sigh, “what do you think you’re doing?”

“Any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” he says, and smiles big at Charity. “Sure you don’t want anything? How about a refill on that shake?”

“Howard,” I sigh. Charity gives me a questioning look.

“Charity, I’m going to cut to the chase,” Howard says. “Les and I need your help. We’re desperate to meet girls, and, frankly, we don’t know how to do it—”

“Speak for yourself!” I protest.

“I mean, let’s face it,” Howard continues, “all we really know about girls is what the jocks brag about in gym class, and we suspect that’s mostly bullshit. You see, Charity, you can provide us with insider tips on what chicks really want in a guy.”

“Howard, shut up. I’m begging you.”

“Now, Les, let me hear the guy out. So, Bachbaugh,” Charity says. “What’s in it for me?”

Howard hands her a menu and says, “Order anything you want, as much as you want.”

Howard and I watch as Charity downs a cheeseburger and fries, a chocolate milk shake, and a slice of coconut cream pie. Who knew a girl could eat so much?

“Okay,” Howard finally says, rubbing his hands together, “what’s the secret to making women want us?”

Charity wipes her mouth with a napkin, belches a little, and says, “Here’s the thing. It’s got to be all about her.”

“Huh?” he asks.

“I mean, be
genuinely
interested in her,” she says. “I see these boys—I’m hit on by them all the time—who think they have to act like ‘real tough guys.’ They just don’t get it. A woman wants a good, honest, caring friend.”

“But I’ve always heard girls want excitement and fun,” I say.

“We want both!” she says. “A fun and exciting friend. If you’re capable of being that, you’ll get some, and then some.”

“Okay, I’ve got one—how do girls like to be kissed?” I ask.

“Take it slow and let her lead the way,” she says. “Pay attention to the way she kisses you and do like she does. I like it soft and slow.”

“Do girls play with themselves?” Howard asks.

“Not nearly as much as guys, I don’t think.”

“What about you—do you play with yourself?” he asks.

“Oh, Howard. Next question.”

“Is it true that girls’ boobs get hard-ons?” I ask.

“Now, that’s a retarded question,” Howard says.

“Kinda,” Charity says, “but only our nipples harden.”

“Wow.”

I glance out the window and see the four o’clock Trailways bus pulling in off the highway.

“Be prepared to do a lot of listening,” Charity counsels. “Girls like to talk. And if you’re a guy who’s willing to listen—and I mean really listen and pay attention—then you’re set.”

“When I asked you out,” I say, “did I do all right? If, uh, circumstances were different, would you have gone for me?”

“Definitely. You seemed really sincere.”

“So why doesn’t Mr. Sincere ever see any action?” Howard asks.

“Oh, he will,” she says. “He definitely will.”

I turn away to hide my gloating grin and watch as the bus hisses to a stop and the accordion doors open.

“I have a feeling everything is going to change in high school for you guys,” she says.

“Man, I hope so.”

Howard, looking out the window, says, “Whoa. Wait. Well, hello there.”

I turn and see HER alighting from the bus. Tall and curvy, skin the color of coffee with lots of milk, breasts pushing out of her halter top, tight blue jeans giving eloquent evidence of a perfect butt. A little dog is under her arm.

“My future has arrived on a Trailways bus,” Howard quips.

“In your dreams,” I laugh.

Wraparound sunglasses conceal HER eyes. Her curly black hair is pulled into a ponytail.

“A black woman in Harker City,” Howard says. “Gotta be a first.”

“She is hot,” Charity says, shaking her head. I’ve never heard a girl comment on another girl like this before.
That’s
hot.

Howard holds his hand to the window and makes slow, hypnotic-like gestures with his fingers, and in a low voice utters, “Come to me. Come to Howard. Look my way.”

And suddenly she does!

“Shit!” I drop my face flat on the table.

Charity’s giggling face is also on the table.

“It worked,” Howard says—he is also one with the Formica.

When I finally have the guts to lift my face up, the woman is gone. Just then Shelleby appears at our table, holding out a bulging doggy bag with a sealed envelope stapled to it. “Les, will you please give this to You Know Who. He just loves our cheeseburgers.”

I take the bag.

“Be sure he reads the note,” she says pointedly.

***

After Howard pays the bill (eleven dollars, and worth every penny), the three of us head outside. Our mystery woman is nowhere to be found. Then Howard tugs on my arm and points at the little motel office, where, through the window, I see that she’s exchanging cash for a room key. Her sunglasses are off and that’s when—

“Holy smokes!” I say. “I know her!”

“Who is she?” Charity asks.

“You
know
her?” Howard asks.

“My uncle has, um, pictures of her.”

“Is she a hooker?” asks Howard.

“I don’t know. She was naked in the pictures. Really, really naked.”

“Maybe she’s going to set up shop at the Sleep Inn Motel here,” Charity says.

“She knows my uncle. Her being here can’t be a coincidence.”

“But why would she check into a motel?” Howard asks. “Why not go straight to your house?”

The motel office door opens, and she emerges with the little dog. The three of us duck around the side of the restaurant. After a moment we peek out and watch her disappear into room number three (I make a mental note).

Howard turns to me and whispers, “Call me the moment your uncle tells you who she is.”

“Well, y’see, I can’t exactly ask him.”

His eyes beg for an explanation.

“I, uh, found her pictures when I was snooping in his stuff.”

Charity smiles as she straddles her bike. “Well, Booger, it looks like you’ve got a real mystery on your hands.”

I guess I do. A
sexy
mystery.

Seduction Tip Number 10:

Your Breast Work

Pushing open my bedroom door, I see Uncle Ray, wearing Dad’s red plaid robe, propped up on pillows, staring despondently out the window. His face is more black and blue than yesterday, with shadow-like pouches under his eyes.

I hand him the hamburger bag with the envelope on it.

“What’s this?” He tears open the envelope, reads the note, then balls it up and tosses it across the room.

“Whatever you do,” he says through his puffy lips, “don’t you let that Shelleby into this house, understand me? I want nothing to do with that needy bitch.”

He points to the blue plastic jug beside the bed. “Now will you please empty my piss pot.”

In the bathroom I plug my nose as I pour the pee into the toilet. When I return, Uncle Ray is snoring. I reach down, pick up the note, smooth it out, and read:

Another sad, complicated Daisy. With no Gatsby to save her.

***

“Lester Eckhardt, count yourself lucky you didn’t break Brett’s nose,” Mom huffs, then turns to Dad, who is chewing his Special K casserole. “Roger, what do you think his punishment should be?”

Dad clears his throat and says, “You know, Bev, the boy has a right to defend himself.”

“Roger!” Mom gasps. “He hit someone!”

“What should he have done?” Dad takes another bite of his dinner.

The bigger question is: what’s come over my mild-mannered dad?

“Think about how this will reflect on our family and the practice,” Mom says. “What are we supposed to tell people?”

“How about you tell me why we are always so damned concerned about what everyone in this town thinks all the time?” Dad snaps.

Mom stares at Dad, flabbergasted. “Well,” she splutters, “if you’re not going to punish him, I will. First off, young man, you’re grounded—”

The phone rings, shattering the exchange. I answer it before the second ring.

“Fact or wishful thinking?” Howard asks on the other end. “The hot babe who stepped off the bus today, her bathroom window happens to be open.”

“Fact?” I ask.

“Fact indeed,” he says. “Ten o’clock tonight, behind room number three. Be there or be square.”

I no sooner hang up the phone than it rings again.

“Hi there, Les. It’s me, Shelleby. Did you give Ray the note and cheeseburger?” she asks.

“Uh, yeah.”

“What’d he say?”

I turn away from my parents and say, “I don’t really know.”

“Oh. Well, will you please put him on the phone.”

“Er—he’s sleeping. Sorry. Gotta go.” I hang up.

“Who was that?” Mom asks.

“A . . . friend of Uncle Ray’s.”

“Who?”

“Some guy named . . .” I scan the kitchen. “Stove—Stover. Ed Stover, I think he said the name was.”

“Huh,” Mom says.

“Uncle Ray,” I say to the ceiling over the top bunk, “did you have a girlfriend in Kansas City?”

“I almost always have a chick in my life,” he mumbles from the bottom bunk. “Often more than one.”

“Your latest ones, what’d they look like?”

“I don’t want to talk about women.”

After a moment I ask, “Why’d you go with Shelleby if you knew she was married?”

“Jesus H. Christ, kid! What’s with all the questions?!”

“Just curious.”

“Look, I never force no one to do nothin’. It’s not my problem if a chick’s married.”

I lean over the edge of the bed. His bruised, whiskery face is immobilized in his stained and dirty neck brace. “No offense, Uncle Ray, but it kinda is your problem now.”

Uncle Ray flips me the bird before looking away.

Mom isn’t snoring until almost twenty past eleven. I tiptoe past Dad’s “ham shack,” where he’s honing in on static-filled voices from the Great Beyond, then slip out the back door, jump on my bike, and race to the motel. A light is on behind the drawn front curtains of room number three. When I slink around the motel’s weed-overgrown back side, I spot Howard standing on a pile of boards, peering into a small, cracked-open, frosted-glass window.

“Scoot over,” I whisper. I step onto the boards and they creak a little. The bathroom is dark, but the bedroom beyond it is lit by the flickering blue light of the TV. All I can really make out are her bare feet at the end of the bed.

“She’s been lying there watching TV for over an hour,” Howard whispers.

“She naked?”

“Got me.”

We stand there, staring and waiting.

“You’re lucky I’m even talking to you, Bachbaugh. I mean, grilling Charity like that.”

“She’s not
your
lesbian, Eckhardt. And it worked, didn’t it?” he whispers. “She gave us both some great tips.”

“That’s not the point, Howard, and—”

He nudges me. My pulse quickens. Her silhouette appears in the bathroom doorway. She switches on the light, and both Howard and I lean back a little. We watch her reach in and turn on the shower. God, that belly-button ring is so what’s the word? Kinky? She’s probably really wild. Stepping back, she pushes down her jeans, revealing her black silk panties, which she takes off.
Sweet Jesus!
I’ve never seen a real live naked woman’s hoo-ha. She’s furrier than in Uncle Ray’s pictures. She reaches up and strips off her halter top. Boobs! Huge brown boobs! Setting foot in the shower, she closes the curtain. Her sopping wet breasts are now at our eye level, the water sluicing down her nipples. There’s the smell of watermelon-scented soap mixed with steam. As she lathers her chest, I hear something: Howard’s panting. And oh, wait, so am I.

The next morning, in the hallway in front of the water fountain, I pass Brett. His nose is swollen and bluish.
Did I do that?
He lasers me with his stare, and I feel ice creep up my spine. In English class Howard slips me a note: “Let’s go back tonight with my dad’s camera. We must immortalize her in Polaroids.”

I decide not to write back.

Thank God, today is only a half day (some kind of end-of-the-year teacher conferences). Just shy of noon I’m riding my bike home, and as I start to round the corner onto our street, I hear some lady yell, “Open this door right now, you son of a bitch!”

And there she is: the Shower Lady is standing on my own front porch banging her fist on my very door. I hit the brakes. Today’s short shorts are orange—with a matching tube top and shiny black cowboy boots. She’s gotta be a hooker.

“You can’t slip away from me, Ray Eckhardt!” she yells, pounding away, her hoop earrings swinging. “I know where your sorry ass is hiding!”

As I cautiously roll closer, she turns around, giving me the once-over. “You live here?”

I nod a little and struggle to make eye contact.

“I’m looking for Mr. Ray Eckhardt.”

I stare at myself in the reflection of her big wraparound sunglasses. It takes all my self-control to keep my eyes on her face.

“Th-there’s . . . no one here by that n-n-name,” I stammer lamely.

She cocks her head a little. “This is the Eckhardt residence, ain’t it?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am, but there’s no one here by that name.”

She sighs, crosses her arms, and taps her booted foot. Above and behind her I see the curtains in my bedroom window move a little.

“You go in there and tell Mr. Nobody’s Here that Cookie ain’t leaving town till he comes out to the motel and talks to me. Tell him I am dug in for the duration.”

“But—”

“Sonny boy, the next time you try to cover for that coward, it might help if you moved his car out of the driveway first.”

As she struts across our freshly mown lawn, I can’t help but linger on her legs. Man oh man.

Finding the back door locked, I retrieve the spare key Mom keeps under a ceramic bullfrog in the flower garden. Upstairs, Uncle Ray stands beside my bedroom window, peering out like a fugitive. He turns to look at me.

“You didn’t tell her I was here, did you?”

“Uncle Ray, she saw your car.”

“Shit!”

He hobbles over to the bed and lies down, fear showing in his bloodshot, gray-bagged eyes. Uncle Ray’s hair is matted and greasy; he has almost a full beard now, flecked with gray. Big sweat rings darken the armpits of his pajamas.

“If I’m going to cover for you,” I press, “the least you can do is tell me who she is.”

“Just a stripper.”

Wow. I settle in my swivel desk chair and lean back. “Really? I’ve never met a stripper before.”

“There’s a shock. I deejay at the club where she dances. We had a thing. Now she claims she’s pregnant with my kid. Wants me to marry her.”

“Is that why you came here?” I ask. “To hide from her?”

He rubs his eyes. “I told her I’m not going to marry her.”

“Don’t you love her?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“Well, I don’t know. But what about the baby?”

He sits up and points at his chest. “Do I look like a daddy to you? Could you see me changing diapers? That’s for other guys. No, sir. Ray Eckhardt has never been, never will be the settle-down kind. I’m a lone wolf, a free agent, a rolling stone. That’s just who I am and I won’t apologize for it. No, sir. Last thing I need is a family to tie me down. Hand me a pen, paper, and envelope.”

I collect them from my desk, then watch him scribble something.

“I don’t know, Uncle Ray,” I say after a minute. “I think you’d be a pretty awesome dad.”

He looks up at me, brow creased in confusion, as if I’ve just told him I think he should become a priest.

“I mean, you’re a lot of fun to hang out with,” I explain. “And you know a lot about people and life. And you talk to me, you know, like a real person.”

He resumes scribbling, then grabs his big black wallet from the top of the dresser. My pulse quickens when I catch sight of the wad of twenties he takes out and stuffs, along with the note, into the envelope.

“Just deliver this to her at the motel,” he says as he licks and seals the envelope. “And don’t lose it! There’s three hundred dollars in there. I think that’s a pretty decent amount, don’t you?”

I nod and slip the envelope into my backpack. He hands me a ten dollar bill and winks. “And here’s your gratuity, kid.”

And so with three hundred and ten dollars—of hush money?—in my backpack, the most money I’ve ever seen, I pedal down to the motel. I’ve never been in the middle of an adult drama like this. It’s nerve-wracking and kind of fun.

Navigating my bike across the hot, fissured asphalt of the motel parking lot, I keep wondering if I could pay this Cookie to give one of those lap dances. Would my ten be enough? Since that is her job, maybe she’d think nothing of it. I drop my bike and step onto room three’s little porch. Knocking on the rust-streaked door, I can hear the applause of a TV audience from inside.

“Who is it?” she yells through the door.

“It’s Les—Ray Eckhardt’s nephew!”

“One sec!”

The TV goes silent, the door opens, and Cookie squints out. “Ray with you?”

I shake my head. “He, uh, wanted me to give you something.”

Cookie ushers me inside, and the scent of her flowery perfume is amazing. Her dog stretches out on one of the pillows on the double bed, a small black-and-white TV rests atop a pressed-wood dresser, a lone straight-back chair lurks in the corner. Cookie shuts the door, and I see that her gleaming pink toenails match her fingernails and lipstick.

I’m shrugging off my backpack when I notice a book called
You’re Going to Have a Baby!
on the nightstand, along with a banana peel. I hand her the envelope.

She opens it, eyes the money, reads the letter, then stuffs the money back into the envelope and thrusts it back at me. “Tell him I’m not getting no abortion.”

I stand frozen. I have given her money for an abortion? Mom and Dad believe abortion is murder and a sin. Did Uncle Ray almost make me an accomplice to my own cousin’s murder?

“You tell him I’m gonna have this baby, with or without him. . . .” And then her voice cracks, her face crinkles up, and she flings herself facedown on the bed. She’s crying—no, actually, she’s sobbing. What should I do? Am I supposed to hug her and say “there, there”? Will she slap me if I try? I stare at her quaking back and shoulders and try not to notice her butt too much.
Geez.
For the next few minutes I stand awkwardly and repeat the phrases I heard at my grandpa’s funeral: “I’m real sorry.” “You have to try to be strong.” “Things have a way of working themselves out.” No one has ever been less convincing.

The little dog whimpers and sniffs Cookie’s face. Her chest is still heaving as she wipes her running eyes with the back of her hand. When I go into the bathroom and tear off some toilet paper, I notice a pair of purple panties and a lacey bra hanging from the shower-curtain rod. I also notice the frosted window in the shower is still open about an inch.

Back in the room, Cookie is sitting up, her back against the headboard, her knees drawn to her chest. I hand her the toilet paper.

“Thanks,” she says, and blows her nose.

I shift my weight from one tennis shoe to the other. Canned laughter blares from the TV set.

“So, Ray’s your uncle. You don’t seem much like him.” She blows her nose again. “What’s your birth date?”

“February 11.”

“Aquarius.” She wipes the corners of her eyes. “You’re kind and sensitive. Ray, he’s a Cancer. I should’ve known better than to get involved with a Cancer. All they really care about is themselves. Why don’t you sit down, sugar, you’re making me nervous standing there twitchin’ like that.”