Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (19 page)

It’s annoying as hell, but in a weird way, educational.

Sam’s sudden barking captures everyone’s attention. They look over and see Jimmy and Gordon tussling in the middle of the pool. It looks like they’re trying to drown each other. Gordon yelps just before his head disappears underwater and Sam, with a heroic yelp of her own, leaps into the pool to defend her young master.

Sam paddles furiously across the water toward Gordon and Jimmy, who both stop their struggling and come up for air to observe the absurd sight: the dismayed dog with her head barely above water–huffing from exertion–as her long, floppy brown ears float alongside her like hairy pontoons.

“Sam!” Gordon says, treading water. “I didn’t know you could swim.”

Only when she’s awake, everyone soon realizes, as the excitement proves too much for Sam and narcolepsy steals over her. Her eyes roll around like loose marbles as she takes one final breath, then the water closes above her head. She sinks toward the bottom of the pool like a torpedoed basset hound submarine.

“
Uh-oh.
Can dogs breath underwater?” Jimmy asks.

As the four adults watch all this from the Jacuzzi, it’s Stan who stands up and decides to take action. With steamy water dripping from his yellow shorts, Stan leaps from the Jacuzzi into the pool, diving deep to retrieve the dog’s quavering form. A few tense moments pass as Stan–like a merman–completes his underwater rescue, then he surfaces with Sam in his brawny arms. Gordon and Jimmy help him get her over to the Kool Deck, where Stan lays the soggy dog on her side and starts pumping his clenched fist up and down on her diaphragm, in a modified version of CPR.

“Give her mouth-to-mouth, Stan!” Janice shouts, waving a bottle of gin from the Jacuzzi. She puts her lips to the bottle and gulps.

Closer to the action, Gordon asks, “Is she all right?”

Sam shudders and coughs up water with a big doggy
gak
. She sneezes and looks at Stan still pumping away at her chest, then she scrambles to get up. She coughs up more water over by the fence, retching as Gordon and Jimmy cheer, then she takes a wide stance on her short little legs and shakes herself off. A fizz of water flies everywhere.

“Way to go, Dad!” Jimmy says. “You saved Sam!”

“Thanks, Mister Marrsden,” Gordon adds politely, wondering why his own father hadn’t been the one to save the day.

Mal is asking himself that, too. The answer, of course, is that Mal is far too drunk for quick thinking. His reflexes are shot. He’s completely shit-faced. Hammered. Bombed out of his skull.

Maybe mezcal really
does
have mescaline in it
, thinks Mal.
I thought that was just my own happy horseshit, but if I start seeing feathered snakes flying around yapping at me, then I’ll know for sure.

While Mal is grimly assessing his own diminished capacities, Stan struts back to the Jacuzzi to bask in glory after his heroics.

“You looked like quite the stud while you were saving that dog, Stan,” Janice says with just a trace of venom.

“Really, Stan, you got us both horny,” says Cynthia, who’s more than a little soused herself.

Mal just stares into space, thinking of ancient Toltec gods and the $360,000 he has tied up in Sammy’s wine and booze inventory.

“Look at this!” Stan says, brushing his arms. “I’ve got dog hair all over…. I don’t want to bring it in the Jacuzzi with me. I better go do a victory lap to get this stuff off.”

“We’ll watch from here, you big hero,” says Cynthia.

“Oh
please
…” Janice groans.

Trying to look like Johnny Weissmuller in one of those old
Tarzan
movies, Stan springs off the diving board back into the pool. When he surfaces, he turns over and starts doing the backstroke, spouting a stream of water from his puckered lips for comic effect. “Man, this is the life!” he shouts. He’s halfway across the pool when a thready cloud of violet blooms in the churning water and starts trailing in his wake.

“Hey, Dad!” shouts Jimmy, still standing at the edge of the pool, watching his father swim. “Dad! What’s that purple stuff coming off your pants?”

Stan looks down. Jimmy’s right–something’s going on. A watery purple jellyfish seems to be emanating from his shorts. It’s getting more inky and obvious by the second. Being privy to certain bodily functions he had hoped to conceal from everyone else, Stan–to his great chagrin–suddenly knows what’s up. His only way out is to pretend ignorance, but it’s a long shot.

“What the heck is this?” Stan asks, clambering out of the pool from the steps at the shallow end. Pretending outrage, he stands staring at the purple water dripping down his legs and swears, “Goddamnit, the dye in my dang pants must’ve run.”

Mal–out of his mezcal trance now–is overcome with a fit of drunken giggling. It’s making it hard for him to talk: “Your pants are yellow, Stan. Just like something else would be–
normally
. But I, um, put this special chemical in the pool. It turns…
purple
… when the kids…
go
wee-wee
….” He’s almost choking on hilarity now. “I guess the kids weren’t the only ones I had to worry about.” That’s it. Mal throws back his head and laughs.

“Oh, Stan!” says Janice.

Stan just stands there, humiliated, with a big purple stain marring the crotch of his shorts. “Well, you could’ve warned me,” he grumbles.

“I guess I wasn’t counting on you taking a leak in my pool there, Stanley.”

“You’re just like a little boy,” Janice tells her husband. “You shouldn’t’ve drunk so much iced tea before we came over!”

“C’mon, Stan…” Cynthia says, rising from the Jacuzzi, “I’ll take you to the shower and find some of Mal’s clothes for you to put on.”

“God, I’m so sorry about this, Cynthia,” Stan says, head down, morosely tagging along behind her as she waddles, flat-footed, toward the house.

“Don’t sweat it, Stan,” she says, lighting a cigarette. “I’ve seen Mal do much worse.”

Gordon and Jimmy follow them inside. “I think we’re done swimming today,” Gordon says, stating the obvious. “Can me and Jimmy go shoot some pool down at the arcade?”

Cynthia and Stan tell the boys they can go, just to get them out of the way.

Back at the Jacuzzi, Janice has scooted over a little closer to Mal. “Can they see us out here from inside the house?” she asks him.

Mal feels a quiet thrill, like a little kid in a hideout (which was usually just some overturned couch with sheets covering it in his day, but
what the hell
…). “We’re safe,” he assures Janice. “I designed it so no one could spy on us.”

“That’s great, Mal,” Janice says, stubbing out a cigarette, then reaching for her bikini straps. “So… you wanna see my boobs?”

“What?”

“Oh, c’mon, you’ve hardly stopped staring at ‘em since I got here. So take a good look, why don’t you? It’s okay with me. Knock yourself out.” And with a few quick yanks, Janice has her bikini top all the way off.

“Wow!” says Mal, dumbfounded. “They’re really, really great!” In fact, they’re everything he’s fantasized about and more. For Mal, it’s the über-rack, the
ne plus ultra
of titties–the archetype of perfect jugs. He can feel the blood thundering into his erection, straining against the stretchy fabric of his Speedo like a catapult readying to launch a burning log across an enemy queen’s battlements.

Janice puts her hand on him under the water. “Christ, you’ve got a big one,” she says, stroking him. “Let’s get it out of that swimsuit so it can breathe a little.” She tugs on the band of Mal’s Speedo and his one-eyed monster springs free, dazzled in the bubbles of the Jacuzzi jets. “Let me get a grip on this Big Boy now….” Her fingers encircle the glans of his penis, then move a little lower and clench him tight.

“Oh gosh, Janice!” Mal jolts and bucks.

“Do you like my tits, Mal?”

“
God!
They’re fantastic!”

“D’you wanna fuck them?” Janice starts stroking him with vigor.

“Hell yes!”

“Show me how you’d fuck them, Mal….”

She’s really pumping him now. Mal’s left leg is twitching like a dog with an insatiable itch. He tries to rise up in the Jacuzzi, toward Janice’s glistening breasts, but she pushes him back down. It’s as if his body is a balloon and she’s holding the string. “No,” she says, enjoying her power over him. “Not until you’re ready to come for me.”

“I’m ready,” says Mal, gritting his teeth.

“Then show me your cock.”

She lets him float up again. The head of Mal’s penis emerges from the roiling water like a fleshy red periscope. She moves toward him slowly, like one of Neptune’s topless daughters carved on the bowsprit of a majestic old sailing ship, until her slick, silky breasts engulf him. Squeezing, she lets him pump his rod between them. Then, with a sort of spastic inhaled scream, Mal comes.

It’s a gusher. Thick, ropy gouts of sperm shoot straight into the air. They rise to a height of seven feet or more before tumbling back upon themselves to fall plopping into the Jacuzzi water. Janice checks her hair for errant strands, but doesn’t find anything.

“Wow, that was quite a show you put on there,” she says. “They should put you in the circus.”

A tingling sense of hollowness has already left Mal limp. “That was the best orgasm I’ve had in years,” he says, searching his mind for a compliment. That wasn’t quite enough. “You’re such an incredibly sexy babe,” he tries again, thinking:
Now that’s more like it
…. “I hope we can meet up again later for a rematch.”

“We’ll see, buddy boy…” Janice says as she slips back into her bikini top. “Let’s just make sure we don’t get caught this time, okay?”

Mal hears the sliding glass door rolling back along its tracks. He ducks down low in the Jacuzzi and stuffs himself back into his swimsuit as Stan and Cynthia walk out onto the patio. Stan is wearing a pair of Mal’s khaki shorts. They’re both laughing.

“Where do you think they’ve been this whole time?” he asks Janice.

“Probably getting it on in the shower,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Stan likes clean sex.”

Before Mal can get his mind around the idea of his wife committing adultery
(“That raging slut!”),
Cynthia shouts: “Hey, you guys! Want some dessert? We’ve got homemade blackberry cobbler with ice cream here.”

Mal explains to Janice that he baked the cobbler himself a few days ago. “It’s good,” he tells her. “We should probably have some. It might help sober us up.”

“Sounds great,” Janice says, getting out of the water, dripping, “but I’m fine with being drunk.”

They both walk over to the umbrella-shaded patio table, where Cynthia and Stan have set out ice cream bowls and the cobbler. Mal sits down heavily in one of the outdoor chairs. He puts a leg up across his knee and is about to ask Cynthia where she put the ice cream when he sees the big wad of jism clinging to the hair on his left ankle. It’s a hot glob of man chowder in the shape of a single exponentially magnified spermatozoon. It couldn’t be any more obvious, sitting there like a snake basking in sunshine, shimmering with a pearly gleam.
Dang
, thinks Mal,
that’s a heck of a lot of spunk!
It must have been floating on top of the water in the Jacuzzi and gotten stuck to him as he was climbing out.

Mal quickly puts both feet back on the ground and swings his legs under the table. He’s panicking now.
How can I get rid of this?
he’s thinking.
If anyone sees it, they’ll know I was fooling around with Janice. Stan will probably kill me–or Cynthia will cut my dick off.
He looks around for a napkin, hoping he can wipe away the evidence without drawing attention to himself.

“Oh, darn! Mal, I forgot the ice cream,” Cynthia says. “Can you go get it?”

“Do we even need it?” Mal asks, stalling for time. He’ll be busted for sure if he gets up.
Where are the damn napkins?

“Of course we need it, you silly-billy. And bring out some paper towels while you’re at it. We ran out of napkins.”

With a sick churning in the pit of his stomach, Mal starts to get up. But then he pauses–with a mixture of repulsion and relief–when he hears the fairy bell tinkling of Sam’s dog collar under the table. He feels her wet nose graze against his shin. Soon she’s licking away at his ankle, removing all signs of his transgression, making Mal feel… well, how
does
he feel?

Not reborn, exactly. Certainly not absolved of sin. But at least he feels like he’s going to get away with it this time–thanks to man’s best friend.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

Four weeks later, Gordon finds himself cast adrift in the murky green aquarium dimness inside Lost Weekend Liquors, the store his father owns with Sammy Beaufont. He’s off by himself because the two men are having an argument–something about receipts and the lease. Gordon can’t make out what they’re saying exactly, standing as he is behind the thick glass door of the refrigerated wine vault. He can, however, see Sammy gesticulating wildly from behind the antique cash register on the mahogany desk near the front entrance. Sammy pauses from his outburst only long enough to unscrew the lid from a brown vitamin jar full of capsules containing dried seaweed, herbal extracts, and essential minerals. He’s told Gordon he eats the pills instead of food (tossing them back with great gulps of zinfandel), claiming they’ll keep him young and vital. So far the plan doesn’t seem to be working. Sammy is a short, fat man with bruised lizard skin bags under his eyes, a huge bony nose, and unruly black hair. He resembles no one so much as that famed ukulele-playing weirdo who’s always on television singing “Tip-Toe Through The Tulips.” Tiny Tim.

Gordon turns his attention to the wine bottles stacked like torpedoes in their neat wooden racks. He doesn’t know much about wine and has only vague notions of why such snobbery seems to be associated with the act of drinking it. Some of the bottles go for four hundred dollars or more. His father has bragged that he and Sammy have the best wine inventory in all of Fresno County. But Gordon wonders if there are enough wine connoisseurs in Fresno to keep the liquor store financially sound. Probably not, going by the snippets he’s heard from Mal and Sammy’s argument.