Falling in Love (2 page)

“
Uh, yeah.” Skip made a
motion and she turned, going through the gap with Skip stumbling on
his first try and wondering what the hell had just
happened.

That wasn’t what he meant at
all.

He really wasn’t like that, and never
with customers.

It was against store
policy.

Scene Two

After sticking his head into the
garage, and yelling to Dave that he was going to lunch, they walked
down the street in silence.

Skip took a quick look at his hands,
but they were no worse than usual. It was mostly road dust from the
tires, and it would come off (mostly) in the diner’s rest
room.

She was on his right, and he took a
good look again.

Mallory would have to be at least
five-ten, and very slender, very erect in her bearing. The hair was
a glorious pile, and she was definitely dressed to kill. She looked
to be about the right age.

She glanced up at him and smiled, then
turned away.

Skip tried to watch where he was
going.

“
It’s right along here.”
Two more store-fronts.

On the angled glass panels inside
entryways, he was able to study her some more as they
went.

Wow.

Just wow.

***

“
I’ll have the, ah…” The
waitress was harried but Skip was at a total loss.

“
How about the
cheeseburger deluxe?”

It was what Mallory was
having too, so he nodded. Keep it simple, stupid. For whatever
reason, Mallory wasn’t here to be impressed by ambience or to
absorb the
haute
atmosphere. Which it wasn’t, in any case.

He could love a girl like
that.

Shit.

There was precious little waiting time
in which to talk. One nice thing about the Golden Knight was the
old cook, who if nothing else was very quick, having made a million
of them over the years.

She was easy enough to talk to. The
burgers and fries didn’t take all that long to consume.

Whatever possessed him, he
suggested hanging out in the park, saying it was his
lunch
hour
, and she went right along with
it.

They ended up sitting on a bench and
exchanging life stories, something that hadn’t happened to either
one of them in quite some time.

She was a single mom, having only
recently gotten off welfare and Skip had just broken up with a
right bitch, going by the sounds of things. There were two sides to
every story, of course—Skip was careful enough to point that
out.

When they got back to the shop, her
phone was charged up. She thanked him sweetly. He got back to work,
with Dave bursting at the seams and unwelcome questions brimming
over.

She called some friend or other, who
came and picked up her up ten minutes later in a dark blue Honda
with smoked windows. Skip was pretty sure it was a woman, but the
visibility through the glare on the windshield was bad. Right about
then the parts delivery guy pulled into the lot and he had other
things on his mind.

***

Mallory came back at ten to five. Her
Betsy was sitting out front, looking pretty much the way it had
looked before, but now it was in a different slot.

The bald-headed guy was out front,
with the hood lifted on a big old Camaro, a black one.

The car was running wide
open.

He was revving it up from inside the
engine bay and it sounded very powerful.

He glanced up, and then straightened
up as she walked past, and with a sorrowful look he watched her go
into the front door on the office side of things.

“
Hi.”

Skip had that befuddled look on his
face again, somehow he just knew it.

“
Oh, hi. You’re back just
in time—” His glance took in the clock, her, her legs, her face,
and then he went looking for the bill. “The whole thing comes out
to three-hundred-forty-eight dollars and nineteen cents, including
tax and disposal fees…”

“
Ah. Yes. About that
bill…”

There was something odd in her voice.
There was something odd in her face—something bold, defiant, and
yet there was a plea, of desperation, unwritten, something else in
there too.

The door behind her popped open and
Skip looked past her.

“
So, I’ll see you tomorrow
then. Ma’am.” Dave nodded politely as she turned and then he was
off for the day.

Dave was a great friend, when Skip
thought about it. He read that one just right, didn’t
he?

She turned back to Skip.

“
About that
bill.”

***

The problem, as she explained to Skip,
what that she only had about two hundred and forty dollars in her
chequing account.

“
Store policy. I’m sorry,
it’s just that we don’t take cheques…” Skip began, just as he
usually did, but she didn’t let him finish.

“…
and my friend still owes
me forty bucks, but she doesn’t have it, ‘cause I called her while
I was waiting…”

“
Ah…”

“
And my daughter needs a
few things, and then there’s the gas bill…” And the hydro bill, and
the phone bill.

Skip slumped as she told him her
story.

“…
and so what I was
thinking…”

“
Oh, hey. Credit’s not a
problem—you can make monthly payments. It doesn’t have to be much.
We’ll work something out.”

She halted then. She looked at Skip’s
face across the counter, and then at the long, blue fabric backed
strips that this modern strip-mall operation boasted.

Abruptly, she turned and went over and
found the chain. She fumbled with it and then the curtains began to
retract, and to swivel, shutting out the bright light from the
street. Then, with him staring, completely mystified, she went out
and grabbed the chain beside the one open door and began cranking
it down…

Skip came out of the office and
stared, jaw open.

The door hit the ground and the
side-latches snapped into place.

“
What…?”

“
I can’t afford to pay
you, Skip. I’m desperate.”

A glimmer of what she might be talking
about lit up in his head and he backed up hastily as she came
towards him.

She pointed.

“
Office.” It was all she
said, and he scuttled to comply.

The look on her face was sheer
determination.

“
Miss, ma’am, I mean,
really…”

“
Mallory…my name is
Mallory.”

“
Yes—yes—of course it is.
Mallory.” Poor Skip was speechless when she unbuttoned her vest and
then threw it onto the corner of the flat leather settees along the
front window.

“
I couldn’t help but
notice a fridge out back.”

Skip just gulped and
nodded.

His eyes moved back and forth and he
figured it out.

Skip’s knees were pretty wooden and
the knees kind of wobbly but as he recalled there were three or
four beers in there, down low on the bottom rack of the
door.

***

“
Mallory. Mallory. Are you
sure you really want to do this?”

Skip sat in the corner, painfully
aware of traffic noises, in the busy, four-lane plus a centre
turning lane kind of a street outside his business
establishment.

The lights were harsher now, with no
warm and diffused light from the sun, and Mallory took a long gulp,
gasped, and belched softly. The lights hummed. He’d always known
it, of course, but now it took on significance.

She took a quick look at the bottle
and exhaled, in and out a couple of times. Then she tipped it up
and chugged it until there was nothing left but foam and
air.

She lowered the empty bottle and came
up for breath.

“
Ah!” It was exactly the
way Skip would have done.

She wiped her mouth with the back of
her hand. He would have done that too.

She leaned over and put the bottle on
the end of the counter, and poor Skip’s eyes followed
it.

But it was all plastic laminates, it
would wipe off. While he was getting the beer, she had found her
station on the radio, some light dance-pop thing, and then she
started gyrating in front of him. Her eyes bored into his and there
was this initial cynical reaction. Skip had sat in a few strip bars
over the years, over a few beers and plenty of bullshit
conversations. But this girl was a total amateur—he saw that at
once.

It was vulnerability, of all things.
Skip sat up, face serious, and just watched her eyes. She never
looked away, and it was all he could do not to fucking cry for some
reason.

Skip blinked it away as best he could,
and then he steeled himself.

She didn’t have to do this.

You don’t have to do this.

She really didn’t have to do
this.

She turned her back, bent over at the
waist, and still swaying her hips a little, she peeked at him,
holding on to her ankles.

So she had seen it done somewhere.
It’s not that he thought she was a virgin or anything,
but.

But.

Skip took a quick gulp of his beer.
She straightened up, turned around, and then her hands went to the
left side. She struggled a bit, biting her lip in frustration but
then the skirt dropped away.

Skip’s heart surged and he sat up a
little straighter. The trouble was that he still had a
conscience.

But this couldn’t be real
anyway.

She flung the skirt with a quick kick,
and it came up and he grabbed it before it went over his shoulder.
It was still warm in his hand. He sat holding it in disbelief for a
moment, then laid it on the coffee table.

She came closer now, undoing the
buttons of her blouse, starting at the bottom and working her way
up.

“
Wait!” She was shaking
her head no, but Skip got up and headed for the back of the
building to hit a few switches and dim the light in
here.

He nipped right back.

She hadn’t gone anywhere.

“
That’s
better.”

She nodded silently, and slowly
swiveled in front of him in time to the music.

She wriggled, slowly and sensually, as
best she could, and then she shrugged out of the blouse and tossed
that aside as well.

“
I have condoms in my
purse. I’ve never needed them before now.” She mashed her breasts
inside the white bra, a small line of lace around the upper
edges.

Skip was breathing pretty hard by now,
clutching the bottle by the neck. The sounds outside were still
there.

“
Oh, no…no.”

A look of startled humour crossed her
face.

She mocked him.

“
Oh, no! Not
that!”

And he had to give a wry little
grin.

Sure, lady.

Whatever you say.

Skip found himself sitting up, and yet
slouching down almost immediately afterwards…it was like he kept
climbing up the back of the couch or something, and at the same
time afraid of being seen. Skip crossed and uncrossed his legs once
or twice, that was for sure.

Mallory was magnificent, and Skid
licked his lips.

He couldn’t believe this was
happening. She stared at him over her left shoulder. Keeping her
eyes locked on his, she rotated to the left and then she was facing
him again.

Her eyes wouldn’t let him
go.

It was like Skip was frightened or
something.

She put her hands in the top of her
silky yet sensibly-cut white briefs and opened her mouth and rolled
her tongue around her lips. Spinning, she stood looking over her
shoulder again. Then she gave a little snap and a shove. The
panties slowly made their way down, as she moved her knees back and
forth to assist.

She lifted one foot and then the other
and stepped out of them. She turned and faced Skip.

“
Mallory…Mallory…”

“
Yes, Skip?”

“
You really don’t have to
do this. We could make some other arrangement.”

“
I know.”

“
You do know that. You do,
don’t you?”

She nodded.

“
Ah, Skip. But you’re
forgetting one thing.”

Eyebrows raised, he asked the
inevitable question as her hands went up and behind her, for surely
the bra was next.

“
And what’s
that?”

“
I want to, Skip. It’s
just that I want to. The fact that I really can’t pay the bill is
just a bonus.”