The Universe is a Very Big Place (16 page)

Lanie leaned over, studying the cards and Spring noticed she was remarkably limber for a woman of her age and girth. "Would you skip to the end of the book without hearing the story?" Lanie flipped more cards over, muttering to herself. Spring saw several she was familiar with, and a few she had never seen.

"Well, Jason is in the picture. The Moon. Might give you a bit of trouble as usual, but nothing you can’t handle. But still, I’m not sure what this all means. You have plenty of men around you. But nothing is really happening."

Spring exhaled. "Sounds about right."

"Must be bad karma from another life," Lanie scolded her.

Spring watched as Lanie turned over the last card. Lanie gasped and clapped her hands. "Finally. A minor arcana card. But since it’s in the final position it’s a big one."

Spring looked down at the spread. The Knight of Cups.

"Looks like there’s another man in your life now, Spring. And I‘d say from the looks of things, he is here to shake things up a bit."

"But I don’t know any other men."

"Doesn’t matter. He knows you."

Thirteen

Sam and Spring had taken the boys to Chuck E. Cheese and Lanie had the house to herself. She put on some music, some good music, not that classical crap Sam listened to. Santana‘s Black Magic Woman.

"God, I miss the 70s," she said as she gyrated around the living room. "Those were the days."

She twirled, liberating her body from her dress and underwear, kicking her clothing into Sam’s recliner.

"Woooo!" She let the music take her, rolling her head and swinging her hair the way the girl did in that movie about strippers she had watched the night before on pay-per-view. "Mama needs a drink." She danced her way towards the kitchen, past the large glass door that led to the back yard.

And there he was. Her peeper! His little head hovered between the slats of the fence. He saw her, blinked, and scurried away.

Lanie’s smile snaked across her face. "Like what you see, big boy?" She fanned herself and shimmied. "Yeah. You know you do. You know you do."

The sound of the car pulling up in the driveway sent Lanie running to her muumuu and scampering back to her room. Didn’t anyone stay out late anymore?

Sam held the door open and two little blond boys wearing T-shirts that said
Wasting Away in Cabo
and
Miss Pac Man for President
tumbled inside. Spring followed, shaking her head.

"How the hell does anyone get kicked out of Chuck E Cheese?" Sam demanded, slamming the door behind them. The boys disappeared down the hall as Spring hung up their baseball caps.

"I don’t know. They are special I guess." She smiled at him, trying to lighten the mood, but he wasn’t going for it.

"Only your kids could turn Whack-A-Mole into a felony offense. Have you thought about what a good paddling would do for them?"

"Spanking? Sam, are you crazy? They’re a bit rambunctious but not worse than the kids I grew up with. I don’t think they need to be spanked. It’s not in their best interest."

"Well, it might be in mine." Sam walked over to the sofa and flopped down. Picking up the remote control he scanned the channels, settling on the Shark Week Marathon on the Discovery Channel. He smiled and folded his arms behind his head.

"I could make it up to you," Spring said. She walked towards Sam, obscuring his view of the TV. She rolled her hips and touched her lips with her fingertip the way the lady did in that movie Lanie had her watch last evening.

"Pookie, you are in the way," Sam whined, straining his neck to look around her. Spring took a sudden step forward and snatched the remote control from his lap. With one quick click, the shark and scuba man disappeared. "They were about to eat the guy in the wetsuit," Sam moaned.

"You know Sam, call me crazy. But isn’t it strange to you that we never have sex?"

"We have sex. Remember Easter?"

How could she forget? He had come to bed dressed in bunny ears and a cottontail, fastened to his bottom with safety pins.

"Sam, I can count on my two hands how many times we’ve had sex over the past year. Nine times. That’s less than once a month. Doesn’t it bother you at all?"

Sam looked around, his eyes widening. "Shhh. Lanie and the boys will hear. Do you want that?"

"Lanie is the one who brought it up to me, if you want to know the truth. She wonders why she never hears anything coming from our bedroom. I tried to ignore her, but she is right."

Sam stood his ground. "Damn it, Spring. There are a million other more pressing matters in the world than food and sex...the only two things you seem to care about." Sam surveyed her waist as if to point out that her vices were beginning to show.

Spring gaped. Sam’s face softened and he patted the couch beside him, beckoning for her to join him. When she crawled up beside him he tenderly pushed the damp hair from her face.

"Sweetie, listen. We need to talk," he said reassuringly, as she sipped on the diet soda Lanie had left on the coffee table. "Lately, I’m getting the feeling that the only reason you are with me is for my body."

Spring choked, spitting soda all over herself and Sam. "I’m sorry you feel that way," Spring said, holding back the laugh. Sex, even at its best, was lukewarm with Sam. He was so fussy about the way it was executed and he had so many rules.

Rule 1: One must always wear a condom, maybe even two. They did not even have to be the good condoms, such as those that were lubricated or ribbed for her pleasure. In fact, the less money spent on the quality of condoms, the more money that could be spent on important things like mochas and books.

Rule 2: Foreplay is a myth created by a matriarchal society to enslave men. Those days have passed. Get used to it.

Rule 3: One must never kiss one’s partner anywhere below the neck. Ever. You could touch someone below the neck, if you must, but your hands must not linger on any one body part for more than say, 30 seconds. You were being timed.

Rule 4:
 
The missionary position is your friend. Learn to love it. Experimentation is bad. Woman on top is heretical. God might come and smite us right in the midst of lovemaking for even thinking of this maneuver.

Rule 5: The bed only. Enough said. Refer to rule 4.

Rule 6: Forget any semblance of after-play either. Or snuggling. Immediately after sex the male must rise, steal the blanket, and shower profusely until all evidence of physical intercourse has been washed away. Then the male deposits blanket back down on the bed for the female, and sneaks quietly into the study to read before going to sleep.

"Spring, honey, are you understanding what I’m trying to say?" Sam was waving his hand before her eyes, trying to bring her back. She had gone to that place she went whenever he was trying to explain anything important to her.

Spring nodded.

"What did I say, then?" He quizzed her.

Spring knew the answer by heart, even if she hadn’t heard the speech today. "That lately you think I just want you for sex. And that makes you feel dirty and disgusting and demeaned. That I should be focusing my energies on more important matters. That sex is trivial and only for people with no will power and no ambition. And should only be used for procreation." Spring tilted her head and looked at him for confirmation.

Sam tightened his lips and smiled. It was strained. "Well, most of what you are saying is true Spring, although I may have said it differently. The Lord wants us to have sex but only when we are married, and we are not married yet. If you do not have sex within the sanctity of marriage then you are saying to God that He did not know what is best for us when He laid down the laws of marriage."

Spring thought for a moment. "Do you think there’s any chance that God might be a She, Sam?"

Sam seemed taken aback as if she had said the most blasphemous words that had ever been uttered. Then, slowly he smiled. "You are so funny, Pooks! You almost had me. Give me a hug!" He took her in his arms and patted her head reassuringly. "There, there, it will be okay. We will get married soon. I have a date picked out now: July 21. Then you can use my body whenever you want!"

Spring allowed herself to be hugged a moment more, and then released herself from his grasp in time to see a blur pass in the dining room. Two boys chasing each other using their fingers as guns and wearing their grandmother’s underwear as face masks.

Fourteen

It was John’s first outing to a real grocery store. Back home there had been only one place to shop, Earl’s Beef and Hardware. Where back home there had been a church on every corner, here there was a supermarket. It seemed these people had traded in God for convenience. John had driven around the city aimlessly until he finally settled upon this one. It wasn’t as newfangled and shiny as most of the others, which was why he chose it. He was getting darn tired of shiny.

Even this store felt overwhelming. The fluorescent lights gave shoppers a stark, zombie-like appearance. They stocked food here he had never seen before. He imagined his family would get a good laugh at some of it. Like pot stickers. That was a warning if ever he heard one.

Finally he found his comfort zone in an aisle filled with boxes of macaroni and cheese and canned chili. And then he saw her. The woman who smashed his truck. She was hard to miss. She ran past his aisle many times, dodging carts, skirting children, pushing through families. She reminded him of the White Queen from
Alice in Wonderland
...or was it the Red Queen? Running fast, yet getting nowhere. Her arms were full sometimes and empty others. He caught glimpses of her expression as she passed his aisle, a strange combination of panic and sweetness. He wondered what it was she was looking for.
 
Finally, she ended up in the canned foods aisle with him. This time her arms were empty.

John tried to study her discreetly, his head bent over the cart while his eyes glanced up from time to time. She was scanning the aisle, her right arm raised and her index finger pointed. She seemed to be using it as a divining rod; it led and she followed, pulling her towards something, finally resting on a can of tomatoes.

"Ah, here it is," she said out loud, and John could see the smile on her profile. "I must have been planning to cook spaghetti for dinner."

John scratched his head and studied her more. Even beneath her sack of a dress he could tell that she was petite and curvy. The material hugged the roundness of her front and back yet fell softly away from her middle. Her arms and legs were tan, a natural tan, not like the girls who visited the salons back home. Her skin was clear. Her lipstick smeared out slightly over her full lips as if she had tried to apply it correctly but was in too big of a hurry to be bothered with precision, like a school child that refused to color in the lines. For some reason this appealed to his artistic nature.

"Spaghetti," she said. "I’m making spaghetti." She turned to him and smiled.

"Yes, I heard," John replied, shoving his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t sure what the proper response to a statement like that was.

"You see, I lost my list," she explained, holding out her empty palm. "And I couldn’t remember what I had wanted to eat for dinner."

"Oh?" John lowered his eyes. She had not recognized him yet, and he wanted to keep talking to her before the realization struck. "Couldn't you have decided once you got here?"