Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (3 page)

 She ordered up another couple of Cervezas.

 "So when did you?" I asked, after a while, long enough to catch her on the hop.

 "What?"

 "Lose your cherry?"

 She blinked at me. "That's kind of a personal question."

 "No, sorry - I mean your
voting
cherry. Which election?"

 "Oh, I see." She sighed and picked at the label of her beer bottle. "Nineteen ninety-two," she said, turning wistful. "I lost my voting virginity to one William Jefferson Clinton."

 "He'd probably get a kick out of that."

 "True," she said, and giggled. "Is it sad that I look at him nowadays and think 'I still would'?"

 "Nah. Bill looks good for his age. Since he lost the weight and all."

 "He does. Although did you hear Monica Lewinsky turned forty this year? Talk about feeling ancient."

 "I wouldn't know," I said, trying not to look too smug as I tilted my beer bottle to my tips. "I was in kindergarten when all that stuff was going down."

 She laughed. "'Going down' is about right." She had a deep, smoky laugh and if she was pushing forty her lips didn't betray it. They were as lush as a girl's and all those bad thoughts that Bog had planted came back to haunt me, not helped by the dark, sidelong look in Cadence's eyes. I remember us talking about the sex lives of Democrat presidents and speculating on the remote possibility of an Obama sex scandal. I think we were pretty wasted by then because Cadence was sloppy drunk enough to shed a few tears when talking about how
into
each other the Obamas always looked.

 I had this weird sixth sense that the conversation was about to take a turn for the ex-husband, so just to keep us both smiling, I leaned over and kissed her.

 So I still don't know what MILF porn Bog had mistaken for reality, but even his fever dreams couldn't come close to Cadence.

 She was a beast, a sex-demon. I heard somewhere that women hit their sexual peak at thirty-five and I remember wondering if whoever said that had also fucked Cadence. Maybe I'd caught her after a long dry spell, or maybe she was just thinking happy thoughts about Bill Clinton - who knows? All I know is that by round four I was starting to learn (twenty-five years too late, some might say) that you could have too much of a good thing.

 "You like that, baby?" she said, as she rode me towards yet another orgasm. Hers, natch. By this point I think I was running on fumes. "Is that good?"

 It was getting light outside. I tried to think filthy thoughts but my mind kept returning to the last time I'd slept. When was that? Oh shit. I was going to yawn. I could feel it tugging at the hinges of my jaw. While I'm not exactly the Emily Post of casual sex I'm pretty sure it's bad manners to yawn like a hippo when a lady is riding cowgirl. I quickly converted the yawn into a moan of ecstasy and Cadence took up her cue and began to ride faster. "You close?" she panted, leaning forward.

 I nodded, seeing an end in sight. And with that end would come sleep. Sleeeeeeeeeeep. Oh God. Another yawn. This one came out as a weird kind of howl, so that Cadence said, "Oh, you like it loud, huh?" Yeah. Sure. Why not? I went along with it. It was all I could do to keep it up and not yawn, so I was happy to have another way to fake my enthusiasm. Cadence screamed her climax to the ceiling, while behind me the headboard banged against the wall. It was at that point I realized that the wall was banging back and whatsmore, it was
talking
.

 "Mo-om!" it said. "Some of us to have to work in the morning!"

 Yep. I was now officially the punch line of a 'your mom' joke. And if you thought the universe was done fucking with me you would be dead, dead wrong, let me tell you.

 I spent what was left of the night. I had no choice; I was out cold the moment I got the condom off. I vaguely remember stirring halfway out of sleep when I heard someone crashing plates around in Cadence's kitchen - presumably the daughter going out to work. When I surfaced around noon I staggered out to find Cadence perched behind a laptop on the couch. She was wearing glasses and sweats, but it was the off-hand, busy way that she said "Hey, Sweetie," that was just so
momsy
that I realized I'd made a huge mistake.

 I felt like a dirtbag as I made an exaggerated play of looking at the clock and exclaiming over the time. But then I saw something on the dresser that made me want to get all
Oedipus Rex
on my own eyeballs and get the ever-loving hell out of Dodge.

 "No, it's cool - I've gotta make a move. Thanks. I'll call you."

 "You won't," she said, with the wry little half-smile I'd found so adorable the night before.

 I felt scummy enough, so I said, "No, you're right. I won't. Sorry," and took off. Now that I knew where I was the neighborhood looked all too familiar. And no wonder. I'd done the walk of shame down these very streets only last week.

 So I was not in the greatest of moods when I got back to the doublewide I currently called home, shit home. We all make sacrifices for our families and this was mine; I could - if you'll pardon the expression - stand on my own two feet, and so I did, or as much as you can when the floor is rotting through and you never know if the next step is going to see you falling clean through onto the ground below. I had the tools to fix it but not the materials or the money, since seasonal yard work was beginning to dry up.

 I had my hand on the door when Bog jerked it open. He looked red-eyed and paranoid, but then he always did; the place was dank as hell. "What?" I said. "Don't be acting all freaky on me, Bog - I've had a fucking weirdass night as it is."

 "Um, okay," he said, and pulled across the curtain in front of the living area. At this point I probably should have realized something was up, but I was too busy wallowing in self-disgust.

 "You remember Heather?" I said.

 "Heather?"

 "Yeah. Heather. That little brunette with the teeth."

 Bog frowned. Something was going on in there - you could tell by the way his eyes moved - but you could never be sure if his thought processes would take the logical path or just kind of go sideways. Ten years at the business end of a bong will do that to a guy. He'd never quite gone full-on crazy and started claiming that aliens sexually molested him, or that the Queen of England was some kind of transdimensional gila-monster - at least, not yet, although last summer he'd developed a worrying obsession with Monsanto and bees.

 "Wait - did she have a wooden leg?" he asked.

 "No. She didn't. Where do you get this shit, Bog? Who even has wooden legs any more? Heather. You know? Heather. She'd just got veneers and kept showing us her teeth. Remember?"

 I swear I heard cogs grinding. "Oh," he said. "Yeah." A big dumb grin spread across his face. "Dude, you totally banged her."

 "Yes, dude. I totally did. And guess what? I think I just did her mom."

 It took him a moment to digest this, but when he did he raised a hand in anticipation of a high five and said, "You the man, man."

 "No, Bog. I'm the man-
skank
. Mom and daughter? I'm dangerously close to passing some kind of slutty event horizon." I opened the fridge, in the vain hope of finding some juice. I don't know what I expected. There was nothing but beer, so I settled for beer.

 "How do you know it was her mom?" he said. "It might not have been."

 "It was. She definitely had a grown-up daughter because her daughter banged on the wall and told us to keep it down."

 "Yeah, but did you see her?"

 "No..."

 "So how do you know it was Heather?"

 "She had a photograph of Heather on her dresser."

 "So? Maybe it was her sister?"

 I took a long swill of beer and sighed. "A sister who called her Mom?"

 "Maybe it was a nickname? Like a soubriquet. You know. Like Caligula."

 I narrowed my eyes. Bog was an eternal mystery. He had gone to high school in the next town over from me and Steve, but we'd heard rumors that he'd once been Nerd King of Nerd Mountain - president of the Chess Club and Lord High Goblin or whatever of his D&D chapter. Nothing of this former brilliance remained, except for his penchant for busty warrior lady 'art' and these occasional idiot savant flashes where he'd use ten-dollar words like 'soubriquet' or talk in great detail about the campaigns of Genghis Khan. Unfortunately he kind of blew it when he claimed that Genghis Khan was his great, great etc grandfather.

 "Bog, there was a photo of them together," I explained, desperate to put this to rest. I know he was trying to make me feel better, but there was no getting around it. "In a pink, sparkly frame that said 'Mom and Daughter - BFFs Forever!' Got it?"

 Bog nodded. "That's kind of twisted," he said, sounding impressed.

 "It's not twisted. It's gross. It's like incest. Heather came out of that vagina."

 "You don't know that," he said. "It could have been a c-section."

 "She wasn't a c-section. Trust me." I leaned back against the kitchen counter. "I fucked Heather and once upon a time Heather was inside Cadence. It's like one of those Babushka doll things."

 "Matryoshka," said Bog. "They're called Matryoshka dolls."

 "Babushka, matryoshka - let's call the whole thing off." I finished the beer.

 The trash was full, so I figured I should clean up. On reflection I should have known something was up by the way Bog started to panic when I moved towards the living area. When I drew back the curtain I figured out exactly what was up.

 Up was the right word. It was a plant, a huge plant that almost reached the ceiling. It was like Jack had sold the cow for a handful of magic beans and this was the result, only a lot more illegal. No wonder the place smelled danker than usual.

 "Right," said Bog. "So...um...about this..."

 "About this?" I said. "Holy shit. No wonder you're paranoid."

 "...I know it's kind of a pain..."

 I could hardly see the other side of the room. Everywhere I looked was foliage - lush, green, illegal foliage. The buds were stinking the room out; my living room was now some kind of pothead Eden.

 "...he was gonna get raided," Bog said. "And I said I'd take care of it. Just for a while."

 "I'm going out," I said. I couldn't deal with this right now. I got in the car, called Steve and headed for my favorite diner. The beer had woken my stomach up and I was fucking starving.

 I was into my second helping of pie a la mode when Steve finally showed up. He looked anxious in a way that told me immediately he knew everything there was to know about Bog and the small weed rainforest now growing where I had used to watch TV.

 "Et tu Steve?" I said, glaring up through a mouthful of ice cream.

 He held up his hands in surrender and slid into the booth opposite me. "Look, I think I can sweeten the deal."

 "Sweeten the deal? What deal? Have you seen that thing? It's like a jungle in there. I need a machete to get to the window. And if I do make it that far in I'll probably find Marlon Brando squatting on his heels beside a camp fire, mumbling about 'the horror, the horror'..."

 "...I know, I know..."

 "No, you don't know. That's my
house
, man. I fucking live there."

 "Listen," said Steve. "I understand things are complicated right now, but that's no reason to lose your shit. Be cool. These things have a way of resolving themselves."

 He leaned forward for a moment and slid a baggie under the side of my plate. "That's not gonna 'sweeten the deal'," I said, taking it anyway. "Okay? My life is enough of a mess without some Afghan drug lord coming by to break my kneecaps because I didn't have the proper hydroponics to take care of his precious crop."

 "He's not an Afghan," said Steve. "He's a local boy - Tadley born and bred."

 I narrowed my eyes at him. "Who?"

 "His name's Robert. You can call him Bob."

 My blood ran cold. "
Psycho
Bob?"

 Steve sighed. I moaned.

 "That was in his past," said Steve. "He has a whole new outlook on life now."

 Bullshit. Bob was a maniac and everyone knew it. He was like a second generation Hells Angel; it was said his old man had been one of the original Angels of the legendary 'Berdoo' chapter out in California. He'd been riding on the back of a Harley since before he was born.

 "Steve," I said. "I don't care if he's found God, Buddha or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I don't care if he's clean, sober and Jesus wants him for a motherfucking sunbeam. I want that thing out of my house and I want nothing to do with Psycho fucking Bob, okay?"

 "Clay, this will be over before you know it," said Steve, in the velvet tones that I knew never meant anything good. "Trust me."

 Trust me. Didn't that just have the ring of famous last words? I folded my arms and sat back, scowling at him.

 "Look," he said. "It's very simple. Originally Bob just needed a little help with the sales and distribution side of things..."

 "Drug dealing," I said.

 Steve leaned over. "Will you keep your voice down? Since when did you get so pious anyway? You smoked enough yourself."

 I leaned over to meet him and lowered my voice. "I was never a dealer," I said. "Dealers get busted - that's why I never did it, stupid. What the fuck am I supposed to say if the cops show up at my door? 'It's all a mistake, officer - that ganja rainforest in there is strictly for personal consumption'? They're not gonna buy that. Snoop Dogg couldn't smoke his way through that shit..."

 "...if you'll just listen to me."

 "Listen to what? What's there to listen to? 'Oh hey, Clayton - I have a perfectly good reason for filling your house with illegal substances and I want you to sit quiet and listen nicely while I explain why'?"

 "Yes," said Steve. "In essence, that's exactly what I'm asking you to do."

 I sighed, realizing there was no point arguing further because whatever I said I was going to yell myself hoarse at a rate of about fourteen fucks per minute and Steve was not going to budge an inch. It had always been like that ever since we were little; Steve could always come up with a perfectly reasonable explanation as to
why
we should attempt to climb the chain link fence into the junk-yard at night, or why we should try to build a scale model of a medieval trebuchet with the intention of firing his younger brother into next door’s pond. He'd been class president through most of High School, prompting some of the staff to worry that he might consider politics as an actual career; they all agreed that his unusual talents would be better channeled in less harmful directions, like pyramid selling or cult leading.