“How can I have a hundred twenty-five pounds on me. You’ll break my ribs.”
“Can you see any other way to do it?”
“I think you’re almost in. Maybe if one of us touched it, gave it a little guidance.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Sam, what are you doing?”
“Uh.”
“Sam, stop grinding.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh gross. You promised, Sam. You jerk, what if I have a baby now.”
I couldn’t answer. My mind had gone void. Maurey shoved me off and sat up. “Look at this gunk. That’s nowhere near a third of a cup. You promised you wouldn’t squirt and you lied about how much comes out. This is three tablespoons, tops, Sam.” She hit my chest. “You’re cross-eyed.”
I held one arm over my head. “That was fun.”
“We couldn’t have made a baby. None of it went inside.”
“I told you—no kissing, no squirting.”
“I discovered something, Maurey. The boy can’t control his squirt.”
“Look at that. How long before it gets stiff again?”
“Beats me, that was my first time. Do you think we lost our virginity?”
“I sure as hell didn’t.”
“This is hurting, Sam.”
“You’re too tight, are you certain we’ve got the right hole.”
“Your finger’s smaller. Try that.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Down lower, you’re way too high. Hold it, move up. You’re poking something.”
“This isn’t romantic, Maurey.”
“Stop grinding for Chrissake.”
“That’s the only way to force it in.”
“You’re on my hair.”
“It’s coming again.”
“Oh, hell.”
There was a long pause, then a quiet voice. “Smooth move, Ex-Lax.”
Maurey and I were back at the kitchen table, playing gin rummy and not speaking, when we heard Lydia charge in the door.
“Dibs on the John,” she called.
“Hell with that, honey,” another voice said, a raspy female voice. Then we heard a race across the living room followed by the crash of a slamming door and, “Shit. I’m gonna go in the kitchen sink if you’re not out in thirty seconds.”
“Someone’s with her,” I said to Maurey.
“Sounds that way.”
The voice in the living room muttered, “Crap it all anyway,” then a short woman all in white tromped into the kitchen. She stopped at the sight of us. “Maurey.”
“Delores. I heard you were on a roll.”
Delores was short—I’d say five foot even—and petite, but proportionately, she sported a huge set of breasts, way bigger than Lydia’s or Maurey’s. I’m talking out there. And she was dressed like a hooker doing a cowgirl fantasy—white pointy-toed boots, white skirt down to her upper thighs, a white fur vest, rabbit or weasel or something, over a white yoked shirt, and a white cowgirl hat with a peacock feather eye in the dead center. The skirt was held up by a black plastic belt and a turquoise rock of a buckle.
She was chewing gum, of course. “Maurey, hon, I won’t tell Annabel I saw you if you won’t tell her you saw me.”
“What’s in the bottle?” Maurey asked.
Delores’s right hand covered her mouth when she giggled. I’d have given whatever future I possessed to see her naked. “Turpenhydrate and codeine—good drink for when you’re ready to stop drinking.”
“Your turn.” Lydia came around Delores and into the kitchen. Delores whirled and ran.
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Who?”
“Hi, Lydia. This is my friend Maurey from school. I told you about her before.”
Lydia opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Dr Pepper. “So you two are getting along now?”
I glanced at Maurey to see if this was true. Her eyes were on Lydia, I think admiringly. She was probably going through the same comparison-analysis I had when I met Annabel.
Lydia perched on the sink with one foot touching the floor. “Sam tells me your mother cuts the crusts off your sandwiches.”
Maurey looked down at the cards in her hand. “Only on holidays, or for company or something.”
“That’s okay. If my mom had cut off my crusts, things might have turned out better.”
There was a short silence that, as the host, I felt obligated to fill. “Things turned out okay anyway. I think. How was your party?”
“Fairly boring. Six drunk yahoos wishing four would go away so they could go manly on Delores and me. Thank goodness for numbers. Wasn’t a cowboy in the bunch had a full set of teeth.”
Delores tottered back in the room, adjusting something under her skirt. “God, I whizzed like a racehorse. I swear, you don’t buy beer, you only rent it.”
At the word
“Sam,” Maurey said, “meet my cousin, Delores. Ray’s looking for you.”
Delores unscrewed her little medicine bottle. “Hell, he found us. Him and a bunch of his logger buddies.” She took a swig. “They come busting in the door of this motel room, I didn’t tell you about the motel room, wanting to save my honor and haul me away, but Lydie’s friends…”
“Nobody was going to lose any honor in that scene anyway,” Lydia said.
“Speak for yourself. ’Nother hour I’d of figured a way.”
“Sure.”
Delores hit the codeine. “A fight ensued. Lydie and me escaped by the emergency ladies-only exit.”
“Bathroom window,” Lydia said. She looked very happy, and not really all that drunk. Her face was flushed and her eyes alive—although maybe she’d been at the codeine bottle herself. “That’s the fourth, no fifth time I’ve had to beat retreat out a can, and it’s always a blood pounder.”
“Always costs me a pair of hose.” Delores lifted her leg to show us. The rip in her nylons went right up past the skirt line. Maurey caught me following it up.
“I need a cigarette,” Lydia said.
From somewhere on her person, Delores pulled out a pack and tossed it. Lydia held the pack out to show me. They were Montclairs. “Look at this, honey bunny. Something’s come out since we left tobacco-land. Some new kind of menthol mixed with cigarettes. Tastes like they soaked the weeds in gasoline.”
She’d never said H-B in front of anyone before. I would have given anything for a gun. “They had that stuff before we left Carolina.”
“You sure? How could I have missed it?” Lydia lit one and took a long drag. She blew smoke out her nostrils. “What I don’t understand,” she began, “is how a woman who smokes cigarettes cured in gas and drinks codeine
