The Traveling Vampire Show

“More appreciated in his absence than in his presence….”

I laughed.

She took off the last burger, the one with half as much Velveeta. “This one’s yours,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I’m kidding,” she said. “It’s…”

“No, really, I’ll take it. I’d rather have that one.”

She laughed softly and shook her head. “If you want it that much, you can have it.” She set the top of the bun in place and pressed it down with her open hand. “She’s all yours.”

Chapter Thirty-one

The sun normally would’ve been blazing in our eyes at this time of the evening, but it couldn’t get through the heavy clouds. Though the air felt muggy, a breeze came along every so often. A warm breeze. It felt pretty good, anyway.

We sat at the picnic table near the back of the lawn. It was painted green and had benches along both the long sides. Slim and I sat across from each other.

The cheeseburgers tasted great but they were very messy to eat. Juices and Velveeta dripped off their sides, ran down our chins, dribbled down our hands and fell onto the table. After just a few bites, I ran into the house to get napkins.

We’d finished our beers and needed something to drink with our burgers. So I went to the fridge. I half intended to grab a couple more beer bottles, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I took out a couple of Pepsis instead.

Then I hurried outside.

Watching me, Slim said, “Ah, Pepsi.”

“If you’d rather have more beer…”

She shook her head. “This is just what I wanted.”

I put the cans on the table, gave Slim a couple of napkins, then sat down.

“Anyway,” she said, “we don’t want Rusty’s parents to smell beer on our breath.”

“Why are they gonna smell beer on our breath?”

She gave me a whimsical, tilted smile. “We drank beer.”

“I know that, but…”

“And we’re going over to Rusty’s house when we get done eating.”

“We are?”

“We want to rescue him, don’t we?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, we can’t exactly go in and kick butts, you know? I mean, this is Rusty’s family.”

“Right.”

Her smile spread. “What we’ve got to do is kiss butts.”

When she said that, I suddenly remembered the wager about Valeria. Rusty had suggested that the loser would have to kiss Slim’s butt. And I’d imagined myself doing it. I imagined it now, too, and my face went red.

“That’s a figure of speech,” Slim pointed out.

“I know.”

“Anyway,” she said, “if we were literally going to kiss their butts, we wouldn’t need to worry about beer on our breath.”

“We’d have bigger worries.”

We both had a pretty good laugh, and then we went on eating. When we were done, we carried everything into the house and cleaned up. Slim washed the spatula, knife and platter. I dried them and put them away. Soon, every trace of our supper was gone except for the two empty beer bottles.

“What’ ll we do with those?” I asked.

“Find a sack. We’ll take them over to my place. We’ll put them with my mom’s empties, then grab a couple of fresh ones and bring them back here.”

I grinned. “Good plan.”

“Elementary, my dear Thompson.”

My dear.

She only said it to make a play on Sherlock Holmes, but the words gave me a warm feeling, anyway.

“We’d better take care of that, first,” she said. “Get it out of the way before we try to liberate Rusty.”

I found a grocery sack. The brown paper kind. (This was before anyone came up with the notion of “saving the trees” by providing plastic grocery bags—which now decorate the trees and fences and streets and rivers and never go away.) Mom used the grocery bags to line our wastebaskets and sometimes to wrap packages for mailing. So she had a good collection of them.

I got one and held it open for Slim. With the empty bottles in her hands, she bent down in front of me, the top of her head almost touching my belly. The bottles clinked together as she set them on the bottom of the sack.

Then she straightened up. We looked each other in the eyes. Smiling softly, she said, “Let me smell your breath.”

I set the sack down beside me. Slim moved in close, very close. She put her nose in front of my mouth and sniffed. I expected a smart remark, but didn’t get one. Instead of commenting on my breath, she put her mouth against mine and kissed me. Her arms went around me. She pressed her body against mine.

I thought about hugging her, but was afraid of her cuts. She didn’t have any cuts on her rear end, though. I could put my hands down there. I wanted to. But I didn’t dare. After all, that was below the belt.

While I was still struggling to work up the nerve, Slim took her mouth away and stepped back. “Your breath’s fine,” she whispered.

“Yours, too.”

“Smells like beer and cheeseburgers.”

“I thought you said it’s fine.”

“It is,” she said. “Only thing is, Mr. & Mrs. Simmons are going to know you’ve been drinking.”

“You, too.”

She smiled. “Maybe if we don’t let them kiss us…”

“They’d better not try.”

“Why don’t you go and brush your teeth?”

“I don’t think that’ll take care of it.”

“Can’t hurt. I’ll brush mine when we get to my place.”

“Well…”

“Go ahead, I’ll wait here.”

I ran up the stairs two at a time and hurried into the bathroom. After brushing my teeth, I used the toilet. This was the tough part about wearing swim trunks instead of underwear; they had no fly. Usually, I tried to maneuver myself out through the leghole of the trunks and the zipper of my jeans. But I didn’t feel like struggling, so I just dragged everything down around my ankles. My skin was hot and damp from being trapped inside all those clothes. In front, I was slippery as if I’d been dipped in liquid soap. I could hardly hold on to take aim. But the air felt great on all those hot, wet places.

Before flushing, I used a lot of toilet paper to dry myself. Then I pulled up my trunks and groaned at the way their hot, clammy lining clung to me. Quickly, I tugged them down again. I took off my shoes, jeans and trunks, then put my jeans back on. The dirty clothes hamper was next to the toilet. I dropped my trunks in, put my shoes on, then washed my hands and left the bathroom. Without anything on under my jeans, I felt dry and loose and free.