October is late summer, in the latitude
of Smyrnings. It was midday, the last
Saturday of the month, two days before Hallowe'en.
Martian Fighting Machine, aka Marty, had
burrowed deep into the pile of mingled oak, maple, apple and birch leaves. It was warm down in there. Marty's stomach was full of lasagna; he was
actually too full to curl up. He
stretched out, groaning deeply and farting a little, and was snoring within a
minute.
Caliban was crouched down among the
leaves under the hammock that hung between the apple tree and the birch. His eyes were glued to a spot below the apple
tree, where his prey had appeared before.
He'd stay there until it came back.
Above him, the hammock swung lazily,
weighted down with Shane Bledsoe and Parmelia Mobley.
"He's getting his winter coat."
Shane wedged his hand between his belly
and Parmelia's, and thence under the elastic waistband of her jeans.
"Are you getting your winter coat?
Ha! No undies."
"You always seem surprised."
"I love that you don't wear them."
"Happy to be of service."
Is
she really? It was hard to tell, with Parmie. But -- "Yeah, you feel happy. Feels like you're getting real happy."
"Is that what it feels like?"
"I think you like this a little, Baby."
Parmie sighed; something between a sigh
and a groan, really. "Absolutely
... not. I'm a nice girl."
"You want me to stop?"
"No, I ... didn't say
that." She wiggled around in the
hammock until she was on her back and could open her legs.
She was lying on top of Shane, and kind
of squishing him, but he wasn't going to ask her to move. And she was getting that breathy hesitation
in her voice; he loved that.
Twenty feet away, under the oak, a field
mouse was wrestling acorns into its burrow.
Born in the spring, it was grown now and could compete with the chipmunk
that had eaten two of its siblings.
The chipmunk, busy with its own winter
storage chores, popped its head up out of its burrow among the apple tree
roots.
Caliban leapt up with the abruptness of a
furry orange Jack-in-the-box. His head rammed
into the hammock at its lowest point; Shane felt the impact on his tailbone.
"Dang it, cat!" Shane watched Caliban race off around the
corner of the house. He whispered in
Parmelia's ear, "Cat hit me in the ass."
"Whatever! Shut up and don't stop." She had both feet hanging off the sides of
the hammock. "Wait! Stop a second."
"You're the boss."
Parmelia looked up through the branches,
at the upstairs windows. "You're
sure the house is empty?"
"Yeah, Wishes is out with his auntie,
and the girls went to the movies. You
want to go in the house?"
"No, I just want to get these
off." Parmie drew her legs up -- Wow, she is really squishing me -- and worked her jeans down over her hips
and over her sneakers.
"There!" She dropped the jeans on the ground.
"You want me to take off my pants
too?"
"Not yet. Just get back to work." She drew her feet up, bending her knees and
letting gravity open her thighs.
"I don't know if I want to now. Forgot what I was doing."
"You forgot, huh?"
"I lost my train of thought." Shane put his hands behind his head.
"Doesn't bother me, I'll just use
you for furniture and get myself off."
"Good, I want you to."
"Good, I will."
"Good, I'll watch."
"Can you see what I'm doing?"
He couldn't. "Not from this angle. I just see that big dragon on your tee
shirt."
"Yeah, Ronnie got me that shirt at
Dragon*Con."
"Super." Shane scootched up on the hammock, until
Parmie's head was on his chest.
"Ah, now I see what you're doing there. Very nice."
"Glad you approve."
"Yeah, Baby. Yeah. I
could give you a couple of pointers, though."
"Oh, shut up."
"Talk about Ronnie some more."
Parmelia swung herself off the hammock,
and smacked Shane on the forehead. "Off
with your pants!"
* * *
The movie wasn't great, but Ronnie would
have been happy to spend two hours looking at a blank screen, as long as she
was holding Cherie's hand.
As usual, they sat in the back row. That was convenient, in case Ronnie was
overcome by one of her frequent urges to confirm that Cherie wasn't wearing a
bra. She knew for a fact Cherie owned at
least one bra, because she'd given it to her on their one-month anniversary. A month was two weeks longer than any
relationship she'd had before.
She leaned over and whispered in Cherie's
ear. "I'm actually finding the
furniture in that house more interesting than the dialogue."
Cherie whispered back, "I know,
right?" She'd fallen in love with
that Americanism and was using it a lot lately.
"That's a trestle table. My
mum had one like that, back home."
Ronnie had a thought. "Beamish, I've a thought."
"Tell it to me, Babcock."
"Later, okay?" Ronnie hated when people made noise at the
movies. For most of her life she'd had
no trouble keeping quiet, because she went by herself.
She forgot her thought until they were driving
home. They'd been talking about one of
the movie trailers they'd seen, for a psychological suspense thriller called Slugbug.
Cherie said, "When it comes out, we should ring up Scrappy the
Squirrel and ask him to take us!"
"Scrappy's afraid of
Volkswagens."
"Right-o, that's the idea. He'll arrive with visions of orgiastic sexual
goings-on in his head, but he'll go home in tears."
"Cry himself to sleep and have bad
dreams."
"Wracked by bad dreams, all night
long."
"Oh, I don't know, Beamish. No need to be cruel."
"You got to kick him in the danglies."
Scrappy the Squirrel was their name for
Lamar Carmichael. Lamar wasn't the most
admirable human being, but in an odd way he'd brought Ronnie and Cherie
together, and Ronnie didn't have the heart to wish him ill.
She remembered her thought then, and got
Cherie to turn her ancient Tercel (Loretta) around and head for Home Depot.
In the power tool section, they spent a
while trying to guess which of the other female customers were gay or bisexual,
or any variation thereon.
The morning after her first night with
Cherie, she'd looked in the mirror and said, "Guess I'm a big ol' lesbian now." She sounded like an idiot
to herself. Cherie told her not to worry
about labels, but Ronnie'd gotten her teeth into the subject and started
researching.
She'd printed out pages of specialized
nomenclature and descriptions of all sorts of sexual orientations and
preferences. And Shane had rattled off
literally dozens of terms she'd never heard before. He was like an idiot savant of vulgarity.
Cherie wasn't great with tools; she let
Ronnie take the lead in the Home Depot.
(Ronnie rather enjoyed the reversal of the roles they tended to take in
bed.)
"This is what we need." Ronnie picked out a Rotozip; she'd been
thinking of getting one for months, and was glad to have a project that called
for such a tool.
But -- "Damn, we'll have to wait on
the wood."
"No worries, I'll put the back seat
down and we can take it in Loretta."
"I don't think Loretta can handle that
much wood. I'll borrow Aardvark's
truck."
Out in the parking lot, Ronnie pointed
out a very tall, stick thin older man in a long coat. He was a few rows past where Loretta was
parked, his back to them. She could see
he was agitated, waving his arms like a spastic mime. He reminded her of a scarecrow.
"Man, that guy flaps his arms around
like a scarecrow."
"So, scarecrows flap their arms
around then?"
"They do in America, Babe. They dance and sing, too."
"I saw that movie. That Wicked Witch, Margaret Hamilton, do you
reckon she had that green makeup on all over?"
"I don't know, but that's just the
sort of thing Shane would say. Oh,
look! It's Aardvark!"
As they approached him from behind, the
flapping scarecrow had moved, revealing the much shorter Darryl
"Aardvark" Willitt, leaning back, his arms folded, calmly looking up
at him.
Aardvark was leaning against a panel
truck emblazoned with a pattern of diagonal lines and the words SHAKES
GUTTERAGE. To Ronnie's eye, it looked
like a stencil with Krylon fluorescent spray paint. Red-orange?
No; Cerise.
They could hear the scarecrow now. He sounded like he'd just had dental work.
"Keep your goddamn mitts outta
m'gutters!"
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