Fire Down Below

by Debra Anastasia

  “Listen, Mr. Fitzwell!” She slammed her purse down in front of him, and he blinked in surprise. “For future reference, when a lady hands you a script like that?” She pointed to the crinkly bag he was holding. “Go get one of the assistants to handle it. No one wants to talk about her ‘vaginal walls’ ”—she mimicked his V-shaped hand motion from earlier—“with a dude!”

  Dove let out a satisfied breath.

  I told him. Good for me.

  She didn’t expect his hurt expression and dejected nodding. His loud voice was quiet, finally.

  “Of course, ma’am. I’m very sorry.”

  He motioned for her to sign the screen in front of her to accept the prescription. She hated the look on his face—like he was a puppy and she had just kicked him. She took the bag from his hands, careful not to touch his beautiful, long fingers. She couldn’t leave him all dejected and dragging.

  “It’s okay. I overreacted. I get mean when I’m embarrassed.”

  Instead of helping he shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Great job, Fitzwell. Living the dream now, you big fool.” He ran a hand through his perfect hair. He was talking to himself.

  Dove bit her lip, and he used her pause to explain himself more. “This is my first day as a pharmacist. I just wanted to be really thorough and make sure you were comfortable with the medicine. I did a great job with that, huh?”

  She had been angry with him, but now she had compassion. This was his dream, and she was probably the worst customer to have right out of the gate.

  Dove smiled at him. “It’s okay, Mr. Fitzwell. I think you’re going to make a great pharmacist.”

  He looked at her doubtfully.

  “No, really, you will.” She reached out and patted his hand to solidify her message.

  They both felt the spark—an actual, blue, snapping spark. Dove’s wool jacket, combined with the pharmacy rug, had turned her into a walking electrical appliance. They both pulled their hands away from the contact, shaking their fingers.

  “Damn!” Mr. Fitzwell stepped a few feet away from the counter and her.

  Dove laughed; it was clear nothing here was going to go well.

  “Well, I guess you got me back. I hope you feel better soon, Ms. Glitch.” He was smiling at her laughter. At least they could end the experience with a bit of joy. His teeth were pearly white and straight, and there was a hint of a dimple. Her uterus swooned.

  “Call me Dove. You already know so much about me.” She held out her hand formally.

  He gave her a huge smile and went about the most awkward handshake of her life. He touched her palm with his first finger. When there was no shock, he flicked her finger to get rid of any latent electricity.

  “Ow!” She winced. His thumping forefinger made her fingers curl into her hand.

  “Sorry, sorry. I’m making a mess of this, but it’s just that I hate shocks.” He finally grasped her hand, but it was before she could completely unclamp her fingers, so he wound up shaking her claw.

  “I’m Johnson. Thanks for being my first customer and breaking me in.”

  He seemed like he was about to release her hand when she dropped her prescription bag between them. They both reached for it at the same time and clanked foreheads together like drunken sumo wrestlers.

  “Damn it!” Dove staggered backward.

  Johnson put his hands to his head, wincing in pain. The assistants tried to stop giggling, but lost their battle. Dove scooped up the bag and backed away from the disastrous transaction.

  “Well, Johnson, I might remember nothing at all after that whack, but my head won’t forget when you banged me.”

  Oh, holy piss cushions. I just said he banged me. Like ‘sex’ bang.

  Johnson reached into the little pharmacy refrigerator and pulled out the first bottle he laid his hands on. He pressed it against the slight contusion on his forehead.

  He waved in her direction and had clearly missed her verbal faux pas because he was deep in the middle of his own, shouting, “I like to leave a mark when I bang people!” in his too-loud voice.

  Dove’s last glimpse of him made her smile for hours. To his forehead, as impromptu first aid, he had a bottle, clearly marked in bold letters: Anal Suppository! Keep Cold!

  For days after her horrendous meeting with Mr. Johnson Loudy McSexypus Fitzwell, Dove would stop to just blush from head to toe. Luckily, her yeast infection and UTI cleared up with the meds. She was able to commence life as normal and prayed that her most delicate of organs stayed disease free until Mrs. Pills got back from maternity leave. Dove blushed again at the thought of her own feminine parts.

  Back to normal. Officially, on paper, Dove worked as a ticket ripper for the local park’s kiddie carousel. She was also in college to be something but had yet to put down a field as a concentration. As soon as she decided who she was definitely going to be, she changed her mind or failed a test. Deciding meant confidence, and they didn’t sell that on street corners. This was her second year as a senior, and she was shaping up to stack a third year on top of the other two.

  Every so often, her guidance counselor would demand a meeting with her. Ms. Jorish dressed in free-flowing dresses and made her own jewelry. Dove was pretty sure Ms. Jorish wore buckets of perfume so she could try to cover the smell of pot smoke that lingered around her like an aura. Their meeting earlier that day had been dismal.

  “Dover, please come in, sweetheart. Lovely to see you. Please, have a seat.” Ms. Jorish pushed Dove into a deep beanbag chair.

  Dove tried to mumble a correction, “It’s Dove. It’s Dove. Duh-vuh. But all one syllable.”

  Ms. Jorish took off her ever-present sunglasses to give Dove a hard stare. “Sweetheart, I need to place you. We have to nail you down. You’re a square peg, and I’ll hammer you into a round hole soon.”

  Despite her carefree attitude, Ms. Jorish liked to see her students graduate. Dove’s file was looking grubby and lived in.

  “Let’s talk about the journalism, Dover. Have you firmed that up? How many credits do you have left?” Ms. Jorish collapsed in the other beanbag chair. Her hair flew around her head like someone had turned on a high-powered leaf blower for an instant.

  Dove looked around the office, wishing she could avoid answering. “Um. I was doing pretty well, but then I failed to give a really good oral…”

  She felt an uncomfortable gas bubble trickle up her esophagus, and Dove cursed herself for loving soda. She guzzled it straight from the can and liked it ice cold. Usually, she tried to find a quiet place to release any leftover consequences from her unhealthy addiction. But not today. Dove pinched her lips together, sealing the evil burp inside. Ms. Jorish waited, but when it was obvious Dove wasn’t going to continue her train of thought, the counselor went off on a tangent.

  “Oral? Are we talking sex, Dover? Oral sex is sex. I’ll tell you what, so many of the kids nowadays get sucked into giving the oral. They don’t think of the consequences. Not all penii are cleanly. And if you’re too busy having all the sex, you can’t concentrate on your work. God knows what kind of STD you can inhale like a vacuum.”

  Dove’s eyes watered as the burp became a painful rock in her throat. Her blush crept up on her, blotchy and obvious.

  Please, please don’t talk about sex. Oh God, stop the talking.

  To open her mouth would be to unleash a horrific belch, so Dove just sat. Ms. Jorish obviously took the blush and tears in Dove’s eyes as an admission of her promiscuity.

  “Hormones’ll drive you crazy, Dover. All you’ll do is think with your vagina.” Ms. Jorish gave a deep, animated voice to Dove’s privates. “More! More!”

  Dove’s eyes bugged out. She thought of the thin door to Ms. Jorish’s office.

  Please, let the hallway be empty.

  Ms. Jorish rolled her head around and returned her voice to normal.

  “Tell me, Dover, have you taken up any new hobbies? Is there anything you do besides all the oral?” She leaned forward in her bea
nbag, squishing it noisily around her bottom.

  Too much time had passed for Dove to correct the woman about the sex. She’d wanted to say, “Oral report.!, I did poorly on the oral report!”

  Dove attempted to speak without moving her lips. “I’ve learned to knit some scarves. With some pattern.”

  Safely keeping the hard burp at the back of her throat, Dove was pleased she had conveyed her thoughts.

  Ms. Jorish sat for a few minutes tapping her finger against her lips. “I’ve got it, Dover!” She became exuberant and tried to stand too quickly. The beanbag held firm to the woman’s bottom, and Dove had to watch the bizarre performance of Ms. Jorish crawling and flailing around on the floor for a bit before using her desk to drag herself to her feet. She returned to her conversation as though the spectacle hadn’t happened at all.

  “You”—she pointed between Dove’s eyes—“are perfect for a job I just thought of. Sometimes I amaze myself, truly.”

  Ms. Jorish held out a hand to help Dove up. Instead of assisting her, it just made it more unmanageable to drag her butt out of the beanbag’s grasp.

  Finally, they were eye to eye. “Dover, my brother’s a warden at the Middletown Penitentiary.” The counselor held her hands up and made a square with her fingers. “I see you there as an arts and crafts director. For the inmates. We’ll combine your love of blow jobs with the knitting!” She tossed up her hands in appreciation of her own genius.

  Dove wanted to puke or at least oppose this woman’s horrible new plan for her life, but Ms. Jorish was high on her own idea.

  She pushed Dove out the door. “Don’t worry sweetheart. I’ll send your info to him tonight. This’ll be perfect.” Just before she closed the door in Dove’s face, she tried to comfort Dove a bit. “Don’t worry, Dover. I won’t tell him about the addiction to fellatio. Just say no to penii for a little while if you can!” The woman’s voice carried and echoed in the hallway.

  Dove thanked her lucky stars that it was empty like she had prayed. She leaned against Ms. Jorish’s door and finally released the burp she had been holding down. It was a doozy, and she covered her mouth, worried the counselor would open the door at the noise. As she hurried away from the scene of her bodily-function crime, she rounded the corner to the lobby of the building. She stopped short at the spectacle of thirty other students peering silently up at her from their Downward Dog positions.

  The men in the yoga class were smiling in her direction while the women shook their heads in disgust.

  Dove mentally reviewed the words they had surely heard Ms. Jorish use just seconds before. And Dove’s loud belch. She covered her mouth and tried to apologize.

  “I’m sorry… that I’m alive. I’m… leaving… now.”

  She learned later that the gymnasium where the yoga class was usually held was having the floors refinished. They had to meet in the lobby right next to Ms. Jorish’s office for at least a month. And they were quiet motherfuckers.

  A fidgety child snapped Dove back to the present moment at her carousel job. He was picking his nose with one hand and holding out his red ticket with the other. She took it carefully from his hand, trying to avoid the boogers, and ripped it in half. In addition to ripping the children’s tickets, her other job at the carousel was to make sure they were buckled on the horses.

  It sounded like a wonderful job when she had applied. She loved to be outside, and the park was very pretty. The eccentric old man who owned the ride liked the idea of a ticket taker, but the ride really didn’t need one. The moms and dads bought the tickets not ten steps from where Dove stood, and they could easily buckle their own kids.

  The happy kids were often screaming and kicking when it came time to take them off the ride. She had perfected unraveling their chubby little hands from the gold pole that kept the horses from running free. Unfortunately, there were many times she’d had to clean a horse’s tail and intricate saddle when a full diaper had exploded after an excited little tush wiggled in it.

  She often found herself with large chunks of empty time on her hands. The owner didn’t mind when she pulled out her phone to tweet. He mistakenly thought Dove was working on her class papers on her “newfangled, super tiny keyboard.” She didn’t bother to correct him because on Twitter, she was someone else.

  Dove loved to see her sexy icon on the screen. It was mostly boobs. On Twitter she never burped or mumbled or had vaginal itching.

  She was @Lotsa_Vampersex there. And she was witty on the Twitty. She was up to four hundred followers who watched her tweets with baited breath. Lotsa found herself in achingly sexy situations in her pretend life and she tweeted about it often. Dove gave a little tweet just to see them get excited.

  Lotsa Vampersex (@Lotsa_Vampersex):

  Licking an ice pop slowly in my sheer, white teddy.

  She was 140 characters of awesome, every single damn time. She scrolled happily through her @’s as the followers trickled in.

  Hotdaddy3_6 (@Hotdaddy3):

  @Lotsa_Vampersex tell me more Lotsa!

  One after another, they reminded her that she mattered, and she liked it. She checked the clock on her cell phone and closed the ride for her brief lunch break. She waved at Marge, the ticket seller, who was knee-deep in a bodice ripper romance book by Debra Anastasia and ignored Dove completely.

  Dove found a seat overlooking the pond and took out a yogurt from her large, monogrammed bag. She hated how big it was, but her cute, kitschy lime green lunch sack was home airing out. Her pickle had exploded out of its watery pouch last week, and Dove had no idea how to clean it.

  Not every day needs to smell like pickles.

  Her large, navy one was big enough to support all the side dishes required for a huge family reunion.

  She’d just scooped a big spoonful of vanilla yogurt into her mouth when she felt the wood of the bench creak its disapproval at the added weight of another person. She looked to her left shoulder and almost spit out the contents of her mouth. Her cheeks were full like a chipmunk’s as she took in the sight of her loud, gorgeous, temporary pharmacist.

  He smiled at her and exclaimed, “GYNAZULE®!”

  He pounded her on the back like an old friend, and Dove had to work to keep her yogurt in her mouth.

  “Eating some yogurt? That’s great for your VAGINAL health. Good bacteria and all.” He seemed to take her distressed look as a reprimand and made a face. “Sorry. Vaginal health,” he stage-whispered in a seeming reaction to her tirade at the pharmacy.

  She’d recovered enough from her shock and was just about to swallow when Johnson decided to become concerned.

  “Are you going to throw up?” He looked intensely into her eyes.

  He’s beautiful.

  She shook her head furiously.

  Just swallow, you dumbass.

  “You’re choking? Oh God.” Johnson launched into action with fervor.

  He jumped up and stood in front of her. “They taught us this. Stay calm. I know the Heimlich.”

  If Dove could have screamed, she would have; instead, she became a floppy rag doll as Johnson yanked her from her sitting position. She tried to wave him off and tell him with her eyes to just give her a motherfucking second to swallow. But he assumed the position behind her and accidentally grabbed her boobs while lining up his hands under her ribs.

  She heard his embarrassed but determined voice in her ear. “Sorry about that. Hang on, Gynazule®.”

  He was exceptionally forceful, and the Heimlich works for a reason. Dove was forced to expel her yogurt all over her stadium-sized lunch sack. A small crowd of joggers and moms pushing strollers had stopped to watch the struggle with the intense curiosity of rubberneckers.

  He was still jerking her all around before she could holler, “Put me down! I was eating! Not choking! Damn it!”

  Johnson set her down and whirled her around. “Airway, good. Breathing, good. Circulation, good.” He ignored the crowd and focused on her face. “Are you okay?”

&nb
sp; Dove wiped her mouth and slapped her thigh. “Yes. I was swallowing my yogurt. I wasn’t choking. And my name’s Dove, not GYNAZULE®.”

  Understanding hit Johnson on the top of his head, and he looked disgusted with himself. “Man, I just can’t get anything right. I’m so sorry, Dove.”

  She sighed and turned to the gawkers. “Move along. Haven’t you seen a girl hurl yogurt before?” She motioned at them in anger. “Unless you’re all going help me clean it up?”

  The crowd began to disperse. Some were laughing; some looked grossed out. Johnson took a handkerchief from his pocket and headed for her sack. He had every intention of using his fancy linen to clean up her spew.

  “No, Fitzwell. Stop.” She grabbed the sack and tossed it in the nearby trashcan. “These things are impossible to clean.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. He looked adorable without his lab coat. His perfectly pleated pants and tie were obviously expensive. She collapsed on the next bench over and held her head in her hands. She felt him sit next to her.

  His super-loud voice was slightly softer as he tried to apologize again. “Why do I do the stupidest stuff around you?”

  More than her frustration with him bubbled to the top, and she decided to vent. “You know why? Because I’m a sucking hole of failure. My job? I collect tickets from shit-filled kids. My career? According to my cracked-out guidance counselor, I should be giving blow jobs to felons in jail in between teaching them to knit. I keep being in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, at the wrong freaking time. I suck at being a human.”

  She risked a glance at his handsome face. He squinted at the horizon, the sun picking up the blond highlights in his hair. He looked like he might say something that would ease her mind. Instead: “I really think it’s a bad idea to bring knitting needles into jail.”

  He turned to look at her in earnest.

  “Oh, for crap’s sake. I’m not teaching in jail!” She stomped her feet in front of her, causing little dust clouds to form around her shoes.

  He put his hand on hers. “Hey, Dove, I’m kidding.”