by Andy Schell
Here she goes , shaken not stirred.
Kiki looks pained. She smiles a forced smile. “There’s a place for everything,” she says, trying to be a good sport.
“That’s the trouble. There isn’t. We need a big ole chopping block for Harry to lay me out on.”
“Maxwell-Grey has them. We’ll put it on the list,” she says, refusing to be offended.
Amity leans forward so that both she and the sales package are
on the edge of their seats. “And a sterling silver garlic press,” she whispers. “It’s nothing but a fancy nipple clamp, darling’. You’ve got to try it.”
“Great. Thank you,” Kiki answers as if Amity has shared a stock tip.
I’m slamming my champagne. Looking around. Anything to keep from laughing.
“Oh! And a food processor! We definitely need one of those.” The saleswoman, assuming there’s a catch, doesn’t write. Amity looks blankly at her. “For processing.” Kiki looks relieved.
” “Course, you’ve got to be careful what you put in those things,” Amity adds. “After all, one little pureed weenie and there goes the marriage.”
The woman finally stiffens, loses her grace. “I suppose.” Amity sings a Tammy Wynette hybrid:
DIVORCE
That’s what pureed weenie means to me.
I’m spitting champagne through my nose. Amity’s smiling. And Kiki is sliding back in her chair. Giving up.
“Look. Just put us down for everything,” I say, using my little cocktail napkin to wipe my nose. “My mother will probably buy it all anyway.”
Kiki Cartwright slides right back out to the edge of her chair, fully rejuvenated. “Yes, Mr. Ford!”
FIFTEEN
Amity has this thing about first dates. She prefers they be brunch or lunch. You can much easier steal yourself away from lunch than dinner in case the date turns out to be a nightmare. Nawtmayor She suggests we invite the waiter boys over for brunch and make nasty fruit plates.
“Nasty fruit plates, Harry! We slice the bacon into pieces and fry them up until they’re nice and curly. Then we cut a banana in half, lengthwise, and lay it on the plate. Two big round slices of kiwi underneath, and you’ve got a nasty fruit plate!”
We sip champagne and take hits off the bong while we fry the bacon in the kitchen. It’s only 10:00 in the morning and we’re getting looped. After the bacon is fried, I slice the bananas down the middle and Amity peels the kiwi.
It isn’t until we fix them up, on four different plates, that I see the curly bacon is pubic hair, the banana is a big penis, and the kiwi slices are testicles.
“Just look at those bad boys!” Amity squeals, referring to our creations. “Now, the finishing touch.” She takes the bottle of creamy salad dressing, and pours a dribble down the shaft of each banana. The phone rings.
“Hello?” I say, into the receiver.
“Hi, honey. Is Amity there?”
“Nice to talk to you too, Mother,” I answer, loading the semen dribbled bananas into the refrigerator.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Harry, but I’ve a limited amount of time today. I have to go to the clinic for a followup.”
Of course. She’s still recovering from cancer. I feel guilty. “Sorry, Mom. How is everything?”
“Wonderful, honey. Bud Orenstein says that it’s the best tummy tuck he’s done and that I look like Suzanne Sommers. He just wants to check my muscle tone, but I’m running late. Is Amity there?”
Duped again. “What’s going on with your cancer tuck?” I ask.
“What a perfect way of saying it! Everything’s fine. Now really, darling, give me Amity.”
I hand Amity the phone.
“Hi, Susan! How can I help you? Uh-huh. Right. Oh, yes. Great! I can’t wait. I’ll mark it on my calendar. See you then. Love your guts!” Amity hangs up the phone.
“She loves her own guts. They’ve been tucked away so nicely.”
“And I’ll do the same when the time comes,” Amity says resolutely.
“So what’s the skinny?” I ask.
“She’s coming down to Dallas. We’re going to go gown shopping.”
“Just warn me so I can be out of town. Now look,” I state, changing the subject. “You, me, and Nicolo are going to get off on eating these nasty fruit plates, but what about Thomas? He’s straight. He doesn’t want to eat a big dick dripping with jism.” “Oh my God, Harry! Should we have made him a pussy?” We laugh so hard we fall on the kitchen floor.
“Come on, come on!” Amity says, pulling me up. “We’ve got to whip up an edible Libby.”
We find out that kiwi is actually very vagina like when squished into shape. And with the green color and the black seeds, we wind
up with something wet, juicy, and so visually stunning that Georgia O’Keefe would be proud. We crumble the bacon on top of it and use a little round slice of banana as a belly button above it. Amity cheers, “Voile, y’all!” “Voile, y’all!” I imitate.
She jumps into the bathroom for a mini poo, the abbreviated version of the poo up. The full version takes two hours, and she doesn’t have time. She takes off her clothes and squats in the tub. She’s dark from yesterday’s sun, and her tan lines make her look as if she’s wearing a white bra and panties where her breasts, ass, and crotch have been shielded by her swimsuit. As water flows out of the spigot, she unabashedly uses a washcloth to wash her Muffle or Lady or whatever it’s called today while I sit on the tub’s edge. “We gotta make sure this isn’t an all-day thing because I’ve got a date with Kim tonight,” she says, now washing under her arms. “Don’t worry. The waiters probably have to work tonight.” She finishes up, and we both get dressed. I wear linen shorts with a belt and a starched, shortsleeved button-down. No shoes. It’s too hot, and besides, my feet are tanned, so they do match my belt, as Amity insists they should. I’d really just like to wear a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt, but Amity makes me dress Winstonesque. The boys arrive together in Thomas’s convertible Mustang. Amity is turning up my short sleeves, making cuffs, while we watch them from the house. “Look at his car, Harry!” She smoothes my collar. I’ll have to wear a scarf when I go riding with him, or my hair could fly loose and kill someone in the next lane.” We bolt from the door so they don’t see us watching them. When they knock, Amity has me answer and then casually strolls into view behind me, wearing linen shorts of her own, a melon-colored blouse, and expensive European sandals over her tan feet and painted toes.
“Hi, y’all.” She’s resting her head on my shoulder, allowing it to be her frame.
Nicolo stands there, wearing a light yellow polo shirt, his dark
skinned biceps bursting out of the short sleeves while his muscled legs press against the faded button-fly jeans. The guys come in. Thomas kisses Amity, and Nicolo shakes my hand. When Amity reaches out to shake hands with Nicolo, he quietly says hello and shakes hands dispassionately. Like the night at the restaurant, I can tell he doesn’t really like her. I think she can too. We show them the house and then bring them right back near the front door to the sun porch, and serve them mimosas. Then Amity pulls out a pre twisted joint, and we all get stoned. Then Amity and I announce the nasty fruit plates. Nicolo and Thomas are relaxing, digging it, and we laugh while we all eat our fruity genitalia.
“We almost served you a dick,” Amity cheerfully confesses to
Thomas, who’s slurping up his New Zealand-grown vagina. “Yes, your pussy is very last minute,” I add.
Amity tilts her head and takes a sip of champagne and orange juice. “Harry’s so thoughtful. He helped me shape it just this morning.”
“That’s why it’s so fresh,” I claim.
“So what happened to my dick?” Thomas asks, jumping into the game with his very slight, very sexy European accent.
Amity smiles and tilts her head even more. “I ate it, darling’.” And so our conversation goes, remaining on the light side to the extent that it almost escapes gravity. And I notice that the lighter it gets, the less p
atient Nicolo grows. Every time he tries to make a stab at something real, whether it’s the Russian boycott of the Olympics or the ongoing presidential debates, Amity steers the conversation back to sex. And I can see that Nicolo doesn’t really respect her, and in fact, I sense that he thinks she’s rather shallow. It’s not anything he says, but I can see it in his eyes when he looks at her. He even tries to discuss the Air Florida bankruptcy, perhaps thinking that Amity would at least be interested in something that has to do with the airline industry, but she steers the conversation back to sex again and gets no protest from Thomas, who eventu ally picks her up and carries her into the bedroom while she pretends to kick and scream like a cave woman
Nicolo and I walk to my bedroom. Nicolo lies down on my bed, which is no longer the blow-up mattress, but a queen-size mattress and box springs that sit directly on the floor. Before I close the door, we hear from Amity’s bedroom, “Oh, Thomas, you drive me wild!” Nicolo chuckles while I close the door and pull the shades. I light two candles and turn on the radio. Cyndi Lauper starts into “Time after Time” as I turn to Nicolo. He smiles, pats the empty bed next to him, and says, “Let’s talk.”
“It wasn’t exactly what we were doing on the porch, was it?”
I answer quietly.
“No,” he claims, “we didn’t saying anything. I want to learn of you, Harry.” Never mind that he’s gorgeous. His Spanish accent alone makes him sexy. I lie down beside him, and he takes my hand. “You said before that Kansas is your home. Tell me about Kansas.”
His hand is warm, and his dark skin is reflective with the slight sheen of natural oils. I’ve never been with anything but white boys, but I’ve always craved his type. I like the feel of him and how he looks next to the white sheets. “Kansas is flat,” I answer. My erection isn’t.
“And?”
My heart is pounding, pushing against the skin of my chest. I
want to kiss his aubergine lips. “Hot.” “And?” “Humid.” “And?”
“What do you want?” I ask, desperately wanting to undress him.
“More.” ‘
More than a laugh? More than a refill on the champagne? More than a quick reply? I look at him, into his eyes. They’re unbelievably
beautiful, the first pair of dark eyes that I’ve found prettier than blue or green or hazel. His eyes are on the border where brown becomes black. And his luxuriant eyelashes remind me of the pocket combs I carried as a kid, with their thick black prongs emanating from the base of the comb. I used to run my fingers across them. I’d like to gently run my fingers across his lashes.
He bids, “Tell me the poetry of your home. I know it’s inside your heart.”
There is something about him that makes me not want to disappoint. I take a breath. Think. “Kansas … is like a dirt road that runs for infinity, never dipping or rising, never turning.” He nods and closes his eyes, causing his lashes to fall like fans, and waits for me to continue. “And above the road is a sky so large it could hold the wings of every angel. And people say there’s no ocean, but there is. In the early season, when the wheat is green, almost the color of seaweed, it rolls in waves, pushed by the wind, just like the top of the ocean. As summer wears on, the waves turn gold and stiffen slightly as if the tide has turned. Sometimes I’d ride my horse down a country road and stand on the side of a wheat field and pretend I was on a beach watching the waves roll by. I’d watch them carry life along, just like the sea. Then I’d close my eyes, breathe in, and change the scent of the damp earth and ripening grain into salty air. And sometimes when I opened my eyes, a meadowlark or a whippoorwill would land and roll up and down over the waves while deciding where it was headed next. And even though the waves rolled on for infinity, like the road and the sky, most often the meadowlark flew only as far as a neighbor’s front porch because she couldn’t see leaving such perfection behind.”
He opens his eyes, satisfied. “This is your reward for telling me about Kansas,” he says, lifting my hand to his mouth and gently kissing it.
“I can tell you about Missouri and Colorado too,” I offer eagerly.
He laughs. “Just Kansas, hombre.” He lowers my hand from his lips. “And why did you fly farther than your neighbor’s porch?”
“Well … I had no choice, I guess. My family couldn’t offer me the comfort of their precious little nest, so I took off.”
“Then we are alike,” Nicolo says, his beautiful lips forming a melancholy smile. “I’m here because of my family also. Though we were forced to flee our nest together.” what was left of us.” “What do you mean?” I inquire, my erection subsiding.
“I am from Argentina, Harry. Do you know of our recent his tory?”
“Not really. Just that it’s been kind of unstable down there, right?”
“When Peron returned to power eleven years ago, I was thirteen years old. The people of my country thought that we would be delivered to prosperity, that the end of bad times had come, that Peron would restore Argentina to the glory of its past. But my father believed that Argentina had never known glory, that its successes throughout its history were triumphs only of the rich and were short-lived and had always come at the expense of the common people, la gente verdadera, my father called them. He was a journalist for Liberacion del Alma.”
“Liberation of the soul,” I translate.
“You speak Spanish? You want that we speak in pansn. “No,” I answer. “I only know a little.”
He continues. “Liberacion del Alma was a paper that was not aligned with guerrilla factions. And not with the government. It was a neutral publication dedicated to telling truth through all eyes and letting the reader decide who was righteous. An interview with members of a Marxist guerrilla organization like the ERP would be published beside an essay from the Navy School of Mechanics, the evil military organization that my father knew operated clandestine concentration camps, and below that, you might read a passion ate interview with Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, the mothers
of the kidnapped civilians who were accused of being subversives. Though the paper was committed to allowing all thought and debate, my father was employed to offer his opinion on the last page. He wrote political editorials that were most often open-minded. It was when he aligned himself with Las Madres that he got in trouble. He believed they were right to speak out about the disappeared. So the government disappeared him.”
He’s not crying, but he’s inside of himself now, below the equator, I suppose, in the land of his past. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“Los desaparecidos. The disappeared. Thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured, murdered. They simply disappeared. Those who were found were floating in barrels in the River Plata or dropped on top of refuse dumps. It is said there were groups taken to the sky in airplanes and thrown to their deaths. I’ll never know what happened to my father.”
“God,” I whisper, “there are some passengers on my flights I’d like to throw out of the plane, but I’d never do it.” He looks incredulous, confused by my remark. Shit, me and my mouth. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it. Sometimes my timing is off. Why were they kidnapped? What did they do?”
“Nothing,” he answers, shaking his head. “The government called them subversives. But they were ordinary people, like you and me. Their biggest crime was that they had an opinion or belonged to a social group that helped others less fortunate or were lawyers with so-called subversive clients or whatever the excuse. It is hard to explain.”
I put my arm around him and stare at the wall, as he does, and try to imagine what he sees. “Is that why you came to America?”
“No. We came because of my sister. She was an artist who vowed to expose my father’s murderers. She was sure it was the work of the government. She blamed the federal police. But when she confronted them, in print and in her person, they cast the blame rllUU | VUIIVim on the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, who had written a strong rebuttal to one of my father’ seditorials, which was gladly publishe
d in Liberacion del Alma. But everyone knew the Alliance was the federal police, and they were making her walk in a circle, she believed, laughing behind her back. And when she pushed too hard and they weren’t laughing anymore, they disappeared her.”
“Your sister too?” All of a sudden the champagne and reefer is making me dizzy, uncomfortable. “Did you find her?”
He shakes his head no. “But my mother received word from a member of the Navy School, someone who called himself a friend because he was willing to offer the truth that both my father and sister were dead so we should not worry or try to find them. “Go on with your lives,” he told us, ‘but remain quiet.” My mother was devastating.”
“Devastated,” I correct. Then I think, maybe she was devastating, I’ve never seen her.
“Yes, devastated. So she did what only a woman in her shoes could do. She joined Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, the group of women who publicly protested their disappeared family members only she knew something the other mothers did not know: Most of the disappeareds were never coming back.”
“She’s brave.”
“Yes,” he says, lost in a memory, “until they attempted to take me away.”
“You? Who?”
He snaps out of his trance, looks me in the eye. “I don’t know. It was the week of the World Cup games, 1978. Police in plainclothes grabbed my arms and legs while I was walking down the street and tried to force me into an unmarked government car.”
“You got away?”
“Yes, because there were so many turistas in town, and a group of Italians was on the street, and I started to scream to them in Italian. The police agents let me go, because they didn’t want to
make a scene in front of the turistas, in case someone from the international press could be watching. When I got home, I told my mother, and she broke down. She cried, a very broken woman. She made arrangements that week to get my brother and me and herself out of the country. She could suffer no more loss.”