by Kim Zarins
“Oh ho ho!” laughed Tom, not asleep at all. “I knew you’d prod an old man’s hairy ass if it meant money. Oh ho ho!”
Frye gaped, holding his polluted right hand away from him.
“You’re a real sicko. I’m calling the cops.”
“Call away!” the old man cackled. “You’re the one who groped my anus! And I can’t wait to show the cops all your posts online. You don’t think that’s a crime? You’re going to be one of the most hated people alive when your story goes viral!”
“You’re totally crazy. What do you care what I post? It’s my life.”
“It’s my life too. My wife was one of your victims. So I thought I’d teach you a lesson. Oh ho ho!”
And after that session, when Tom tipped him forty bucks, Frye took it in his left hand.
And that is the fucking end.
“Wow,” says Frye. “Give Mace a mic, and this is what happens. Seriously.”
Briony rolls her eyes. “Now I can never get a massage without thinking about this horror story.”
The other girls emphatically agree, except for Cece, who thinks Tom was justified in avenging his wife. “The stories really go together. I think the idea is that Mace and Frye are not all that different.”
Everyone pretty much tells Cece she’s wrong.
Meanwhile, I’m staring at this guy in all black—this guy who ate lunch with me at the loner-solidarity table, never to become a real friend. He was always a scary mystery, with that joyless face and that mean body. And now it’s like, mystery solved? There he sits with his skull rings and his metal tattoos half visible on his biceps and chains gleaming about his black clothes, and it’s just weird, because under that pimpled, scaly, tough exterior, there’s a guy who can give a nice back rub if you really need it, and who thinks a lot, a very lot, about butts and farts.
BRYCE’S TALE
“And now for something completely different,” Bryce says when he’s called on. “I’ve had enough of demons and farts.”
Saga flips her hair from her face. “Thank. God.”
Okay. So this story is also about an old guy. No farting, promise.
The old guy is Jan Uriah Wagger, and he’s this octogenarian rich dude in New York who has played the field his whole life and finally decides he’ll settle down with a wife, mostly so they can have a kid to inherit all his wealth. But hey, if he’s going to get a wife, she may as well be hot. So he thumbs through Tinder and all his other social feeds looking for the right chick.
And he finds just the one: Maya. She’s gorgeous, and he researches her background and sees she’s had nursing experience. He thinks that’s perfect because, at his age, it’s nice to have a wife who can tend to his sex needs and make sure his stools are healthy.
Private detectives confirm she is, indeed, a hottie and has worked at a nursing home for three years. She’s twenty-three years old.
Wagger is ready to offer marriage. Maya accepts, prenups are signed, and after a massive wedding and reception, the wedding night arrives.
Wagger has jacked up on Viagra and all these Chinese herbal remedies like ground-up rhino horn, but it doesn’t make much difference. Maya finds herself under this soft old guy who can’t do it, though he’s panting and growling and clawing her with his old man nails. She stares at the loose skin on his neck, rough with white stubble, as he crows with lust, and she endures what he manages to perform on her. Luckily, he sleeps like a log after.
After the honeymoon in Paris, she returns to Jan’s modest fifty-five-hundred-square-foot penthouse apartment.
“Welcome home, sir.” Wagger’s manservant, young Damian, holds a tray with two champagne glasses. Maya notices Damian blush when he sees her.
“Excellent,” Wagger says, draining his glass. “Now, boy, go make us a snack while I give my bride a tour of my little home in the city.” Wagger’s apartment has been featured in every architectural magazine, but it’s the urban garden on the roof that is his real pride and joy.
He has an elevator that leads up to the roof, and only he has the key to activate the elevator. When the doors open, Maya gasps. She’s standing in a garden with vegetable patches, a fruit tree orchard, and, under the boughs of trees, a shady bed of thick moss, sculpted as a reclining love seat, rimmed with soft ferns.
“It’s so enchanting!” Maya sighs, then sees her husband unbuttoning his shirt and pants. “Wha—what are you doing? We can’t do it here!”
He chuckles as he undoes his fly. “Of course we can! You are Eve, and I am Adam, and no one can view us in our little Eden. Did you know there’s a quaint place in the English countryside called Fockynggrove? I won’t translate that for you, but I thought, why not have my very own love grove, right here in Manhattan? I designed it for privacy from the other high-rises, and I’m the only one with the key to our private elevator, so no one can come up unless I permit it. So, what are we waiting for?”
During the warm weather, they spend loads of time in Wagger’s garden.
Meanwhile, Maya notices a change in the manservant. Damian once had fine bronze skin, but now he’s become pale, and he can barely speak. He had a slender build to begin with, but now he looks frail. Finally, too sick to work, he takes to his bed in the small servant’s quarters.
“Poor little guy,” Wagger says. “The doctor isn’t sure what’s wrong with him. Maya, see if you can cheer him up, would you?”
She knocks softly on the door and enters his room. It’s dark, and the young man is curled up under the blankets. He looks terrified to see her.
“My lady, please don’t trouble yourself over me,” he croaks.
Maya smiles at being called “my lady.”
She sits on the bed and pushes his dark curls from his face. “What lovely hair.”
He looks at her with helpless, sad eyes, then closes them and groans.
“How’s the boy doing?” Wagger calls out, leaning on the doorjamb.
“Not well,” Maya says.
“Then, let’s have lunch downtown again. I do miss Damian’s cooking.”
Maya rises to follow Wagger, but Damian whispers, “Wait.” He presses a folded piece of paper into her hand. She can see from the urgency on his face that it’s a very private message.
In the bathroom at the restaurant she reads his letter.
I am so lovesick that I can no longer stand, no longer trust myself not to reach out to you whenever you walk past. What should I do? If you hate me, I should leave my job. No, I should throw myself from the window. I love you. Could you ever love me? Check yes or no in one of these boxes. If yes, you’d make me the happiest man who ever lived.
Needing no evidence of the boy’s passion, Maya rips up the note and flushes it down the toilet. Still, she thinks of Damian while eating her smoked salmon crepes. The more she thinks of his curly hair and his young bronze skin and his lithe figure, the more she wonders if she could ease his suffering.
“What a warm day!” crows Wagger as they walk from the restaurant. A breeze unfurls his comb-over, which he quickly refastens. He winks. “I think we should have a turn in the garden.”
So they do, and afterward, when Wagger sinks into a short nap, Maya checks in on young Damian.
She teases, “How do I tick the box? Like this?” And she kisses him on the lips.
Damian draws her to his body for one long, blissful moment.
He is cured.
But he wants more of that cure, and so does Maya. The young lovers have only snatches of time to exchange loving looks and brief caresses. With Wagger breathing down their necks, there’s never enough time for anything more.
And then, something happens.
Wagger loses his sight. Completely. It’s a huge blow to him. He needs Damian’s help more than ever now, and Maya’s, too.
The lovers begin to realize their opportunity. Maya leads Wagger to the couch, and when Damian brings them their tea, he slides his hand up Maya’s thigh, even as Maya is helping Wagger find his tea. Her back is
arched with the new possibilities in store for them.
“Perhaps the garden would cheer me up,” Wagger says.
Maya answers Wagger, but her eyes seek out Damian’s, as if her reply were meant for him. Passion makes her voice almost rough. “Yes. I really want to.”
The three of them wait for the tiny elevator. Maya pushes Damian in first and leads Wagger on her arm and then squishes Damian against the wall with her ass, which he seems to like very much. With the key in the elevator, they rise to the roof.
Walking gingerly on the path, Damian follows Wagger and Maya to the mossy love seat, shady under the trees. He watches them start to undress, then wanders around the garden while they try to do what Wagger wants to do. It’s over by the time Damian gets back, though Maya and Wagger are still naked and sprawled on the fresh green bed.
Maya looks over at her lover, who is now taking his clothes off and soundlessly launching himself up the pear tree.
He gestures for her to come up.
“Those pears look so tempting,” she says aloud. She unravels herself from Wagger’s embrace. “I’m going to climb up and find a ripe, juicy one.”
Wagger frowns. “Be careful. I wish I could help.”
She too launches herself up the tree, with Damian’s outstretched hand pulling her up. She braces a foot against a branch to get a firm hold, and with her legs spanning two branches, Damien thrusts himself inside her. They tussle, rocking on the branches and letting the swaying limbs do some of their work for them.
She moans, trying to keep her voice down, but it’s so good to finally have sex with a man with the sap of life in him.
“Did you get it?” Wagger calls.
“Almost there . . . higher . . . higher . . . higher! Good . . . just a little . . . ah . . . ah . . . yes!”
The lovers gasp, both of them, and Wagger’s face turns toward the sound. Something strange and miraculous suddenly happens to the old man. He rubs his eyes.
“I can see! But . . . what are you doing? You’re having sex in a tree! Sex in my tree!” He rubs his eyes once more, and the vision is gone. He’s blind again. The doctor had warned him that his sight might have some rare moments of flickering recovery, but, otherwise, he would be blind for the rest of his life.
Wagger begins to sob with frustration, while Maya jumps down to the mossy floor.
“What are you talking about?” She speaks calmly to him as if he’s a befuddled patient in her old nursing home. “You didn’t see anything, you silly goose.”
“I saw you,” moans the old man. “For an instant. You had your hands above your head, gripping the branches, and Damian was ramming you hard, with the branches swaying under your feet. Oh no, no . . .”
Maya snorts. “You’re fantasizing, Jan. Sweetheart, you’re still in shock from your eye trouble. Your brain is playing a trick on you. A dirty trick! If I wanted to have an affair—which I don’t—I’d get a hotel like a normal person, wouldn’t I?”
“I suppose . . .”
“I wouldn’t have sex right under—or over—your own nose, would I?”
“I guess . . . but why else climb the tree?”
She laughs. “The pears, my dear! You know pregnant ladies and their food cravings, don’t you?”
Wagger’s mouth gapes. “You’re . . . you’re pregnant? Really?” His worries forgotten and his dynasty assured, he strokes Maya’s belly, kissing it and murmuring to the baby that one day, all this will be his. . . .
Even if the baby isn’t his.
The end.
Kai slaps Bryce a high five.
Rooster whoops and calls out, “Forget D.C. Take me to Fockynggrove!”
And pretty much everyone is impressed that Damian and Maya had sex in a pear tree and got away with it.
“But they never ate the pears,” Parson says.
“Oh, I think they did—metaphorically,” Kai says.
“I’ll never be able to listen to that partridge in a pear tree carol without thinking of sex,” Briony says.
Alison muses, “I’ve done it under a tree, but never in it.”
“Fockynggrove,” Rooster says breathlessly. “Is that place for real?”
“I read it online,” Bryce says. “It’s in England.”
Mari says, “It sounds like the porn version of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood.”
Rooster holds out his hands like a baby that wants to grab all the colored blocks in the entire preschool. “I am going there someday.”
JEFF’S PROLOGUE
Mouse turns to the window and points at the city skyline.
“Are we heeeere?” she squeals.
Everyone gets excited, but Mr. Bailey laughs. “Not even. This is Philadelphia.”
Philadelphia. This is where Alison stood in front of the cracked Liberty Bell and declared herself free and unbroken. There’s a weight on me just thinking of it. And, fictionally speaking, it’s the city where Zac and Aaron reunited. It’s the City of Brotherly Love, and the unclouded spring day makes the place look full of hope and healing.
Mr. Bailey calls my name.
“Yeah?” I say, turning, wondering what he wants.
But he’s holding a slip of paper.
It’s my turn to tell a story. It’s time. This is it.
“But he’s the fifth male in a row,” Cece whines, and I nod vigorously to show my utmost conviction that going next would be sexist.
“I’m afraid we have more men on this ride than women,” Mr. Bailey says. “Jeff, it’s your turn.”
I try to remain calm, though I know this is bad. My chosen story doesn’t rise to the mood that’s just swept over me when I saw the city skyline. I’d love to tell something about cracks and love and Philadelphia. But I decide to keep to my plan. I’ve got it all rehearsed, which is good, because the pressure is on with Bryce intending to be helpful by chanting “Mor-phe-us!” as if I have the sequel ready to go.
“Whoa,” I say. “Don’t get your hopes up. What I have is pretty rough. I’m going to tell you a story I’ve been working on. It’s called ‘The House of Fame.’ ”
“Objection!” calls Reeve, rapping his pen on the metal grip of his clipboard like a judge. “Everyone else made up new stories on the spot, and you’re shamelessly planning to recycle one you’ve already written?”
“It’s only a work in progress,” I mumble.
To my horror, everyone takes Reeve’s side. They say it isn’t fair.
“But I don’t have anything else prepared!” I sound more frantic than I care to let on.
“Hire someone to write one for you,” Mari says airily. “Oh, wait, I forgot. You’re the wordsmith enabler for everyone else, right?”
I meet her glare and shrug like I don’t know what she’s talking about. I can’t believe she’d call me out for my paper-writing service with Mr. Bailey sitting right here.
“Chill, Jeff. None of us were prepared,” Kai says, diffusing the tension and being nice, even though I’ve never written a single paper for him. “Rushing into a story is part of the fun.”
Fun? Fun?
Like he wants to help, Kai adds, “Just throw yourself into it.”
Everyone stares at me politely but mystified. Like: What is Jeff’s problem? Why can’t he throw himself into a story? Why can’t he have fun?
“I don’t write this way.”
But in the end they prevail, and I’m forced to make up a story on the spot.
I think of simple movie plots and come up with something. To mask my terror, I project a deep male narrator’s voice, like the trailers for big-box movies with lots of action and little logic. A movie that I have never seen before, never read a plot summary of, but am forced to narrate.
JEFF’S TALE
In a world of devastating climate change, continents sink under the waves. The sole survivors are young, muscled teenagers, fit for a movie screen . . . or an apocalypse. They band together on a ramshackle floating structure called a flet and fight the evil Cthulooc
ks spawned from the sea. They are led by Ashton Blair, seventeen-year-old pro surfer, who rides the waves, but longs only to ride his way home.
I get some laughs from this cheesy intro, and I smile. This is fun!
Awake before dawn, Ashton limbers his taut six-foot-four frame with Pilates, when a ripple in the water alerts him. The guy on watch is insufficiently manly to detect the danger, but Ashton dives, machete ready in his hand.
Tentacles punch above the surface as a Cthuloock attacks a strange animal. Ashton severs a tentacle gripping its injured prey. The Cthuloock lashes out, but Ashton stabs its red eye, straight into its brain, and the Cthuloock dies.
The creature Ashton rescues is a Triwhal, a dolphin mutated with a triceratops. As Triwhals and humans become allies, human riders surf the waves with new, unparalleled speed and can battle the Cthuloocks with new might. A tide is turned, and peace gives way to passionate embraces among the heroes.
Ashton Blair was not always a sex icon. He had been such a shy, thoughtful child that when his body transformed to sculpted perfection, he remained humble. Experienced, yet virginal in his gentleness.
So the Triwhals breed, and Ashton serially impregnates flet girls, including Bethany, who didn’t seem hot until her glasses fell off while Triwhal riding. She turned out to be the hottest woman ever born and never wore glasses again.
Yet the Cthuloocks strike back when a sorceress’s Spawn of Evil leads the entire Cthuloock swarm to the flet.
On the horizon the water churns with angry Cthuloocks.
“Uh-oh,” says a dude who usually lingers in the background.
But Ashton pulls up his riding pants, his bare toes firmly keeping his balance on the swaying flet. He dresses in special seaweed loin-girders suited to Triwhal riding—first pulling one perfect thigh into the pants, followed by the other perfect thigh. The seaweed pants perfectly encase an ass so tight and a front so generous that just watching him simultaneously impregnates all the remaining flet girls who haven’t been knocked up yet.