by H. M. Mann
At Señor Pizza, Johnny first inspected Marion’s two pizzas before bagging them.
“You doubt my skill?” Hector asked.
“She’s kinda picky about a lot of things, Hector.”
Hector laughed. “She chose you. How picky can she be?”
Pretty darn picky actually, especially about being on time, and I’m already twenty minutes late …
“You’re thirty minutes late!” Marion cried at the door. “I ain’t hungry no more.”
“I am.” Gloria kissed Johnny and pulled him into the house. “You look beat.”
“His face always looks that way,” Marion spat. “You ain’t getting a tip, Johnny.”
Johnny pulled out a two-for-one coupon. “It’s only ten before taxes.”
Marion handed him a ten and a five. “Here. Go get gas.”
Johnny smiled at Gloria. “I filled up before my shift.”
Marion snatched back the five. “We even?”
Johnny nodded and hugged Gloria. “Wish I could stay longer, but we’re getting slammed. Where’s Angel?”
“Upstairs asleep,” Gloria said, opening the door. “I’ll walk you out.”
As they walked down the sidewalk to the Vega, Gloria slipped a sucker into Johnny’s back pocket. “For later,” she said.
“I can’t wait for later,” Johnny said. “I might not get here till three. Is that okay?”
Gloria pouted. “I guess. Are you going to shave? I don’t want you to cut me.”
I cannot resist asking. “Where on your delicious body would I cut you?”
She sidled closer. “Very soft, sensitive places.”
Johnny rubbed his stubble. “This will be as soft as a baby’s bottom.” He kissed her and held her close. “I hate this. I want to stay.”
“I want you to stay, too. Do you ever take a night off?”
Johnny shook his head. “I can remember the last night I didn’t work.”
“Why?”
Johnny sighed. “I’ll tell you about it sometime, but only if you hold me tight.”
“I promise.”
He dipped her half into the street. “Is not a promise, is a requirement.”
“Ooh, I love a foreign man.”
Johnny left Gloria purring.
It was the least he could do.
23
Gloria wore loose jeans, a looser T-shirt, no socks—so Johnny could admire her heels—and a smile.
She also wore tiny beads of sweat from the anticipation and the adrenaline as she strained her eyes at the window to follow every set of headlights.
I haven’t had a “date” in so long. I don’t even know how to behave! I mean, I know how to behave, but I want so badly to misbehave … Sorry, Lord. You try being a working mama and nothing else for five years, and then You tell me how You feel.
Sorry again, Lord.
I know I’ve been hoping and praying for a good man, and though the package isn’t what I expected, I certainly like what’s inside.
So far.
For the most part.
Hmm.
Johnny is a little pushy. Offering opinions on my child the first minutes he knows her. What kind of guy does that? He has no children. How would he know?
Okay, he’s a little right about Angel, but he isn’t an expert or anything.
At three, she heard a slight tapping on the window, tiptoed to the door, and let in a complete stranger. Johnny simply didn’t look like Johnny anymore. He wore ordinary blue jeans, a dark blue T-shirt, and a gray hooded sweatshirt. He was clean-shaven and even smelled nice.
Johnny handed her a handwritten page.
“What’s this?” Gloria whispered.
“Just something I threw together.”
Gloria led Johnny to the loveseat, where he sat. She read the single sentence by the flickering light of the TV: “While Kevin gorged on the pizza his mother paid for with pennies, his mother evaporated into a couch that had once held memories of a home as across town at Señor Pizza, Hector dreamed of Guatemala while Gloria set one cherry Dum-Dum aside on the Quick-E Mart counter for Johnny, the worst romance novelist ever born, but Johnny couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even drowse, because he couldn’t stop daydreaming of interesting, slow hands, Gloria’s soft body, and the bliss yet to come.”
“This is very nice,” Gloria whispered. And it makes me want to misbehave and rub my soft body all over him! “Clear, almost poetic.” It’s getting hot in here.
Why is it getting so hot in here? Johnny wondered. I wonder if she’ll mind if I … Oh, just do it. Johnny untied his boots and set them on the floor then pulled off his hoody, laying it on the back of the loveseat.
And now, Gloria thought, he’s taking off his clothes?
“I don’t know if I can sustain that kind of writing for an entire novel,” Johnny said.
And Lord, I don’t know if I can sustain any kind of resistance to a man who takes off his clothes so quickly! She put the paper into her back pocket and tried to still her heart. There’s a man in my house at 3 AM who has … as many clothes on as I have on. Oh yeah. He’s wearing socks … and they don’t quite match. Whatever. I haven’t been this close to a man without a counter between us in … five, long, hard years, and here I am standing in front of a TV.
Gloria sat at the other, safe end of the loveseat. “So, you haven’t added much to your novel. Why?”
“I’ve been too busy living, I guess.” He leaned closer to her. “And thinking about you.”
And now he’s a few inches from me. I want to attack him with my body so bad! But I can’t with my baby upstairs and my mama probably listening on the stairs and the holy Lord Jesus watching from heaven. Keep the conversation light, Gloria. “So, tell me about …” Who’s Gunn’s third conquest? Oh yeah. The thorny one. “Tell me about Emily.”
I need to work on my game. She was supposed to lean closer to me, affix her lips to mine for a long period of time, and commence reintroducing her body to mine. He leaned back. “No, you tell me about this Emily,” Johnny whispered.
Not the sexiest whisper, but it’s not as if I’ve heard many sexy whispers in my life. “You are supposed to tell me about Emily. You’re the author.”
“So I need some help here from my favorite editor.” Johnny smiled. “What is Emily’s best feature?”
She doesn’t have any good features if she’s in his book, but … “Um, the first thing you notice about Emily is that …” Gloria bit her lower lip. “Emily is, um, well-endowed in the, um …” She pointed at her chest.
“Oh?” Johnny said. What a sneaky way for a woman to get a man to look at her, um, front. “They’re, um, big?”
Gloria nodded. “Emily’s breasts are so big she can’t drive a car because the horn goes off continuously while she drives.” I can’t believe I just said that.
“Those are big, um, yeah,” Johnny whispered. “So she’s buxom.”
Gloria nodded. Like I am, Johnny. I know you’re looking. “How … buxom … is she?”
Johnny had to look away from Gloria’s buxomness. Is “buxomness” even a word? “Um, Emily’s … chest … was so big, airbags puckered in shame whenever she walked by.”
Gloria laughed. “Funny.” She walked a hand across the cushion to Johnny’s knee. “Would you like to, um … you know.”
I would like nothing better than to, um … you know, but on a loveseat in her grandma’s house? “I’d like to cuddle with you, yes,” he said quickly.
Has he forgotten about the backrubs already? My lower back is killing me. “I meant …” She squeezed his knee. “I was hoping you could maybe …” She massaged his thigh.
If her hand goes any higher … He twisted his knee and leg away from her roving hand, scooting as far back into the arm of the loveseat as he could. “What happened to developing a relationship slowly?”
Huh? “Huh?” Gloria said aloud.
“You excite me a lot, Gloria, but I need to take it slower than slow.”
All I did was stroke his knee and squeeze his thigh. “I just want a backrub, Johnny.”
Oh. “Oh,” Johnny said aloud. I am glad it’s dark so she can’t see me blushing.
“Did you think that I wanted to …”
Johnny nodded.
“Here on my mama’s loveseat? Are you kidding?” I’m hurt. Sort of. I mean, I have a great deal of power over this man. A single touch or squeeze and he’s excited? I could get used to that. But to think that I would just …
Okay, I would.
Sorry, Lord.
Johnny flexed his fingers. “Ready to rub you down.” He stood.
Gloria blinked. “I was just going to back into you on the couch.”
Johnny gulped.
Did he just gulp? Gloria thought. He did. Oh yeah. If I put my booty … “But I can just stretch out here.” She lay on the loveseat, her feet pressing hard into the arm. Oh, this is comfortable. We have to get rid of this thing and a get a bigger sofa soon.
Johnny rubbed his hands together until he thought they were warm enough, knelt beside Gloria, and flattened his palms against her shoulders, carefully pressing and making small circles around her shoulder blades. He worked his way lower cautiously, kneading her lower back with his thumbs.
Gloria closed her eyes. Nice. Just the right amount of pressure. I could do without the squeaking, though. “What do you think of my heels?”
Johnny looked at her heels as Gloria’s legs did scissor kicks in the air. “Very sexy. Almost Brazilian.”
“Almost? Have you ever seen a Brazilian woman’s heels?”
Johnny walked his hands up to her shoulders and went to work. “No. Um, I’m not squeezing you too hard, am I?”
“No.” Just being squeezed, being touched, being wanted is heaven. “So, you went to Tech, huh?”
“Nice transition,” Johnny said.
Gloria laughed. “Yeah. That was pretty random.”
So was Tech, but I can’t talk about that while my hands are so happy. “Speaking of random, did you know that the average person has close to fifteen hundred dreams every year?”
I think I’m living one right now. “That’s a lot of dreams. Do you remember yours?”
Just the bad ones. “A few.” Johnny focused his hands on the back of her neck.
“Ahh,” Gloria said.
Ahh, she said, Johnny thought. I’ll have to rename the dog in my book “Ahh” instead of “Ouch.”
“What’s the earliest dream you remember?” Gloria asked.
He brushed her ears with his thumbs and drifted his fingers down to her lower back. “I remember a huge, stuffed Yogi the Bear attacking me in my bed.”
“A stuffed Yogi attacked you?” Gloria giggled. “Did he give you a boo-boo?”
Boo hiss. “He tried to suffocate me with my pillow in my dream, so I woke up and tried to flush a real Yogi the Bear stuffed animal down the toilet.”
He’s got to be pulling my leg. Maybe he could massage my hamstrings. They feel a little tight. “Did it go down the drain?”
“No,” Johnny said, reliving the moment. “I was still staring at the bottoms of the bear’s furry feet when …” Who was that? “When some random foster parent came in, rescued the bear, threw him in the dryer, and took me back to bed with a good talking to about how we don’t flush our friends down the toilet.”
Gloria turned sideways, Johnny’s hands left groping in the air for her back. “Did that really happen?”
Johnny nodded, his hands still wiggling in the air. “Where did your back go?”
Gloria flopped back to her stomach. “You can massage my legs if you want to.”
And this is how children get conceived and wedding planning begins. “Gloria, um, if I do that, I may accidentally”—on purpose—“brush against your, um, other back, and while it is a very nice other back, the nicest other back I’ve ever seen, by the way, not that I look at a lot of other backs, but I am afraid that I will, um, enjoy it entirely too much and want to, well …” Say it all, man. “I may want to, as they used to say, get my freak on.”
Gloria turned sideways, propping her head up on her elbow. “Get your freak on?”
“I didn’t say it right? Get your Greek on? Get your sneak on? Get your beak on?”
She reached out a hand. “Lie here beside me.”
Johnny sized up the situation and realized he could not possibly fit on that loveseat unless he overlapped her legs with his and pulled her close enough to feel her backbone rubbing against his ribs. “I try not to lie, Gloria. I have this knack for telling the truth.”
Gloria rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“Okay.” Johnny crouched to his right. He crouched to his left. He felt like John Belushi in Animal House. “Um, face to face or face to heels?”
He can’t do it. Gloria sat up. “Do I scare you that badly?”
“No, no, of course not,” Johnny said, kneeling. “It’s just that, well, this is a sixty by thirty loveseat at best, give or take a half inch, and a seventy-one by thirty-four man, even sideways, cannot lie effectively next to a sixty-four by …” Be nice. “Thirty-eight woman unless one of them happens to be … on top.”
He measured the loveseat, himself, and me. He did some math just now. What’s up with this man? And I’m a thirty-seven, thank you very much, and those kinds of bras are hard to find. “So … lie down first, and I’ll be your blanket.”
Sexiest blanket I’d ever use. “Okay.”
Gloria stood, Johnny lay on the loveseat, and Gloria carefully rested her head on his left shoulder before cuddling close to him.
Johnny absorbed her weight, decided he never wanted to move from this spot as long as he lived, and wrapped his arms around her.
Gloria couldn’t quite get comfortable, so she wiggled her body higher.
“Just don’t move,” Johnny whispered.
Gloria turned his face to hers. “Isn’t that the point?” She kissed his cheek, brushing her lips across his several times. “Your lips are soft.”
“Chapstick. Unscented. SPF thirty.”
Gloria moved her soft cheek against his. “You have a strange mind, Johnny Holiday.” And the nicest body! It’s not too bony, not too flabby—just right!
“Thank you,” Johnny whispered, a light flickering on then off in the direction of the stairs. Someone’s awake! “Gloria?”
“Yes?” I’m so glad he shaved! And I used to hate Old Spice.
“What would happen if, oh, say, Angel were to walk down the stairs right now and see us like this?”
Gloria rubbed her nose into Johnny’s neck. “She’s a very deep sleeper.”
The upstairs hallway light flashed on and stayed on.
“Shoot!” Gloria hissed, rolling off Johnny onto the floor with a soft thud. “Um, just, sit up and, oh, act like you’re watching TV.” Please don’t be Angel, please don’t be Angel …
Johnny sat bolt upright, located a remote between the cushions, and channel surfed.
“Don’t mind me,” Marion said, her footfalls evenly spaced as she descended the stairs. “I just live here. It’s only my house. I have every right to walk around in it whenever I want.”
“She sounds angry,” Johnny whispered, focusing on the TV. Oh. Man vs. Wild. I haven’t seen this episode. I wonder what nonsense he’ll survive tonight.
“And I have excellent hearing for an old lady, Johnny.” Marion stood in the hallway, a halo of yellow light behind her. “Fornicating in the living room like a couple of teenagers when they’re grown and could be at his place since Gloria has a built-in babysitter, but no, not these two. They have to, how did he say it, get their freak on, and on my grandmama’s loveseat!”
This has to be the oldest loveseat still in existence, Johnny thought. It has to be priceless. “She is angry,” Johnny said. He surfed more channels during a commercial. Hey, It’s A Wonderful Life is on again. I’ll bet they fall in that pool again. Jimmy Stewart was a pretty fair dancer for such a tall man—
“Um, is it okay if we go to your place?”
Johnny blinked.
“To talk, that’s all,” Gloria added.
Johnny nodded.
“Girl, you’re grown,” Marion said, “so get out. Just tell me what to tell Angel when you’re not here on a Saturday morning.”
For the first time in Angel’s life! What am I going to do? Gloria handed Johnny his hoody. “Tell her … tell her I’m out getting her breakfast.”
“She’s up at the crack of dawn, Gloria,” Marion said. “You gonna be here at sunrise? Burger King doesn’t open until six.”
Gloria turned to Johnny. “Am I going to be back by sunrise?” Please say no! I have never talked to anyone all night. Oh. Right. Except for God, but I was in labor at the time!
Johnny shook his head once and nodded once. “Maybe.”
“Um,” Gloria whispered, taking Johnny’s hand and dragging him to the door, “you think of something to tell Angel, Mama.”
“Why me?” Marion asked.
“Cuz this is your house, Mama,” Gloria said.
Johnny stepped outside then stepped back in. “It was good to see you as always, Marion.”
“Get out!” Marion yelled.
After the Vega rumbled away, Marion took a long look at the loveseat, chuckling to herself. “I told her about a man with big hands, but did she believe me? No. What do I know? I’ve only lived … fifty-five years …”
24
Even the mice knew that there was no way Johnny’s secondhand futon could contain them.
And the mice knew a thing or two about getting cozy on secondhand futons.
Johnny and Gloria first tried to lie lengthwise on the folded futon. Gloria fit fine, but when Johnny tried to join her, the futon cushion sagged and seemed to suck Gloria into the wall.
“I’m stuck,” Gloria said.
“Sorry,” Johnny said.
“It’s okay. Let’s try …”
They then unfolded the futon, and though they fit fine, Johnny’s additional weight sagged his side and raised hers.
“Cheap futon,” Johnny said. I didn’t know I owned a teeter-totter. “Sorry.”