More Than a Kiss

by Layce Gardner

  “You just missed her,” Jordan said.

  “Motorized bicycles have already been invented,” Amy said.

  Edison sat in Petronella’s vacant chair. “They have? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, pretty sure,” Amy said.

  Edison looked downcast. “Damn. All the good inventions are already taken.”

  Jordan leaned across the table until her nose was six inches from Edison’s nose. “Guess what? Petronella wants you to invent a paint car just like the one that sprayed her.”

  Edison looked confused. “I invented the one that did spray her.”

  “She doesn’t know that,” Jordan said. “She wants to take it on tour. Build another one and Petronella will be out of my hair forever. Can you do it?”

  “Of course,” Edison said.

  “If you build it, she will go,” Amy said.

  Congress of Cow

  Amy walked into the house and was immediately engulfed by the aroma of curry emanating from the kitchen. She followed her nose to the source, expecting to find Isabel. Instead, she found Jeremy stirring something in a sauce pan and reading a book - both very unnatural things for him.

  “You’re cooking?” Amy said.

  “Actually, I’m only babysitting. I have strict orders to not stop stirring.”

  Amy peered into the pot and saw something green and lumpy. She was no expert, but she knew enough to know that wasn’t a good sign. “What is that?”

  “It’s Saag Paneer. Or will be when it’s done,” Jeremy said, not looking up from the book he was holding. He cocked his head and then turned the book upside down and squinted his eyes.

  “It’s what?” Amy said, taking the wooden spoon from him and giving the goop a good poke. It had the consistency of something found in a touch pool at the aquarium. She felt the urge to do it again - like how kids like to poke dead things with a stick.

  “Saag Paneer is Indian for green slime. It’s essentially cooked spinach with this Indian cheese stuff. The sauce is supposed to be thinner than this but he ran out of coconut milk. He went out to get it. He’s making you dinner.”

  “He? He who?” Amy asked with a note of panic.

  “Chad he, that’s who. You know a man’s in love when he starts cooking dinner.”

  “What!” Amy said, dropping the spoon and splattering green stuff everywhere.

  “Seriously, the dude’s got it bad for you. He was like so down about what happened at lunch that he took an express cooking class this afternoon to woo you back. The only class they had available was Indian cooking. Hence, the green slime.”

  “That’s just great. I thought I could spend an evening alone with you and Isabel. I had something important to tell you both and…” her voice trailed off when she realized Jeremy was more interested in his book than in what she was saying. “What’re you reading?”

  “The Kama Sutra. Talk about a real eye opener.”

  Amy looked over his shoulder at the drawing he had been studying. “That’s not even humanly possible.”

  “Apparently, it is. Those bodies are drawn to scale. I think you just have to be really limber.”

  “Why do you even have this?” Amy made some deductions and she hoped she was wrong about all of them.

  “It’s not mine. It’s Chad’s. He bought it with the cook book. He’s boning up on some new positions to try out on you.” He laughed. “Boning up. Get it?”

  “Not funny. This is wrong on so many levels I don’t know where to start,” Amy said.

  “No, I think the dude is right on target. His plan is to feed you and then fuck you like…” he shows her a picture in the book, “a congress of cow.”

  “That is so not going to happen.”

  “You prefer him to fuck you like a panda?”

  “Jeremy, there is going to be no fucking, panda, cow or any other animal.”

  “He’s going to be totally bummed out. What’re you going to tell him?”

  “Good question.” She could call Jordan and have her call back with same fake emergency. Amy bit her lip. In theory that was a good plan but maybe the wrong person. Jordan was already skittish about Chad. Amy didn’t want to make it any weirder. She thought some more. Her mother! She’d be perfect. Who can deny the call of a sick mother? And it would have the added benefit of not looking like she was rebuffing him because the rebuff strategy was backfiring. It was making Chad more ardent than ever.

  “Do you think that Chad thinks I’m trying to play hard to get and that’s why he’s trying so hard to get me?”

  Jeremy stared back at her. “Could you put that in like man-speak?”

  Men and women were not of the same species despite the claims of science, Amy had concluded. She tried again. “That’s what you told me once. That he thinks I’m playing hard to get.”

  “Yes, and he likes it.”

  “So if I acted like I wanted him then would he go away?”

  “No, he’d totally marry you.”

  “And then cheat on you the day after,” Isabel said, entering the kitchen. She was carrying a bag of groceries with celery sticking out of the top and something moving in the bottom.

  “What’s in the bag?” Amy asked.

  “A live lobster which I really need to get into some water,” Isabel said, setting the bag down on the counter. She peered into the pot on the stove. She took the wooden spoon from Jeremy and poked the green, lumpy stuff. “What is this?”

  “Saag Paneer,” Jeremy said.

  “It needs more coconut milk.”

  “Chad went to get it,” Jeremy said.

  Isabel ran water into the sink. She carefully extracted the lobster from the sack and dumped it into the water.

  “What are you making for dinner?” Amy asked. “Lobster bisque?” Amy didn’t know what Lobster Bisque was exactly, but it had to better than Chad’s Pig Veneer or whatever it was Jeremy was stirring.

  “No, the lobster is for the lobster race that’s being held at the Extreme Cook Off downtown in the Convention Center,” Isabel said.

  “Lobster race?” Amy asked. She did a double-take when she saw Jeremy was now studying a diagram on cunnilingus. She made a mental note of the page number.

  “The placement of your lobster in the race determines your place in the cook off. Obviously being in the top ten is best. Judges’s palates get jaded and gastric problems start occurring so you want to get in early.” She gestured at the lobster in the sink, saying, “I thought this guy looked pretty fast and he was hot to go getting out of the tank. Look at him trying to get out of the sink now.” She grabbed a spatula and parried it at the lobster, like an errant knight defending a damsel. The lobster evaded Isabel’s thrust, reached out with one deadly claw and snapped the spatula in half.

  “Wowzer,” Isabel said, surveying the decapitated spatula.

  “Wowzer is right,” Amy said. “Remind me not to get on his bad side.”

  Isabel threw the spatual in the trash. “I guess that’s why they’re usually sold with rubberbands around their claws.”

  “So, after the race are you going to eat him?” Amy asked. Jeremy was totally engrossed in the book and not stirring. She poked him with her elbow. “Keep stirring.”

  “Depends on if he wins or loses the race,” Isabel said, looking down on him. “His performance will affect my life. If he places high I should reward him with life don’t you think?”

  “You could take him to the beach and free him,” Amy said.

  The front door slammed, announcing the arrival of Chad with the coconut milk. Amy panicked. He was the last person she wanted to see. She was about to sneak out the door when Chad appeared, blocking her only exit. “Hello, my little love button.”

  Amy gritted her teeth and looked at Isabel, sending her telepathic messages. Isabel caught on and came to her rescue by saying, “You better get that coconut milk in the Saag Paneer because it has the consistency of wallpaper glue.”

  Chad’s quickly began tearing the top of the contai
ner. “How much do you think?”

  Isabel shrugged. “Don’t know. Never made the stuff. It upsets my spastic colon.”

  Chad noticed Jeremy reading and snatched the book away from him. “No one was supposed to see that you idiot.”

  “Hey, I needed entertainment. Stirring is boring.”

  Chad poured in a tiny bit of the coconut milk. Jeremy had to use both hands to stir the thick gunk. “Keep stirring,” Chad ordered.

  Isabel grabbed the carton of coconut milk out of Chad’s hands, saying, “Let me help. You men are useless.” She poured a little at a time into the pot while Jeremy continued stirring.

  Chad leaned up against the counter next to the sink, affecting a pose that Amy supposed was calculated to look like a male model. He tossed Amy his famous wink. She didn’t bother to catch it.

  Chad changed poses, leaning on one arm, crossing his feet and pooching out his bottom lip. Amy supposed it was his sultry look.

  “Where are your pink shoes?” Amy asked.

  Chad’s smile disappeared. “They were stolen. I couldn’t believe it. Who would steal pink size 12 men’s shoes?”

  “A clown?” Isabel said.

  Amy snickered.

  Chad ignored the insult. “Do you know how hard it is to find a shoe like that?” he said, petulantly. “And now I’ve got to do it again. But you should see all the adorable kid Converse shoes. You know for when we’ve got little ones,” Chad said, raising his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx.

  Amy might have decked him if what happened next hadn’t happened.

  Chad’s face turned red and he screamed. He plucked his hand up off the counter by the sink. The lobster had a death grip on his forefinger with one of its enormous claws. Chad jumped up and down, spun in a circle and then banged the lobster on the edge of the counter. The lobster sailed across the room, splashing into the pot of Saag Paneer.

  Jeremy yelped and jumped back.

  Isabel screamed, “Save him!”

  Amy said, “I’ll save him!” She rushed to Chad who was now spurting a stream of blood from his hand.

  Isabel shook her head. “Not him! Save the lobster!” Isabel pushed Jeremy back and whacked the back of the pot. It turned over, emptying out the green lumpy stuff and one seriously dizzy lobster onto the floor. The lobster scurried away.

  Jeremy put his hands over his ears, screaming, “Will somebody please turn off the alarm?”

  “That’s not an alarm. It’s Chad screaming,” Amy shouted. “The lobster bit off his finger!”

  That seemed to be news to Chad. He looked down at his hand and, for the first time, saw that he was missing his index finger. He stopped screaming. His eyes rolled back into his head, his knees buckled and he crumpled to the floor.

  “What kind of doctor faints?” Isabel said.

  “One that just lost his finger,” Amy said.

  “He’s bleeding an awful lot,” Isabel said. This observation kicked Amy into gear. She grabbed a dish towel and kitchen shears. She cut the towel into strips. “Snap, snap, you two,” Amy said, gesturing to the floor, “find the finger. The lobster probably dropped it into that green goo.” She tied the strips to Chad’s hand, fashioning a tourniquet.

  Jeremy and Isabel knelt on the floor, searching the globs of Saag Paneer with their bare hands. They looked like two kids making mud pies. Green mud pies.

  “How do we know which lump is it?” Isabel asked.

  “Just find a lump that looks like a finger,” Amy said.

  “They all look like decapitated fingers,” Jeremy said.

  Amy said, “Get them all, we’ll sort it out later.”

  “I found it!” Isabel yelled triumphantly. She held the finger up for everyone to see.

  Jeremy gently pinched the dismembered digit between his thumb and forefinger and dunked it in the sink of water, to rinse it off. “Isabel, get a baggie. Fill it with ice.”

  Isabel leaped up and got a baggie and ice. Jeremy dropped the finger inside. Isabel put her hands on her hips and looked at the kitchen floor. “Gross. It looks like Linda Blair was here.”

  Satisfied that the tourniquet was working, Amy turned her attention to waking Chad up. She slapped him across the face. He didn’t move. She slapped him again, harder.

  Chad’s eyelids fluttered. He opened his eyes and smiled at Amy. “I knew it. I knew you cared.”

  She gave him one more slap just because she could.

  Indy 500

  Isabel was driving her Jeep Cherokee with Jeremy riding shotgun. Amy sat in the back seat with Chad’s passed out head in her lap. Amy couldn’t believe this was happening, although she had to admit that this was far more exciting than the evening Chad originally had planned.

  Isabel had the accelerator mashed to the floor and weaved in and out of traffic with a steady hand. Jeremy and Amy held their breath each time Isabel cut in front of another car.

  “Did anybody turn off the stove?” Isabel asked, not slowing through a yellow light.

  “Shit,” Jeremy said. He sat up straighter. “Did anybody catch the lobster?”

  “Shit,” said Isabel, taking the corner on two wheels.

  “So we have an open gas flame and a killer lobster on the loose in our house?” Jeremy said. “Could this day get any more weird?”

  “I’m a lesbian,” Amy blurted like it was all one word. Wowzer. She didn’t know that was going to pop out. The words were out of her mouth before the thought was even formed. Or maybe the thought had been formed for a long time and it escaped her head once her guard was down.

  Isabel looked at Amy quizzically in the rear view mirror. Jeremy turned in his seat and looked her up and down before turning back around. Finally he said, “Well, that answers a lot of questions.”

  “It does? Like what?” Amy asked.

  Jeremy shrugged. “Why you were kissing that hottie in the paper. Why you hate Chad.”

  Isabel laid on her horn and swerved around an old man walking his dog across a crosswalk. “Is it because of Chad?” Isabel asked. “Because that’s a little extreme, isn’t it? You don’t have to change your sexual orientation just to make him go away.”

  “No,” Amy said. “It’s not because of Chad. And in my own defense, plenty of women hate Chad and they’re not all lesbians.”

  “True, true,” Jeremy said.

  Isabel careened around a corner without touching the brakes. She gunned the engine up to the emergency room, leaving twin skid marks in front of the double doors.

  “If this cooking thing doesn’t work out, you might consider race car driving,” Jeremy said.

  “Yeah, who knew I had a natural talent?” Isabel said.

  “I’ll be right back, don’t try to move him yourself,” Jeremy said. He baled out of the Jeep and sprinted inside the emergency room to gather a gurney crew. After a moment, Veronica and Valerie ran outside. Amy opened her door and once the twins saw Chad passed out on Amy’s lap, Valerie said, “This was a little over the top, wasn’t it?”

  Veronica continued, “Yeah. You didn’t have to try to kill him.”

  “I didn’t do this!” Amy protested. “A lobster did it.”

  “Well,” Valerie said, “You get an A plus for creative excuses. I don’t know if a jury will buy it, though.”

  “If I were you,” Veronica said, “I would have cut off his penis. But a finger is good, too.”

  Amy handed Veronica the finger in the baggie, saying, “Just take this. Make sure it gets to wherever the rest of him is going.”

  Jeremy rolled a gurney up to the Jeep. It took two EMTs to load Chad onto the stretcher.

  As they rolled the stretcher into the hospital, Chad awoke and started screaming. Amy, Isabel and Jeremy all watched Chad being wheeled away until they could no longer hear his screams.

  “Do you think they’ll be able to reattach it?” Isabel asked.

  Jeremy shrugged. “Who knows. We might be calling him Dr. Stumpy from now on.”

  Isabel giggled. Jerem
y joined in. Their laughter was infectious and soon Amy was laughing, too.

  Steve

  Jeremy drove the Jeep back home. He had insisted on driving until Isabel’s adrenaline rush had subsided. Halfway home, he pulled off onto a side street and into a strip mall. “I have to pick up a few things. It’ll only take a minute.” Jeremy got out of the jeep and walked into Uncle Miltie’s Party Land.

  “Is it someone’s birthday tomorrow?” Isabel inquired.

  “I don’t think so,” Amy said. “Maybe that’s not a birthday party place. Uncle Miltie sounds like a perv. Maybe it’s a sex shop.”

  “Yeah,” Isabel giggled. “Maybe it’s a sex shop for clowns.” They both laughed and the tension of the past hour eased.

  “So speaking of sex,” Isabel said. “What’s up with the lesbian thing?”

  Amy took a deep breath. “You know how I’ve been hanging out with that woman Jordan, the one I met at work?”

  “The pretty one, yeah, Jeremy told me.”

  “We’re sorta kinda dating now.”

  “I don’t have a problem with it. Just tell her if she’s not nice to you, she’ll have to deal with me. I’ll sic Steve on her.”

  “Who’s Steve?”

  “The lobster,” Isabel said. “He needed to have a name before I could wrap my mind around what just happened. Besides, despite the Chad thing, I still need him for the race. I don’t think I can handle picking up another one.”

  “We’ve got to find him first. We should use gloves to handle him,” Amy said, thinking they didn’t need to lose any more fingers tonight.

  “Baseball gloves,” Isabel said. At that moment, Jeremy opened the driver’s door and handed a big sack over to Isabel. “Mission accomplished.”

  “What did you get?” Isabel said, peering inside the bag.

  Jeremy smirked. “I couldn’t resist. Check it out.”