by Cathy Holton
“Yes,” Annie said. “But what does it mean?”
“I think it’s a masturbatory term,” Mel said.
“Oh, well, then, you should know,” Sara said.
April finished deveining the shrimp and started mincing the garlic. Mel held the pitcher up and said, “Hey, do you want a Margarona?”
April, who’d watched her mix the drinks earlier, said, “No thanks. I need to stay sober to cook.”
“How unfortunate for you but probably best for us,” Mel said, happily pouring herself another drink. She paused and said to April, “How about your better half?”
The girl glanced at her over one shoulder. “Who?” she asked.
“The Captain.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “I guess,” she said.
“He’s probably back from the marina by now,” Mel said. “I’ll go ask him.”
“I’ll go with you,” Sara said in a loud singsong voice. She and Mel exchanged glances across the bar. Mel poured another Margarona and Sara followed her out the kitchen door onto the porch. As they walked along the boardwalk to the crofter, Mel said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you didn’t trust me alone with Captain Mike.”
“I’m just looking out for April.”
“April doesn’t need looking out for. She’s a big girl.”
“She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know how tricky and cunning you can be.”
“People who live in glass houses,” Mel said, “shouldn’t throw stones.”
Captain Mike was in the garage under the crofter listening to the Foo Fighters. He had on a pair of cut-off shorts and flip-flops, and he was leaning over Briggs’s fancy golf cart with his back to them. The seat was pulled up and he was scouring the connections for the six batteries with a wire brush.
“We brought you a present,” Mel said, standing in the doorway. She felt a momentary sense of light-headedness, which quickly dissipated. The Margaronas were kicking in.
He stood up and turned around, still holding the wire brush in one hand and a grease-stained rag in the other. His eyes appeared green in some lights and blue in others, but she saw now that they were really gray. Gray as a rifle barrel. Gray as the sea under a storm-lit sky. Another Margarona and she’d be spouting poetry.
“What’d you bring me?” he said.
“Something guaranteed to make you a happy man.”
He grinned and said, “That sounds promising.”
Mel grinned back. Damn. She was beginning to weave on her feet. There was something about his eyes, something mesmerizing that she couldn’t shake, something you didn’t pick up on at first but that kind of grew on you over time. If you saw a photograph of him you wouldn’t think of him as anything special but standing near him was something else entirely.
“It is something special,” she said and took a step toward him but it went wrong. She managed to put too much weight on her right foot and lost her balance, slopping his drink over the rim of the glass before she could recover.
He dropped the brush and put his hand out to steady her. “You girls haven’t been drinking, have you?” he said, wiping his fingers on the rag.
“It’s not too bad,” Sara said. “If you slip it slowly.”
“Slip it slowly?” Mel said.
“Shut up, Mel. You try saying it.”
“Sip it slowly, sip it slowly, slip it sowly.”
“See?”
“I appreciate the offer,” Captain Mike said pointing to a bottle of Sam Adams sitting on the floorboards of the golf cart, “but I’m a beer man myself.” He stuck the rag in his back pocket. “Besides, someone needs to stay sober to drive you girls around later on.”
“We’re not going anywhere tonight,” Mel said, and then she thought, Shut up, stupid. If he wants to drive you around don’t argue. “Well, not for dinner anyway,” she added vaguely. “Maybe later.”
“A moonlit ride,” Sara said and then giggled as if she’d said something funny.
Captain Mike squatted down and stuck his fingers back in among the battery cables. His T-shirt rose in back, exposing the smooth, sleek curve of the latissimus dorsi. His skin was darkly tanned but she could see the rim of pale skin just below his swimsuit line.
“Where’s Mrs. Furman?” he said.
“Who?” Sara asked.
“Mrs. Furman? My employer?” he said lightly, without turning around.
No doubt Briggs would be calling tonight to collect any information he’d managed to gather on Lola. Mel immediately went back to not liking him. Captain Mike and April were like some kind of sinister CIA tag team, and Lola was just naive enough to trust both of them. Poor Lola. “She ran off with that young guy at the beach club,” Mel said perversely, and then thought, Why did I say that?
He turned around and looked at her and then went back to work. “What young guy would that be?”
“The one in the real estate sales office. The good-looking one.”
“She’s in the kitchen with Annie helping April make dinner,” Sara said flatly. She made a face at Mel and sipped her drink.
Mel stared at her, briefly, and then swung her attention back to Captain Mike. She felt foolish now, standing there holding two drinks. “Briggs doesn’t know how lucky he is,” she said. “Lola could have run off with a dozen men by now, if she’d wanted to.” If he was listening to her, he gave no sign of it. He continued to look at the batteries, poking his fingers here and there to check the connections.
She probably should shut up. She was only making it worse for Lola. Briggs would hear about the young real estate salesman and drag Lola home to Birmingham. She should shut up, but there was something in the set of Captain Mike’s well-muscled back, in his reserved silence that drove her to say, “She could have run off in college, you know, with some guy named Lonnie.” Sara shot her a warning look. Mel thought again, Why did I say that? It was hard being ignored by a man as good-looking as Captain Mike. She wondered how old he was. She was guessing thirty-six or thirty-seven although it was hard to tell with a man who still had a full head of hair and shoulders like a high school running back. But April couldn’t be more than twenty-four or twenty-five, not with that body she had, and that meant a twelve-or thirteen-year age difference, which was pretty considerable when you thought about it. Pretty unfair, too, for women in Mel’s age bracket. “It’s a whole new world out there,” she lied, lifting her drink. “Women get to run off with younger men now, too.”
He gave her a curious look, and then went back to work.
“Maybe,” Sara said. “If you’re a Hollywood actress.”
“I once dated a guy who was twenty-two years younger than me,” Mel bragged, which was another lie; she hadn’t dated him, she’d only slept with him. The sex had been great but later, eating dinner at a little dive down in the West Village, he’d said things like Dude, that sex was off the hook! and Damn, Skippy, I was all up in that shit. That shit was tight! and she’d had to fight a sudden urge to lean over, tuck his napkin under his chin, and cut his meat into little squares.
“I don’t think you should be bragging about your pedophilic tendencies,” Sara said rather cynically.
Mel turned her head slowly and gave her a long look. Sara wasn’t making things easy for her, which was extremely hypocritical of her, and if Mel thought about it long enough, might make her really mad. Mad enough to slap the shit out of her. Mad enough to tell the Mofo to step off, as her twenty-two-year-old lover would have said.
Despite the Margaronas, Mel decided not to go there.
By the time Captain Mike came in for dinner an hour later, the party was in full swing. Lola, Annie, Sara and Mel were sitting around the farmhouse table laughing about the time Kevin Adler, aka Sweaty Kevin, superglued his face to the floor during a Sluts and Geeks Party. Half-emptied plates of shrimp scampi and Caesar salad littered the table. Their third pitcher of Margaronas rested in the center like a trophy, like the America’s Cup of Binge Drinking. April leaned against the breakfast
bar listening to them, shaking her head and smiling ruefully, as if she found it hard to imagine them as crazy teenagers.
Captain Mike came up behind her, handing her a plate, and she took it, rolling her eyes at him. He had showered and changed his shirt, Mel noted, although wearing his hair slicked back from his face was not a good look for him. Some men needed their hair around their faces, and he was one of them. He heaped his plate with the scampi, salad, and bread, and April did the same. Most nights they took their plates back to the crofter porch, where they could sit and enjoy their meals privately.
The women were all talking at once and no one seemed to have noticed Captain Mike but Mel. She smiled at him and raised her glass and he smiled back. She beckoned to him in what she thought was a friendly manner, and opened her mouth to say, Come! Join us! but what came out was something that sounded like Cawsh!*
Lola said, “Y’all stop. My stomach hurts from laughing.”
Annie snorted and pointed at Mel. “Cawsh!” she said, flapping her arms like a big black crow. Then she began to giggle.
• • •
After Captain Mike and April left, Mel got up to make another pitcher of Margaronas. Getting from her chair to the kitchen involved a bit of careful planning, and was performed with a hump-shouldered lurching movement, her arms spread out on either side of her like rudders. Behind her, Annie pointed and shouted, Cawsh! Cawsh! like a deranged parrot.
When she got back to the table, Sara had cleared a spot in front of her and was busy folding her cloth napkin into some kind of intricate shape. Mel poured another round of Margaronas and sat down. “What are you doing?” she asked Sara.
“Cloth origami,” Sara said. “Watch this.” She folded the napkin carefully. About halfway through the exercise it became apparent what she was making, at least to Mel, who began to chuckle.
“Is it a swan?” Annie asked.
“It looks a little like that photograph of the Loch Ness monster,” Lola said. “The one with the big arching neck and the little bitty head.”
Mel snorted and Sara kept folding. The shape rose off the table in front of her, curved and quivering.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Annie said. “Where’s the swan’s beak?”
Mel said, “It’s not a swan, Annie.”
It wasn’t until Sara finished gathering the cloth at the base of the long arched shaft and placed it in a wineglass on the table that Lola and Annie figured it out.
“Oh, my God,” Annie said. “It’s a talleywhacker.”
Lola clapped her hands gaily. “Show me how to make one,” she said.
They pushed their plates and silverware back to make room at the table. Each one started with a cloth napkin unfolded flat on the table in front of them while Sara gave them instructions.
“Where’d you learn to do this?” Mel asked, as they began to fold.
“Law school.”
“You learned to make penis napkins in law school?”
“I sat next to a girl from Tunnel Hill, Georgia in one of my classes. A former beauty queen.”
“You mean like Miss America?” Annie said.
“Miss Tunnel Hill.”
“Oh.”
“What does that have to do with penis napkins?” Mel asked.
“Her talent was cloth origami,” Sara said. “And one day she was just fooling around and came up with it.”
“Wow,” Lola said, shaking her head in amazement. “I wish I was creative like that.”
Mel looked at her a moment and then went back to rolling.
“Did she win?” Annie said.
“Yes, she won. She didn’t use the penis fold, of course, she used something else. A swan, I think. Or maybe a turtle.”
“Wow,” Lola said. She continued to shake her head, her expression gradually changing to one of profound wonderment. “But how would you make a turtle out of a cloth napkin? That would be really hard.”
“That would be nearly impossible,” Annie agreed. She had always been pretty good at arts and crafts but cloth origami wasn’t really a craft—it was more like a skill, like baton twirling or sword swallowing.
Mel snorted and said, “This isn’t brain surgery, you know. This isn’t quantum physics or figuring out a way to stop cancer cells from multiplying.”
Annie ignored her. Mel couldn’t even sew a button on her shirt. She had the people at the dry cleaners do it for her. Annie looked at Sara and said earnestly, “If she won Miss Tunnel Hill, why did she stop doing pageants?”
“She said the pageant world was too brutal. She decided to practice law instead.”
Lola giggled suddenly and pointed. “Look at Annie’s,” she said.
The other three napkins were beginning to rise from the table, curved and thick-shafted, but Annie’s lay there limp and lifeless. “Why is mine so flat?” she said, looking around at the other three.
“Damn, Annie, it’s supposed to look like a penis, not a hair braid.”
“I don’t think you’re rolling it tight enough,” Sara said.
“Have you ever even seen a real penis?” Mel said.
“I’ve seen plenty!” Annie cried, looking indignant. Her neck slowly flushed with color. “I mean, I’ve seen one, of course,” she added unconvincingly.
“Of course.”
“If you’ve only seen one then why are you blushing?”
Annie struggled for a comeback. The Margaronas were definitely beginning to interfere with her ability to think sequentially. Whatever it was she was trying to say was locked up behind door number three, if only she could figure out the combination code. “Buff me, Mel,” she said finally.
Lola snorted. Mel said, “Buff me?”
“It sounds nicer than that other word I don’t like to use.”
“Which word would that be, Annie?”
Sara put one finger to her lips. “Leave her alone,” she said. Her eyes were pink-rimmed, and her nose was red and shiny. “I think we should respect Annie’s right to euphemisms,” she said.
“What’s a euphemism?” Annie asked.
“Saying talleywhacker instead of penis. Saying buff me instead of fuck off.”
After that they settled down and went back to work. Lucinda Williams sang on the stereo. Outside the long windows evening fell. The dunes glimmered along the horizon like fallen snow, and beyond them the sea stretched, black and slick as a mirror.
“You see them on TV,” Lola said in a drowsy voice, almost as if she was talking to herself. “At least you do on European TV. And sometimes in magazines. In movies.”
“See what?”
“Penises.”
The other three stopped rolling and looked at her.
“What kind of movies?” Mel said. “Does Briggs have you watching porno films now?”
“Briggs?” Lola said, and giggled. “No, sillies,” she said. The other three watched her with blank expressions. She held her napkin up and waggled it at them. “Look,” she said. “My penis has a kink in the middle.”
Somewhere around nine o’clock they decided it might be fun to have a bonfire on the beach so Lola called Captain Mike. He came over a few minutes later looking tired and irritable, like a camp counselor dragged out of bed in the middle of the night by a group of unruly campers. His hair stood up on one side of his head, and it was obvious from his peevish expression that he’d been called away from doing something he was clearly enjoying. Mel was pretty sure she knew what it was. April hadn’t even bothered to come back and clean up the dinner dishes.
“What is it you girls are up to now?” he said, staring grimly at the origami napkins they had lined up in a row down the middle of the dining room table like an obscene centerpiece. His good humor from earlier in the evening had clearly vanished.
“Were you sleeping” Mel asked, narrowing her eyes above her Margarona glass.
“I was trying,” he said.
“It’s still early.”
“I’m a little behind on my sleep.”
Me
l thought, Well, whose fault is that? Lola colored slightly and said, “We won’t keep you.”
“Keep me as long as you like.”
Sara came out of the bathroom and sat down at the table. Her eyes were swollen and threaded with red veins. She could never hide the fact that she’d been drinking. When they got caught once with a bottle of Jack Daniels out behind Nordan Hall, Mel had tossed the bottle into a hedge and lied like a skillful corporate attorney, but the resident assistant had taken one look at Sara and instantly guessed the truth.
Sara noticed Captain Mike standing over by the breakfast bar and she lifted her glass. “Have a drink with us,” she said gaily.
He whistled softly and ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.
“We were thinking we’d go down on the beach and dance around a bonfire,” Mel said. “We were thinking we’d holler and whoop it up like a bunch of crazy women.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea either,” he said, beginning to relax a bit. He leaned against the breakfast bar with his arms crossed over his chest and his legs crossed at the ankles. “You girls can hardly stand, much less dance. One of you might stumble and fall into the fire.”
“That’s exactly what I said,” Annie said, looking around the table with a self-satisfied air. She stabbed the air with one finger as if to make a point.
“Then you’ll just have to stay and keep an eye on us,” Mel said, smiling. She was trying to be seductive but she was drunk and it wasn’t working.
He ignored her like he always did, as if she were nothing more than a mild annoyance, a slight disturbance in his wide field of vision. Mel would have liked to slap him. She would have liked to hit him over the head with something heavy. She would have liked to lurch over and throw herself upon him like a drowning woman clinging to a buoy.
He lifted his chin and let his eyes rest on Lola. “I hadn’t really planned on babysitting tonight,” he said pleasantly.
She colored again and looked at her glass. “Sorry,” she said.
The evening sky was clear and filled with a big yellow moon. Annie lay in the sand on her back looking up at the stars. Thirty feet down the beach a fire flickered in the portable fire pit Captain Mike had convinced them to use instead of a bonfire. He had wheeled it down to the beach, loaded it with driftwood, started the fire, and then disappeared into the darkness, where he watched, Annie knew, like a protective disembodied spirit. Like their own personal loa. From time to time he would reappear to load more wood on to the fire. Annie pitied April, alone in her cold bed while her lover tended to the needs of a group of inebriated women who should have known better.