Meanwhile in the World where Kennedy Survived

by Lacey Ann Carrigan

  Chapter Eleven

  Dorina lived in a one bedroom apartment in Westwood. It was a light-pink stucco, adobe style building with a fresco roof that may have been a big deal when it was first built in the mid-seventies but had started to get worn around the edges. All things considered, it was a combination of the most reasonable rent in a reasonably safe neighborhood that was still close enough to all the places she needed to get to during a typical day.

  At the advice of her mother and father, she insisted on the second floor, nestled between other apartments. Her mother said “You don’t want to be on the first floor because you’ll be vulnerable to all sorts of riff-raff and you want to avoid end or corner units too because they get broken into more often.” During a family financial crisis when she was in early high school her mother took a job as an emergency dispatcher for the county. Though she had been able to “retire” when her father’s insurance business recovered, she still kept a watchful eye focused on all the hazards of everyday living. She called her second oldest daughter every Sunday just after four o’clock. It was the one reason Dorina had to get a cell phone, since she didn’t want to be apartment-bound at that time.

  Her immediate neighbors were a mousy little ex-ballerina who worked as a secretary for an international exporter and a tall, boyish man who worked as a loan originator in real estate, who was trying to learn Japanese. All of the apartments in the building were one bedroom since the building had been originally designed for singles. Most of the people who lived there were either students, older men who worked in the factories or drove pest control routes, or single moms with one child. Dorina felt safe there. She could recall only one time during the year she lived there that the police had been called: they had to break up an extra-loud end-of-the-semester party at one of the student’s apartments.

  That night she was in the mood for mindless entertainment and for leaving adulthood for awhile. She rummaged through her dresser drawers with the perfect garment in mind and then she found it, her extra large Cincinnati Bengals official NFL jersey with the number 7, “Esiason” stenciled on the back. The sleeves covered most of her wrists and the shirt bottom nearly reached her knees, so with only her underwear and bare feet she was aware that she probably looked small. Neither her collection of chick-flick DVD’s or trashy novels would suffice for that night’s escapism.

  Instead, she brought out her Play station and snapped the “Pandemonium” disc into place. It was an older-generation, non-violent game she loved to play where a girl character in a strawberry blond pageboy, dressed in medieval garb, must travel through various worlds to save her fiefdom from destruction. While she played she vacantly munched on dry Cheerios out of a Tupperware bowl. A health website she’d visited once recommended them as the perfect replacement for potato chips since they contained vitamins, lowered cholesterol, and promoted regularity.

  The apartment, small as it was, contained three telephone jacks. She put one of her prized possessions, a porcelain French phone on her vanity, hung another utilitarian wall phone in the kitchen, and connected a third, tiny headset phone to a switchbox also serving her computer. On top of all that, she kept her cell phone beside her as she played. A tether to the adult world. She was making progress in the game, squashing killer plants and jumping over rolling boulders, making it to level four “Monster Mountain” when she heard the unmistakably high-pitched Mickey Mouse voice saying “Oh Boy! A Phone Call!” She put the game on pause and answered her cell phone: “Samantha’s House, Dorina speaking, may I help you?” Samantha was her eight-year old ginger tabby who was curled in a ball sleeping on some towels atop the closet shelf just then.

  On the other end of the line, Mitch said “I know you can. Question is, do you want to?” Judging by the static, which unfortunately muffled the full effect of his sexy voice, Dorina guessed that he must have been in traffic.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. What are you doing?”

  “Freezing trolls and climbing parapets.”

  “Pandemonium? You overgrown child, you. Want to play a different kind of game?”

  “Maybe. As long as it isn’t ‘Guess who blew her interview.’”

  “How did you know I was going to ask about that?”

  “Clairvoyance. Hey, maybe if I get fired I can get a job on one of those psychic lines.”

  “It can’t have been that bad. Whoa! Shit!” There were a series of muffled clunking sounds and line clicks.

  “What! What’s wrong? Mitch? Are you there?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Almost traded paint with a Saturn.”

  “You know I’ve been meaning to tell you about that. It’s not really what cell phones are for. Maybe you’d better wait until you’re stopped somewhere and call me again. I don’t want to get a call from the ER.”

  “Got a better idea. I’m on the freeway now. I could be at your place in about ten, fifteen minutes. Want some company?”

  “I guess so. I’m not really dressed for it.”

  “Ha, ha. How about undressed for it?”

  “Mitch I really don’t feel...”

  “Look, tell you what. I’ll come by and we’ll talk about this supposedly ‘bad’ interview you had. I guarantee you’ll be glad I did. If you decide you’re not up to having me around, fine. Then I’ll go on my merry way. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

  She smiled. “Okay.”

  Traffic must have been bad, because Dorina was able to complete one more level after dying twice before she heard Mitch’s knock. He would rap the door one slow, one two three quick, one two three quick, then one slow. She opened the door. Mitch stood out on top of her welcome mat wearing his European cut charcoal gray suit with violet power tie. And he had splashed on some Aspen sometime during the day. His eyebrows raised in exaggerated cartoon fashion when he looked down at her. “Wow! Me likey! You look almost as sexy in that as the shiny black teddy.”

  “Guess you like the scrubbed down look, too.”

  “Yeah! Very innocent. Almost virginal. You gonna let me in or what?” Once he was inside and she’d closed the door behind him, he again looked her up and down. “You do look really cute in that. How come you haven’t worn that for me before?”

  She shrugged. “I thought you’d make a crack about being the fan of a loser team.”

  He dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. “Ah, I saw ‘em beat the Raiders once. That makes them a winner in my book.” She invited him to sit beside her on the couch. After resetting the game for two players, they passed the controller back and forth, absently taking turns while they talked. Mitch said “So, did she really almost die during the filming of that Steven Blade flick? Was she pissed off that they picked Raquel Welch to play her part in the movie version? Is she a notch on Hugh Hefner’s bedpost? Give me all the inside dirt.”

  “Mitch, I can’t have been at her house for much more than fifteen minutes.”

  “Fifteen minutes? What did she have to do? Catch a flight for a Galaxia convention? And what’s her house like? Pleasure toys? Whips and ropes? Does she have a live tiger for a pet?” Dorina described the house, and Jacy’s apparent elegant, though simple taste and the way she had managed to create a pastoral haven in the middle of an exclusive urban neighborhood through her garden.

  “Aside from being slightly, I don’t know, spacey, she was a pretty ordinary person,” Dorina explained.

  “So what was her take on that urban myth thing?”

  “We really didn’t get that far. I asked her and she said she was aware of it, but she seems to think the whole thing was a coincidence.”

  “Okay, then write about that. And describe how beautiful her garden is”

  “Miggy, it’s not Good-freaking-housekeeping. Vic will never go for that.”

  Mitch took the control from her and started to play, though distractedly, getting killed before making it out of the the first chute. “Well then how come she had to dash off so quick like that? She a CIA operative or something?”

/>   “No. Nothing that exotic. She and her daughter manage real estate and there was a problem at one of the properties. The daughter called freaking out so Jacy felt like she had to drop everything and go there.”

  “Jacy Rayner has a daughter?”

  Dorina described Josette, getting into detail about how closely she resembled her mother at the height of her show business career. “She seems to have an attitude, though,” she added. “Wasn’t really friendly.”

  “Ooooh. Think you could talk her into doing a two-on-one?”

  Dorina bonked him playfully on the head with the game controller. She then sighed and returned to the game. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said.

  “Well it wasn’t your fault she had to leave suddenly. Maybe you could get her to invite you back to finish the interview.”

  “Yeah, right. What would I say? ‘Hi, Miss Rayner. You know I really fucked up that interview the other day. Could I come over so we could try it again?’”

  “Ooooh, like it when you talk dirty.”

  “Well I had my chance and fucked it up. That’s all there is to it. I’m going to be doing obits and filler fluff when I’m fifty.” To illustrate her frustrated mood she gleefully incinerated an advancing troll with the flamethrower option on the controller, pressing the button savagely.

  Mitch said “Hey,” and reached forward to hit the “Select” button, pausing the game. “Let’s not do this.” He gently tugged the controller from her, forcing her to pay attention. “You’ll be fine. Just keep trying.” With a languid, gentle finger he lifted her chin up then leaned in for a soft, delicate kiss. He set the controller down and traced a long line on the inside of her thigh. She moaned, returning his kiss, teasing him with a gentle flick of her tongue, allowing her hand to drop down delicately atop his straining, hardening ridge.

  That’s all it took.

  To Dorina, the best part was always the afterglow. When they had finished and were sitting up in bed, she fetched the bottle of lambrusco and a small plate full of Godiva chocolates to munch on while they watched old reruns on cable. At one point Mitch playfully poured the wine from his glass into Dorina’s navel while she lay flat. He then drank and licked it out while she writhed in ticklish agony, laughing hysterically. By the time she was about ready to pound on his back to make him stop, he turned his oral attentions further on down. She received him, leaning back deliciously, stroking his hair, encouraging him while he trailed kisses downward, letting him work his lingual magic on her.

  For a moment she briefly turned her attention to the small television set perched atop a night stand against the wall. One of the nostalgia networks was playing a re-run of a spoof spy show. The nerdy main character of the show, with his narrow shoulders and tweeds was sitting in an office surrounded by frosted pale green glass. A tall woman wearing a pale pink separates outfit cut to accentuate her curves appeared at the door. She wore a pillbox hat with a boa, black gloves to match and dabbed delicately at her eyes with a handkerchief. Her cheekbones were classically high, eyebrows arching, eyes slanted sensually. She was Jacy.

  “Oh, my god,” Dorina said and Mitch may have thought that his titillations were close to working her into the frenzied throes of glorious climax. Because he loved her, lavished her, tantalized her all the more enthusiastically. Dorina leaned back; closing her eyes to be caught up in the crashing waves of ecstasy, yet when her apex of ecstasy neared she inexplicably opened them. She saw a close-up of Jacy onscreen, laughing pleasantly while spasms of glory racked her body.

  Mitch then rolled over, onto the remote, hitting one of the buttons just hard enough to change the channel. “Oh, no darling, switch it back, please,” she said.

  Disoriented, he grunted “Huh?” then reached down for the remote. “What was that, 35? He flicked the buttons and an image reappeared on the screen, this time of the small nerdy character in a car chase, driving a dingy white little sedan while Slavic looking types pulled away from him in a souped up Dodge Charger. Dorina must have registered a quizzical look across her features because he asked “What’s wrong, hon? Not the right channel?”

  “No,” she said softly, and she considered telling him what she had just seen but shook her head instead. “I’ve got an idea, babe. Switch it over to something you want to watch. Sit up.” She fluffed up the pillows for him. He did as he was told, shifting around so that he sat up, eying her eagerly, appearing ready for more action.

  Dorina reached for a candle atop the dresser and found a box of matches in one of the side dresser drawers. Mitch flicked the remote and the channel jumped over to the Sportscenter, then the news, then a western. He stopped at an entertainment magazine show hosted by a sexy blond wearing glossy lipstick. She was discussing the new movies that were currently in production, and the stars that would be appearing in them.

  Dorina lit the candle and then held one of the chocolates to the flame, watching it melt taking care to catch the molten drops on the plate. Mitch shook his head, grinning, realizing what was about to happen. “You never cease to amaze me,” he said.

  She allowed a few moments for the molten treat to cool before lifting a dollop of it off the plate with her finger. His column, and his helmet received a lavish, languid basting. Afterward, she knelt down, her lips scant inches away while she blew air gently on it, to cool it even further. “Anything good on TV?” she asked, trying extra hard to be lilting and innocent. At first she licked glancingly, the way she might as a child when an ice cream cone had begun to melt and rivulets of it dripped down onto the cake and she would lap them away before they fell further. Then it was an orange creamsicle, the outer orange ice so refreshing on a hot day when she swirled her tongue around it. Finally it became a large lollipop with a chocolate center, as she lapped and sucked, eager to get to the soft, tasty middle, nipping it.

  “My god, you’re wonderful,” Mitch said, in strained spasms as he smoothed her hair against her shoulders. He then leaned his head back, eyes closed, jaw clenched as Dorina’s tasty chocolate treat ended with a generous serving of cream.

  Moments later they both sat up and watched a sitcom detailing the trials and tribulations of three young men and three young women in Manhattan. “You ought to, you know, call her,” Mitch said.

  Dorina shrugged, finishing the last of her wine, savoring it as the perfect complement to the other treat she’d had. “We’ll see.”

  About an hour after that, Mitch dressed and had to head home. Dorina, who did not enjoy sleeping in the nude unless she was with her man, put her Bengals jersey back on.

  The cat reappeared almost immediately after Dorina saw Mitch to the door. “Hi fluffy,” she said, reaching down to pet her. “Are you hungry?” She filled Samantha’s food and water bowls and cleaned out the litter box as the last act of the evening.

  When she settled down to bed for the night she said, out loud, “Yes, Miss Jacy Rayner, you are surely an enigma.” And she fell swiftly asleep.

  In the wee hours she had a dream.