Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  Especially if the voices are programmable, like GPS systems. Male, female, British, Irish, Spanish, French, Shrek—imagine the possibilities. Mr. Darcy could be your vibrator’s voice. You could have tie-ins with major video game characters.

  Thor.

  Thor could utter phrases from down below, like, “This mortal form requires orgasms.”

  You could even have your significant other record special messages to be played at intervals of their choosing (or yours). If your partner dies, you’d cherish the memory of them forever.

  I may be on to something here. I come up with some amazing ideas sometimes. Man, this Pinot Grigio is some good stuff.

  While I contemplate these philosophical questions about the meaning of life and finish my fifth (I’m not counting) glass of wine, Marie calls everyone to attention.

  “Dinner is served!” she announces.

  Declan hands Andrew and Hamish a shot of something amber. The two clink glasses and down the alcohol. Then Hamish pours another. By the time we’re all assembled at the table, I count three rounds.

  Fine, then. I pluck a sixth glass of wine from the hot waiter and take my seat.

  Next to Andrew.

  Before my ass is even in the chair Marie is banging on her wine glass with a salad fork like it’s a dinner bell at a dude ranch and we’re all cows out to pasture who need to come home.

  Get along little dogie.

  “Kiss! Kiss!” she calls out, smiling at Declan and Shannon.

  In response, Jason bends over Marie and gives her one hell of a hot, probing scorcher that she starts to fight off, then melts into. After a while, we all start to shift in our seats as it goes on and on...

  “I don’t think that’s quite what Marie was going for,” James says dryly.

  “You don’t know my mom and dad,” Amy replies.

  “A typical kiss contains more than two hundred strains of bacteria,” my mom announces.

  Jason pulls away.

  “Research,” my mom says awkwardly.

  “What do you do for a living? Work on a porn set?” Marie jokes.

  “Actuary.”

  “Oh.” Marie frowns. “That’s like the opposite of porn.”

  “I compute premium rates for various high-risk pools. Just did a kissing evaluation last year for some Hollywood projects.” Mom shudders. “You wouldn’t believe how much herpes there is in that population.”

  And with a single sentence, my mother silences even Marie.

  “You are just a wealth of interesting facts,” James says. I do a double-take as I realize James is holding Spritzy in his lap, rubbing his little head with affection. He’s smiling at my mother with a look that makes me understand why people call him The Grey Wolf, though lately they’re calling him The Silver Wolf. Not sure what the difference is.

  Andrew’s hand lands on my knee.

  Oh.

  It’s The Asshole Wolf.

  I turn to face him. He is, basically, James. Only three-and-a-half decades younger and a little lighter.

  “Would you help me get Hamish’s attention?” Andrew asks, the hand withdrawing quickly.

  I pick up a bread roll and pull my arm back to throw it across the table, but Andrew’s faster.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Getting Hamish’s attention.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No,” I lie. I take the opportunity to really look at him. He has five o’clock shadow, a genetic trait that runs through the McCormick men even at noon, and his tie is loose. His eyes are floating in his head and he’s staring at my boobs like they talk.

  “Are you?”

  He ignores my question.

  I put down the dinner roll and reach down, pressing my breasts together to form the Grand Canyon.

  “Why Andrew, well fiddle-dee-dee,” I say in my best Scarlett O'Hara imitation. “How nice of you to drop by.”

  Hamish is watching us from across the table and nudges Amy, pointing. “Is this a party trick in the U.S.? Do women actually make their breasts talk?”

  She gives him a hard look. “No. Most of us just double-knot a cherry stem with our tongues.”

  Hamish sprays a fine mist of what I now realize is Glenfiddich Scotch whisky all over his arm.

  “I need to spend more time with my American cousins,” he mutters, eyeing Amy with renewed interest as she reaches for the maraschino cherry in her amaretto sour.

  And promptly bites down, hard, on the fruit’s flesh, tearing it in half with her teeth.

  Hamish flinches.

  “Or not,” he declares.

  “Why are you making your boobs sound like one of the women in Duck Dynasty?” Andrew says with a sad little look. “I’ve lost respect for them.”

  “You apologize to my boobs,” I demand. Maybe a little too loudly, because suddenly everyone is looking at me.

  Shannon’s face ripples with horror. Her eyes skip to my wine. She makes a throat-cutting gesture with her finger.

  “She wants you to stop drinking,” Andrew hisses in my ear.

  “Or cut off your balls,” I say pleasantly. “It’s hard to tell which one would make the world a better place.” I reach for my butter knife and Andrew shifts away from me, turning to try to speak with no one, because he’s at the end of the table.

  I overhear Terry saying something about Farmington Country Club to Carol.

  “Last time I was there was for my mother’s funeral.”

  She flinches and puts her hand on his wrist. “I’m so sorry. Is the location going to be hard for your brothers and your dad? Because I can talk to my mother and—”

  Terry’s deep laugh makes his eyebrows go up, and he sits back in his chair, stretching out, like he and Carol are old friends.

  “We’re all fine. Farmington isn’t ruined for us. And you’re about as likely to change your mother’s mind as you are to find my dad dating someone who was born before Reagan was president.”

  Declan stands abruptly, Carol interrupting her own laughter as his movement catches her eye.

  “Well,” says Declan, in a voice I can’t read. Either he’s overcome with emotion, barely holding himself back from strangling Marie, or pissed as hell.

  Sometimes you just can’t tell the difference with him.

  Most of the time you can’t tell the difference with him.

  “I found the perfect woman for me,” he chokes out as the toast ends and we all smile.

  Overcome. I see. I’ll learn to read him eventually.

  He and Shannon share a sweet kiss. Marie looks like she’s a split second away from chiming her wine glass with a spoon again. I catch her attention and give her a wide-eyed stare that I hope looks earnest like Thumper the rabbit in Bambi, but also deathly, like one of those scary prison women from Orange is the New Black.

  It works.

  My hairstylist shops are back, and I’ve returned to my onyx hair color. I need to rock this black-hair look more. When you look like a dominatrix and walk like an Ice Queen Warrior, people defer to you.

  Especially Jason, which is kind of disturbing.

  “And Shannon looks great naked,” Andrew adds with a smile and a voice that carries.

  All movement, all breathing, all linear thought halts. Splat. Like dropping a watermelon from James McCormick’s office window.

  All the air leaves the room like a (c’mon, you knew this was coming) New England Patriots football.

  Shannon’s face contorts like something out of a circus show. Declan looks like he’s about to leap across the table and give Andrew a vasectomy with a shrimp skewer.

  This is my best friend. My bestie. The woman I can call at 5:47 a.m. on my way to a 7 a.m. appointment and beg to bring me tampons after my period makes an inelegant appearance mid-night. The woman who knows my secret passion for marshmallow treats made with Cheetos instead of Rice Krispies. The friend who I could, seriously, call to help me move a body and who would dance on the grave if the person was bad enough.<
br />
  She may help me move Andrew McCormick’s body at this rate. And not in some male fantasy FMF kind of way.

  No one makes a sound. All eyes are on Andrew, who is obliviously chowing through his salad. He stabs a pecan and eats it, then reaches for his glass of white wine. My white wine, in fact.

  I imagine Andrew’s ankle is his crotch.

  And then I jab it, hard, with my high heel.

  He yelps, wine spilling down his wrist.

  You know that one note in “The Star Spangled Banner”? The one no one can ever quite nail when they sing it before a Red Sox or Patriots game?

  Yeah. He should change careers, because that sound is pitch perfect.

  “You’ve seen Shannon naked?” James asks Andrew, who is reaching under the table to rub his ankle and muttering curses in three different languages. Ah, the rich. They even curse better.

  “Who hasn’t?” Marie says in a too-chipper voice.

  Terry’s eyebrows hit a CNN satellite orbiting in space. He’s been quiet so far, the only McCormick brother at the table who seems to avoid power or attention. I like him the most. He is my new best friend.

  Marie continues, very obviously counting heads at the table. Me. Andrew. Declan. Marie. Jason. Amy. Terry. Carol. Hamish. James. Shannon. “By my count,” she adds, “about seventy-five percent of the room has.”

  “Who else here hasn’t seen Shannon naked?” James replies. It dawns on me that he’s not shocked by this conversation.

  He’s pissed to be an outsider.

  Hamish starts to raise his hand and wiggles his fingers. Amy smacks his hand down.

  “You’ve seen her naked?” Andrew growls at me from a position half under the table. Is he snarling?

  “Yes,” I whisper back.

  “Hmph,” he grunts, sounding remarkably like his Scottish cousin. “That’s kind of hot.”

  I stab the back of his neck with my dessert fork.

  A strong hand reaches up, grabs my wrist, and I find myself yanked, hard, under the table. My face is inches from Andrew’s, and he’s hissing at me in that voice only men can do. The low, deep vibrating baritone that makes hissing sound like pure sex in vocal form.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he growls at me.

  His eyes are red and floating. “Did you show up here drunk?” I ask, my voice full of accusation. “Is that what your quickie text is all about? You’re drunk texting?”

  He’s very, very angry. Which makes him even hotter, which makes me tingle in places that feel like they’re vibrating from pure animal magnetism. He’s the magnet and I have iron shavings running through my bloodstream.

  “Raise your hand if you haven’t seen Shannon naked,” I hear James say above us. “Apparently, there’s a club and some of us are excluded.”

  “DAD!” Declan shouts, his voice filled with warning.

  I don’t know what happens next, because Andrew’s mouth takes mine, hard and furious, the kiss more like retaliation for my neck stab.

  Retaliate away, bud. And do it a little more to the left like that. Oh, and that.

  And...oh.

  A month’s worth of lust comes pouring out between us. If my panties hadn’t already melted off from listening to Hamish recite the MBTA Red Line station list, they would melt off again.

  “Are you two making out down there?” Shannon cries out. Her beautiful Tom Ford high heel turns into a weapon, jabbing at us like a toothpick going after a jumbo piece of shrimp at a cocktail party.

  Fortunately, she gets Andrew, an inch to the left of his crotch.

  “Jesus Christ!” he screams, sitting up so fast his head whacks against the underside of the table, making people murmur and gasp above.

  “Direct hit!” I shout. “You sunk my battleship!”

  Shannon pulls me out from under the table and directs me to my seat. “Don’t do this to me,” she whispers furiously.

  Andrew crawls out as well, clutching his phone. “Found it!” he says, pretending that’s why we were under there. He does not realize that three inches to the left of his lips, he’s covered in my red lipstick. He looks like the subject of a South American anthropology documentary.

  “Found what? Mandy’s mouth?” my mom quips. James’ lips twitch. I don’t appreciate the childhood name, but I let it slide.

  Until...

  “Mandy!” Marie squeals, her eyes jumping from me to Andrew like she’s on a scavenger hunt and we’re on the list. “And Andy!” She claps like a child, jumping up and down in her seat.

  “No one has ever called me Andy,” Andrew declares in a cold voice as he takes his seat and angrily wipes his face with his napkin.

  Hamish waggles his eyebrows and holds up the bottle of Scotch, offering to pour Andrew a shot. Andrew takes the entire bottle from him and fills his wine glass instead.

  “Hardcore,” Hamish murmurs admiringly.

  “And I haven’t been Mandy since I was five,” I say. Andrew and I exchange a look. I give my mom an arched eyebrow. She reaches into her bag and pretends Spritzy needs attention, except Spritzy is in James’ lap, now licking the herbed butter bowl.

  Andrew and I have something in common, after all. At least there’s this: a hatred for diminution.

  Marie pretends not to hear, or maybe she does and simply decides our protests do not fit her delusion and therefore are dispensable.

  She zeroes in on Hamish, then Amy.

  “Weel,” Hamish says in that low Scottish accent of his. “Ye dinna have a nickname you can use for me, Marie. Hamish is—”

  “Hamy and Amy!” Marie interjects, pronouncing Hamish’s new moniker as if it rhymes with Amy.

  The man’s face turns green. It’s astonishing, and too bad he’s not Irish, because that would be one hell of a party trick if he were, especially in Boston every March for the famous St. Patrick’s Day parade.

  “Oh, God,” Amy mutters, reaching for her wine. She drinks the whole glass down, grabs the bottle of white wine, and starts chugging from the mouth.

  Declan grabs the red and it looks like he’s about to imitate her. Or use the bottle as a weapon against Marie.

  When he starts drinking, I exhale sharply. Whew. Marie’s safe.

  Terry is watching all of this with a look of inappropriate glee, most of his attention focused on his brothers and James. Of all the McCormick men, he seems to be the only one who genuinely likes Marie.

  “Carol and Terry,” Marie announces, squinching up her face. “Hmmm. You two don’t match.”

  “And I’m not changing my name to Terrel,” Terry says, winking at Carol, who manages to roll her eyes and blush at the same time.

  “That’s fine. Carol can just go by Carrie! Carrie and Terry works!” Marie looks like she just discovered Fermat’s Last Theorem.

  “What rhymes with Chuckles?” Declan mutters.

  James clears his throat. “I know a word. It starts with F—”

  “Too bad ‘Shannon’ and ‘Declan’ don’t rhyme,” Marie says sadly. Is she pouting? Her lower lip pokes out like a cash register drawer.

  “Where’s that sword that goes with the kilt tuxedo? I need it sooner rather than later,” Declan whispers to Shannon.

  “Quit joking,” she says, poking him in the ribs.

  “Who’s joking?” he, Andrew and James say in unison. Andrew pops back all the whisky in his wine glass and slams it on the table.

  And then the caterer begins the next course.

  We manage to eat in relative peace for an entire four minutes or so before someone—okay, me—opens her big, fat mouth and says, “Jason and Marie don’t rhyme.”

  “Your names don’t need to rhyme to have a fabulous marriage,” Declan says, giving Shannon a lovely kiss on the cheek.

  My eyes tear up.

  “That was fucking beautiful, Declan,” Andrew says, giving him a slow golf clap.

  Declan gives him a look that silences Andrew.

  “I would like to make an announcement,” James s
ays, handing Spritzy off to my mother and standing slowly, with the grace of a man who is accustomed to being watched.

  “Is this about your cancer?” Andrew asks, the words coming out of his mouth with little tethers on them, and as they roll out you can see in Andrew’s eyes a series of tiny little men desperately yanking on the ropes as they try to put them back behind his teeth.

  “What?” Declan gasps. The table erupts into chaos.

  Andrew has the wherewithal to just close his eyes and wince.

  “I’m sorry, Dad.” He bows his head like a toy being powered off. My heart softens for him and I reach under the table to take his hand, but stop myself. I don’t really know what role I play in his life right now and the boundary between us is there. Undefined, but there.

  James is blinking, his face a neutral mask as he stands above the seated group, clearly trying to figure out the best approach to salvage the situation.

  “I was about to propose a toast to Shannon, but it looks like I will make a quiet personal announcement instead,” James says in a jovial voice. Either he’s really this grounded and centered about the cancer, or he’s a damn fine actor.

  “Yes, it’s true. I have very slow-growing prostate cancer.” He looks at Declan with the closest thing to love I’ve ever seen him express toward his son. “And I wanted to tell you privately, Declan, but this is how you’re learning.”

  Both Terry and Andrew shift uncomfortably in their seats.

  Ah. Terry knows, too. Sympathy for Declan makes me pour myself another glass of wine, because...well.

  Because I’m pretty sloshed here.

  Declan stands and looks across the table at his father, who is already on his feet for the aborted toast. “Are you sick now? Do you need chemotherapy? What do the doctors—”

  James’ eyes go soft and concerned. Fatherly. “I’m fine, son. My prognosis is fantastic. I’m one of those old coots,” he says with a laugh, exchanging a look with Jason that makes my throat ache, “who will be around to watch my grandchildren graduate from high school. As long as you two get cracking,” he adds, giving Shannon a wink.

  The table erupts into polite chuckling.

  My mother and Shannon have one thing in common: when they get nervous, they babble. This is important, because Mom, who is sitting right next to James, turns to him and says,