by J. J. Murray
Jesus. If he only knew how close to the truth he is. “Yeah? What’s he doing?”
“He’s … he’s kissing the back of your neck.”
Whoo. “Is he … is he hard?”
“Yeah.”
Whoo. “And what’s she doing?”
“She’s … she’s trying to get between us….”
Don’t stop.
“She’s kissing on your nipples….” Oh, don’t stop.
“Her tongue is going lower—” I hear another damn beep. Shit! “Roger, hold that thought. I have another call.” I click over. “Hello?” “Checking up on me, Lana?”
Izzie.
“Huh?”
“I know you called Karl while I was there.”
Time to break bad on Izzie. “Yes, I did, and I’m wondering how you could have ever become a guidance counselor if you can’t count.”
A pause.
“Karl told me everything y’all didn’t do.”
“Oh, did he?”
“Yeah. And all you got were some fake Coach bags, Grandma.”
Another pause. “He told you about that?”
“You bought them all, right?”
“No, not about that. He kept calling me ‘Grandma,’ and I wondered why in the world …”
“By the way,” I interrupt, “you got four grandchildren and five kids by five different daddies.”
“You witch!”
“Isn’t that one of your fantasies?”
I hear a low growling sound. Does Izzie have a dog?
“Oh,” I add, “and don’t bother coming over next Sunday.”
“Why?”
“Because you won’t have a story to tell. Good night, Izzie.”
Click.
Now, what am I ever going to do on Sunday afternoons without Izzie? Hmm. I may just have to do nothing all day.
Or have more phone sex with Roger. I click back to him. “Is she licking me down there yet?”
“Uh-huh.”
This has never been my fantasy, but I can’t help but get more excited. “What’s the … what’s the man doing?”
“He’s, um, he’s fucking her, hard….” Damn.
“And he wants to fuck you next….” Oh … shit … damn … Oh yes, here come the rainbows. “Roger?” “Yeah?” “I came.” “Yeah?”
Oh shit, oh shit. “Yeah. Did you?” “Yeah.”
“Um, I’ll talk to you later.” “Okay. Good night, Lana.” “Yeah. Good night.”
I look around my room, at the crumpled sheets, at all that yellow.
Yeah. It has been a good night.
Chapter 16
After a nice nap and a phone call to PH to tell the secretary that I’m “under the weather”—and after having a difficult time getting Roger’s boxers off the side of my house using a step stool and a long stick—I sit in the reading room and think.
Another woman, a so-called friend of mine, tried to steal away one of my men today. And this gets me to thinking about other women I don’t know out there who might be trying to do the exact same thing with Juan Carlos or Roger. I can’t let my men lose interest in me. Should I put them on a schedule? Hmm. A timetable of lust. Yes.
Nah. It wouldn’t work. Whenever my friend comes, no one can see me—
Or should I continue to test them? I can’t live my life full of doubt. I can’t sit here wondering what each of them might be doing. I didn’t have these thoughts when I was living in the city, but the same as when I was there, I can’t just sit here by the phone. If Roger can talk me into an orgasm, what’s to stop him from calling someone else? His fantasies are so detailed, almost as if maybe he’s already done them.
I need another test.
I pat my stomach. It’s mostly flat with a little roll just under my belly button. I never could get rid of that little jelly roll no matter how many sit-ups I did. Must be genetic—
A test, yes. But this time, it will be a test of their friendship.
Yes.
I pat my stomach again. “I think I’m going to be late,” I say.
When Karl arrives with lunch, I get right to the point. “I’m late, Karl. I think I may be pregnant.” I dig into the Hardee’s Thickburger he brought me, ketchup and mayonnaise oozing out of the sides of my mouth.
Karl doesn’t seem to be breathing.
“You hear what I said?” Damn, this is a sloppy burger.
“I heard you. Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. My friend has been faithful since I was thirteen. I was going to tell you yesterday, but I didn’t want to ruin the moment. So, what do you think?”
Karl fiddles with a curly fry. “I think it’s great.”
I smile. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
And then he, um (sorry, Roger!), puts me right up on that kitchen table and starts to get busy with me while I finish my burger. But then I realize—
“You got a condom?” I say, sitting up.
“I don’t need one anymore, right?”
Shit.
Why didn’t I think of this? They all hate to wear condoms, and now I’ve just given Karl the chance for his stuff to be free!
“I’m late, boo. That doesn’t mean I’m pregnant. You still need to wear a condom.”
He steps back. “You don’t want to be pregnant with my child?”
Huh? “I was just saying that you need to use a condom like always.”
“I heard you. You’re saying I need to use a condom because you don’t want to be pregnant, right?”
Karl is just full of surprises today. He’s actually thinking something through. “I didn’t say it that way. It’s just …”
“Well, what are you saying, Lana?”
And suddenly I’m not Peanut. “I’m just saying that now is not the time for us to have a baby, with you on the road so much.”
“But I just told you about being a distributor or opening my own store down here.” He sits in a chair as he shrivels up and my stuff dries up. “What was all that stuff you were talking about yesterday?” He pulls up his pants, zipping his zipper.
Oh yeah. I was pushing him about hooking up long-term. “Baby, my hormones are all out of whack right now. I know I’m not making much sense, so—”
His pager starts vibrating on the table.
“Don’t answer that,” I say, but it’s too late.
He snatches up his pager, snatches my cell phone, and goes outside to make his call. If I’m lucky, he won’t be able to get a clear signal.
I limp to the window and see him talking on the phone using that salesman’s smile of his. Shit. He sees me and mouths “business.” Ten minutes later, he comes back inside.
“I have to go meet with one of those truckers, the ones I told you about. He’s over at the truck stop in Troutville.”
“You’re just going to leave me like that? Karl, I may be pregnant.”
He sighs. “And this deal, if it works out, will keep me home with you and our baby. I have to go.”
“But I need you” escapes before I can stop it.
He nods. “And I need you, too, Peanut. I’ll come right back when I’m done. I promise.” He kisses my cheek. “I’ll be back.”
“How long are you going to be?”
He shrugs.
Thirty minutes pass. Then thirty more. I toy with paging him but don’t. I even think of calling Izzie, just to make sure the two of them aren’t scamming me. There’s no scam. There can’t be a scam. I believe in Karl, and I’m even beginning to believe he’s about to become my one-and-only boo. He’s trying to put down roots around me. Maybe it’s time I simplified my life. Karl seems sincere, and with that smile and body, he’ll be a great salesman. It will take me a good long while to control my jealousy of other women checking out my African god, but I think I can handle it.
Am I making a choice here or what?
I think I am.
I think … I’m about to become a one-man woman.
Then it’s time to weed
out Juan Carlos.
I call Berglund, and the service manager gets him for me. “Hello, Lahhh-na.”
“Hi.” For some reason, his saying my name that way didn’t make me tingle today. I’m doing the right thing. “Juan Carlos, I want to meet your mama today, and I won’t take no for an answer.” That ought to do it. That ought to weed him out.
“But Lana, I am not ready—”
“It’s now or never,” I interrupt.
“But Lana, it is impossible today, you see. She is at—”
“I thought you loved me,” I interrupt. This is going so much better than I had hoped! Almost done.
“I do, I do, Lana, but I cannot—”
“Then it’s goodbye, Juan Carlos. We’re through.” I should hang up now, but I owe him the last word. After all, he did bring some passion into my life when passion was missing in my life.
But he doesn’t give me the last word. “I am coming to see you.” Click.
Oh shit! I call back, but the service manager says Juan Carlos is “gone in a flash.”
Shit shit shit!
Karl’s coming back.
Juan Carlos is on his way.
Should I just … vacate? Is the sun starting to go down? It is. I could just roll on out of here, go for a drive until, oh, midnight. That’s what I’ll do. I know the country roads around here by now. I don’t even have to turn on my headlights. I’ll just take a long drive without my cell phone—
No, Karl might worry if he tries to call me and I don’t answer. I mean, I may be “having his child,” and he’d worry. What if Roger calls? He’d worry, too. And what about Roger? I’ve been sitting here clearing the way for Karl, and I’ve completely forgotten about the man who made me see rainbows without even being in the room!
I should have stayed in the city.
Okay, okay, calm down. That Bonneville can barely get over forty without shaking. That gives me at least half an hour to—
To do what?
Page Karl. Tell him … tell him I’m going to my mama’s to do laundry. That might work. Yeah. I’ll meet Karl at my mama’s.
But that will leave Juan Carlos hanging, and knowing his temper, he might wait here for me until I get back.
Damn.
I thought I was perfectly clear on the phone with him. “Then it’s goodbye, we’re through” should have been enough! What’s there left to talk about?
I page Karl and wait, staring hard at my phone. “Ring, damn you,” I whisper.
Hmm. I’ll need laundry. The sheets! I get up the stairs with some difficulty, and as soon as I get the sheets off, my cell phone rings.
“Karl, thank you for calling back so soon.”
Silence. “Lana, it’s Roger.”
Oops. “Hi, Roger. I was expecting a call from … from my brother.”
“Oh. You sound out of breath.”
Has it been forty minutes? Of course not. Juan Carlos is still miles away from here, and why doesn’t Juan Carlos have a cell phone so I can tell him not to come? Everyone on this freaking planet has a cell phone, but no, I have to hook up with a man—
“Lana, are you all right?”
“Uh, well, it’s been kind of hard getting around with this bum ankle.”
“I suppose so. You need some help? It’s been a slow day at the cemetery. Our customers aren’t dying to see us today.”
Normally I’d laugh, but today, I can’t. “Uh, no, I can manage.”
“Well, um,” Roger says, “I’m already … here.”
Every blood cell in my body freezes.
I can’t move.
“You’re … here?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
Surprise.
Damn.
I usually like surprises, but today …
Breathe, Lana, breathe.
“Well, uh, Roger, I was just about to do some laundry down at my mama’s.” God, I hope Juan Carlos hits every light and stops at every stop sign. Maybe he’ll be pulled over for going too slow!
“I can help you. Is the front door open?”
“Um, yeah. I’ll be upstairs.”
Freaking out.
Yes.
I’ll be upstairs freaking out.
I click off my phone and hear the front door open. I look at the sheets in my arms, and they all smell like Karl! I drag my bad leg behind me to the closet and stuff the sheets inside. Just as I close the closet door, Roger is standing in the doorway.
“Hi,” he says. “What can I carry?”
New plan. “Oh, just some towels from the bathroom”—oh shit, and three of them are wet!—”and some dish towels from downstairs. The rest of my laundry is already at Mama’s. I just need to pick it all up.”
I watch Roger collect the towels, and he comes out smiling. “I can’t believe they’re still wet from last night.”
Believe it.
“Um, where are my boxers?”
Oh yeah. Them. “Um, I put them out in the barn.”
He blinks.
“They were wet, and I thought they’d dry off more quickly out there. You wouldn’t want me to hang them out on a tree or something for everyone to see, would you?” Please believe me!
“Boxers blowing in the breeze,” he says. “Kinda kinky.”
“I, uh, must have known you were coming back, huh?”
In my sickest, most twisted thoughts, I never would have thought up this scenario. Three men are trying to visit in one day, and, it seems, simultaneously. No freaking way.
“I’ll take these downstairs.”
He walks down the hall, and I follow behind him—praying. Oh God, what is about to happen? If You just let me get out of this house, I will owe You big-time. I’ll even go to church. I’ll even—
“Oops,” Roger says, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. “I dropped something.”
He stoops over and comes up with … a fuzzy black ring box. Is that—
“Now, how did that get into my pocket?” He turns to me. “Lana, I didn’t go to work at all today.”
“You … didn’t?” I can’t take my eyes off that box. Please be earrings inside, or a brooch. Brooches are nice. Maybe a charm for a charm bracelet. Or the bracelet itself.
Anything but a ring!
“No. I spent all morning picking this out for you.” He opens the box….
A ring. A diamond ring. A diamond engagement ring.
Oh shit.
“I’ve been thinking about this moment for a long time, and, well, you practically asked me to ask you to marry me yesterday, and this might not be the right time, but …” He drops to one knee. “Will you marry me, Lana Cole?”
Before I can answer, I hear shouting outside.
And it isn’t Mr. Wilson.
Unless Mr. Wilson has suddenly learned to speak Spanish.
And city slang.
Oh … no.
Chapter 17
Roger goes to the door. “Is that your brother?”
Oh God!
I can’t move.
Why didn’t I hear a car pull up? I should have heard two cars pull up!
I look past Roger’s head and see Karl and Juan Carlos walking toward the house. Well, they’re not exactly walking. More like running. No, more like racing to see who can get to the door first.
Please, please, please, God, wake me up from this nightmare!
Roger turns to me. “What’s going on, Lana?”
Find your voice, girl. “Roger, I want you to know that no matter what happens—”
The shouting begins again.
“Your brother sounds pissed. Should I leave?”
“Um, Roger, he’s not my—”
I can hear what they’re shouting now. Karl is yelling “bitch,” and Juan Carlos is running off in Spanish, and—
Yep.
I’m a bunta.
Roger turns to me, repeating, “What’s going on?” When I don’t answer, Roger puts the ring box back into his pocket.
Is this where I�
��m supposed to faint? Maybe I can break a leg and get some sympathy before they arrive. They wouldn’t dump me if I’m lying in a heap on the floor, would they? If I had a back door, I’d be stumbling out of here right now!
They’re at the door, pounding away, Karl yelling, “Let me in, Peanut!” and Juan Carlos screaming, “Lahhhna!”
“Should I let them in?” Roger asks.
Only if I can go out. They can stay, though. That’s right. I’ll just go for a walk. Y’all just stay here and work this thing out without me.
“Lana?”
“Yeah.”
Oh God!
“Lana?”
Damn, I’m beginning to hate my name. “Let them in.” Maybe they’ll understand. Maybe they’ll be okay with it. Maybe—
I sit in the closest chair. They are all going to be pissed.
So this is how it ends.
This is how paradise crumbles.
The door opens. So much noise, so much shouting. I’m the only one sitting. Suddenly this kitchen isn’t as big as it once was.
I need to take control. “Why don’t”—my voice is so small!—”why don’t y’all sit?”
“What’s Mr. Wilson doing here?” Karl shouts, pointing at Roger. Oh no. Karl’s upper lip is touching his nose. He’s most definitely pissed.
“His name,” I say feebly, “his name is Roger.”
“This is the guy who cuts your grass, right?” Karl demands.
I nod.
“Are you’re doing him, too?” Karl shouts.
I have trouble looking any of them in the eye. I hear a chair move. At least Roger is sitting down now, his big ol’ goofy feet tapping out a beat on the linoleum.
“I can explain,” I say, my voice shaking. “I can explain everything.”
“Yes,” Juan Carlos hisses, “explain everything.” Juan Carlos’s nostrils are flaring. Shit. He’s angry, too. “Explain!”
What’s to explain that isn’t already obvious? I look at Karl. “Karl, what took you so long?”
“What?” Karl says. “You said you were going to explain.”
“Just … just answer my question.” I have to know exactly how badly I’ve messed all this up.