Skydiving, Skinny-Dipping

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

Behind him, his assistants walked in one at a time, some carrying poisonous snakes in portable terrariums, and some with lizards like bearded dragons and chameleons to show off. Sitting in the air conditioning was a nice reprieve from the heat outdoors, but I still didn’t understand where the challenge lied.

  Then Len stood up and handed our tickets to the lead handler. He punched the last holes for us and handed them back. Len pulled me up and that was when I thought my heart would seize up.

  “It wouldn’t be a trip to the reptile house without getting to see the constrictors,” the handler, who introduced himself as Tod, told the audience.

  Three, yes, three assistants brought out six feet of reticulated python. I think Tod talked about the skin patterns. But I couldn’t get myself to look anywhere but the bulge in the belly. The bulge that had begun its life as a leg connected to an incredibly large pig.

  “Mollie”—what they named the snake—“loves pork,” Tod announced loudly to the giggles and squeals of the audience.

  Great. But I needed to know the challenge.

  “To end the show, we always bring up volunteers. Today we have—” Tod paused.

  “Kami and Len,” Len told him.

  “Kami and Len,” Tod repeated louder for the rest of the audience.

  Now the nerves showed their ugly, nervous faces.

  “What do you do?” he asked.

  “I’m a skydiving instructor,” Len answered.

  My turn. “I’m a stylist at an upscale salon.”

  “That’s an interesting pairing,” Tod went on. “Welcome.”

  I made the mistake of letting my guard down. Oh, that sneaky Tod, he called me up to stand next to him, which I did, Len taking the spot next to me.

  “Put a body width between you, please?” Tod asked us.

  And like fools, we did, stepping apart.

  “Now Kami and Len are going to help us show you just how long reticulated pythons can get.”

  Excuse me?

  We, what?

  Two of the assistants picked up Mollie’s tail end and draped it around Len, oh yes. Draped it around Len. His shoulders. But they weren’t through. No, no, no… Tod and his assistant from Hades dropped Mollie’s head around my shoulders. And Mollie felt like moving.

  “If she squeezes too tightly, let me know right away,” he said.

  You think?

  I’d have been nervous for Len, watching Mollie wrap her tail around his arm several passes if it weren’t for her doing the same with her head around my arm. Her powerful muscles constricted, pulling Len and me closer together again. Her middle section, the one containing the pork leg, drooped between us.

  My knees felt like they could buckle any minute under her immense weight, which Tod explained came out to one hundred sixty-two pounds, but as her food hadn’t digested yet, she weighed in at a whopping one-sixty-five.

  “I take back… every nice thing… I said about you,” I struggled to say.

  Lennon chuckled and the jerkface didn’t look winded at all.

  “If I survive this,” I said, “then I’m going to kill you.”

  “Well, now I’m torn. I want you to survive this because, you know, I’ve got plans for us. But I’m not ready to die yet… those same plans.” And he winked at me. The nerve. Now he had to die on principle.

  Tod kept talking, though I zoned out.

  “Smile, baby,” Len whispered. “You look constipated.”

  I shot him angry eyes.

  “Make kissy lips at the camera,” he continued. “Remember, this is all going up.”

  No, right. I didn’t remember. Knowing Brian watched these, I couldn’t be seen as anything less than ecstatic to be here wrapped in a giant freaky snake. Time to channel my inner video vixen.

  I puckered my lips and tried for smoldering, sexy eyes aimed at the camera one of the assistants had focused on us. I didn’t know if it worked, but Len certainly couldn’t stop staring at me.

  “…so that’ll wrap up our time for today. Thank you, everyone, for coming.” Tod. I forgot about Tod again.

  The assistant who’d been filming us walked over to stuff the phone in Len’s pocket, getting entirely too handsy in my opinion.

  “Hands and feet inside the car,” I warned her. Len’s eyes got round right before he smiled and I felt momentarily stupid—hello, not really my boyfriend. But that quickly passed because at least in public, only I got the girlfriend privileges. And a hand by Lennon’s zucchini definitely felt like a privilege.

  “Thank you for videoing us,” he said to her. “But my girlfriend is pretty possessive of me, so I’d be careful. She’s unpredictable.”

  My mouth popped open. What did he just say—the rat ba-arstard. Whoops. Almost broke my own code of ethics.

  She froze. Stared at me. Then took a giant step back. Only two assistants and Tod lifted Mollie from around our shoulders.

  Who hit on a guy right in front of his girlfriend? Not to mention now all the workers thought I was a looney-pants who’d go off at the slightest provocation. I’d have actually been pretty upset at the situation if he didn’t wrap his arms around me and pull me into a hug. “Proud of you, baby,” he whispered, then kissed me—slow, sweet, and every bit Len. “My fearless girl,” he mumbled with his lips still pressed to mine.

  “I can’t believe I did that,” I admitted, squeezing him tighter. Heck yeah, proud didn’t begin to cover my feelings toward myself. And I didn’t think I’d felt proud of myself in years. “What else you got?”

  “Adrenaline rush?” he asked.

  And well, that didn’t answer my question. But when I thought about it, yeah. Absolutely an adrenaline rush.

  “Yes.”

  “Right. So we’re done for the day.” Releasing my hips from his hug, he reached over to hold my hand, tugging me along next to him.

  I tried not to budge, putting up a fight. “What? No… why?”

  He, of course, being Len, which meant being eons stronger and faster than me, scooped me up into his arms to walk us out of the reptile house. He bent his knee and pressed it against the wall to free a hand to open the door, then carried me through the lobby using his butt to push open the front glass door.

  “Uh… what are you doing? Put me down.”

  “I will.” Gravel crunched under his feet as he made his way across the lot.

  “Len, put me down.”

  “I will.”

  Except he didn’t. Not only did he not put me down, he had no intension of putting me down. People stared at us the whole way to his truck.

  All I could do was wave. My face burned. “I’m not an invalid. I can walk.”

  “Sure you can… but I like carrying you, so quit your bi-otching.”

  Right, now I couldn’t be annoyed with him. He was watching his mouth for me. That decided, I quit my biotching. We stopped at the passenger side of the truck and he stuck his hand in his pocket to produce his keys, hitting the unlock button on the fob. He opened the door and then put me down by sliding my bum onto the seat.

  The man had thoroughly upped his demonstrative kissing game. Yesterday had been good, but it seemed today he took every opportunity to display affection. I couldn’t even say PDA, because half the time we weren’t in public. Now was no different. Before pulling away or shutting the door, Len bent in to brush his lips over mine. If anyone could make my heart beat erratically from a lip brush, it was Lennon. Darn. Calm down, heart.

  Abruptly, he stole those lips from my skin that needed them and shut the door. I watched him jog around the front of the truck. He opened his door and climbed inside.

  “Let’s go home,” he said.” How about dinner and a movie?”

  My eyes lit up. I could so eat. He was a mind reader. “Pizza?” I asked.

  He chuckled. “Sure, we can do pizza, baby. We can have whatever you want.”

  Eight:

  Before driving us back to his apartment, he turned down streets I didn’t recognize in a section of the city I’d
never been too. An older section with a few broken-out streetlamps, boarded-up windows, uneven, cracked sidewalks, and the sour aroma of trash filled the cab of the truck.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Uh, Len… I think you took a wrong turn.”

  “You said you wanted pizza. I’m getting pizza.” He clicked on his blinker and turned one more right.

  “I said I wanted pizza. Not salmonella.”

  “Whoa, slow down there, Ms. Judgy Judgerson. Books. Covers. Ring any bells?”

  “I judge all my books by their covers. Cover, back blurb, first page. In that order.”

  He snickered as he drove one car length past an open spot, cut the wheel hard, and backed in. He pulled forward to straighten the frontend out and cut the engine. Len even made parallel parking look easy.

  We parked across the street from a storefront with an awning straight out of the 1940s. Red-and-white awning with the word Napoli written in green font.

  “I’ve been coming here for years,” he said. “They make the best pizza anywhere, and I’ve been all over the world.”

  “That’s high praise.” I slung my purse around my shoulders and opened the door because if he thought he was leaving me to sit out here, he was cracked in the head.

  Len met me around the truck and took my hand. We looked both ways before crossing, though ours was the only car in sight.

  A bell dinged when he pulled open the door and so much better than the trash smell outside, we were hit with the pungent, tangy aroma of onion, oregano, and parmesan. Oddly enough, no garlic.

  “Leno,” the little old man behind the counter greeted Len. He couldn’t be more than 5’1" if just and he had class one, Shar-Pei puppy-level wrinkles over his head, face, and neck. So much that the skin drooped over his eyes so I wasn’t sure how he actually saw anything. Although totally bald with liver spots, he had the thickest salt-and-pepper eyebrows probably of any human alive.

  “Hey, Mr. Napolitano,” said Len. “How are you?”

  “You bring pretty girl to see me?” The old man gestured to me with his hands but seemed to put his whole body into it.

  We walked up to the counter where Len’s hand moved from mine to around my waist. “Yeah, this is my girl, Kami.”

  “Your girl? Mama Mia.” The old man kissed his fingers and shot them up in the air like he was sending a kiss to heaven while speaking some super-fast unintelligible (to me) Italian. “You never bring girl. Rita,” he called then to someone not in the room with us. “Come. Leno brought his girl.”

  A thin woman with silver hair walked from the back, wiping her hands on her apron. Her olive skin tone and fine wrinkles made her appear fifty years younger than the man. “What you mean he brought a girl?”

  She turned to look at Len, then cut her eyes to me. “So pretty. Leno, she’ll give you beautiful bambinos. I can tell.” And she winked at him.

  Beautiful bambinos? Awkward…

  Again the blush crept over my cheeks. I felt the burn even as I wanted to laugh. If she only knew how fake this whole thing was.

  But I went along with it. After all, I’d never see these people again.

  “Does this girl mean you stay instead of taking that boat out?”

  “Nope. She’s going with me.” Len squeezed my waist and dropped a kiss to the top of my head for effect.

  It worked. The effect from his little kisses and touches made me start to believe it was real. And I knew the truth.

  Not knowing what else to do, I held my hand out. “Hi, I’m Kami.”

  The little old man, or Mr. Napolitano, shook my hand, gripping it firmly. “So good to meet you, bella.”

  “It’s Kami, actually,” I corrected him.

  “No, fearless…” said Len. “‘Bella’ means ‘beautiful’ in Italian.”

  Oh. “I knew that,” I lied.

  When he finally let go of my hand, the woman immediately tugged me by my shirt to slam against her bosom, wrapping me in a tight, tight hug. “We don’t shake hands in this family,” she said.

  My arms, constricted at the shoulders, stayed limp at my side. She seemed like a wonderful woman who obviously adored Len, but um… her letting me breathe would’ve been welcome too.

  “Rita,” Len said as he tried to tug me back to him. “She’s turning blue.”

  Rita looked down with horrified expression and shoved me away. “Sorry. Sorry. I get too excited.”

  Turning blue was a bit of an exaggeration, but it got me the result I wanted.

  “We’re here for an extra-large Margherita,” Len explained to Mr. Napolitano.

  “Bellissimo, bellissiomo… Rita, you stay here, I make pie.” Then in a move I did not expect, Mr. Napolitano moved from around the counter to pull me from Rita. “Come, bella Kami. We make pie.”

  Um…oh-kay.

  And he continued to tug me back into the kitchen. I went to the sink to wash my hands, a habit still ingrained in me from my years working food service as a teenager, while the old man scrounged me up an apron.

  I tied on the bleached white covering, waiting for him to finish washing up his hands. Then he took me to the table with a bowl that had a damp towel draped over it. He flipped up the towel to show off a vat of prepared dough. A scale rested to the left of the bowl, but I had a feeling the man never used it.

  He pinched off a large blob and started stretching it while moving it in a circle. He had an old-school brick oven burning, set in to the back wall behind us. And it felt like a bajillion degrees radiating off that sucker.

  Then he set his circle down in a pile on the flour-dusted surface in front of him and reached back into the bowl to pinch off a smaller blob of dough. “You do,” he ordered me, plopping the blob down in front of me.

  “Oh, I don’t think…”

  “No, don’t think. Do.”

  Don’t think, do. That was the whole point of these excursions, to do. To be the braver Kami I used to be and really, it was just pizza. What was the worst that could happen, right?

  “Sure,” I answered, picking up the sticky blob. “Why not?”

  Mr. Napolitano showed me his technique of dusting his hands in the flour from the table along with the dough, so it wouldn’t stick to my skin. And I started copying him move for move. He stretched dough. I stretched dough. Though his started to form the traditional circle of a seasoned professional while mine looked kind of like the state of Wisconsin.

  “Good,” Mr. Napolitano praised me, even if my work didn’t warrant it. “Now throw.” To show me what he meant, he tossed his beautifully round circle into the air to widen the circumference or whatever.

  So I tossed mine as directed. It looked more like I tried to reshape Wisconsin’s borders. I tossed it two more times, and on the third catch I heard whooping and clapping. I turned my head to see Len and Rita in the kitchen. She was doing the clapping, because Len had his phone out videoing me.

  “I didn’t know this was a challenge,” I said.

  “It’s not. But I thought you might want to relive this one.”

  As usual, Len was right. When I turned back to the task, Mr. Napolitano had two extra large wooden peels dusted with cornmeal. The old man moved fast to pull them out and dust them in just the time I turned away. Wow.

  He laid his on a peel, so I did the same with mine. Then he showed me how to sauce the pie and add the rounds of fresh mozzarella that he made there in the shop. He didn’t have to tell me; I saw the pot with the steaming water and cheese curds simmering on the stovetop. I’d seen enough Food TV in my life to know that was the step before forming the balls. Finally, we topped both of ours with fresh leaves of basil.

  Carefully, we walked over to the oven with our pies and slid them in. “Eight minutes,” he told us.

  How hot did that oven have to burn to turn out pies in eight minutes?

  We folded pizza boxes while we waited. And I had to giggle at myself for getting so distracted from the delectable smell that I ruined two while the three of them talked around me. But
at eight minutes, he used the peel to remove first my creation and then his, placing each directly into a box. Wisconsin never looked so good.

  “Thank you so much for letting me do this,” I gushed, then bent in to kiss his cheek. His eyes got huge and I realized how what I’d done could be construed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I got caught up in the moment.”

  That was far too familiar a gesture for only having met him a half hour ago, give or take.

  “Leno, you find another girl. We keep her.” And he pretend-tugged me behind him as if keeping me out of range of Len.

  We all broke out the major laughs. The throw-your-head-back-and-grip-your-stomach kind.

  “Nah. No other girls like Kami,” Len replied. “Gonna have to fight me for her.”

  Instead of fighting for me, Mr. Napolitano picked up the two boxes and headed out to the front of the store. We followed in step behind him, but when we got out to the front, he simply handed the boxes off to Len.

  “Can’t get to my wallet,” Len said.

  That’s when it hit me the boxes were too hot to rest on his bare arm. It would be too awkward to hold both boxes by the edges, he’d end up dropping at least one. I stepped forward to fish his wallet frim his back pocket.

  The old store owner waved him away, anyway. “She worked. It’s payment.”

  I mean, I hardly worked. I funned.

  “Wow, thank you,” he said.

  “Thank you so much,” I said too.

  Rita handed me off a plastic bag with the word Napoli printed on the front in the same green from the awning. “You just be sure to bring her back, Leno.” Then she turned to me. “Antipasto salad and breadsticks. Enjoy.”

  “Oh my gosh, you guys, this is too much.” I began to protest even as they shoved me out the door to keep from having to hear my protests. “Thanks, again,” I called back.

  We walked back across the street to the truck and I waited for Len to bleep the locks to unlock it. I climbed in first and took the pizza boxes from him after I buckled my seatbelt. They were scalding hot on my lap.

  I know I wore a pinched, wincing face when he climbed in because—hello? Hot.

  “What’s wrong, baby?”

  “Burning… It’s burning my lap.”