“Naturally,” Jake said.
She smiled at him one last time and then went to work. He enjoyed the experience greatly. It had been a while since she had blown him in the car.
Just before he shot off in her mouth, it occurred to him that she was almost always in an extremely randy mood after visiting Neesh.
Wasn’t that interesting?
Chapter 7: The Birth of a Monster
Warwick, Rhode Island
January 3, 1995
Jim and Marcie Scanlon lived in a thirty-year-old single-story tract home in the suburban city of Warwick, Rhode Island, just south of the city of Providence. They had purchased the house six years before, just after the birth of Meghan, their oldest child. It was a four bedroom, seventeen hundred square foot structure that sat on a non-premium lot and it had cost them one hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars, which, of course, they had to take out a mortgage to cover. At seven and a half percent interest on their thirty-year fixed rate, their mortgage payments were $1157 per month. With a combined family income of only sixty-nine thousand a year, two growing children, a car payment, the normal utility bills, and nearly twelve thousand dollars in high interest credit card debt, the Scanlons struggled constantly just to live paycheck to paycheck. They had very little savings to their name—certainly nowhere near the ‘three months living expenses’ the so-called financial experts recommended that every American working family maintain perpetually—and any unexpected expense like a car repair, an appliance failure, or a medical bill, usually sent them into a months-long spiral of late bills and phone calls from creditors.
However, on this cold New England winter morning—the first day back to school after the Christmas break—as Jim and Marcie awoke to the alarm clock at 6:00 AM and pulled themselves out of bed, their crappy credit score, the fact that their checking and savings accounts combined had only ninety-six dollars total, and the fact that they were already ten days late on the electric bill and still a week from the next payday were the furthest thing from either of their minds. Today was the day they had been anticipating for months. According to Jake Kingsley, who had called them last week with the happy news, the local alternative rock station, WKRO, would be debuting Together, the first Brainwash song from their self-titled debut album, sometime during the early morning commute hours. They would then play it at least once every two hours throughout the rest of the day. And that was just the Providence alternative rock station. The two hard rocks would be playing the song as well. And that was just Providence. Stations from Boston, Portland, Montpelier, Hartford, even New York and Philadelphia would be debuting the tune today as well. It was go-time. Time to see if the experiment was valid.
“Turn on the radio,” Marcie told her husband as she yawned and stretched. Her long brunette hair was mussed up from sleep and she was dressed only in a pajama top because Jim had pulled off the bottoms and her panties the night before so he could access her nether regions for a nice, sedate round of marital sex.
Jim, who was completely naked and still smelling strongly of his wife’s sexual musk, scratched at his balls for a second and then farted. “Jake said the song won’t be on until at least 6:30.”
“I don’t care,” Marcie said, walking over to the toilet in the attached bath area and sitting down on it. “People are wrong sometimes.”
“He seemed pretty sure about that,” Jim said, opening a drawer on the dresser and pulling out a clean pair of underwear.
“Just turn the goddamn radio on,” Marcie ordered as she began to pee.
“All right,” Jim said with a sigh. “Since you gave it up last night, I’ll be nice to you.”
“That is the deal,” Marcie told him with a smile.
Marcie finished up her business and then turned on the shower so it could warm up. Since the master bathroom shower tap was as far as it was possible to be from the hot water heater in the garage, she had time to brush her teeth before the water was warm enough for her to step in.
The Collective Soul song, Shine, was playing as she soaped herself up and as Jim shaved and brushed his teeth. As she stepped out of the shower to blow dry her hair and start getting dressed, Jim stepped in to start his own shower. Shine gave way to Stay, by Lisa Loeb. This was followed by a long series of commercials that played until Jim was out of the shower and fully dressed in a pair of slacks and a button-up long-sleeved shirt—his standard high school English teacher uniform.
By the time 6:30 AM rolled around, the official beginning of the commute hour for radio programming purposes, both Jim and Marcie were downstairs, eating breakfast and drinking coffee. Since they had only ninety-seven dollars to their names until payday, and since the cereal in the pantry and the milk in the refrigerator was earmarked for Meghan and Alex, their breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs with hot dogs cut up into them and a dusting of cheddar cheese on top. As they ate, they continued to listen to WKRO on the kitchen radio. Another set of songs rolled by without any of them being Together. Another set of commercials started. The clock ticked onward toward 7:00 AM, when Meghan, who had a longer commute, would need to hit the road and Margaret Scanlon, Jim’s mother, would arrive to take charge of the children.
Jim made the two of them lunch sandwiches from generic wheat bread, Walmart pre-packaged lunch meat, and individually wrapped slices of Walmart brand American cheese. He wrapped the sandwiches in generic Saran wrap and then packed them into their lunch bags along with reusable ice packs and a single serving bag of potato chips pulled from a huge bag of such in the pantry.
“Thanks, hon,” Marcie told him as he dropped her lunch bag on the shelf next to her car keys and purse.
“No problem,” he said. “When we go big shopping on Friday, let’s get some better lunch meat, huh?” Though they did not get paid until Tuesday, they could go shopping at Walmart on Friday afternoon and write a check for the groceries with the knowledge the check would not clear until usually the following Wednesday or Thursday. The Friday-before-payday shopping trips were a bimonthly ritual for the Scanlons.
“You mean the stuff from the actual deli?” Marcie asked doubtfully. “You know it’s a lot more expensive.”
“True,” Jim agreed.
“And it doesn’t last until the next shopping trip. You can only keep deli meat in the fridge for a week, tops, before it starts to go bad.”
“Again, true,” Jim said. “Let’s get a pound of it anyway.”
“Live a little?” she asked with a smile.
“Exactly,” Jim said. “Life is too short for crappy lunchmeat.”
Marcie smiled at him. “I always knew we’d be high-class someday.”
On the radio, the latest set of commercials ended and the morning DJ, who called himself Justin Case, made the announcement they had been waiting for.
“New music here on the Crow to get your morning drive rolling along,” Case told the audience. “At least it’s new music for the rest of the world. Here in the Prov, however, lots of you out there might already be familiar with this group. They’re called Brainwash and they’re a group of teachers who work for the Providence Public School District and have been laying down the tunes at the local clubs in New England for the better part of ten years now. Well, they finally got themselves a record deal and this is their debut song from their first CD, which I’m told will be released on January 23. The CD is just called Brainwash, and the tune is called Together. And remember, you heard it first here on WKRO, the Crow.”
“This is it!” Marcie said excitedly.
“Shh,” Jim hushed her. “It’s starting.”