“Okay,” Katrina said. “Let’s rock.”
She climbed on board and went at her thing; I lay back and looked up at the bush. Sex is a lot more relaxing with the woman on top. You can admire the light reflecting on her body and pretend she’s a movie star having the time of her life. You can think about baseball. Woman-on-top combines the best of involvement with the best of spectating; missionary style takes too much concentration.
Whispers came from the street. I clamped my hand over Katrina’s mouth and we listened to a conversation between a boy with two heads, a human fly, and Prince.
“Too dark, ain’t nobody home.”
“We could try.”
“Nobody home and they might have a dog. I’m not going in there.”
“Chicken lips.”
“Worm breath, you’re so brave, you go knock.”
“I’m not if you’re not.”
“We’re wasting time, I told you rich neighborhoods suck.”
“Colored houses give the best candy.”
“Hand me an egg. This’ll teach ’em to stay home Halloween.”
The boy with two heads cocked his arm and let fly. I didn’t see the egg, but a thok hit the second story of the house. Beneath my hand, Katrina struggled to shout. I clamped her harder as the three trick-or-treaters disappeared down the street.
I moved my hand from Katrina’s mouth. “If those kids had come to your door they’d have seen us. Hell, they’d have tripped over us.”
“But they didn’t.” She closed her eyes and resumed hopping up and down.
I grabbed her hips and squeezed to get her attention. “Others will, Katrina. The next batch might come across the yard.”
She exhaled an exasperated “So?”
“So we have to go inside.”
“I’m happy here.”
“I won’t have sex in front of children. Get up, we’re going indoors.”
Katrina considered the alternatives for a few moments. Every now and then she gave an experimental jiggle. That’s when I realized she was doing Kegels in there.
“Katrina.”
“We’ll go in the house, but only on one condition.”
“I don’t do conditions.”
“You can’t come out of me.”
“What?”
“I won’t allow a man to pull out just as it’s getting interesting.”
“I have to pull out to walk.”
“In Five Easy Pieces Jack Nicholson gets inside Sally Struthers and runs all over the room, bumping into furniture and walls and everything.”
“I remember Sally Struthers’ tit.”
“And now she’s on TV collecting money for Feed the Children, so it must be okay. Sally Struthers is normal.”
Why not? The standing position always looked fun in the movies. I sat, then raised up on the soles of my feet. Katrina wrapped her arms around my neck, and, with a grunt—several grunts—I made it upright.
All right. Slight wobble but I’m okay. Felt somewhat like a backpack on backward—all the weight on the hips and the rest was balance. I got my hands on her lower back and we were mobile. More or less. It’s not as romantic or wild as it looks in the movies, but then what is? Given a light woman, it can be done.
“Keys,” I said.
“My jacket pocket.” She pulled her keys out and stuck them between my teeth. Acrobatic details taken care of, she went back to the general purpose of sex—side-to-side, up-and-down, in-and-out. I stumble-shuffled across the wet lawn, for once glad to be barefoot. The porch steps took a one-leg-at-a-time motion with frequent rests. At the top, I sort of fell forward and propped Katrina against the wall. She, of course, did nothing to help. In fact, from the “God don’t stop” and “Oh baby” sounds, she seemed on the edge of something big.
I got the keys from my mouth and fumbled at the lock for some time before the door swung open. Like a groom carrying his bride across the threshold, I stepped into the Prescott house, amazed that we’d made it across the yard and inside without being seen. Katrina kicked the door closed behind me, plunging us into blackness.
What next, I thought, then an instant later blinding light slammed my eyes and a bunch of voices shouted “Surprise!”
25
Thirty or so people stood in a rough semicircle around the Prescott living room, blinking in the sudden light and the less sudden knowledge of what they were looking at. A few launched into “Happy Birthday,” but the song petered out before the second line. My first impulse, which I followed, was to dump Katrina on the floor. She may have been the last person present to realize we had a major social blunder on our hands.
The party-goers stared at my hard-on aimed at the ceiling: Cameron was already in an I-told-you-so mode; Billy Gaines had yet to understand the anatomy of the situation; for some bizarre reason, Mimi Saunders broke into hysterical laughter; Sonny showed humiliation; Ryan, rage. Skip Prescott, the bantam rooster himself, appeared deep in denial.
I searched the crowd quickly until I found Gilia, the only one staring at my face instead of my penis. Her eyes reflected immeasurable sadness, a disappointment so total as to annihilate hope. If the goal of my life had been to hurt Gilia, I could never have hurt her more. I wanted to scream, to beg, to sacrifice everything for the right to start over. I wanted to give birth to her. I wanted to marry her.
I said, “Gilia.”
At her name, she blinked, then the mask of withdrawal slipped over her face and she became the same uninvolved, untouchable girl I’d seen the day we met in her mother’s family room.
Skip screeched. “Kill the bastard!”
Sonny made a yelp sound, like a run-over dog, and came at me, followed by the bulk of Ryan.
I ran.
The smart move would have been to stand and take my medicine, on the theory Sonny and Ryan wouldn’t kill me in a house full of witnesses. Running off into the dark only upped the chances of manslaughter, but when Skip shouted “Kill,” my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and I defy you to find a man who will stand and fight when he’s butt naked and everyone else in the room isn’t.
I snagged my boxers off the lawn; there was no time to search for jeans or shoes. I stopped for a moment at Katrina’s car, with the thought of stealing it, but the keys were back in the lock, where Sonny and Ryan were falling over Katrina’s body as they came through the doorway. I couldn’t see well, but she seemed to be grabbing at their legs. I think Sonny kicked her.
Nothing to do but jump in my shorts and run. What I had done to Gilia had to change me—what I did next and how I looked at details. I could not allow less. In the meantime, however, survival mattered. I ran toward the Saunders’ front yard, thinking maybe to circle the house and get on the golf course, where at least running barefoot would be bearable. I’m not one of those guys with tough feet. I put on slippers to use the bathroom at night.
Near the property line, a volleyball net sprang from the dark and I nearly decapitated myself. You know how in an intense physical crisis, time accordions so you can think twenty separate thoughts in the blink of an eye? Falling under the net brought on the eeriest déjà vu deal, which before I even hit the ground I identified as the day in the seventh grade when, chasing a foul ball, I hung myself on a volleyball net and lay on the ground, looking up at Maurey Pierce backlit by the sun. These were her first words to me: “Smooth move, Ex-Lax.”
The perfect comment for my current situation.
This time, no teenage girl waited to insult me, then become my lover and friend. This time, I pulled the collapsed net off, bounced up, and was running again, without missing much more than a stride. The volleyball net reminded me of something else I’d seen last weekend during my visit to the Saunders’ home—Bobby’s Sting-ray bicycle leaning against the porch.