“Hey, hon. You new here?”
Country shut his mailbox and looked at the woman beside him. Tall as a mutant rooster, sporting a full head of black hair and beach-tanned skin, with more curves than the Colorado River. She looked like the letter s had grown a few more squiggles.
“I moved in a couple months ago,” he said.
“That blonde with you. She your girlfriend?”
“Just a friend.”
“Ohh.” The woman’s voice inflected upwards a full octave. “I see.” Back down.
Country scratched the inside of his ears, trying to see if Thompson’s sound distorting caterpillars had come home to roost. “Nope. Not me,” he said. He checked inside the woman’s mouth. There it was. Pink and delicate. Grabbing a pair of pliers, he yanked it out and showed it to the woman.
“The uvula worm,” he said. “It hangs down in the back of your throat and licks your food as it goes by. Looks exactly like a real uvula except it has a tongue. Also makes your speech sound as if Bob Dylan was singing off key. Nasty little creature.” He dropped it on the ground and watched it scoot away.
“What d’you do?” she asked, unfazed by the high-pitched trilling coming from the gutter.
“I study computers. Yourself?”
“Chiropractor, specializing in bent spines. I learned so I could treat myself after I got caught in last year’s tornado. You remember? No. Not important. I’m nearly back to normal. What d’you think?”
“You can’t tell unless you look real close,” Country said.
“You know how to make a girl feel good, don’t ya?” She sidewinded over to him. “What say you drop by my place this afternoon and let me crack your back? People say I got magic fingers.”
Country looked at her hands and counted. Then, he doublechecked. He was right the first time. Nine thumbs and what appeared to be a big toe.
“Rain check,” he said.
“You don’t know what you’re missing, big boy.”
“I’m pretty sure I do.” He twisted the key and removed it from the mailbox. “Well, nice meeting you,” he said as he shuffled off.
Country walked up the cement stairs and took a left at the top. A few more steps and he turned the knob to the studio apartment he rented from a woman who constantly dangled a cigarette out the side of her mouth. Smokey Jo, he called her. Her breath reminded him of his eighth-grade field trip to the coal mines.
He was surprised anybody here smoked or did anything remotely considered unhealthy. They all seemed preoccupied with fitness. His neighbor Brandi, a twenty-something vegan with either anemia or a vampire living in her closet, tried to hook him each week on the newest fad diet. The latest was something called smoothies. She even took him to the Smoothie Store and helped him order.
His was a concoction called veggie delight. They got one out of two right. He watched as the barista added a spinach leaf, a green onion stalk, five celery strings, and a turnip spleen to six cups of ice in a blender.
“Twenty-two fifty,” the barista called out.
“It’s on me,” Brandi said. “You can get the next one.”
Country took a sip.
“Good, isn’t it,” she said.
“Tastes like the inside of my running shoes.”
“Yeah,” Brandi said, her eyes all aglow. “Just like heaven. You know they’re not allowed to work here unless they’ve gone to college,” she added. “They even have degrees just for it at the local university. Blender Studies, they call it. We’re very progressive.”
Country poured the progressive smoothie on the ground when Brandi looked away. The rocks splashed by the green treat immediately died.
The inside of his studio apartment was dank and musty. A truffle away from Cambull’s cream of booger soup. He threw the newspaper made from recycled solar panels onto the rickety table. The faint scent of lilac hung in the air.
“Good morning, Genny,” Country said.
Silence. Other than the ticking of the clock on the counter.
“I guess she came and went,” he said to himself.
Country opened the fridge and pulled out a carton of eggs along with a stick of butter and sausages he had smuggled in from Nevada. A frying pan sat on the stove waiting for the morning omelet. He twisted the on knob. A whoosh of blue flame rose from the burner and tickled the underside of the pan.
He stood there, mesmerized, not yet fully awake. Long days and longer nights had rendered his senses somewhat dulled. His new passion, computers, propelled him to take programming classes at the university during the day. The nights were spent figuring out how to open some blocked files he found on Nancy Lizardo’s desktop. That and scrolling through the fifty or so pages available on this new thing called the internet. Soon though, he would have to find a job. The Bivins money wouldn’t last more than a couple months. The want ads in the paper would be his first start.
The butter sizzled and shared its fragrance of warm cow udder with the walls. The eggs cracked readily in his large, skilled hands and joined in the chorus of non-vegan, frying goodness. A happy melody of animal by-products. In his daze, he had forgotten the wooden spoon he used to mix the eggs. He reached towards the spatula drawer and slid it open.
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Genny popped out, screaming at the top of her lungs. Recently, she had taken to trying to scare Country any time she could. The original idea came from watching videos on his computer when he wasn’t around. Normally, a person would hide in a closet or behind a couch and jump out when the frog like chatter of the hiccup sufferer approached close enough. Genny’s super pliable body, made even more bendy by her daily yoga classes, gave her a much wider range of places where she could hide.
She only started doing it because she had been worried about Country, who seemed more withdrawn than normal since their move to Los Angeles. One day after reading an article on scare therapy and its supposed benefits for hiccups, she decided to try the therapy out on him. How she figured it would improve his condition is anybody’s guess. Over the last few months, the tactic had evolved into a game she affectionately called scare hide-and-seek but without the seeking.
Despite the scream, Country stood there as stoically as Marcel Marceau’s younger brother, Ted, who was twice the mime Marcel ever hoped to be. No reaction at all. Not a single arm hair stood on end. No twitching of the eyelids. Not a muscle moved, not even those in his heart.
“Really?” Genny asked. “Nothing? Are you made of stone? That was my best hiding place yet. I’ve been there since four this morning just on the off chance you’d make an omelet. My spine is misaligned. My knees have been rubbing against my forehead since five. And I have a cramping in my toes something fierce. I did that all for you, and this is how you repay me? With Ted-level stoicism. I have to say, Country Bivins, that I’m disappointed in you. I’m disappointed in the whole situation. Although now that I think about it, it wasn’t a total loss. I did meet the nicest woman by the mailboxes, who offered me a once in a lifetime back rub. She was able to grasp three different cans in each hand. I think she’s a juggler.”
“Excuse me,” Country said.
Grabbing the toaster, he headed to the bathroom. Genny heard the sound of the tub filling with water. A few minutes later, a loud sparking, crackle lit up the tiny space beneath the bathroom door. Soon after, Country emerged, soaking wet with his hair standing straight up and smoking.
“I’m going to need a new toaster,” he said, his heart beating again. “And some new underwear,” he mentioned casually.
He looked at the empty frying pan. Dribblets of butter drifted down Genny’s chin.
“Thanks for making me the omelet,” Genny said. “It was very sweet of you. I don’t understand how you knew I’d be coming, though.”
“Lucky guess,” he replied as he watched the last of his eggs slide down Genny’s gullet and into her gizzard.
“You used egg substitute, didn’t you? And butter proxy, also?” Genny asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“My new friend, Jessie Belle, the one I met in doctor classes, convinced me to give veganing a go. She told me about all the wonderful benefits, not to mention the amazing food. Admittedly, everything she gives me tastes like I’m licking a cardboard box, which is also one of the vegan food groups, but she swears that’s just because my tongue has become evil from eating meat my whole life. Another couple months and it won’t know the difference between a veggie burger and a cardigan. She says that like it’s a good thing.”
“In that case … sure,” he said. “It was egg substitute.”
“I guess Jessie’s right, then,” Genny said. “That mock omelet was to die for.”
Country looked at Genny’s glistening, butter-encrusted lips and wondered if there was any way he could lick them without making things awkward between them. Not finding a way, he changed the subject. “A bit off topic, but how’re doctor classes going?”
“Great. Dr. Snees says I’m his top student.”
What an unfortunate name, Country thought. “No surprise there. Just let me know if you want to study with me again today,” he said.
“I would, but this is my first day off in two weeks.” She twirled her hair with a pair of fingers. “Say. Since it’s my day off, you want to go to the beach? I heard there was a mermaid sighting by Hazard Cove.”
Country looked at the stack of homework in front of him and then outside at the bright, blue sky and the inviting, golden sand.
“I have been working hard lately, and I do deserve a break,” he said.
“Besides, your summer tan is fading,” Genny added.
Country thought for a moment, mainly about why he still hung out with her. After a while, he said, “Sure. Let’s go. I can take care of this later.”
The two friends left, leaving the door unlocked like everybody did in Chippers Station, Pennsylvania. Before the episode with the squirrels, of course.
As Country walked across the superheated sand, Genny on his back to keep her delicate toes safe, they saw a crowd of people gathered around a host of flashing lights. They headed directly towards it as any red-blooded American would do, distracted by the spectacle so that they didn’t notice what was happening back at the apartment complex.
Even if they had turned around by accident or simply to see how far they had come, it wouldn’t have mattered. From that distance, there was no way they could have heard the latch on Country’s front door slowly open and shut. Or seen the pair of eyes peer out through the kitchen blinds. Or known that a knife with a silver blade carefully lifted the papers on his desk.