and I stand up. When “Pink Houses” plays, you’re required to stand up. We hold our beers high in the air, crooning to no one in particular.
“Ahh, but ain’t that America, for you and me…”
“Hank?”
Hatch and I turn to the sound of the voice. It’s coming from the master bedroom. It’s Mary.
“Yeah?”
Mary steps out of the room, my shirt and pants in her right hand. “I think your clothes are dry. You want to come in and, uh, get dressed?”
“You tired of me walking around half-naked or something?”
Mary smiles and winks. “I’m hardly tired of that, Henry.” She turns and walks back into the bedroom.
I stand up. Hatch stands up as well, shaking his head. “Henry?” He punches me in the shoulder, then sings, “Little pink houses, for my pal, Fitzy!”
“Oh, shut up.” I pretend as if the girl who has just invited me into her room to get undressed has not been flirting with me all day.
“Don’t forget this.” Hatch picks my Velcro Def Leppard Pyromania wallet off the table and throws it at me. “Try to be careful in there.”
“Careful?” I feel the impression of the off-brand condom I bought out of a machine in a gas station bathroom. “It’s not like she’s going to eat me.”
“She might only be sixteen, but she’s an East Coast girl,” Hatch says. “There’s no telling what she’ll do to you.”
I enter the bedroom. Mary is sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette. With her brunette hair she looks like a much younger, tanning bed version of Erin Gray—the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Erin Gray as opposed to the Silver Spoons Erin Gray. I try to picture her in one of Erin Gray’s signature skintight bodysuits, although the elongated cigarette in Mary’s left hand and the bottle of Heineken in her right skews the fantasy.
“Here,” Mary says, patting the bed with her left hand. “Have a seat.”
I stumble forward. The alcohol in my system has made the outer edges of her face fuzzy. I manage to find my way to the bed and sit down beside her.
“Smoke?” Mary hands me a long, peculiarly thin cigarette.
“Sure.” I roll the cigarette between my fingers. I grab the pack off the bed and hold it up to the light. “Virginia Slims?”
Mary nods toward the closet to her right. “My mom’s stash.”
I can feel the butterflies in my stomach. I’m nervous. “My friends and I call these Vagina Slimes,” I say, chuckling.
She doesn’t laugh, which makes me even more nervous. I fumble around with the cigarette, managing to get it in my mouth by sheer dumb luck.
“Please, allow me.” Mary holds the lighter to my face. With a quick roll of her thumb, a small tongue of fire ticks the end of my cigarette. She never looks at the cigarette, staring into my eyes and then down to my lips—textbook flirting. I stare at the cigarette—textbook avoidance.
Mary leans off the side of the bed. I hear the rattle of ice cubes. She produces another bottle of Heineken. The bottle is already open, like she was expecting me. “Beer?”
“Of course.” I take a quick swig. The beer tastes like canned corn, like all Heineken does in my opinion, but I pretend to like it. “Pretty fancy beer. Part of the parents’ stash, too?”
“Uh-huhhhh.” Her affirmative is more of a moan than a response. She sips her beer and then licks her lips. Her hand has somehow found its way onto my leg.
“Look, Mary, I—”
“You want to watch a movie?” Mary grabs my beer and sits it on the floor. She nods at the videos stacked on top of the television.
“Sure.” I cross one arm over my bare chest, squeeze my shoulder in awkward modesty. “Whatever.”
“Here you go.” Mary hands me my boxers and jeans but not my shirt.
“Thanks.” I pull my boxers and jeans on with my towel still attached at the waist. I stuff my wallet in my back pocket.
Mary is neither awkward nor modest in her intent. “Oh, you’re no fun.”
Mary suggested Peggy Sue Got Married. I suggested Hoosiers. Somehow we decided Crocodile Dundee was a good compromise. We sit on the floor in front of the bed. A half hour into the film, Mary has wedged herself under my arm, wrapping her right leg around my left leg. We are at the part when Sue Charlton tells Mick Dundee she can make it in the Outback on her own. Mick lets her go, but hangs back out of sight. Sue gets tired, takes a break by a watering hole, and undoes her pants. She’s wearing a black one-piece swimsuit, but with a thong back that’s all but swallowed up by her beautiful rotund ass.
As if that moment could have gotten any better, a crocodile lunges at Sue Charlton. Mary flinches, burying her face in my chest. She isn’t scared so much as looking for her opening. She runs her pursed lips up my chest, and then starts nibbling the side of my neck. She presses her chest against mine. I can feel Mary’s erect nipples beneath her shirt because she isn’t wearing a bra. Mary finds her way to my fly as Mick Dundee saves his lady-in-distress. She unbuttons one button, then two, then a third. She is inside my jeans and past the slit in my boxers before I even know what’s happening. We kiss, but just for a second or two before she goes back to work on my neck. She kisses my neck and then starts to move down my chest. She bites my nipples, licks my navel, then…
“Wait a second, Mary.” I push her away with my forearm and tuck myself inside my boxers, all in the same motion. “We can’t do this.”
“What?” Mary says.
The blood coursing through my drunk, engorged erection is equally taken aback with my decision. But this is not going to happen.
“I don’t know what to say.” I stand up, buttoning my fly. “I’m sorry.”
Mary folds her arms in front of her chest. She seems more sad than angry. “Is it me? Did I do something wrong? I thought this is what you—”
“Oh no, Mary, it’s not you at all.” I offer my hand to her. She takes it, standing. We sit face-to-face on the bed.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I scratch my chin. I grab the pack of cigarettes off the bed and pull out a cigarette. I offer it to Mary and light it for her. She takes a long, frustrated drag.
“My problem isn’t so much a what,” I say. “It’s a who.”
“A who?” Mary blows her Vagina Slimes disgust in my face. I wave it off, eyes squinting.
“Yeah, see, the thing is, I kind of have a girlfriend.”
“Fuck you, Hank!”
“Mary, wait. Can I just—”
“Can you just what?”
“Can I, umm, have my shirt?”
Mary slams the door behind me as I walk out of the bedroom. I put on my clothes, scanning my general vicinity. No one is upstairs. Hatch has disappeared, which is a good thing. I’m not in the mood for him fucking with me, not to mention I still have an erection. I see the bathroom just to my right. I walk in, shut the door, and lock it.
I test the door, making sure the lock is secure. I pull my wallet out of my pants pocket. Inside is a picture of a headless belly dancer.
I was casually introduced to the record album Exotic Music of the Belly Dancer in the nineteen-seventies, back when my mom took belly dancing lessons in Kokomo. Soon thereafter, the album went into exile until Dad invested an obscene amount of money in a new stereo system and pulled his dusty old record collection