“You’re really stupid,” said
the child.
“No I’m not. You are.”
“She’s right,” said Toad.
We were under the awning of a
beach restaurant, Toad and I, watching women, mostly topless, while our own women
frolicked in the sea. Me, anyway. Toad was at his phone studying stocks. The
rich do that. They study stocks. I study bare breasts.
“Right about what?”
“She’s not stupid. You are.”
“Fuck off, Toad.”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“I’m telling mommy you said
that.”
I waved the child away as one
would whisk at a fly.
“I can do anything I want,” it
said.
“So can I.”
“No you can’t.”
“Yes, he can,” said Toad,
scarcely glancing up.
I made a face at the child.
“Just because mommy pays for
you!”
“So? Too bad.”
“I can make you un-stupid,”
said the child.
“No thanks. I’m good.”
Some women in string bottoms
paused in front of us, surveying the restaurant.
“Are you staring at me?” said
one of them.
“How can you tell that through
my sunglasses?”
“I can.”
“Very clever. Whenever I meet
a woman who’s smarter than I am, I fall in love.”
“He falls in love with a lot
of women,” said the child.
If it suddenly turned blue
and started to choke, I would watch with interest.
“I’m smarter than you
are.”
“I said woman. A
little pimple like you doesn’t count.”
The ladies smirked and
strolled on, jiggling impossibly smooth cheeks. I checked Toad to see if he shared
this moment, but he was poking his phone.
“Greed, Toad. Simple greed.”
Beside her was Toad’s teenage bride, an exquisite
little thing, if she could be restrained from plucking at her underwear. When
you look like Toad you have to be real rich to get a woman like Darleen.
She looked back at me with longing, poor cupcake. I am
her dream; Toad, her semi-reptilian reality.
I looked over at him, slaving away.
A fat woman paused before us,
one of those flippers-and-flab monsters that once in a while wash up, limp,
shining, unidentifiable, but with a human head and mammalian extrusions, for she
too was topless. One had to suppose she was wearing a string bottom, but her
buttocks and overhang obscured it, and even the patch on her mouse was lost in
there.
She squinted into the darkened
restaurant and shouted to the waiter, “Aren’t there any more chairs out here?”
“You can sit on Toby,” said
the child.
“Who’s Toby?”
It indicated myself, and
before I could think of a decent demur the sea creature sized me up and dropped
her naked mass onto my lap.
“He’s nice!”
“Why don’t you take him?”
“Can I?”
“Sure. You just have to feed
him.”
As the blood drained from my
thighs she gave me a second appraisal. “OK.”
I squirmed under her weight,
but she took this for foreplay and ground her stuff on me. “You’re good-looking.”
“Thank you. Don’t you have
any restraint?”
“Where you from?”
Typical American question.
Don’t answer. Could be a process server.
She presented her front as if
to nurse me when—
“Tobee!” said Marcie, “what
are you doing?”
“She’s taking him away,” said
the child.
Marcie marched over and absorbed
this. “Oh, yeah?”
“Get off him, Lard-Ball,”
said Darleen. “He’s ours.”
“Darleen!” said Toad.
“Whatsa matter with you,
Toad? Ain’t you got no esprit de corpse?” And to the large lady, “Get your
jelly bag up and moving!”
But I had now become
territory to be defended, and there was no sign of retreat.
Marcie, hands on hips, glared
at me. “Toby! Why is she sitting on you?”
I stretched around my
ravisher and pointed at the child. “Andrea did it.”
“Andrea!” said Marcie, fixing
the child with maternal wrath.
“So? He’s just a big ding-dong!”
Darleen put her nose to the squatter’s.
“You better git to gittin’. What do I have to do, call a fork-lift?”
My burden tilted and rolled to
her feet, at which I withdrew my knees and crossed my legs in the other
direction.
A moment of danger as the
women faced each other. Then my assailant waddled away, rolling the topography
of her dorsal surface. “There’s no chairs here anyway.”
Marcie sat on my lap and
hugged me. “Boy, Toby!”
“I’m all right,” I said. “She
almost got me.”
Indeed, I could not but reflect
upon the fragility of my situation.
“See?” said the child. “Now
you’re not so stupid.”
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