Jane and I weren’t friends. We sat next to one another at Corduroy a couple of times, and I’d bought her a drink or two. Mostly she ignored my advances. I didn’t expect much. I was sixty-four and she was twenty-three or something around my granddaughter’s age.
The night we finally hooked up, she’d had a fight with her boyfriend, and I comforted her, told her it would get better. Divorce changes a man, softens him. She listened to me for the first time that night, looked me in the eyes.
We went back to my place and I got the cats off the bed. There was still some bourbon in the bottle and I gave her the first swig. She told me I should get an air-freshener for the place, a Glade Plug-In, and I promised I would.
“Who’s that?” she asked, looking at the photos on top of my television.
“My son and his kids.”
“He looks like my math teacher.”
“He’s good with numbers,” I said, “but he never went to college.”
We ended up in the shower, our clothes tossed on the bathroom floor. I was embarrassed at my long-johns, but she didn’t say anything, no wise cracks about my sagging undies or the stains on my undershirt. A lesser woman would have called me a tramp, and she wouldn’t have been too far off.
We moved from the shower to the bed, and I chased the cats off again, but they’d be back. They were strange things and sat like old dogs watching us have sex. I came early, and she kept going, as if I could start all over again without a nap or a smoke break. Bless her heart, she gave me the benefit of the doubt.
Well, I couldn’t get going again, so I made her some Ovaltine and drove her home. Her boyfriend was there and he must have smelled the sex on us because he returned to his car and came back with a bat. Luckily I’d loaded my shotgun that morning, but I didn’t have to fire it. She stopped him and walked him inside. I imagined them in bed together, though I doubt she’d let the cats in the room.
I waited a few minutes before heading back home. There was a peppermint candy from Pizza Hut in my glove box. I sucked on the thing before biting it altogether. Candy rots your teeth? Only when you have some.
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Damn, I nearly coughed up a lung laughing so hard. Good stuff.