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Nine
Somehow, Colin manages to
live alone in a 1908 four-bedroom Victorian with a one-acre backyard. I pull in
under a shade tree and walk the long drive, discovering oversized body parts on
dropcloths: an arm here, an arm there, two legs, torso, a world-beating rack. I
find Colin and some other guy on the hedged-in porch, applying paint to a
five-foot-tall head. She looks like Sacagawea as drawn by Diego Rivera, all
Aztec cheekbones and wide brown nose. The eyes are enormous white diamonds with
green irises.
“Micko!
Meet the goddess of Joyism, Iluana.”
“American
Indian?”
Colin
gives her a long study.
“I
suppose so. You recall the Camarena deck?” He holds up a can of Cabot stain, a
reddish brown hybrid we call Coco Ray. “Oh, and this is my helpmeet, Greg.”
Greg
is a bald man with an egg-shaped dome. His skin hangs basset-like from his
face, and shakes when he talks.
“A
million small suns. Helpmeet - wonderful word. A million small… Iluana, the
helpmeet of a million small suns, flies with Coco Ray to the conference of
contrabands.”
“Hi,”
I say.
Colin
laughs. “Sorry. Greg’s in riff-mode. He’s a poet. He gets hooked on these
phrases and has to speak them all day until they sprout a poem.”
Greg’s
eyes get wide, like someone’s just shot him with a taser. “Like an oyster
working a pearl.”
“Wonderful,”
I say.
“A
million small suns.”
“Exactly.”
I turn to Colin. “Could I fetch the sprayer? I have to get to a softball game.”
“Oh!
Certainly. Carry on, Greg.”
“A
million small suns,” says Greg. “Preposterous.”
The
paint sprayer is next to the garage, freshly cleaned after some clogging
issues. Colin begins the briefing.
“Let’s
see, you’ve got the gate code…”
“Check.”
“Cell
phone for Mrs. Atkins?”
“Yep.”
“Gave
you the layout of the deck – oh, and don’t forget that little porch out back.
They’re on vacation all month, so it’s up to you as far as the schedule, but
whatever you do, avoid the sun! Morning, evening, whichever you prefer. I trust
you completely, my friend. And if anything comes up you are utterly on your
own. You might be able to smuggle a text onto the playa, but it would probably
take me too long to respond.”
“Have
a great time,” I say. “I expect some naughty stories.”
“If
nothing happens, I’ll make something up.”
Colin
and I maintain a handshake professionalism, but for occasions like the annual
Burning Man sendoff I use the he-man hug.
“Have
fun.”
“Thanks,
pal. And thanks for handling this job. It does help the old cash flow.”
“No
problem.”
I
pick up the sprayer, loop the hose over my shoulder and head off.
“Ta!”
says Colin. “No fuckups!”
“Ta!”
Greg
pokes his head out of the hedge.
“A
million small suns!”
“Bye,
Greg.”
We’ve
got a couple of new infielders, so I’m back in left field, which is kind of
nice. It’s relaxing to turn off the brain and just go fetch the ball. I’ve been
doing pretty well (for an old fart), but the infield commits a couple of
bobbles and soon the virus is hitting the whole team. I have no idea why such
things are contagious, but they are. My centerfielder is chasing a base hit
when he steps on a bald spot and goes down like he’s been hit by sniper fire.
“Okay!”
I shout. “I think we’ve got enough for the blooper reel now!”
Famous
last words. I’m chasing a flare down the line, trying to get a lower angle on
the ball, when my feet get tangled up and I go down like I’ve been hit by a
shoestring tackle. The ball clanks off my glove and falls to the grass.
“What
the hell!” says Doug. “I’ve never
seen you do that.”
I
adopt the rumbling baritone of sports documentaries. “It was the end of a
brilliant playing career for Mickey Siskel.”
“Yeah,
right. Get up there and get a fucking hit.”
We
are a much more talented team than our opponents, but that never stopped us
before. We’re tied in the top of the seventh when someone lifts a lazy fly to
my left. Something in my gearbox goes off by an inch and the ball clanks off my
glove again.
Oh no, says my body. Not this time, you fucker. I follow the
ball down, slapping at it with various appendages as I crumple to the ground:
the left elbow, the right hand, a ricochet off both knees, bada-bing. Now I’m
crawling, and I manage to slide my glove beneath this last bobble just before
it hits the grass. Lying flat on my stomach, I raise my glove to show the
umpire, and he signals the out.
“Well,”
I say. “That was entertaining.”
Doug
is laughing up a storm. “You probably saved a run. The runner couldn’t decide
if you were going to catch it or not, and he got all brain-locked.”
“That’s
what I’m talkin’ about.” I tap a finger to my temple. “Stragedy.”
We
eke out the winning run and slither away like a man smuggling the ugly girl out
of the bar. I’m feeling just as unsettled as my glovework, driving into the
suburban night, gathering stray thoughts at the stoplights.
At
the left turn to the 85 onramp, I flash on my early July doubleheader: the
ex-wife and the booty call. Allison’s quick fadeaway is neither surprising nor
disappointing. Her mojo-resuscitation act was like chemotherapy: a little is
effective, but too much will kill you.
As
for Katie, I suppose this is the nature of booty-call arrangements. They
survive on the understanding that they are not
real relationships. When they go on too long, or become too regular – when they
begin to take on the appearance of
relationships – they are bound to scuttle themselves on the next sandbar. She
stayed that night, she kissed me goodbye in the morning, and I haven’t seen her
since. Desperate as she is for any candle in a dark existence, I think she was
able to ignore her growing attachment, but when she came up against a mythic
figure like Maddalena Hart, she decided it was time to quit. I’m sure she’ll be
in church this Sunday, rationalizing our Saturday nights as a sinful mistake,
feeling the kind of warmth that does not emanate from a pew. I don’t deserve
to, but I miss her.
I
come to a stop at Prospect and Saratoga-Sunnyvale, the dark mass of the Santa
Cruz Mountains looming across my windshield, and I’m thinking what a lonely man
I have become. Thankfully, the decking business is booming. But when it’s this
busy, Colin and I tend to split the jobs, so even there I’m losing
companionship. I try not to go home too early, because the solitude around the
cabins is pretty thick, and it’s not like you can dash to the corner for a
late-night coffee.
Thanks
to softball, tonight’s schedule is just about right; it’s 10:30 and I am
pulling up to Saratoga Village, my final stoplight before the long, slow rise
of Highway 9. It is precisely at this right-hand turn, each and every night,
that my thoughts turn to Maddalena.
September
23. That’s when Guillaume Tell opens
at SFO. That’s when I am guaranteed of seeing her in the flesh. Left alone
without my usual supporting cast, I find myself aching for her. Silly, poetic
thing to say, but that’s what it feels like – a deep-tissue bruise, a separated
shoulder. I am hopeful, nonetheless, that her two-month, three-opera stay will
give us an idea as to what, precisely, we will do with each other.
Meanwhile,
I subsist on a diet of text messages. Neither of us are fond of phone calls,
which are just close enough to actual contact to max out the frustration level.
But these little tapped-out thoughts are okay. I am surprised at their power.
At
the turnoff to Sanborn County Park, my cell shakes against the cupholder. Being
a performer, Maddie keeps a night-owl schedule, so one-thirty Eastern is
nothing unusual.
Did you win?
Barely.
A W’s a W, bebe.
Comedy softball.
God I miss u.
Just another month.
Loooong month.
Don’t worry. It’ll seem like 15
mins.
Oh sure.
Trust me.
How’s Mathilde?
Rossini’s
tough! Especially GT.
She
always seems to catch me on Highway 9, so I have learned to type by touch as I
navigate the curves.
Front gate.
I
don’t dare text on the dirt road, however, so I always let her know when I’m
about to go into cyber-silence. For some reason, Trey the Fish has reattached
the lock on the wrong side of the gate. I have to yank it over the crossbar to
catch some light from the highway. I return to the car to find Maddie's
signoff:
Drive carefully! Never know what night
creatures you may encounter.
Thx honey.
I
switch on my brights and follow the usual tracks: the short first climb, the
sandy straightaway, uphill past the hiking trail, the long gravelly downhill,
the tricky outcroppings of rock. Approaching the first overlook, I catch a
flash of red reflector, then a bright sedan, then a woman in a white pantsuit.
I crunch to a halt, sending up a cloud of dust that follows me as I jog into my
high-beams and lift her off the ground. She lands laughing.
“Gotcha.”
“I
thought…”
“They
wanted me here early. Some sort of… Oh who cares? Kiss me!”
I
kiss her until all deep tissue bruises and separated shoulders are absolved, and
then I hold her tight as she hums in my ear. When I open my eyes, I see the
lights of Silicon Valley spread out like a million small suns.
“A
million what?”
“Nothing.
Poetry. God it’s good to see you.”
I
have thoughts of showering, of pouring Maddie some wine, maybe scraping
together some dessert. I recall that I have peanut butter. What can you do with
peanut butter?
Maddie
has other ideas. She nudges me like a border collie working a sheep, driving me
across the living room, to the edge of my bed and over. She yanks at the layers
of my softball gear – pants, sliding pad, athletic briefs – until she unearths
my cock. She works it over with her tongue until I’m sporting a grade-A
hard-on. Then she hops off the bed, removes her pants and readies herself to
hop onto my dick, which is now limp.
She
looks at me. “Is it all right to yell?”
“Yes.”
“Neighbors
won’t mind?”
“No.”
“FUCK!”
She
stands to give her diaphragm more room, and delivers her next three notes with
an impressive amount of volume.
“Fuck!
Fuck! F-U-U-U-U…”
I’ve
got my hand clamped over her mouth, an arm around her waist. She’s still
yelling – I can feel the force of her breath against my palm.
“Maddie?
Honey? Ya gotta stop, Maddie.”
It
takes her a few breaths to calm down, and then she peels my hand away.
“Why?”
“Because
I am not going to explain to the
opera fans of America how it was that the end of your singing career was
inspired by my limp dick.”
She
takes in a hissing breath that might be a rising indignation, then lets out a
little burst, like the first puff from an air compressor. That’s the hole in
the dike; the rest is a flood of wild, rolling laughter that sweeps me along in
its wake. Two minutes later we are flat on the bed, pantsless, trying to stop
before we asphyxiate ourselves. After that we grow silent, and I think I know
why: we’re both afraid that the next utterance will send us right back into the
water.
Maddie
curls across the bed, grabs my dick and gives it a stern look.
“Why
don’t you like me? Everybody else
likes me.”
This
isn’t as funny as it should be. I am drowning in frustration.
“When
you got home from your drive, did you masturbate?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Hard
as Wagner.”
“Wagner
is hard. I’m so sick of this.” She
releases my idiot cock and leans back on her elbows. “Sadly, this has happened
before.”
“Really?”
“I’m
a pretty intimidating figure. La Diva! Tenors and penises cower before her.
Christ.”
“Sorry.”
She
leans up and gives me a kiss.
“If
I was smart, I would sleep only with men who know nothing about opera. But
don’t worry about it, honey. Please
don’t. Well. I gotta go.” She hops off the bed and fetches her pants.
“Huh?”
“My
boy-genius stage director. Jose Maria Condemi. He’s one of those fucking
morning people, and like an idiot I agreed to meet with him at nine o’clock. No
way in hell I’m accomplishing that
from here. I’m awfully sorry, Mickey. I feel like I ambushed you. But I had to
at least see you. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I adore you.”
“I
adore you.”
“Now
put on your pantalones, Dimaggio, and walk me out.”
I
lean her against the hood of her Lexus and kiss her like a lover should.
“Thanks
for surprising me.”
She
taps a finger on my chest. “Your assignment: don’t touch that thing. Get a lot of sleep, and be here at seven tomorrow
evening. I’ll bring dinner.”
“Nice.”
“I will think of something.” I give her a
last kiss and watch her drive away. When I get back inside, I open a beer and
crash on the couch. I have a visual flash of Maddie giving me head and my dick
starts to stiffen.
“Oh
fuck you. You had your chance.”
I
turn on the TV and search for the most non-sexual shows I can find. The Disney
Channel. Murder She Wrote. The McLaughlin
Group.
My
sleep is pretty spotty, so I spend much of the next day napping on the couch as
a classical station lulls me in and out of slumber. I manage to take an
afternoon hike through the madrones, and then I head for the bath so I’ll be
presentable for La Diva.
She
pulls in exactly at seven and parks in my front yard, which is really just dirt
and tree droppings. I meet her at the door and give her a kiss. She seems
excited.
“Hi.
I need some help loading up.”
She
opens the back door of her Lexus and hands me a couple of wardrobe bags on
hangers. I attach them to the curtain rods over the living room drapes. A few
trips later, we are adrift in a sea of clothing. I sit on the couch expecting
some sort of explanation. Maddie hitches her thumbs into her jeans pockets,
surveys the landscape and says, “So. Who do you want to fuck tonight?”
“Ummm…
pardon?”
“I
have just pilfered a hefty portion of the San Francisco Opera wardrobe
department. Any lyric soprano you’d like. We’ve got Violetta, Gilda, Mathilde,
Manon, Micaela…”
“Ooh.”
She
flashes an amused smile. “Oh! Micaela. That’s
interesting. Okay. Here’s what I want. Lose the coffee table. Leave the
armchair. Round up some candles. Then just relax, watch some TV. This may take
a while.”
She
fetches a bag reading MIC ’06 and
leaves for the bathroom. I close all the blinds and curtains, lean the coffee
table against the far wall, pull the rug to the center of the remaining space
and position the armchair atop that. Then I set four large candles on an end
table and add an incense holder with a stick of patchouli. A half-hour later,
as I’m dozing through an episode of Seinfeld
(George as a marine biologist), the kitchen door closes, and three knocks
resound from the other side.
“Two
minutes! Light the candles.”
[Track
8]
I
light the candles and incense, setting the room in a hazy orange glow. I sit on
the couch, an expectant audience. Maddie gives another three knocks and enters.
She wears a long gray skirt with petticoats, a white rectangle of apron
descending from the waist. Above that is a white blouse with puffs at the
sleeves and a chocolate-brown leather corset. Her collar is open, revealing
just a hint of cleavage. She wears her hair tied up in a blue scarf, flowing
out the back, and her face is marked with swipes of dirt, as though she has
been on an arduous journey. She speaks in clear, unaccented English, but the
formality of her tone implies a 19th-century European.
“Thank
you so much for taking me in! These travels have been much more difficult then
I expected. It’s very gracious of you.”
She
listens for a moment, as if someone is speaking to her, and then smiles.
“Oh!
Well, you see, I am on a quest of sorts. I am trying to find my beau, Don Jose,
who has taken up with gypsy smugglers. His mother is quite ill and… May I sit?
Thank you.”
She
settles rather properly on the armchair and takes a sip from an invisible
glass.
“Thank
you so much. Yes, you’re right, it is quite dangerous. I’ve never really done
anything like this.”
Another
attentive pause.
“Oh,
well. I… care for Jose quite a lot. We grew up on neighboring farms, and we
played together as children. And I remember this one day. I was twelve. I was
beginning to… develop. I was walking back to the house after milking the cows.
Jose was working the fields. It was hot that day, and he had taken off his
shirt. He waved to me; I went to lean against the fence and talk to him. He
continued to work as we spoke. I could see the muscles moving in his arms, like
the strings of a guitar, and the way the sweat shone on his back.
“I
don’t know if it is proper to describe what it was that I was feeling. A
tingling. Like the tickle on your skin when your clothes rustle in the wind.
Only this… tingling seemed to emanate from beneath my skirt. I wanted so badly
to reach down and rub myself, but of course I could not. And watching Jose, I
recalled something I had seen two days previous. A bull approached a cow in the
field and, amazingly, he stood on his hind legs behind her. I had heard of such
things, but I had never seen the mechanical aspect, the way the bull’s tube of
flesh slid in and out of the cow’s backside. I tried to be disgusted, as I knew
I should, but I was fascinated by the beauty of the design, as if these two
dancing animals had rehearsed all their lives for this one performance. And
that same tingling beneath my skirts – though why I should feel this way about
a bull and a cow I do not know. I almost could not keep my hands off of myself.
That Sunday, in church, I prayed for God to remove these temptations, or at the
least to let me understand them better.”
She
stops for a moment; her thoughts seem to drift. Then she squints her eyes and
purses her lips.
“I
detest gypsies! Filthy, ignorant animals. You see, I always thought that Jose
and I were rehearsing. I suppose that I loved him. But I was a terribly shy
girl, and I did not tell him a thing. Before I knew it he was in the army and
off to Seville – Seville, that evil place. It was there that he met this Carmen
person. I do not know what he sees in her – she’s not even pretty. But now… Now
I have what it will take to win him back. If his mother’s sickness is not
enough, then I will simply have to give myself to him. I am ready, I love him,
and that should be enough for God. Just the thought of it… just the…”
She
reaches inside her blouse, brings out one white breast and tweaks her nipple,
arching backward. Then she opens her eyes and smiles.
“Everyone
at home believes that I am a good girl, but I have spent years walking by the
field with the bull and the cow, and… well. I know, sir, that your wife is away
at her sister’s, and I hope that you do not think that I am taking advantage of
circumstance, but I wonder if you… if you would show it to me.”
It
takes me a moment to realize that I have been drafted – that I am the kindly
farmer who has offered her lodging. I stand and shuck my shorts, revealing a
hardening but untrustworthy member. She giggles.
“It
is not so large as the bull’s, but it is much more handsome! Here, I have
brought some oil with me. Perhaps you’d like to rub it? I have heard that men
like to do such things.”
She
pulls a small vial from her skirts and hands it to me, then dashes back to her
chair as though I were the bull in her story. I pour some of the oil into my
hand, apply it to my dick and make a good show of stroking it.
“Ooh!”
Her eyes squint in pleasure and she places a hand over her skirt. “It’s that…
feeling again, that tingling. Only now it’s unbearable. Are we… Are you sure
that we are quite alone?”
I
nod.
She
looks around nervously, then slowly gathers her petticoats until, in a narrow
gap beneath all the layers of clothing she reveals her pussy. She opens her
legs further, displaying the moisture coating her labia, then reaches down to
rub her clitoris and dip a finger inside.
“Oh!
Oh! I see now why I have wanted to do that for so long! What an incredible
sensation. I think it is time…”
She
closes her legs, reaches into her skirts and extracts a large black dildo, made
to look as realistic as possible.
“I
hate the gypsies, but they do occasionally prove themselves useful. This one
was a peddler of novelties, and he sold me this, a life-cast from the erect
member of a Zulu warrior. ‘Even though you may not yet want to join with a
man,’ the peddler said, ‘this will give you an idea of what it feels like. And you won’t get babies.’”
She
spreads her legs again, pushes her petticoats aside and inserts the black cock.
The sides of her entrance cling to the dildo as it slides in and out. Micaela
moans.
“Oh!
It feels so good. I want Jose to fill me like this. Sir, oh sir, please. Be my
Jose. Put your thing inside me. Show me how it feels.”
I
leap from the couch, take her hand away and push the black cock in and out,
faster and faster until Micaela’s eyes begin to bug out. It’s the filthiest
thing I have ever seen, and it’s divine. I take the dildo and throw it to the
floor, take my cock in my hand and I am inside of her, aloft on a cloud of
petticoats.
“Oh,
Micaela, you feel so good.”
“Jose!
Jose! Je’taime Jose. I will love you forever.”
The
layers of identity are getting pretty deep. I am the middle-aged farmer banging
away at the lost little girl as the pretends that I am her soldier-boy. Carmen
could never be this hot – she’s too fucking obvious.
I sink into the illusion and continue pumping Micaela into the armchair. I hold
myself deep inside of her as I drive my tongue into her mouth, then I stand up
and order her outside. I push her against the Lexus and I lift her skirts so I
can surround my dick with that plump white ass.
Then
I’m on the ground, redwood cones digging into my butt as Micaela bounces on top
of me, all of our parts delicious hidden beneath her petticoats. She takes off
her scarf to release her hair. I find myself shouting a long string of yesses
as Micaela begins to sing. She looses a top note into the trees; I can feel the
vibrations all the way down to my dick and it’s too much. I explode, gushing
into her. Micaela screams; the sound echoes off the hillsides. I grab her by
the waist and continue to empty myself out, then I roll beside her. We spend
the next five minutes laughing, kissing and smiling, leaves and sticks and
God-knows-what entwined in her hair.
“Micaela!
You are a bad, bad girl!”
“You
knew that all along; that’s why you picked me.” She kisses me and snuggles her
face against my neck. I roll onto my back and see the moonlit sky, jagged
silver patterns sketched across the treetops. A jetliner skates across,
flashing red and white signals.
My
non-existent neighbor snuck in while I was away and left an old picnic table
next to the fire pit. I am high on sex and feeling ambitious, so I construct a
pyramid of aged logs, douse it with lighter fluid and soon I have a raging
fire. So raging, in fact, that Micaela and I are forced to sit on the opposite
side of the table, digging into the baked lasagna that Maddie picked up at
Bella Mia. She has decided to keep the costume on for a while.
“So
this monologue. Did you rehearse that?”
Micaela
wipes her mouth with a napkin and kisses me just beneath my earlobe.
“That is the kind of well-developed
backstory that any decent soprano should come up with. Really, it’s the one
part of the opera where we get to be
the creators. The backstory builds the character, the nature of the character
affects the musical and dramatic interpretation, and those interpretations
determine the flavor of the production as a whole.
“The
critics, bless their hearts, have always said that my Micaela has a little more
umph than most, and now you know why.
I don’t buy the hapless innocent. This is a girl who ventures into the
mountains all alone, knowing full well that there are murderous gypsies up
there. She wants Jose, she has always
wanted him, and she will do just about anything to get him away from Carmen. My
backstories are not usually so explicit, but you can bet there’s a lot of
suppressed sexuality there, and it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that
she would put her virginity on the line. When you picked her out of the lineup,
I thought, Well shit, this is a piece
of cake.”
“The
corruption of the girl next door.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Elena
Mendez.”
“Pardon?”
“Girl
next door. Used to lay out by her pool, which was just visible from my window.”
“Pervert.”
“Oh yeah.”
“When
you men see all that innocence, you just want to go in there and mess with it.”
“I
get the feeling Elena wasn’t all that innocent. Not from the looks of that
bikini. What was that aria? Was that the famous one?”
“‘Je
dis que rien ne m’epouvante.’ Yes, the famous one. And she sings it at that
very point in the opera, on her way up the mountain. Little did we know she had
just spent the night banging a farmer.”
We
enjoy a long laugh, and then we return our attentions to the lasagna, which is
extraordinary. After Maddie finishes, she lifts my right leg over the bench,
straddles me, takes a draught of wine and swirls it into my mouth. When we’re
done, her eyes are half-closed and dreamy.
“Having
you inside of me, I can’t tell you…”
And
she can’t, because she’s crying. I settle my head against her chest until she
recovers. She wipes her eyes, laughing.
“I’m
sorry, honey. I guess I was really anxious about this.”
“Me
too.”
Once
the floodgates have opened, there’s no stopping us. Being a professional,
Violetta is an expert cocksucker. Manon is into full-body massages and having
her toes licked. Susannah is a saucy little wench who enjoys filthy language
and (much to Figaro’s surprise) anal sex. Donna Elvira keeps slapping Don
Giovanni in the midst of intercourse. The Celtic priestess Norma is a tender,
generous lover who likes it on top, surrounded by banks of candles. Lucia is a fucking
maniac, speaking in tongues, changing position every two minutes and constantly
referring to Edgardo’s tool as a dagger. The Queen of the Night brings along
whips, handcuffs and (much to Papageno’s surprise) a strap-on dildo.
And
Rusalka. In a pool of deep blue light, the water nymph plays with her newly
granted human body until she brings herself to a slow, quiet climax. She does
the same with the body of her prince, holding and licking his staff for long
minutes, then spreading herself open and inviting his entrance. After
shuddering to a wordless climax, she sings to the moon as the prince continues
to stroke slowly in and out.
The
following evening, the woman who is all of them returns home after a day of
errands and appointments. She looks a little frazzled, her hair tied up in a
bandana, her face lined and weary from the heat. She greets me with a hug.
“So,”
she says. “Who do you want tonight? I’ve got Mathilde, Desdemona, the
Marschallin…”
“I
want the opera singer.”
“Oh.
Tosca?”
“Maddalena.”
She
looks at me in the filtered shade and gives me a smile that grows and grows.
“Excellent
choice.”
The
next day is our last before she begins rehearsals. Regardless, I decide that
it’s time I get to that deck. Maddie invites herself along (“After all, you’re
always watching me work”), and sits
in the shade with a cooler of beers and a book.
The
Atkins house is a veritable mansion, built on a steep, sunny hillside far back
in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After a few back-and-forths with the pressure
washer, I conclude that the deck is completely hidden from neighboring roads or
houses. I head for the far corner, out of my diva’s vision, and remove every
article of clothing, save the Wellies. Then I return to my work as if nothing
is awry, following a pair of planks all the way down. The mix of sunlight and
mist on my privates is intoxicating, but what I’m really after is audience
reaction.
Making
my full frontal turn, I find that the joke is on me. Maddie has planted a
chaise lounge at the center of the adjacent deck and is lying there absolutely
starkers, like a plus-size model at the Playboy mansion. She gives me a little
wave to let me know that I’ve been had. I raise my wand, sending a spray that
catches the breeze and settles on her radiant white contours. She spreads her
arms as if welcoming a lover.
Photo by MJV
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