Good Luck, Fatty

kiss.
    I clear my throat as I approach. “We’ve got an eight and a nine,” I say in a hopeful tone, “but no eight and a half.”
    The brunette stands up and Lex leans back, tucks his hands behind his head. I glance over my shoulder at Harvey, whose expression is inscrutable. “Can I help you with something?” he asks the brunette.
    I dart my bulging eyes from Lex to Harvey and back again, but Harvey remains immune to my eyeball pointing. The brunette says, “I’ll try the eights.”
    I lead her to a rickety Asian-style bench in front of the cash register, where she slips off her rhinestone-encrusted flip-flops (those can’t be diamonds, right?!) and crams her bare foot into one of the rollerblades. I hold out its mate and say, “You can try ‘em on the sidewalk, if you want.”
    She gives me a closed-lipped smile that is quite lovely and not the least bit bitchy, as I’d expected. (The tabloids portray all of Lex Arlington’s conquests as money-grubbing trollops.) Softly she says, “Thank you.”
    While the brunette ventures out onto the pothole-ridden walk, I pretend to dust the front counter. And I eavesdrop.
    “How many’ve you got so far?” Lex asks Harvey.
    “Mmm…let’s see,” Harvey says. “Twenty-six? No, no. Twenty-eight, counting Mr. and Mrs. Willard.”
    “That’s it?”
    Harvey shrugs, his back to me, his frame just wide enough to eclipse my view of Lex. “It’s meant to be an intimate affair. Not more than fifty riders, tops—although the permit covers us for a hundred.”
    Lex lowers his voice, and for a few seconds, I’m in the dark. Then Harvey’s voice comes back, bright and bouncy. “ Ten thousand? ” he says, as if the number astounds him.
    Lex stands. “To divvy up as you see fit,” he says. “And another ten for charity. Asthma’s prevalent around here, isn’t it?”
    “It is,” replies Harvey.
    “So the American Lung Association might make sense. It’s your call.”
    Harvey simply nods. “That’s mighty generous of you.”
    The brunette struggles with the door, so I rush over and shove it open from the inside. She blows by me, splashes down on the bench and says, “I’ll take ‘em.”
    Lex grins at Harvey. “Do you accept out-of-state checks?”
    “Sure do.”
    “And where are those registration forms?” says Lex.
    If I could do a cartwheel, I would. Instead, I say, “Right this way.”
     

----
     
    Brent Flynn is a repeat customer and the only boy who calls to schedule appointments to screw me. I like that he knows my name and brings me little gifts (trinkets from the vending machine at the Bowl-A-Rama) as some kind of reward for when it’s over.
    “Hello?” I squeak when I pick up the phone, my throat tense in anticipation of hearing Marie or Duncan.
    “Bobbi?” It’s Brent. He’s called enough now that I recognize his voice.
    I lean against the kitchen wall and spiral the phone cord around my finger. “Oh, hi.”
    “What’re you doin’?”
    “Nothing much,” I say. I think about Brent, how he might be a good guy (unlike the rest of the trolls who screw me), how he’s never uttered a mean or degrading word in my presence, how he’s extraordinarily sweet and polite to Melissa, his long-term girlfriend, who’s a virgin and intends to stay that way until she and Brent are married.
    “I’ve got my dad’s car until nine,” he says. “Can I come get you?”
    Between my legs, a sneaky little humming sensation begins percolating. Even though it’s wrong to keep letting these boys screw me, I can’t stop. Probably I’d have better luck quitting the Milky Ways. “Okay,” I say. If I’m going to give up the screwing, at least I could end on an up-note, with the quasi-respectable Brent Flynn.
    Brent says something I don’t hear due to the way Orv’s just clomped into the house. “Gotta go,” I blurt into the phone and then quickly hang up.
    Orv stops in his tracks and stares me down. “Who was that?”
    “Huh?”
    I slink into the living room as if I’ve been headed there all along, and Orv follows. “Who was on the telephone, Bobbi-Jo?” he persists.
    I’m not supposed to get calls from boys, and usually I don’t, with the exception of Brent and, sometimes, Tom. I click the TV (one of those clunky, prehistoric tube sets that looks like an overgrown robot’s head) on and say, “Ruby?”
    Orv collapses into the thrift store La-Z-Boy and begins unlacing his work boots. “Don’t lie. You ain’t very good at