“Okay,” answered Suzie. She retrieved the ostensible reason for her visit from Charlie’s desk and followed him out the door. As she entered the kitchen, she exclaimed, “Man! We really left a mess!”
Charlie turned from the old white Westinghouse side-by-side refrigerator/freezer with two Coke Zero cans and said, “Huh?” Then, as he set the sodas down on the nearest available surface, he looked about the room more critically than he usually did. Used cookware, an empty Ragú sauce jar, bread crumbs, a garlic salt shaker, dirty dishes piled with wadded paper napkins, all littered the Formica table, the range and the ceramic-tiled countertops. “Oh, yeah. I guess we did,” he acknowledged.
“C’mon, Charlie,” Suzie said brightly. “Let’s get this cleaned up so your mom won’t have to. I won’t be able to think about anything else until it’s done, anyway.” Immediately, she began loading the Whirlpool dishwasher with their plates, glasses and silverware.
Charlie, who had very little experience with such things, hesitated, then gingerly picked up the garlic salt and returned it to the spice rack on the wall over the Hotpoint stove. “That’s a big help,” laughed Suzie. Then, taking charge, she ordered, “Throw out that old glass tomato sauce jar and scrub those pots with soap in the sinks! I’ll take care of wiping down the counters and table.”
Later, when the room was ship-shape again and the dishwasher was humming along, Suzie popped the tabs on the Cokes. Holding one out to Charlie, she asked, “Shall we sit at the table in here, or go out to the couch in the living room to study?”
Actually, Charles wanted to do neither. While they were cleaning the kitchen, he had been able to forget that he was alone with his secret crush, but now his pending hell was eminently clear. He wondered how he could get Suzanne Pomeroy to leave. Or, if she stayed, what was he going to do to keep his thoughts on schoolwork instead of on her personally? How long could he endure the torment?
Suzie got tired of waiting for an answer. “Hey! Charlie! Are you okay? It wasn’t, like, the hardest question ever, you know!” She asked again, “Where do you want to sit?”
Snapping out of his quandary, Charles stammered, “Uh- umm, oh, yeah. Sorry to be slow.” He pointed to the now gleaming sea-foam-green speckled Formica and chrome kitchen table. “Let’s do it here.” As he pulled out a plastic-upholstered chair and sat down quickly to hide his building boner beneath the table top, he shrieked to himself, “Oh my God! Did I really just say ‘Let’s do it here’? Please, please, don’t let her think I meant ‘DO it’!”
Rebelling, as if it had a mind of its own, Charlie’s thickening prick twitched in his jeans. It didn’t help matters that before she sat herself, Suzie stood close beside him and put his Coke can by his right hand. As she leaned in to set down the soda, her perfume again teased his nose while her left breast inadvertently squashed ever so slightly against his shoulder. He suppressed a groan, but couldn’t suppress the pressurized blood petrifying his penis.
For the next ninety minutes, Charles was in a terrorized fog and functioning on auto-pilot. He had no sense of what Suzanne or he were saying or doing. It was a miracle that he didn’t pass out, or worse yet, ejaculate in his underwear as he watched her face, and especially her fantastic full pink-glossed lips, while she talked. Suddenly, weirdly, he was aware of the mantle-clock in the living room chiming nine and he distinctly heard her say, “Oh gosh! I’ve got to get going! Thanks, ever so much, Charlie, I think I finally have an idea of what to say in my essay for Mrs. Krautheimer! Maybe we can do this again?”
Relief flooded through Charles as his angel prepared to take flight. “Um, yeah,” he answered dully, hoping both that such a thing could happen and also that it never would. “Anytime I can help, I’m glad to do it.” In a moment of belated rationality, he asked, “Butch doesn’t mind you being here? I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble.”
Suzie scooted around the table, planted a sweet kiss on Charlie’s cheek and bubbled, “Don’t worry about Butch Carlson. He’s just a big dope. You’re smart and I like you!” Then, like that, she was gone. Charlie stood, stunned and immobile, until he heard her car start, then drive off. More tired than he had ever felt this early on a Friday night, he switched off the kitchen lights and went to bed without even removing his shoes.
An hour earlier, right on time, Butch Carlson rang the doorbell at the Pomeroy house. Suzanne’s dad, Edgar, carrying a bowling bag, greeted Butch, “Oh, hi! My wife’ll be right with you. I’m running late for my league.” As he rushed by the eighteen-year-old boy, he waved dismissively and added, “Nice to see you. That was a great game you had against Western!” Then he climbed into his white Dodge Ram 2500 Crew Cab pick-up, with ‘Pomeroy Plumbing and Heating’ emblazoned on its doors, backed down the driveway and drove away.
When Butch turned back to the open door, Bernice Pomeroy was standing there waving at her husband’s disappearing truck and saying, “Bye-bye, Ed.” She looked the teen over from head to toe, then greeted him, “Hello, Howard. Are you here to pick up Suzanne for a date?”
Butch hated his given name, but never showed that when an adult used it. “Yes, Mrs. Pomeroy,” he answered politely. “Is she ready to go, do you think?”
“Mmm, I’m afraid not,” Bernice said smoothly. “She left the house for, oh, I don’t know where. Was she expecting you?”
Butch could not contain his petulance. “Well, yeah! It’s Friday night. And I told her I would be here at eight.”
“Hmmm,” mused Bernice. “That seems so unlike her, but if you’re sure, why don’t you come in the house and wait a while. Maybe she thought she would be back before you got here.” Stepping backward into the entry hall, she ushered in the jilted kid while she said to herself, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Suzie. This is a very handsome young man, and I know he comes from a good family with oodles of money. You could do worse, you know.”
Then, aloud, Bernice added, “I was just going to have a drinkie-poo. There’s lots of mixers, and I could make you a nice virgin something-or-other, if you want. Or there’s plain Coke or Seven-up or Canada Dry, if you prefer. Whatever you like, just ask.”
As Butch crossed the threshold, he caught Bernice squinting weirdly at him, like he was a bug under a microscope, or something. He thought he had seen her looking funny at him at the door, too. Now, as she offered him a drink when she was clearly alone, he wondered, “What’s going on? Is she coming on to me? She has to be near forty, but her bod is tight and she’s got an even nicer rack than her daughter.”
Deciding that he could see what happens without risking too much, Butch answered, with what he considered to be a confident grown-up voice, “Yeah, Mrs. P… uh, do you mind if I call you that?… I’d like a ‘virgin’ whatever you’re having.”
Bernice looked over her shoulder and laughed heartily as she led the way to the living room. Approaching the wet bar near the stereo cabinet and big screen television, she explained mirthfully, “I’m having a Manhattan. If I made it a virgin for you, all you’d get is the cherry!”