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Tamara L. Pavich from
TILT-A-WHIRL Ahead on the path, Buddy jogged backwards, licking his plum-red lips at me and heaving fistfuls of popcorn into the night air. His pale eyes caught the neon-red under the roller coaster, white-blond hair glowing pink and his mouth forming a kiss just before I lost him in the crowd. I kicked off my heels and snatched them out of the dust, pushed my hair back from my eyes and spotted him, lean and handsome, watching me between the shuffling bodies at the fair. s I caught up to him, he struck his favorite pose, rock-star, pelvis forward, shoulders at a tilt, twisting the empty popcorn bag into a microphone at his lips. In the center of the path, a tide of Nebraskans milling past, his eyes fell shut and his voice lifted. “Lay, lady, lay. Lay across my big brass bed.” He dropped his mic in the dust and whined out the guitar part, his voice sliding down by half-steps, left hand barring imaginary frets, the right strumming the fly of his pants. “Stay with your man ay-while.” A frowsy woman yanked her child away, caught me grinning and scowled. “Ought to be ashamed,” she said. He took off again, snatching the popcorn bag from the path and balling it, pretending to dribble, dodging baby strollers and sidestepping couples, while I trotted along at the edge of the path in the dust, sandals dangling. The night-cooled air raised goose bumps on my damp skin. Colored lights pin-wheeled in the sky around us and his teeth flashed white as he shot the wad of paper at a trash barrel, striking the hat of a deputy sheriff. Buddy grabbed my hand and we ran. He had twelve tickets left, so on our way out of the fairgrounds we stopped to catch a last ride at the Tilt-A-Whirl. Through the tumble of voices and music, a chorus of screams rose from the fairgoers strapped to twirling seats, lifting and falling on the spinning disk. Between the Tilt-A-Whirl and a snow cone stall, we filled our mouths with the single malt from Buddy’s flask and kissed, our lips still sore and swollen from kissing in the car and on the Ferris Wheel and behind the bleachers. Under the pink and blue neon flashes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, we tasted scotch on each other’s tongues. “Look what you do to me,” he said, glancing down at his pants, the lump under the cotton, pulsing pink and blue and pink. “Let’s take a different ride,” he said, nosing through my hair. He reached around and under my short flouncy skirt, cupping my hips with his hands and pressing my shoulders against the metal building, his knee between my legs. “Go back to the Jeep?” he murmured, his breaths coming faster. “Backseat fuck in the State Fair parking lot? How ‘bout it?” He threw his head back and howled at the half moon. Two men and their young sons sat down at a picnic table in the shadows, the men lighting cigarettes and the boys licking cones. Buddy danced me toward the path, humming a tuneless tango, forcing me back across his arm, his small white teeth nipping at the cotton fabric over my breasts. Then one of the men at the table spoke. “Sarah?” I lurched away from Buddy and almost fell. The four faces came into slow focus, and I smoothed my skirt down over my thighs. Quickly Buddy caught me by the arm and pulled me toward the path. “Must be mistaken,” he called over his shoulder. He aimed us toward the lighted parking lot, but I tugged him back into the fairgrounds and out of sight of the man, whom I’d remembered by then. Bill Kennedy, the plumber we’d hired months ago to run a gas line to our bedroom to covert the wood-burning fireplace. I fled into the line at the Tilt-A-Whirl. “Close call,” Buddy said, grinning. “Who is he?” “Nobody. Gabe hired him to work on the house.” That was back in March. I’d fixed him iced tea while he put his tools into their little cloth pockets, arranged so neatly along the sides of his bucket. Bill Kennedy. “Hey, so maybe we’re busted,” Buddy said, nuzzling my neck. “Forget it.” I leaned against him, slipped my hand up under his shirt and felt the smooth hollow beneath his ribcage. Then I knelt to put my sandals on, brushing the dust off my feet. The diamond of my wedding ring glittered pink. When I stood up, I stayed in Buddy’s shadow, out of the blinding pink and blue light. He offered me the flask, but I shook my head and he finished the scotch. “God, we’re fifty miles from home,” I said, brushing at my skirt. “You wouldn’t think . . .” I peeked around his shoulder and watched the two men and their boys emerge onto the path and walk toward the parking lot. Bill Kennedy’s stride was slow and deliberate. He dropped the cigarette and stopped for a second to crush it with his boot. Even at a distance, I was sure he looked straight at the Tilt-A-Whirl and could see Buddy’s white-blond head above the rest, me rabbit-tense beneath his shoulder. Gabe had arranged it all by phone. My wife Sarah doesn’t teach on Tuesdays. Can you do it then? I’d written the check that afternoon, while Bill Kennedy put his tools away and finished his tea. While he’d never met Gabe face-to-face, he couldn’t have taken Buddy for Gabriel Mendich of Telpner Mendich & Smith. Gabe would fly back from L.A. tomorrow, but surely Bill Kennedy wouldn’t call up a virtual stranger to rat out his barefoot wife, practically having sex with some guy in the middle of the State Fair. “He’s gone!” Buddy said, taking me by the shoulders. “Hey, relax!” He dug the tickets out of his pocket as the line moved forward. I stepped through the turnstile. “Got a surprise for you,” he said. “When we get back to the car. Make you feel better.” “I know what you have for me,” I said. I felt my voice quiver. "No, you don’t.” He touched my face, then patted the shirt pocket over his heart. “I’m talking about this. This’ll make everything okay,” he said, as the attendant strapped us into the seats. Buddy’s plum lips and pale eyes throbbed with the neon. He touched the pocket again and winked. “This stuff’ll make you fly.” [...] |
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