“What are you talking about?” I frowned.
“Veronica. I gave her a ride home, and the whole way back, I forgot to tell you, she kept on talking about how hot you were.”
“Come on, you must be kidding me. She totally ignored me.”
“Not at all,” Timberlake said. “Man, I can’t believe I didn’t tell you about that night.” He slapped his hand against his forehead. “She wants your putz. In her mouth. It’s true. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why, but goddamn, there it is. By the way, she didn’t even remember where she lived. We were in the car together for about three hours. I almost gave up. She was loopy. Eventually we had dinner together at some diner in the Valley. Nightmare.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“Give me some credit,” Timberlake said.
I sighed. “So where did she live?”
“Huh?”
“Where’d you drop her off?” I said testily.
“Jeez, you know? I can’t, remember,” said Timberlake. “Everything looks the same out here.” He grinned at me and picked up the broccoli in his hand once again and sniffed at it carefully. He chuckled, then threw it over his left shoulder.
“Now look, goddammit, you guys!” yelled the guy with the red baseball cap.
Timber whirled to face him. “What?” he said, a huge smile on his face. He was laughing, loud and hearty. “Are you making a broccoli arrest, pardner?”
“No, I’m just. . .” Red cap looked at his date, who was watching him and watching us dispassionately, like we were TV. She wasn’t so bad. But her hair was mousy, and she was holding herself a bit too tightly, like something might unwind if she let it go. Maybe her large intestine. Maybe she was waiting for the date to end so she could go home and take a nice smelly shit that would snake its way around the toilet bowl.
“You’re just. . . what?” Timber grinned. He was a master at getting under someone’s skin. When threatened, he was rapid and relentless and viciously annoying. Timberlake would take a punch to the face happily, if it meant that would piss off the guy who threw it.
“We’re very sorry, sir,” I interjected. I put my hand on Timberlake’s. “My boyfriend’s having his period.”
“Yeah!” Timberlake exclaimed. “Right! My boyfriend and I are just having an argument about who gets to be on top tonight.” Both of us gazed longingly at each other, then started laughing uncontrollably.
Red baseball cap stared a hole in us, but he didn’t get up. He just exhaled deeply and shook his head. Likewise, his girl said nothing. Her eyes said nothing. Her arms were squeezing around her middle, holding everything in.
A couple of nights later, White Liz called me. She certainly had an interesting flirting style: half insults and half compliments, alternating the whole time, so you were constantly off balance. Neat little trick. At first I was too intimidated to keep up, but luckily, I managed to marshal together what little balls I had and invited her over to hang out on a Friday night. Maybe we’ll try out the Jacuzzi, I said in a Pumper-like tone. She laughed but then agreed, and I was glad. Suddenly I had a date to look forward to, with a normal girl.
On Friday, Timberlake asked, “How do I look, dude?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I said. “Why do you care how you look?”
“Liiiiizzzz, man! I gotta look good for little Lizzie! She’s a hottie!”
“She’s coming over here for me, douche,” I reminded him.
“It’s Friday night. She’s open game.”
“Open game? You are fuckin’ crazy, kid. She-called-for-me.”
“Relax, relax. I am merely trying to look good,” Timberlake said, grinning. “Got my hair cut today—what do you think?” He reached up on a high shelf for a glass tumbler, exposing the wobbly line carved in his reddish neck hair.
“Looks like you went to SuperCuts.”
“I went to SuperCutshe announced. “It was the only place I could find! I think they did a great job, though!”
“You fucking tool,” I said.
“Hey,” Timber began, with an outraged look on his wide face, but just then the doorbell rang. “I’ll get that.”
I buried my head in my hands and let him bring White Liz into the house.
“Hi, guys!” She smiled at us. “Where should I put this?” She held a twelve-pack of Tecate.
“I’ll take that, darlin’,” Timberlake said suavely, winking at me, removing two cans from the box, then stopping, as if remembering something important. “Beer, Samuel?”
“Yes,” I said thinly. “Hi, Liz. Thanks for coming over.”
She smiled. “Thanks for having me. You look cute.”
“You look cute.” She did. White Liz had curly red hair and tiny tits and a tiny ass and summer-ripe skin and all her tattoos were complemented by a sharp way of dressing that wasn’t afraid to use Lycra to show off every little inch of her tight twenty-two-year-old body. Her face was her best feature, though: pixieish and lightly freckled in a childish way, yet the eyes were bright, intelligent, and even wry.
“What about me? Don’t I look cute?” Timberlake preened.
“What’s with him?” Liz asked, frowning.
“I think he’s chaperoning.”
“I am not,” said Timberlake. “However, it is Friday night, and seeing as my girlfriend is in Oakland, and I have no other plans, I will be preparing my evening meal in the same dining space as you two. That is, if you don’t mind. After all, you don’t own this place.”
“You can join us, dude,” White Liz said. “More the merrier.”
“See, Samuel?” Timber said, pleased. “More the merrier.”
I’d planned on making pasta, and Timber said he would prepare a rice pilaf, but in the end, we all decided to just order a pizza. As we ate, we sat around the table and talked shop. White Liz regaled us with DK stories.
“You guys, he’s disgusting. I seriously can’t deal with it.”
“What does he do?”
“Well, first of all, he loves it when he gets a new girl in there. It’s like his birthday. First he brags for a while about how much money he’s going to make her, and who his connections are. He always mentions the Ice-T video.”
“Ice-T?”
“Yep. Ice-T produced a porno this spring; you guys didn’t know about that?”
“Nope,” I admitted.
'Yeah, well, DK got him all his girls. So within the first ten minutes of meeting any new girl, he tells her how he supplied all the talent for the porno that his good friend Ice-T produced'.” The last few words were in a deep bantone, which I assumed was White Liz’s impersonation of a buffoonish DK.
“Then he takes the girls on a ‘tour’ of the grounds,” she continued, disdainful. “Sometimes I have to come with him, to legitimize his whole act. He’s always got his hand on the small of the girl’s back, and he’s like dying to put it on her ass, but he’s too scared. Then at a certain point, he asks me to ‘go get his video camera’ and he mentions that he’d like to ‘take some test shots.’ It's all so fucking predictable, it would be hilarious—that is, if I hadn’t seen it like a million times by this point.
“He’s a decent man,” I said to Timberlake.
“Decent?” Liz snorted. “He’s a fucking moron. He hits on me almost as much as he does on his girls! If he could figure out a way to get me naked, I swear he would declare it a national holiday or something.”
“He hits on you?”
“He’s in love with me!”
“Insatiable appetite,” I commented to Timberlake. “Not his fault.”
“Why are you defending him? He’s repugnant. And he’s not the only one! Brian! Brian is a creep-in-training!”
“Pumperl” we squealed, delighted.
“He’s a sick kid,” Liz said, looking nauseated indeed. “I think he’s obsessed with me. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, believe me, I’m not. I really think it’s a problem. You know he can’t drive, right? Well, yesterday, Jie told DK that he needs me to start driving him to his scenes. I was like, what the fuck? I’m a secretary, not a driver! Brian said he’ll pay DK if I’ll do it.”