“What I’m getting at,” Jarrod finally said, “is that I can’t fix your satellite dish, because you got no satellite dish. And I’m not allowed to fix the cable seeing how I don’t even work for the cable company.”
The girl twisted a lock of dry copper hair around one of her fingers until her finger turned lilac. “Aw, now,” she said. “Ain’t fixing a TV just fixing a TV? Whatever happened to being a gentleman?” She winked at Jarrod and switched her wad of gum from one cheek to the other. Jarrod could see her flat breasts through the white tank top. They looked like two eggs in a skillet and he thought he might lose consciousness. “I’m sure you can figure out how to fix it.” The girl exhaled. “I really need my TV because TV is my whole life.”
Jarrod looked over his shoulder. He looked at the white company van parked on the street. There was a picture of a big red satellite painted on the van. The driver’s side window was half-down but it didn’t look like it was going to rain. “All right,” Jarrod said. “But real quick or else I might get fired.”
Inside the rental house, a giant dog with clouded eyes got itself up on all fours with some struggle when Jarrod entered. It came over to Jarrod and nosed around his crotch and thumped its heavy tail against the wall in apparent approval.
“Get the fuck off the nice man, Oreo,” the girl said. “Don’t worry about Oreo. He’s my stupid roommate’s stupid dog. He doesn’t bite or nothing. He just bothers the living shit out of everyone.” The girl kicked laundry and magazines out of the way with a dirty foot. “You want something to drink?” she asked. “I got the blue Gatorade. The light blue kind. And I got tap water and milk, but I don’t think the milk’s any good anymore.”
When the girl bent over to push some old newspapers out of their path, Jarrod could see high up where the girl’s legs changed from legs to ass. Her skin went from smooth and tan to white and dimpled. There was nothing gradual about it. It was like two countries on top of each other, ice cream on a cone. “I’m not thirsty,” Jarrod said. “But you better show me that TV. I can’t take all day here.”
“All right,” the girl said. “But it ain’t much.”
The girl took Jarrod down a banged-up narrow hall. She opened a door at the end of it and a burst of air-conditioned air hit Jarrod in the face. The room was as dark as midnight and it smelled like fruit punch. The girl clicked on a little lamp and the little lamp flickered on to reveal a mattress on the floor covered in clothes. The walls were sloppy-painted the color of bubblegum. In the corner, an outdated television sat on a milk crate, its rabbit-ear antennae wrapped in aluminum foil.
“I’m a mess,” the girl said. “Always will be.”
Jarrod waded through towels and clothes. He went to the television and held one of the antennae ears in his hand. “You have cable and you don’t even have this hooked up to cable,” he said. “This thing is just plugged into the wall like a radio.”
The girl gave a sheepish smile and shrugged. “Aw, all right,” she said. “I’m busted.”
Jarrod let go of the antennae and scowled.
“See, now. I didn’t call for no repairman,” the girl said. “I’m just laying an egg is all.”
Jarrod looked at the girl the way she’d looked at him when he had tried to explain the difference between satellite and cable.
“Ovulation,” the girl said. “This is that week in the month I’m most likely to get pregnant and I need someone to get me pregnant.”
“Ohhh no,” Jarrod said, suddenly enlightened. He went to step over the clothes, to go back the way he’d come, but Oreo was standing right in the way he needed to go, slapping his big tail against a dresser missing most of its drawers. “I ain’t getting anybody pregnant. No ma’am, no sir.”
The girl backed up against her bedroom door and by the time Jarrod got to her, she had her spine pressed up against the doorknob. “The Robinsons’ baby,” she said fast. “I let it drown in the ocean.” Jarrod went to reach behind the girl and she lifted up a knee. “I was their babysitter last summer and I let go of the baby and it drowned.” The girl choked for a second, like she might cry. “They never found it neither. Thanks to me, their baby wasn’t only killed but lost, too.” Jarrod looked at the girl’s raised knee. He didn’t think she could do him much harm. “They’re pretty bad off now, the Robinsons are. Who wouldn’t be with a baby at the bottom of the ocean? But I’m going to get pregnant and have them a baby and put the baby on their porch in a laundry basket and then leave town for good.”
Jarrod put one hand on the girl’s knee and reached behind her with his other for the doorknob. He’d get rough with her if he had to. He thought about how he could move her. He could shove her to the side and run. He could push her to the floor. He could do that and get free and back to the van, but before Jarrod could decide exactly how, the girl reached out and clicked off the little lamp and the room went midnight again. Jarrod felt the girl’s hands, cold and gentle, one on his knee and one on his forearm. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “I don’t have anything you can catch. I just got me a fresh egg and it’s not going to stay fresh long.”
The girl took Jarrod’s hand and slid it up the back of her shorts’ leg where the two countries met and before he knew it, Jarrod was doing what he hadn’t planned on doing. He was stumbling with her over the sea of laundry, over to the mattress on the floor. Once they were down, the girl’s tank top went off and Jarrod’s hands were on her flat skillet chest. The room was cold and the girl was cold, so Jarrod put as much of himself onto her and into her as he could. The girl made little mouse-like squeaks. Jarrod heard himself breathe like he was being chased. He felt himself leave his body and come back into it, leave his body and come back into it. Up close, the girl smelled like cherries, and with his eyes closed, Jarrod couldn’t help but imagine that all that was in him was going into the girl to make something that would solve a terrible problem.
When it was over, Jarrod opened his eyes and the girl clicked on another little lamp by the mattress on the floor. This lamp was shaped like a horse and where the lamp part rose out of the horse, right where a saddle might be, Jarrod imagined himself on the horse’s back and the girl behind him, her arms around his waist. He suddenly saw himself as important. On the other side of the mattress, the girl stayed on her back and brought her knees to her chest.
“This keeps the swimmers in,” she said matter-of-factly. “It gives them a chance to find the egg.”
Jarrod noticed that the girl’s top two teeth were crooked and as she concentrated on her position, they poked out over her bottom lip. For a second, Jarrod wanted to touch her face, gentle, but then a bolt of fear shot through him and he squeezed his eyes together.
“You need to come back tomorrow,” she said. “We should do what we just did for at least five days in a row.” Jarrod didn’t know what to say to that. He felt again as if he might faint. He opened his eyes forcefully and got up from the mattress and put on his pants. He felt weak, like the time he’d had the flu as a boy. Like the time he’d given blood in high school. “You hear me?” the girl said. “Five more days.”
Jarrod didn’t answer. He went down the narrow hall and out to the van. Outside, the world was hot and blinding and he could hardly breathe. When he sat down behind the wheel, he could see a faint yellow dust all over the dashboard where the pollen had settled while he and the girl had been in the dark, doing what they’d done.