“Hey, Sandy,” I said.
“Would you like some punch? I can mix some for you!” she said.
“No, Sandy! I think, uh, I think we should probably figure out what the hell to do here before we start drinking punch, right?” I said.
She paused. “Well, drinking punch usually helps me figure out what to do!” She started laughing.
“All right. Let’s drink some punch and maybe we’ll get inspired.”
Sandy pulled out a mason jar full of mystery pink liquid from her silver puffy jacket. She grabbed two plastic cups that she kept by the register, that had some sticky leftover pink residue in the bottom, and filled them up. We clinked our Solo cups together.
“Cheers!” she said. It was a small moment of joy in this half-run-down porn store.
“So what do we do?” I gave the punch a few minutes to circulate inside our bodies and seep into our brains. “I mean, don’t you have insurance, or anything of the sort?”
“Well, I came in the morning after the storm with an insurance adjuster,” she said.
“Oh, really?” I know it sounds incredibly insulting; it was just surprising to hear Sandy say the words “insurance adjuster.” The store has been open for over twenty years; sometimes I don’t give her enough credit.
“So what happened? Do they send someone to fix it?”
“Well, they couldn’t find anyone to fix anything because there’s too much damage everywhere in the town, and you know, we’re not exactly the priority around here. They would be happy if we shut down! They did give me a check, though, and told me to take care of it myself.”
“I mean, I’m sure you know plenty of repair people we could call, right?” I said.
“Honey, unfortunately the check they wrote me was for about one quarter of what it will cost to fix this place up. It was barely anything. A little less than four thousand dollars. My ex-husband was an electrician, and he owned a construction business. I know what these things cost—we will need at least fifteen thousand to fix this!” She continued to drink the punch. There were tears in her eyes.
“Sandy, why didn’t you call me?! I would have come in here and talked to them for you.” They completely took advantage of her. “Did you talk to Emma and Bradley next door? What happened to them?” I asked. There was a business right next to us run by an older couple that did vacuum cleaner and sewing machine repairs, and Sandy was friendly with them. They stayed open for about four hours a day, if that.
“Yes, they are getting full coverage. Hell, they’ll probably just retire and use their money to buy a new house! They’re getting a little over forty thousand dollars,” she sighed.
“That’s ridiculous! Their store is one-eighth the size of ours! Can’t you get a lawyer? This can’t be legal. I wish you wouldn’t have signed off on this so quickly.”
Shouldn’t the local authorities know that masturbating is far more important than fixing a vacuum cleaner? Don’t people actually just go and buy new ones when they break?
And then I remembered. After the fisting and before the public debauchery, Billy told me he used to work construction. He also told me he basically had nothing to do and a good amount of money in his bank account. Was this just meant to be? What were the chances that someone who drove up and down throughout the entire 500-mile stretch of the entire state of Florida would just happen to stumble upon this store? The fact that I worked here was completely random; I was supposed to be a substitute teacher somewhere in Pasco County, while attempting to get upgraded to an actual teacher somewhere in Hillsborough County. But that didn’t happen. The fact that Billy wound up here was equally as random. He was supposed to be a married man by now, with a child, owning his father’s construction business, living in a Boca Raton mansion, but instead, he was living in a truck.
People used to always tell me that everything happened for a reason. But nothing ever happened to me, so there were no reasons for anything. It truly felt like everything that happened in my life happened in the way that it did just so this moment would happen the way it was right now. From the power outage, to the frozen strawberries, the path of bizarre mishaps have led us to a broken porn store with no one to fix it. I pulled out my phone and called Billy.
“Hey!” I said, “It’s me!”
“Hello! How’s it going? I miss you, pretty.”
I blushed.
“Well, the store is totally fucked up. I’m here with Sandy. Remember Sandy?”
“Hello love!” Sandy yelled loudly behind me.
“Yes, of course. The lady with the lipstick all over her face who made the punch.”
“Yes. That’s her!” I said. “So, I remember you said you worked construction. The insurance company came in here and totally ripped her off and gave her less than half of what she will need to get this place back up and running. Would you want to help?”
Silence came from his end. Shit. I don’t know why I was expecting him to just suddenly say yes. Maybe this was a mistake.
“You can, like, think about it and call me back if you want,” I said.
Sandy was now chugging her punch straight from the jar. She wasn’t bothering to pour it into a cup any longer.
“I can do that—I’ll come by and figure it out,” he said.
“Really?” I said.
“Well yes, but I have a better idea. I can put some of my savings back into fixing it, we can tear down the whole place and rebuild it, and make it amazing.”
“I mean, that’s not really my call. I make minimum wage here,” I laughed.
“Sandy can still get her share. I’ll just be another partner. I know a lot about running businesses. I would love to help,” he said.
“Well, why don’t you come over here? We have a lot to talk about!” I said.
“I’ll be right over.”
I hung up the phone. “Don’t worry, Sandy, everything will be okay!” I turned to her and said.
“Are you sure?” she said.
“Yes. I am sure.”
“Well, all right, lead the way!” she said. And she turned up the music in the store to the highest volume possible. Which wasn’t very high at all because the speaker barely worked anymore. But through the crackles and the static and feedback of the now mono (that was once stereo) speaker system, she danced to an instrumental pop song.
Billy came by later and talked everything over with Sandy. They had a lot of complicated details to work out, but she seemed very excited. She hugged him and kissed him, and he brought from his truck a giant box of tools taller than me, and began making a plan on how to fix the store. We made a promise to each other that as soon as he removed all the ruined flooded carpets from the ROOMZ, we would christen it by having sex for the first time with each other in there—something we hadn’t actually done yet. Our seventy-two-hour relationship had been limited to fisting, cum swallowing, and panty wearing, but no penis to vagina penetration. Not yet. Did I set my vagina up for something too strenuous? I wanted to fuck him, and I didn’t want to wait too long to do it. Perhaps I should Google the details of how long it takes to reupholster damaged carpet so I had a timeframe.
He decided to do a quick fix on the speaker. Sandy didn’t want to turn the music down, and the sad sounds of the burned-out speaker was painful to our ears. He got up on a stool and pulled out some wire cutters and began pulling out colored cords and fixing them up accordingly. His pants sunk down a bit, and on top of his sliver of adorable plumber’s crack, he revealed that beneath his manly jeans he wore the original plain black garter he got here, tied in the back with safety pins and some twine. My heart melted. And I felt a drop of moisture in my own new pair of lace panties. I smiled to myself as I realized, there is nothing in this world he can’t fix.