Up in Watauga County you can’t simply jump in the car and drive five minutes to the local superstore. This mission could take me the entire afternoon. The local convenience store only sells candy bars; the drugstore in the nearest town sold the last bag of licorice whips an hour ago. Too bad. I suppose I’ll have to drive all the way into Boone, to the Wal-Mart strip center or maybe to that little mall a few miles on the other side of the town. I’ll hang around, nothing better to do.
The mall is grim. Bottom-of-the-line chain stores, bad lighting, high vacancy rate. The man lingering at the entertainment shelf of Waldenbooks wouldn’t be my first or even second choice in a lineup of possibilities. He’s slightly effeminate, puffy, and wearing a shabby Members Only jacket. He flips through a picture book, The Films of Joan Crawford, his eyes darting quickly between the page and me until we establish there is an understanding, an attraction, a chemistry. I decide he’s not so bad after all. He’s got a pleasant smile and a dimpled chin, and his gold wedding band is a powerful aphrodisiac. He clears his throat and slips Joan back on the shelf.
I tell myself I’m not really going to do this. But I know that I am. No one will ever know. I’ll be careful. I won’t do it unless I’m absolutely certain it’s safe. I’m not really going to do it. It’s just a fantasy and I’m bored. I already have an erection. The fact that I’m nervous, very nervous, makes it more exciting. I’m on autopilot as I follow him. He walks slowly, looking back over his shoulder, not trusting he won’t lose me in a nearly empty mall deserted by everyone except a few elderly power walkers. He nods at the door marked Men and disappears inside. I steel myself for the inevitable: Just do it! There’s not another soul in sight. Do the deed, zip up, no harm, no foul.
“Hi, Andy.”
I’m speechless, confronted by my cousin Bobby’s son as he emerges from the restroom.
“Be out in a minute, really got to go,” I manage to say, flustered by this completely unexpected encounter.
He steps aside and I rush by. I’m so shaken I can barely locate my zipper. I fumble inside my shorts and try to find my dick. It’s shriveled into my body cavity. It’s not as if I had to piss anyway and I’m conscious of every passing second. I run my hands under the faucet, barely wetting them. My confused would-be paramour is peeping over the stall. I’m in and out in two minutes flat. No reason for anyone to be suspicious.
JR is standing at the door to Women, waiting for his girlfriend.
“Weird,” he says, “running into you here.”
He seems a bit embarrassed. Maybe he suspects something. I tell myself I’m being paranoid.
“Your mother sent me on a mission,” I say.
“Oh yeah?”
“Licorice whips.”
His eyebrows form a question mark.
“For the bunny cake.”
I’m spared further explanation by the appearance of his girlfriend. Amanda, I think he says her name is, Mandy.
“You had lunch yet? We’re going to grab something to eat.”
Mandy doesn’t look too pleased by his invitation. I tell him I’ve eaten and that I’ll catch up with him back at the house.
“Well, have coffee then. You can have a cup of coffee.”
She squeezes his arm, signaling him to not encourage me. She doesn’t attempt subtlety, doesn’t care I can see. Fuck the little slut. I say yes to spite her.
Mandy orders fries and a Diet Coke. She won’t take off her cheap leather jacket even though the mall is overheated. Her magenta nail polish is chipped. She affects the Gothic look, her hair dyed black, parted in the middle and breaking at her shoulder, trying to project sensitivity through fashion. I feel hopelessly middle aged in my pastel polo shirt.
Bobby’s son has changed since the last time I saw him. He’s always had a face that hinted at masculine beauty. Now, at the verge of manhood, it’s fulfilled its promise. He could pass for a heartthrob on one of those television teenage soap operas. Watauga County 90210. He has deep blue eyes and a perfect nose. His thick, shiny hair is a testimonial to the miracle qualities of his conditioner. He looks exactly like Bobby at his age except he didn’t inherit the cruel streak that cast in cold stone those same perfect features in his father.
I congratulate him on his big news. He’s headed for Chapel Hill come fall. It’s a couple hundred miles away and on the other side of the moon. He’s already shed the clothes of Watauga County. Gone are the dirty sneakers and down jackets, replaced by black T-shirts and boots, the look of MTV. A thrift-shop overcoat is slung over his chair. But none of these accoutrements, intended to make him look dark and ominous, can dampen his sunny disposition. He’s a terrible mismatch with this scrawny vulture who’s licking the ketchup off a greasy limp fry.
We talk about college. He tries to appear world weary, but can’t hide his eager giddiness at escaping this pit. He says he’s sure that no one on campus will be cool, but it’s just a show of bravado. He’s already worried he’s going to come off as a country bumpkin. We talk about pop music. He’s amazed at how familiar I, a dinosaur, am with his favorites from the college radio station. I ask Mandy where she’s going to college. She responds with a look of sheer hatred. I’ve picked at a scab.
“Mandy’s thinking of going to nursing school,” JR interjects.
It’s impossible to imagine this harsh, brittle creature in the healing professions. Then I think back to all the snide and abrupt registered nurses I’ve encountered in the past few months and decide she’ll probably graduate first in her class. She doesn’t bother to thank me for picking up the check and her good-bye smile has a sarcastic undertone. JR thanks me profusely and promises me we’ll catch up later.
I buy a bag of licorice whips. I try to kill time in the record store but the aisles of Nashville hitmakers depress me. The toilet is off-limits now. To go back would make me feel dirty, diseased, a polluter desecrating public places where nice, trusting kids like Bobby’s son go to empty their bladders. I have nowhere to go but back to the farm. I hand over the candy and ask Bobby’s wife where she wants me to bunk. She says she hasn’t given it much thought. She’s got a full house this weekend. Would I mind sharing? JR’s got a double mattress and hasn’t wet the bed in ten years, she laughs. It’s either that or the couch.
That’s fine, I say, and excuse myself to take a nap. I want to sleep until dinner, through dinner if I can get away with it.
The nap doesn’t refresh me. After dinner, I collapse, staring at the television as the Braves lose to the Phillies in an early season series while Bobby snores in his lounge chair. I can barely keep my eyes open. It’s all of ten o’clock and I’m exhausted. I head off to bed.
I strip to my underwear and crawl between the sheets. Bobby’s wife hasn’t bothered with fresh linen. I worry I’m sleeping on his side of the bed. He’s in for a big surprise when he comes home, maybe a little tipsy, Mandy on his fingertips, if, in fact, he comes home at all. I haven’t slept in this room, a stuffy dormer, right below the roof beams, for twenty-five years. The old mattress is full of peaks and valleys. It’s probably the same bed where I slept as a boy. Bobby always had a double, even as a kid, a place for my aunt to exile Uncle Buster when he drank too much beer and farted in bed and tried to take a poke at her. Maybe that explains why she never liked me. When I was here, she had nowhere to send him and had to endure his dick.