The way he figured it now, he’d never have sex again unless he paid for it. Never get married, never have the kind of relationship other guys had with a woman. He was too butt-ugly. No getting away from that — he had mirrors in his apartment, he saw his reflection in store windows, he knew what he looked like. Big puffy body on little stubby legs, not much chin, mouth like a razor slash, knobby head with a patch of hair like moss growing on a tree stump. Somebody’d said that to him once, in the Starlite or someplace. “You know something, man? You got a head looks like moss growing on a fuckin’ tree stump.”
Most of the time it didn’t bother him too much, being a toad and not having a woman. Most of the time he was a pretty happy guy. He liked his job at Mossman Hardware, he liked drinking and shooting pool with his buddies, he liked baseball (even if some of the players nowadays with their billion-dollar contracts were assholes), he liked bowling at Freedom Lanes and playing draw poker at Henson’s Card Room and watching martial arts flicks on the tube and now and then reading a Louis L’Amour western if he was in the mood for a good book. And when he got horny, well, he had his collection of porn videos and he could go on the Net and surf through the porn sites. Looking was the next best thing to having, right? Just looking could be pretty damn good.
But sometimes, some nights, not having a woman really bothered him. Some nights he felt like busting down and bawling. Life sucked sometimes. When you had a face and a body like his, when you looked like you’d been whupped with an ugly stick, life really sucked sometimes.
He figured things would go on pretty much as they always had, the good and the bad, right up until he croaked. One day the same as another. Weekdays he went to work at the hardware store, knocked off at six, headed to the Starlite or Freedom Lanes or Henson’s, went home and watched a video or fooled around online and then went to bed. Weekends he took in a ballgame, holed up in the Starlite, played poker, played pool, played with his computer, played with himself. Boring, sure, but he was used to it and mostly it suited him. He was better off than a lot of poor jobless schmucks living on the streets or on welfare or hooked on drugs, wasn’t he?
Yeah. Sure he was.
Only then, all at once, everything changed.
Then he met Julie Brock.
Well, he didn’t really meet her. More like he ran into her, almost. It was on a Saturday morning and he was in Safeway buying a couple of six-packs and some TV dinners and other stuff.
He pushed his cart around into the frozen food aisle, and there she was, not two feet away, so that he had to veer off to avoid slamming his cart into hers. As soon as he got a good look at her, it was like he’d been punched in the belly. He couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t stop staring. He must’ve looked like one of those cartoon characters, Wile E. Coyote or Bugs Bunny, when they got surprised — tongue hanging loose, eyes bugged out so far it was like they were on the end of stalks.
She was a blonde. Not your ordinary blonde, not your Marilyn Monroe type. Sort of a tawny blonde, dark and light at the same time, he’d never seen a color like it. And tall, real tall, almost six feet, with perfect bare legs that went up and up and up. Nice little rack, nice tight ass. Oh, she was gorgeous, man, the sweetest piece of sweetmeat he’d ever feasted his eyes on. She knew it, too. Walked slow and lazy, like a cat, her head up and her nose up. Haughty. Sweet and haughty and twice as sexy in a pair of shorts and a blouse as any of the naked broads on the Net or humping in one of his porn flicks.
She didn’t pay any attention to him, didn’t even glance at him. She stopped pushing her cart and opened a freezer case and bent over to get something off one of the lower shelves so he had an even better view of her ass. He stood there staring until she moved on. Then he started pushing his cart after her. He couldn’t stop looking, he couldn’t just let her go away. He felt like he’d died and gone to heaven. He felt like... he didn’t know what he felt like, except that he was all hot and cold inside and his johnson was half standing at attention in his shorts.
He followed her around the store, not real close so’s she or anybody else would notice. He got in the same checkout line she did. He trailed her out to the parking lot, to a little red Miata. His own beat-up wheels were in the next row. He hustled over there and threw his bags in the backseat, and when she pulled out of the lot he was right behind her.
This is crazy, he thought after a few blocks. Me following a woman around, any woman, let alone a stone fox like her. But what the hell, it wasn’t like he was a pervert or anything. He didn’t mean her any harm. All he was doing was looking.
So he kept on following her, all the way home. And it turned out she lived in a bungalow on Acacia Street, five blocks from his apartment. He parked across the street and watched her carry her groceries inside, and he had a big urge to go over there, offer to help so he could see her again up close. But he didn’t give in to it because he knew what’d happen if he did. She’d take one look at him and tell him to bugger off. She probably had a dozen handsome guys sniffing after her every day, she might even be married or living with somebody. She wouldn’t want anything to do with a butt-ugly toad with a head that looked like moss growing on a fuckin’ tree stump.
She took the last grocery bag into the bungalow and didn’t come out again. He stayed put for a while, but he couldn’t keep on sitting there all day waiting for another look. That was just plain stupid. So he drove on to his apartment and put his groceries away and sat down in his recliner. He’d planned to go to a ballgame today, Giants were playing the Dodgers, but now he didn’t feel like it. Didn’t feel like bowling or going to the Starlite or doing anything else he liked to do on Saturdays.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the blonde. It was like she was lodged inside his head, big as life, that tawny light-and-dark hair and that gorgeous face and that hard body.
Oh, that fine, hard body!
Sunday morning he drove over to Acacia Street again. He’d dreamed about her that night, damn near a wet dream, and woke up with her, and wanted to see her again in the flesh so bad he couldn’t think about anything else.
Damn, though — her Miata wasn’t in the driveway. He parked and waited a half hour or so, but she didn’t come home. He got tired of just sitting and walked over in front of her place, casual, like a guy out for a Sunday stroll. Her bungalow was small, painted a bright blue with white trim, trees and bushes growing thick along both sides. When he squinted down the driveway he could see a jungly backyard, too — part of a lawn, more trees, some tall oleanders. He knew this neighborhood almost as well as his own and he was pretty sure the yard butted up close to Miller Creek.
Back in his car, he drove around the block. Two blocks, matter of fact, because what was behind her place was a grammar school. Nobody was at the school today except some kids playing basketball on the courts behind the classrooms. He walked past them, across a soccer field and another acre or so of lawn. A chainlink fence made up the far boundary. On the other side of that was Miller Creek, and on the other side of the creek was the blue bungalow. He could see part of its ass end when he got to the fence, but the rest was hidden by the trees and oleanders.