Vernon God Little by D. B. C. Pierre Page B

way folk are behaving right now.
    Barry continues his rounds, lingering for the rest of the night down by the TV. I lay back onto the bunk in my cell, and drift into the important and scary business of my future. Remember that ole movie called
Against All Odds
, where this babe has a beach-house in Mexico? That’s where I can run. Mom can visit after things die down. There she is, sobbing with joy, ole spankycheeked Doris Little, who could be played by Kathy Bates, who was in that movie
Misery
. Tears of pride at the excellent sanitation, and at my decent, orderly life. See how it works? It’s the future now, young Vernon has been vindicated. Now he’s buying her a clay donkey, or some of those salad utensils Mrs Lechuga makes such a big deal about. The salad utensil seller would say to me, ‘You want the same kind Mrs Lechuga got, or you want the
Deluxe
edition?’ There’s a fucken point up Mrs Lechuga’s ass. See? That’s definitely my new plan. I like the food just fine, burritos, and cappuccinos and whatever. They say money’s cheap down there, hell – I could really make good. Folk must live in those beach-houses, for real.
    But the pessimist in me says, ‘Kid, forget vacations, what yez need is a cake wid a fuckin bomb in it.’ My pessimist has a New York accent, don’t ask me why. I ignore it. The question of the babe needs thought; you never see guys running alone, admit it. Who to take is Taylor Figueroa. She’s in Houston now, in college or something, on account of being older than me. But she’s the fox to take. Moist air stirs me through the bars of my cage, and in my mind it becomes a shunt of hormone from the lip of her skirt. I’ll take that girl to Mexico, see if I don’t. Now that I’m grown up, now that I’ve been to jail and all. I wasn’t close to her at school, even though we nearly made out once. I say nearly because, fucken typical of me, I had her on a plate and I let her go. You’re just never taught when to be an asshole in life. There was this senior party that I wasn’t invited to, and Taylor was there, face as soft aspanties, just her big wet eyes seeped out. She left the party and crashed on the back seat of a Buick in the Church parking lot, where I just happened to be with my bike. She was wasted. She called me over. Her voice was sticky like freshly bitten cake. Some drugs fell out of her clothes onto the ground by the car. I picked them up. She said to keep them for her, in case she passed out or whatever. I kept them too, you know it. Boy was she fucken bent though. She started saying my name, and writhing around the back seat of the car. Don’t even ask me who drives a fucken Buick at our school, but she added some value to his back seat. I helped unpeel her shorts a little, ‘So she could breathe’ – her words, not mine – I didn’t even know you could breathe from down there. Brown Wella Balsam hair licked her body all the way down to her buns, where gray cotton tangas peeped out; clefted heaven in workaday dew. She was wasted, but conscious.
    So guess what your fucken hero did, take a shot. Vernon Gonad Little went into the party and sent her best friend out to mind her. I never got a finger to her panties, even though I was close enough to catch the lick-your-own-skin-and-sniff-it disease that wastes me today; fucken hauntings of hollows between elastic and thigh, tang ablaze with cotton and apricot muffin, cream cheese and pee. But no, duh, I went inside. I even kind of strode in, like a TV doctor, all fucken mature. It fucken slays me, she was right there. I tried to look her up again, but Fate deployed the shutdown routine you get whenever you miss a ripe opportunity in a dumb way. A billion reasons she can’t be located, and fucken blah, blah, blah. So much for Taylor Figueroa.
    Tonight, though, my hand is her mouth. Every stroke of my boy brings her cotton closer,