“Okay,” says the mom.
Christine turns to the boy. “You ready to do this thing, buddy?”
The kid nods.
Christine places her (sort of) clean fingers into the boy’s mouth.
He gags.
Up comes an explosion of brown, chunky mush.
And one white hunk of scallop.
Christine’s cute chocolate brown top? It is now slimed with dribbling tan slop.
“Thank you!” gushes the boy, breathing deep just to prove that he can do it without coughing.
“Thank goodness you were here,” says the mom.
“You’re lucky to have her as a girlfriend,” the dad says to me, shaking my hand, like I did something to be congratulated for.
I think all three of them want to hug Christine.
But they hesitate.
No sense in everybody’s top getting ruined by all that regurgitated chum.
We take turns shuffling in and out of my apartment to gather up our dirty clothes and head to the nearest 24-hour laundromat.
Christine, of course, needs to peel off her soaked blouse and change into something clean.
I wait in the parking lot until she comes out of unit 111 in a new outfit, toting a canvas sack like Mrs. Claus. Then I dash in to grab my stinky gym clothes, socks, and whatever else is tossed in the corner of the closet or tucked under the bed. I stuff it all into a brown grocery sack because I’m all about re-using and re-cycling.
Once again, we take my car. I’m a little worried about how Christine is going to scrape up gas money without a job.
It’s dark out. Moths are dive-bombing into the halogen streetlamps up and down the avenue. Christine is wearing what I think they still call a halter top. As in, “Halt! Don’t go there, Danny.”
If you were familiar with my romantic history, you’d know I don’t have the best long-term luck with the ladies. My girlfriends either end up as sniper targets or turn into psycho-freak bunny-boilers. It’s never a simple boy-meets-girl-and-they-hop-into-a-fast-car Springsteen song for me.
During the spin cycle, Christine tells me how scary things were at the late Arnold Rosen’s house this morning, right before Ceepak and I showed up.
“That Judith told me to get out of the house or she’d finish what her sister started.”