Maternity Leave (35 page)

While I was getting my massage after the day’s stage, I brainstormed with Danny about taming Sonny. He suggested tranquilizers, but that involved a veterinarian and I was a little hesitant to drug my dog unconscious.

Then I remembered and shouted, “A dildo!”

“What?”

“He loved Julie’s dildo. I’ll get him a new one.”

“I am not sitting next to that dog while he chomps on a dildo,” Danny said.

“Why not? At least he’ll be quiet and not bloody,” I replied.

“Where are you going to get a dildo?”

“I don’t know. I was going to make it a JRA.”

Danny laughed and said, “There’s a better chance of you shoving a dildo up my ass than me getting one for you.”

“Alrighty, I guess I’ll just Google the nearest sex shop.”

The team car and my car were gone. Instead of waiting, I called a cab and pondered the pros and cons of inviting a girl I shared one kiss with to go to a sex shop with me to get my dog a dildo. I ended up extending the invitation after explaining the dildo story and Alyssa, laughingly, accepted. She grabbed a jacket and followed me. Even though it was still summer, it was only thirty-five degrees while we waited for the cab to take us to Papi Cock. I blew into my hands and felt my phone ringing in my pocket. Quinton. I let it go to voice mail. A few minutes later, I checked his message only to realize I had five new voice mails. Good to know Tampa hadn’t forgotten about me. I dialed my code and listened to the first message.

“Hi, Jenna, it’s Mom. Oh, shit. I forget why I called you. I’ll think of it and call you back. Love you.” Delete.

Message number two: “Hi, Jenna. Mom, again. I remembered. My school is having a shoe drive and I was wondering if you had any shoes you don’t wear that I could go pick up. Give me a call later. Love you.” Delete.

Message number three: “Hi, Jenna. It’s Mom. I left a message for you to call me, but Dad and I are going to bed, so don’t call me until tomorrow. Bye, love you.” Delete.

Message number four: “Hi, Jenna. Did you get my messages yesterday? Call me back.” Delete.

Message number five: “Hi, Jenna. It’s Quinton. I saw your name in the results on Cyclingnews. That’s awesome that you’re better and racing. I think I’m going to come out and see you at some point in Oregon. Maybe go from there to Seattle with you. Good luck.”

Replay. It was not a dream. The message played the second time exactly as it had the first. Time to panic.

“What’s wrong?” Alyssa asked.

“Nothing, just a message from that psychotic guy I dated that I told you about.”

“Which one? There seems to be so many.”

“Quinton slash Tony,” I answered.

“What did he want?”

“To come out and spend time with me. God, I hope he gets arrested again soon.”

The cab, a white Oldsmobile, arrived. The driver was a lanky man with a ratty ponytail. From the backseat, I could tell that his ponytail was actually meticulously placed to cover his bald spot.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked.

“Eighth Avenue and Drew Street,” I replied.

“What’s the place called?”

I hesitated then said, “Papi Cock.”

“You know,” the cabbie said with a new expression, one that I recognized from many horrible dates. “I’m not really a cab driver. I’m actually head switchboard operator for the cab company. Not only does it pay more, but it has a lot of perks. Cab drivers tip me to send them to good calls and the Russian mob pays me to send certain drivers to certain locations.”

Clearly, he was thinking threesome. You couldn’t really blame him. It was probably not often that he picked up two attractive girls to go to a porn shop at 9:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. He must have thought we were a wild couple of kids. I cringed at the thought of the cabbie’s sexual fantasies, but remained polite. My mom raised me to be ridiculously friendly to people with crappy jobs so they don’t think I’m above them. So, I gave the guy a pass for trying to impress me with unimpressive lies and just said, “Can you put up the window? I’m cold.”

“Don’t be silly, it’s delightful out, you can have my jacket.”

Obviously the driver hadn’t noticed me opening the cab door with my foot, closing it with my elbow and covering my hands with my sleeves so as to not touch anything in the car. “That’s okay,” I said, as he threw a jacket at me. The jacket was black with a deteriorating white lining and smelled like bologna. I wiggled in my seat to get it off me without touching it. Alyssa laughed.

“So, do you have any children?” the cabbie asked us.

“No,” we replied in unison.

“I do. Three in fact. They were just the most beautiful three kids ever made.”

“That’s nice,” I said, trying to abort the conversation.

“All three died at childbirth, so I never got to be a dad. I’ve always wanted to be a dad,” he said to me with a hopeful look.

I hadn’t wanted to engage, but now I had to talk to the poor guy. “I’m sorry. How did they die?”

“Something called SIDS. You ever heard of it?”

“Yes I have. Three cases of SIDS is pretty suspicious. Did they do autopsies?”

“Why would they, we already knew they died of SIDS.”

“Right,” I said. Hard to argue with that logic. Alyssa and I avoided looking at each other so we wouldn’t laugh. We arrived and told the cabbie, “Wait right here, we’ll be right out.”

I grabbed the first dildo I saw and walked over to the checkout. I thought of browsing with Alyssa, but we’d only shared one kiss and so I didn’t want to be presumptuous. Besides, the meter was still running. Alyssa was walking around and I peered out of the corner of my eye to make sure she wasn’t looking at whips. She was looking at restraints. Try as I may, when I see restraints I think of John, Julie and my mom. A year ago, my mom was in John and Julie’s bedroom trying to leash up their dogs but couldn’t figure out how to hook the dogs to the black leather leash attached to the bed posts. Awkwardness ensued.

After the clerk rung me up, I walked over to Alyssa and said, “You ready?”

“Sure.”

I wasn’t sure if Alyssa thought this was a sexual mission and I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t down with that, so I said, “We can shop around some other time if you want. Sorry, meter’s running.”

Alyssa either didn’t know what I was talking about, or pretended not to, because she did not respond or react to this comment in any way. I followed her out the door, feeling a little embarrassed for having said anything at all about the sex shop.

As we got back in the cab, a strong cologne odor wafted toward us. Clearly the cabbie was going to start giving us his A game.

“Where do you want to go now?” he asked.

“Back to the house where you picked us up,” Alyssa replied.

“I know a great bar with a live guitarist we could go to instead,” he offered opportunistically.

I thought about hopping out of the car and running, but I didn’t want to tire myself out for tomorrow’s race. Plus it wouldn’t be very impressive to leave Alyssa in the car with this guy. “We’re good,” I said. “Let’s just go back to the house on Jasmine Street.”

“Sure thing,” said the cabbie disappointedly. “I have to get up early anyway. I have a project I’m working on with the government. Have to be down in San Francisco tomorrow to meet with some federal agents. This cab job is just my cover.”

“Is head switchboard operator part of your cover too?” I asked without a hint of sarcasm.

The cabbie obviously didn’t recall his previous lie. “What are you talking about?”

Before I could respond, he said “Hang on,” and he answered his cell phone. The conversation ate up a good minute and a half of drive time before he hung up and said, “My daughter. She only calls me for money.”

“The one with SIDS?” I asked dryly.

“She had it, but she got better,” the cabbie replied.

“Good for her,” I said, hopping out of the car the second we pulled up in front of the house. The ride cost twenty-two dollars. I gave him a twenty and a ten and asked for three dollars back. “I don’t have any change,” he said. “But I’ll drive you up to the store to get it free of charge.”

There was no way I was getting back in that cab, so I said, “Just keep it,” and we walked away, mission accomplished.

The next day, the dildo brought brief comic relief to the team. Unfortunately, Sonny wasn’t interested in this dildo. Instead, he barked throughout the entire stage again. This wasn’t just annoying, it made my emergency dildo purchase look a bit ridiculous. I was sure my teammates now thought of me as a sick fuck for trying to force sex toys on my unwilling dog.

I placed fourth in the stage and entered the first rest day in sixth place overall. Going into this race, I thought I was capable of placing in the top twenty. My new goal was a top ten, or even top five overall.

I called Julie after the stage and begged her to search my backyard for her former dildo.

“I think he buried it,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to dig up the backyard, but if you could look around, I would appreciate it.”

“Why don’t you just buy him a new one?”

“Tried that. He’s pretty monogamous with the one you gave him.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

A rest day in cycling is a bit of a misnomer because it is merely a rest from racing. Taking a day off the bike is unheard of because it causes the legs to stiffen up. Riders generally spin for two to three hours on each of the two rest days. Team Sunshine Cycling met for coffee at ten in the morning then went for a thirty mile ride. After the ride, we sat around the Jensens’, our host family for two full evenings in a row, and ignored each other while we each typed on our laptops.

I was sitting next to Alyssa and sent her an Evite card entitled “Girls Night Out.” I filled in, “a sit-down restaurant” for the place and “in two hours” for the time.

She responded immediately, “YES, very funny. Where do you want to go?”

I typed, “I don’t even know how to get out of this neighborhood.” then added, “We’ll find something.”

“Sounds good.”

I spent the hours in between the ride and my date stressing about Quinton. I couldn’t tell Sarah to take care of it because then Sarah would know I was racing instead of in the nut house. Ignoring Quinton wasn’t an option either because he was such a loose cannon that anything could happen, the least of which would be my office finding out about my fake pregnancy. I finally decided that I had to call him back and attempt to control him.

“Hi, Quinton, it’s Jenna.”

“Hey, Jenna. That’s awesome that you’re out there racing. I can’t wait to come and see you.”

“About that. It would really make me nervous if you came out. Can I just see you when I get back to Tampa?”

“I already got a week off work,” he whined, “and okayed the trip with my probation officer.”

“Well, maybe you could go somewhere else,” I offered helpfully.

“No way. I want to see you and help you in any way I can. Don’t worry, I won’t make you nervous. You won’t even know I’m there.”

“I’m sure you’ll blend in fabulously, but I’m doing better than I ever imagined and I think it’s because I’m so focused. I really don’t want any distractions.”

“We’ll see.”

“Hey, Quinton, what did your mom tell you about my absence?”

“I forget. Something about visiting Betty Ford’s house. She said I should go there too, but I’m more of a Saab guy myself.”

“I think its Gerald Ford’s wife, not Henry Ford.” The guy was hopeless.

“Hey, I gotta go. I’m at Tiny Tap and there’s a competition about to start. Whoever can remove twist-off beer caps with the most body parts wins. I can do hand, butt, forearm, forehead, toes, underarm pit, neck, calf and probably other stuff. I gotta go win me a beer. Love you, babe.”

I hung up without saying goodbye, trying to fathom how our relationship had elevated to the love and pet name stage after only two lousy dates.

* * *

Alyssa and I found a reasonably-priced Italian restaurant and decided to go there and carb-up. Instead of discussing cars and jobs, we gossiped and talked about cycling. She also told me that if I was gay, I had to have a root. It was the best date I’d ever been on.

“What’s a root?” I asked.

“From the movie
But I’m a Cheerleader
. You need a list of gay books and movies before you date anyone else. You should know what a root is.”

I looked at her like she was crazy when she mentioned dating other people. I’d finally met “the one.”

After dinner, we got back in the car, and instead of driving off, I kissed Alyssa. It wasn’t the ideal location, but we couldn’t exactly hook up on the Jensens’ couch in front of Team Sunshine Cycling. Over the past week, all I’d thought about was kissing and touching Alyssa. I felt like it was now or never so when she accepted my kiss, I stopped holding back. After kissing her, running my fingers through her hair and moving my hand up and down her breasts and stomach, I moved to the back of the car. I felt a little hypocritical since I had just made fun of Sarah for having teenage car sex a few months ago, but these were extenuating circumstances and I could not wait any longer. We only had a week and a half left until the end of the race. I’d go back to Florida and Alyssa would go back to Georgia.

Alyssa followed me to the back of the car and we continued. I barely noticed the discomfort of the car, as I was busy enjoying the new experience and marveling that I liked the exact opposite of what I always thought I liked: Alyssa had white skin with freckles instead of a tan; a soft but flat stomach instead of a six-pack; her breasts were fuller than mine and felt different and lovely on top of me instead of a hard chest; her face was full and soft instead of having a prominent jaw-line. I couldn’t open her bra, even after I focused, because the clasp is reversed when it’s on a person you’re facing instead of on your own back. Eventually I just moved it up out of the way. This bit of awkwardness was topped only when Alyssa tried to reposition herself and fell off the car seat onto the floor of my car. My car had a large space where I removed one of my rear seats to make room for my cycling crap. Alyssa landed hard on the base of my bike pump, which caused it to flip upright and hit her in the face. But she laughed and the moment didn’t make us skip a beat.