Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (16 page)

“I will give your grandfather credit for
one
thing,” she said. “He’s right—it would help if you knew her better. Help
you
. The rest of us don’t matter. If you spent more time with her, you might find there were good reasons for her behavior that have nothing to do with being a gold-digger. In fact, the simple answer might be that she’s…”

She stopped. Her eyes widened. She seemed to think of something or remember something, and slowly smiled a rather grand and affecting smile.

“I have to go,” she said hurriedly, and raced for the door before I could ask her what she was going to say. She bumped into Mindie on the way out, and they bounced off one another repeatedly as each tried to squeeze through first.

“I’m coming in!” Mindie snarled.

“And I’m going out!” Helena responded, equally churlishly.

They struggled momentarily—Helena partially pinned by trying to avoid contact with Mindie’s rather massive breasts—until Mindie finally managed to shove past and into the room. Collecting herself and breathing hard, she glared a moment at Helena, eyes visibly red from crying, then turned with a huff and strode toward me, supported by Grandfather, who had followed her in past Helena.

“Where are you going?” Grandfather asked his sister pointedly. “We’re going to talk to Corky, now.”

“I have to see to something,” Helena said and then paused, looking at Mindie nervously. “Something urgent.”

Mindie was sniffing dramatically and leaking fluids from various facial orifices. Why was she so distraught?

“Corky,” Helena said to me, her smile vanished and she didn’t seem at all pleased. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret until you know more about your model.”

Mindie shot Helena a look of withering death at the mention of ‘your model’, as did Grandfather. Helena sneered back at them, then quickly darted out the door and disappeared.

I scowled, not getting any of this. It was a very confusing, and uncomfortable night.

I wanted to go back to thinking about sheep.

“Are you all right?” I asked Mindie.

“I will be,” she said, sniffling sadly. “And I forgive you. After all, a man needs to get a certain amount of wildness out of his system—as mother told me so
many
times when father worked late.”

“Men need to—what?” I asked, lost.

“But I don’t want you to see her anymore. You understand?”

“I…who? Ms. Nuckeby?”

“Don’t even
mention
that slut’s name!”

“Um, all right.”

“So you won’t see her again?”

I glanced at Grandfather. Then back to Mindie.

“I’m not seeing her
now
.”

She smiled at me, and some of the darkness that had enveloped her seemed to lift.

“Thank you,” she said and dropped into my lap, putting her arms around my neck. She adjusted to make herself more comfortable, and me less so, managing to wedge her substantial chest under my chin. Being as she’d never so much as even bumped into me in the past, this was a bit of a shock, and I looked at her like I’d been pithed. (It is a
great
word.)

Smiling a bit sadly, she looked back and forth from one of my eyes to the other as if comparing their sizes and relative positions on my face. Eventually she decided they were more-or-less where they were supposed to be, or could be with minor plastic surgery, and she turned to Grandfather.

“You can bring in the others, now,” she told him.

He smiled—seemed almost relieved—and quickly opened the door to my den, brusquely waving in the rest of my family. They filed past him, gleeful, and most of them were eating snacks they had likely not been offered by Woodruff. My older brothers in particular were ravenously working over some week old chicken legs from somewhere in the back of my fridge which were skirting that razorthin line between ‘leftover’ and ‘natural laxative.’

“I can’t really be mad at you, I suppose,” Mindie told me, smiling and sniffing. “You don’t even know the real reason for my coming here tonight, do you?”

“I…er…no,” I admitted. “Not really.”

“I’ve decided to accept your proposal of marriage.”

“My…my…my what? My proposal of what?”

Suddenly I felt more naked than when I’d been naked. I looked at everyone in the room, and most of them were—more or less—smiling. All except Morgan, who couldn’t manage it around another large lollipop he’d found. But he still gave me the thumbs-up.

“What proposal of marriage?” I asked.

“The one Morgan told me about. The one he said you’d been wanting to give me all these years, and I—Oh,
God
, Corky! I had
no
idea!” She hugged me tightly, and her boobs cut off my air.

As she scrunched me, vise-like, I turned to Morgan—who slurped, winked, and mouthed the words, ‘You’re welcome.’ He held his hands out and made the universal symbol for gigantic breasts, nodded briefly toward Mindie, then grinned even bigger, and gave another thumbs-up. Blue spit dripped on my carpet, plopping down beside my brother’s greasy chicken-leg fragments.

“I’d just about given up on you ever even asking me
out
, and then
this!
I was over the
moon!
I wanted to come right away, and see you— start making plans, discussing dates.”

“But I
did
ask you out, Mindie.
Many
times. You always said ‘no.’”

“
When
did you ask me out?”

“Well—there was the time I invited you to the air show. But you said,” I screwed up my face in an annoyed and dismissive expression—not unlike how someone might look if they were having their face shoved forcibly up a baboon’s ass—that, I’m sure, paled in comparison to the one she had actually given me at the time.
“No! Get away from me!”

“Well, why would I want to go to an
air
show?” she said, capturing the expression far better than I had. “Dirty planes and engine noise. Smelly gasoline everywhere. A date involves
dining
, Corky.
Dancing
. Gifts. Two people being seen spending
romantic
time together. Not
jet
fumes!”

“Well, there was the time I asked you to stroll with me that evening in Monaco by the sea…”

“In the
sand?
It was
cold!
I was wearing Manolo
Blahnik’s
, for God’s sake! A thousand dollars a pair! I thought you were being
flip!”

“Not to my knowledge, no. I…”

“We’ll go on a
proper
date, Corky.
Lots
of them. I’ll show you what a proper date
really
is, and how much it should cost. Oooooooh, Corky.”

She kissed me. I almost managed to kiss her back before she pulled away and picked something off my chin that apparently offended her, maybe the thing that had shot from my sinus in the closet earlier. Then she kissed my nose, obviously unwilling to return to the infected area.

She smiled and turned to the others.

“Well,” she said, beaming. “Congratulate us!”

And they did. Even though, technically, I still hadn’t asked.

Amidst the pats on the back, the hugs, and the ‘welcome to the family’ greetings to Mindie, Grandfather pulled me aside.

“This should solve all our problems, son. Getting it regular at home will make it easier on you in the office. Especially since you seem to be so undersexed anyway. Can’t believe I thought you were gay. You’ll have to explain that damned video to me sometime.” I had. Repeatedly. “I imagine it’s far more embarrassing
now
, eh? Being straight and all.”

He laughed heartily and slapped my back. I wheezed.

“Grandfather…”

“Best of all, there won’t be any temptation from the Ms. Nuckeby’s of the world. Money grubbing little tarts! I’ll write her a check. Get her to sign a waiver. This will all be forgotten by next week. You’ll be engaged, Mindie’s somewhat attractive, and has huge tits, and that’s the end of it! Right? Good? No more closets?” He laughed. “Of any kind!” He laughed harder and returned to the others.

No more closets.

I watched him a moment, sadly. Then reached into the group and grabbed Morgan, dragging him out of earshot. I asked how all this had come about, and between sucks on what seemed an endless supply of drooly candy-on-a-stick, he explained.

He had called my grandfather, as I had suggested, asking to be allowed into the Garment Viewing Room. After a considerable amount of time reminding Grandfather who he
was
, Grandfather turned him down flat. Grandfather said the last thing he needed was
two
perverts running amok among the models, to which Morgan informed him I was too nice a guy to have done anything untoward— although the actual word Morgan used was ‘skeevy’.

(I prefer, however, to use ‘untoward’. ‘Skeevy’ just makes your mouth feel dirty. So, in the future, anytime you see me use ‘untoward’ feel free to substitute the word ‘skeevy’ if that explains the situation more adequately for you.)

Grandfather told Morgan he obviously didn’t know me very well, and Morgan said, no, it was Grandfather who had
his
head…er…
in the dark
—and before Morgan could be hung up on, he told Grandfather, by way of example, about my chaste and unrequited love for Mindie.

This brightened Grandfather considerably and things moved rather rapidly from there. Grandfather called my sister Mimsi, Mindie’s best friend. Mimsi told Mindie, who happened to be visiting for the night, and Mindie, though cautiously excited, wanted proof, ‘even if it comes directly from the mouth of that idiot, Morgan.’ Grandfather called Morgan back and before long, everyone was invited for a meeting at Mindie’s a few blocks over on another of Epsoms’ Roads.

Morgan carefully explained how long and how deeply I’d been in love with Mindie, up to and including my abortive attempt to propose to her on the night of our prom. She was, of course, going with someone else.

As proof of my commitment, Morgan had produced the engagement ring from his car’s glove compartment, where it had lain undisturbed for six years, ever since Morgan placed it there during our long drive to the ER after Mindie’s prom date knocked me unconscious (He apparently took issue with my desire to ruin his chance for ‘prom night sex’ by proposing marriage to his date before the evening had even begun. I knew it might be a mistake in telling him. But I felt it the honorable thing to do. I lost a tooth. Mindie never even knew what happened. He never got sex. Chivalry in action).