Cupid ain't Stupid, Barry Rachin [the little red hen read aloud TXT] 📗

was fastidiously clean. If you cracked a joke, she got the punch line and laughed on cue. The former barmaid brushed her hair and presumably washed her crotch on a regular basis. When Lenny and Elsie crawled into bed together the night they shared the Mexican pizza, she snuggled up against his chest as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world and fell promptly asleep. Earlier in the club Lenny wondered what it might be like to bed a woman like Elsie. The experience was sedate and uneventful. It was pure bliss. He couldn't get the feeling out of his system for days afterward. She wasn't terribly pretty, but she elicited a reverential awe. She couldn't make change. A human slug like Derrick could fornicate with her and then thumb his nose at the girl with the weak chin and deferential smile. It was like something out of an Aesop's fable - the Tortoise and the Hair. The night they slept together without having sex, the swelter of conflicting emotions confounded Lenny. He lay there in the darkness holding her pliable body, sodden with effable joy.

*****

On Wednesday evening, Lenny stopped by Elsie's place. "How you doing?"

"Better." She held the door wide open. "I got work at a doctor's office."

"So I heard."

"Can I get you anything?" She led the way into the kitchen.

Lenny slouched down in a chair. "Cup of coffee, maybe."

Elsie filled the mesh basket on a single-serve Black and Decker coffee brewer with grounds and added water. "Doctor Blake is real nice Everything's going fine."

"You don't handle cash."

"I process the payments," Elsie corrected, "but use a digital calculator so my 'situation' doesn't become an issue."

"Your situation?"

The coffee brewed, she brought the cup and a pitcher of light cream to the table. "The dyslexia… I was diagnosed in elementary school." She stood near the sink. "It's why I can't learn shit."

"But you're doing okay at the doctor's office."

"For sure!" Her features brightened noticeably. "Like I told you, I need a calculator to double-check my math, because sometimes, in my screwed-up brain I see figures in the wrong order."

"You reverse numbers?"

Elsie smiled sheepishly. "While the doctor's giving an eye exam, I talk myself through a math problem, out loud… softly to myself, without disturbing the other patients. I use my ears not just my eyes to make sure bills are accurate." Elsie looked him full in the face and her voice softened. "Want to spend the night?"

"I didn't come here with that in mind, but, yeah, that would be nice. This time, though, maybe we can get a little more sociable, if you know what I mean."

Elsie ignored the playful banter."So if you didn't come here with that in mind…"

*****

Later as they lay naked under the covers, Elsie ran her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. "Any two numbers… ask me to multiply them."

Lenny was dozing off with Doctor Sheldon Blake's new receptionist draped lightly across his chest. "What's that?"

"Any numbers between two and twelve." She spoke purposefully. The sex was over and done. Not quite ready for sleep yet, in her doggedly resolute manner, the girl had moved on.

"Eight times eight." Lenny felt his blissed-out brain going off on drowsy hiatus.

The girl kisses him leisurely on the side of the mouth, then nipped his ear playfully with her teeth - just hard enough to grab his attention. "Eight times eight is sixty-four, close your mouth and shut the door!" she intoned with a herky-jerky, singsong inflection. "He ate and ate and sticks in the door, eight times eight is sixty-four. Skate, skate, figure eight's all the way to the shore, eight times eight is sixty-four."

Lenny caressed her buttocks. "Nine times nine."

"He stood in line and ate a ton, nine times nine is eighty-one."

"That's how you learned to multiply?"

"There was no reply. The girl, who could rhyme all twelve multiplication tables, had fallen off the steep ledge into deep sleep.

The thought occurred to Lenny that certain shared intimacies were commonplace. Derrick could have picked himself up off the bathroom floor, gone home and fornicated with the platinum blonde. In the grand scheme of things the carnal act counted for nothing. In the morning over a leisurely breakfast, Lenny would suggest a dinner date at one of the exclusive Italian restaurants of Federal Hill, where a parking valet greeted you curbside and diners cleansed their pallet with fruity sorbet between courses.

He stood in line and ate a ton, nine times nine is eighty-one.
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Publication Date: 09-06-2011

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