Viktor Caeneus

Fortunate One

“Hey baby, come take a ride in my T-bird.” Jimmy took the last drag off his smoke and tossed it on the ground near the little cutie’s blue sandals. He scoped her body from that sparkly pearl polish on her toes up to her high waisted short shorts. He paused at her knit tube top, which matched her sandals, and settle on that unimpressed frown she wore on a pair of juicy pink lips, which were wrapped around the red plastic straw of a Slush Puppy cup. He licked his lips, thinking she probably tasted like cherry slushie and cotton candy too. 

That’s how most of the high school girls tasted in the summer time, and they all smelled like cheap drug store perfume, heavy on the coconut and tangerine. He liked that just fine. Trashy was his world, and these young ladies didn’t have enough life experience to know that a man living in his car and drinking Jack straight from the bottle was bad news. 

Jimmy had two things going for him. One, his good looks. Like James Dean and John Travolta were lovers then some how one of ‘em pushed out a puppy. And two, he had the gift of the gab. That was thanks to his uncle, Tony the Wop. His whole family were wops, if he was being honest, but he didn’t do honest so much. He liked to fancy himself one of them hispanics from across the border. The girls liked them better. Something about them being seen as ethnic instead of grifters.

The girl pulled down her Ray-Bans and gave him a gander. Jimmy flashed his teeth. He liked to show off his gold caps so the girls knew he had money even if he didn’t. 

“Who you calling baby?” she said. 

Jimmy cut the engine. John Fogerty belting “It ain’t me,” over the radio fell into silence. The distant tinkling sound of the merry-go-round and drunk carnival revelers filled the car.  

“Well, I fancy that’d be you, baby. What do you say?” Jimmy stroked the leather seat beside him like he was caressing a woman’s thigh. 

“Not interested. Thanks.” But she didn’t budge just the same.

“And why not?” Jimmy craned his neck, taking a gaze around the drive-in parking lot, then behind her to the fair. “You telling me these jock boys with their varsity jackets and heads square enough to shove in a socket got more to offer than Jimmy? 

“Jimmy is it? I heard of you. You come into town creeping on high school girls.” 

“Creeping, huh? No. You got a look about you. That blonde hair like a halo.” He crossed himself. “I wouldn’t steal an angel from the lord and savior. Now, I don’t know what you heard about me girl but I just wanna be friends. My intentions are pure.” 

“Mhm,” She mumbled skeptically and crossed her arms. “Like they were with Carolyn Deary?”

“Can’t say I know that name.”

“How about Hannah Jeffrey?” 

“Not that one neither.” 

The girl rolled her eyes and looked like she was fixing to walk off.

“Look baby, you got me wrong. I swear. Come in my ride, we’ll have a nice private chat and clear things up straight.”

“You wouldn’t try to take advantage of me?” 

“Cross my heart, baby girl. Anything you don’t want, I ain’t offering. I mean, you might just change your mind, and I’m not gonna promise I can say no to you. Because oof…” Jimmy made like he was outlining her body with his hands. 

“Aren’t you 25?”

“I seen 26 summers to be exact, but I can’t see how that means nothing.” 

“Maybe ‘cause I’m jailbait.” 

“Like Carolyn and Hannah?” 

“Thought you didn’t know them.” 

“I don’t. Look your age don’t bother me.” 

“It should.” 

“Tell you what, we drive up to the old mill, look out on the valley, pop a little Jack in your slushie. We’ll have a good time.”

“Daddy told me not to get the car with strangers.” 

“Daddy ain’t here baby, and you’re big enough to make that decision without daddy’s help. I can tell.”

“Think so?” She put her hand on her hips and flashed him a grin. She liked that.

“Oh I know. Come on baby what do you say?” 

“Maybe I am, but maybe my answer would be, no thank you mister.” 

“Ooh what I gotta do to get you in my car, huh? Didn’t you hear from your girlfriends Jimmy’s a lot of fun?” 

“I heard you gave Hannah the Clap.”

“Ain’t true. None of it.” 

She leaned against the car. Jimmy reached out and stroked her shoulder. She shrugged his hand off like he had leprosy. “You been framed, huh?” 

“Yes, ma’am. I am an innocent man.” 

“Innocent, huh?” She leaned her elbows on the window frame and popped her head in the car. She gave Jimmy a sniff and assessed the car’s interior.

“Everything check out? Yeah, she’s a cool ride. Smooth too. Come give her a test run, baby.”  

“You even know who I am?” 

Jimmy scratched his chin. “Billy or Betty. Something like that.” 

“Bobby. Bobby Sue Constance.” 

“Yeah, that’s right. See I knew that. You coming, baby?” 

“I tell you what, Jimmy. I accept your invitation and go for a ride, there’s two things that’s gonna happen.” 

Jimmy slammed his fist on the steering wheel and squealed.   

“Hot dog, girly. You got it. What do you need?”

“I’m choosing where we go for our chit-chatting.” 

“Fair enough.” Jimmy was already thinking about pulling that periwinkle tube top over his neck and wearing it like a collar while they tested the suspension. He leaned over and opened the passenger door. 

“You listening, Jimmy?” 

Jimmy popped his head back over to the drivers side.

“You still standing there? Get in girl.” 

“You haven’t heard my second conviction.” 

“Sounds a touch churchy but shoot.” 

“No kissing. No cuddling.” She leaned in and ran her fingers down his nose and shoved one in his mouth. “And no caressing.” Jimmy let out a sweet little whimper like a puppy at the teat. She hooked his bottom lip. “Understand, baby?” 

“Uh-huh.” Jimmy nodded. 

Bobby Sue dragged her fingernail out of his mouth.

“Good, I’m young enough to get you tossed in Folsom.”

Jimmy sucked his lip and tasted blood. Watching that fine little vixen strut around the front end of his T-bird, Jimmy’s heart started flapping in ways it never had before. She dragged that nail across the hood and kept her eyes on his. He didn’t care none if she scratched the paint. This girl was his kind of woman. 

She crawled in and blabbed on about going this way and that. Jimmy went through the motions, turning the wheel when she said, stopping at a red light when told, nodding the affirmative while she smirked and sucked that slush puppy. Jimmy was busy eating up the way her shorts crawled up her thighs like panties, and thinking about the trouble they could cause if he convinced this sugar plum to run off with him. Jimmy had never considered taking a girlfriend, but Jimmy and Bobby. Now, that had a nice ring to it. 

Now don’t be a fool, Jimmy boy. This girl’s pushing seventeen. Maybe. Ooh but the way she lifts her brow when she glances my way. She’s no angel. No sir. She could be my little devil. 

“Cut the engine right here, Jimmy.” 

“Well then, we’re in an alley, baby.” Jimmy peeped the light flickering over a rusty metal door, looking like the back entrance to a slaughter house. The far end of the alley was walled up with bricks. No doubt, this place gave him the creeps, but he had to admit it was cozy. 

“Not quite as romantic as the old mill, baby.” 

Bobby threw off her belt and put her feet up on the seat. She sucked the last of her slushie noisily and grinned.

Jimmy’s eyes went places they shouldn’t with a girl saying “no touching” and the like. He wiped his mouth. “Ooh girl. You’re asking me to break my promise, aren’t you?” 

Bobby kicked off her sandals. Those bare feet slithered across the seat then wriggled around his leg like a python. 

“I have done no such thing.”

“What are you playing, little lady?”

“I’m getting you into trouble.” She pressed her foot into his manly business.   

He moaned. “Oh mhm, you are, girl.” 

Jimmy took a gulp of Jack. The warmth spread through his chest and tingled his head. He passed the bottle to Bobby then massaged her foot. She held the bottle out, wagging it from side to side. Not taking a drink. Just watching him with a naughty grin. 

Jimmy crept over, sliding his hands up her thighs, and laid a kiss on those cherry lips. She shoved her tongue his mouth and twirled it around like an expert. 

“Ooh girl, you’re delicious like strawberry cream. I wanna taste the rest of you.”

“I said no, Jimmy,” she whispered. 

“Your body’s telling me something else, baby.”

He went in for another kiss, to which she obliged. 

The alley exploded with light like an asteroid burning up in the atmosphere. Jimmy cocked his head like a rooster and felt his retinas sizzle. Blinding white like search lights. They started to dance around the interior of the car.  

“What in the hell you suppose that is, baby?” Images of little gray men pranced through Jimmy’s head. He was not a man to lose his cool but this was something.  

The passenger door opened behind Bobby. One of the spotlights blasted Jimmy directly in the face. 

Bobby. Were they stealing her for one of them experiments? 

Jimmy pawed around trying to keep hold of his little treasure. No way space men were stealing this morsel from him. He found her breasts in the confusion and said, “Bobby, baby, you feel me?” 

A hand closed around the collar of Jimmy’s shirt. The damn space men had infiltrated the drivers side too. An arm wrapped around his chest. The grip was firmer than he expected from someone who spent all their time on a space ship. Jimmy squawked. 

“Shit, help me, girl. Them aliens got me.” 

Bobby didn’t scream. She didn’t kick up a fuss. Nope, the girl sat there giggling. 

The landing lights shifted behind her and Jimmy saw a face. Not a green sickly face with black bug eyes over a pinched, lipless mouth, but a thick black mustache and a peaked cap. Bobby looked at Jimmy and smiled. She handed the bottle of Jack to the officer behind her and said, “Hey Daddy.”

“Hey Honey. What kinda trouble you get into?” 

“None Daddy, but this big man was looking to do impure things to me.” 

Jimmy felt like he’d taken a bullet in the chest. This girl was bad, badder than him, no doubt. Two officers pulled him out of the car. One of them saying to Jimmy, “you must be some kind of stupid parking out back of the station.”  

They dragged his ass around the trunk toward the street. He craned his neck trying to catch one last look at that naughty vixen.

Bobby’s father, chief badge on his hat, helped her out of the car. The beating in Jimmy’s chest came to a full stop. 

Look at me baby. You’re gonna break my heart.

Bobby sashayed around the back end of the car like a pointy tailed succubus and tossed Jimmy a smirk. 

Jimmy fought the arms around him but it was useless. He resigned himself and screamed, “Bobby Sue, I love you.”