“It's as big as your head, Laura,” Josie gaped.
“It's bigger. It's the size of my ass.”
Madge pointedly peered behind Laura, pulled back, and pursed her lips, contemplating. “Nah. Not quite, honey.” Laura gave her a grateful smile. Madge was Laura's new best friend. “You girls need anything else?”
“No – thanks!” Josie had a sausage on one fork, was spearing part of a potato pancake, and had a spoon attacking the ice cream. Laura dipped a piece of pancake in the aioli and stabbed her fork into the luscious pistachio cake, made green by the nuts.
“Who needs sex when you have Jeddy's?” she muttered, filling her mouth with the cake.
“Hello! Me?” Josie waved her hands like an air traffic controller on an airport runway. “Right here. I'd give all this up for what you just had tonight. Wouldn't you?”
Laura stared plaintively at the spread before her. “Uh...”
Josie stabbed the dark chocolate and mint rose off the top of the cake and ate it. “You don't have to choose. Lucky you.”
Lucky. Lucky? Here she sat, drowning her sorrows in fudge-covered cake the color of infected snot while her body still hummed from being double stuffed (note to self: get Oreos on the way home) and as the sun began to make its first entrance on this glorious day, Laura had to go to work in a few hours. Then there was at pesky issue of needing to deal with the fallout from storming out of Mike's cabin, leaving the two people in the world she most wanted to forget wondering what the hell was wrong with her.
“Madge!” Laura shouted. A quick glance down showed her cl**vage covered with green crumbs and an embarrassing number of hot fudge drips. It was a meal unto itself. For Dylan...or Mike...
Stop that!
Madge didn't even blink, just tilted her head up, painted-on eyebrows lifting up. If she'd been bald she could have given Tim Curry a run for the role of Pennywise. “Whatcha want?”
“Got any caramel sauce?” That shit cures everything, like Windex or Robitussin.
“Nope. How about peanut toffee swirl?”
“You're a good woman, Madge. My new BFF.”
“Hey!” Josie mumbled, her face stuffed with ice cream. “Wha' 'bout me?”
“You're my old BFF.” Laura heard the door behind her creak and the sound of loud voices. More college guys. Swiveling around, she took a look. Fresh, unlined faces. Wet t-shirt contest-looking tops and running shorts. Sneakers. Backwards baseball caps. Why did they all look twelve?
“Henderson Cross Country” read all the wet shirts. Ah. High school. That's why they looked twelve.
The sound Josie made caused Laura to pivot back, whiplash a distinct possibility. “You pig! At least try not to burp,” she hissed.
“In some cultures it's a compliment, you know.”
“In some cultures, a woman who did that would be stoned to death.” Josie stuck out her tongue and stifled another belch. “How can I be your old BFF when that woman is like a thousand years old.”
“She's young on the inside.”
“She could be the cryptkeeper's mother. Grandmother. Uh – ”
The door behind her creaked open again and she heard footsteps. Then a low whistle from Josie, who peered around Laura. “Hot damn!”
Madge slid a cruet of peanut butter joy at Laura, who speared a chunk of green cake and dipped it in the creamy mixture. “Whuh?” she asked, tipping her face up to watch her friend.
Josie pitter-pattered her fingertips over her heart. “Some day my Thor will come. And this one is mine, Laura. All – ” She halted, eyes growing alarmingly huge, her words ending abruptly in a strangle. Mouth dropped, Laura could see parts of Josie's meal in her tongue.
“Jesus, Josie, shut your trap.”
“Hey – I didn't say anything bad.” Squinting, Josie cocked her head and flinched, suddenly nervous.
“No, I mean literally. Your jaw is almost on the table. Shut your mouth. I can see what you just ate. We're not in third grade.”
“Right,” Josie answered absentmindedly. What the hell was wrong with her? Laura's feeling of comfort, of relaxation was dissipating fast as Josie's distracted body language just added to Laura's feeling of exhaustion and confusion. As she shifted to look behind her to see what on earth Josie was staring at, her friend shouted, “No!”
Huh? “What the hell is wrong with you?”
When she turned around, though, she understood exactly what was wrong with Josie. There stood Thor, cupping the waitress's balls, with a more muscled version of Joey Tribiani grinning madly at him and saying “How you doin'?”
Dylan hadn't been back at Jeddy's in, what, two years? Last time he was here was with a group of guys from work, after a fire, when in the bowels of the night they'd found themselves embraced by soot, dead tired, and starving. No ramen noodles or scrambled eggs back at the station would do, so they'd come here.
His balls greeted him nicely. OK – their balls. Because it had been the trio who had invented the famous cardboard, be-balled icon at Jeddy's, a combination of some wicked bad peyote and Mike's college job working at Newbury Comics. Old Madge had helped, offering up an ancient server's uniform, and the balls had been Jill's idea. Dylan's Joey Tribiani imitation stuck – a little too well, because he was known as Joey until they'd finished college.
“You two,” Madge greeted them, shaking her head, lips pursed in an expression that was either pleasure or disgust. Dylan didn't think the difference mattered much at her age. Or with her temperament. How the hell do you serve drunk frat boys, homeless glue sniffers and post-coital munchie seekers for six decades and not become –
Was that? Mike elbowed him. No way.
No.
Fucking.
Way.
From behind, he couldn't quite tell whether it was Laura, but he had to be dreaming. She sat at a booth, hunched over a plate, blond hair in need of a combing, the woman across from her looking like a greasy chihuahua posing as a human dancer. Teeny tiny and hyped up, eager and craning to look at something.
Him?
Them?
“Is that Laura?” Mike whispered furiously as they followed Madge, who threw two menus down on the scarred formica table and walked off unceremoniously. Dylan slid in on his side, ass catching something, impeding his fluid movement. Duct tape. He wiggled his ass to settle down the torn edge, then froze.
“What? You're crazy, man. What are the chances she'd be – ”
“Come to claim your third?” Madge's gravelly voice nearly made Dylan laugh. She sounded like a caricature of an old South Boston woman combined with Harvey Fierstein.
Mike's eyes bugged out of his head, shifting between the blond in the booth and Madge. “Our third?” His voice sounded like Peter Brady going through puberty.
“Someone grab your balls too tight tonight?” Madge rasped, clenching the plastic balls in her hand. She nodded toward the warlock waitress. “You ever gonna cart this monstrosity away?”
“Oh!” Mike groaned. “You mean him?” He pointed at the cardboard cut out.
“What other third would I be talking about?” she asked, incredulous, her hand batting the testicles and shooting Dylan a dirty look. “You two are too old to come in here drunk,” she chided.
Mike sighed, his lips buzzing as the air left him and he and Dylan buried themselves in the menu. “God damn, Dylan. We need to figure all this out.”
The last notes of some Meatloaf song faded out and then the all-too-familiar first chords of AC/DC's “You Shook Me All Night Long” filled the air. The blond's head began tapping out the beat and the ratty little brunette with her looked like Will Ferrell playing a cowbell. Could that really be Laura?
Nah.
Why did the brunette keep staring at him? She huddled with the blonde, who fake-scratched her head and tried to do that sly thing where you look behind yourself without making it obvious.
“Chipotle maple sausage and a five-scoop sundae for me,” Mike announced. “Fried green tomatoes, too. Double order.”
“Swear to God, Mike. Look at her. It's Laura.” Just then, Madge appeared, dragging the warlock waitress with her. Julian Sands seemed to be judging their meal choices.
“The third in your threesome,” Madge announced grandly. The frat boys at the other table all did a spit-take in unison, bursting into good-natured laughter.
And then the brunette froze. The blonde turned slowly, the folds of her neck reluctant to complete the motion, her arm reaching back as if through water, her body needing to know but so –
Yes. It was Laura.
And boy was she pissed.
“Motherfucker!” she hissed. “They're following me?”
“So that is them? Holy shit, Laura, they're more scrumptious in person than online.” Josie actually licked her lips and said, “I wish they were on the menu.”
Threesome? Had Madge actually said something about a threesome with them? Were they that open with everyone but her? Why on earth would a dried-up old octogenarian speak openly about their sex life like this?
“Warlock Waitress here wants you to take her home. Have your way with her. Give her the complete sex change she's entitled to,” she heard Madge joke, a raspy smoker's laugh rumbling after.
“You mean make Julian into Julia?” Dylan dished back. All three laughed.
They had no right to laugh! Not when everything in Laura's mouth turned to sawdust and Josie stared at her like something in an insane asylum under twenty-four hour watch.
“I'll make a scene and you can crawl out through the kitchen,” Josie suggested.
“What?”
“And then I'll go over there and hang with them and we can be besties and I'll,” she licked her lips again, “get my own taste of Superhero Sandwich. I can be the meat.”
“You are a sick woman.”
“I got the fever and they got the cure.”
“I know you're joking, but this isn't funny anymore.”
Josie dropped the act instantly. “Sorry. You're right. What can we do?”
Crawling on hands and knees was starting to look like a great option, except she would have to abandon the rest of her cake. Was saving face worth leaving this luscious, green-tinted pistachio chocolate mound of salvation?
With ice cream? And the untouched homemade mint whipped cream?
No. She would stand her ground.
For the sake of gastronomical integrity.
Someone had to. And she would make that sacrifice. Determined, Laura took another enormous bite of cake, ice cream, whipped cream and all dipped in peanut butter sauce.
The moan that escaped her body rivaled anything she'd made in bed with those two.
Which is why they both turned in unison, she imagined, staring as she devoured her true love. Thor could have his hammer. Dylan looked enough like a short Christian Bale to be Batman. Right now, though, she was going green, getting her most important hole stuffed by the Hulk.
Peanut Butter Hulk Smash cake allowed her to be the avenger now.
Could those two be any weirder? Following her here to Jeddy's, where she still had their funk on her. In her. In places no man had ever been before on her body. Places she suspected no one except maybe, once, the gynecologist had touched during a routine “Hi! Welcome to 25!” exam.