that way. Grandpa George is visiting some cousins in Kentucky for the week, so she only makes half as much as normal. After dinner, Dad asks Mom to join him for a walk around the block. Mom doesn’t want to. The thirty pounds she’s put on not even halfway through her pregnancy tells me she’s won this argument once or twice. But Dad insists. He issues instructions to his progeny.
“Clean the kitchen, son.”
I nod. “Sure thing, Dad.”
“And, Jeanine?”
“What?” my sister asks. She has a tendency to whine more than talk when she’s annoyed by the world. She whines a lot.
“Help your brother.”
“But, Dad, I cleaned after lunch.”
I look at Jeanine. She’s the one most opposed to the new baby, for fear of breaking her stranglehold on the getting-away-with-murder privileges afforded her as the youngest child. “We went out to eat for lunch today,” I say to her. “You were the one who begged us to go to Taco Bell.”
“Did not.”
“Did, too.”
“Do you or don’t you want to go to the New Kids on the Block concert?” I ask. “Because I can always back out as your chaperone.”
“Uh…” I can see the horror in Jeanine’s face. “I guess I just forgot.”
“Just do it!” Dad orders, shutting the door.
My sister thinks I’m doing her a favor when I tell her I’ll take care of the kitchen and she should go watch a movie. But the truth is I don’t want any witnesses.
I clear the dinner table and wipe it down with a wet rag. I carry the butter to the refrigerator, open the refrigerator door, and place the butter on its plastic shelf inside the door. I grab the gallon of milk and the carton of large eggs. The milk is just opened. Two eggs are missing from the dozen. I carry the milk and the eggs over to the sink.
“I want a snack.”
I jump, startled. Jeanine stands behind me. Her mop of curly blonde hair makes her look younger than thirteen.
Between us, I most resemble Dad—the longer face, the prominent nose, the large eyes setting off a more straight than curved smile. Jeanine is her mother’s daughter, the eyes smaller and closer together in the middle of a more circular face, the nose not as obvious, all of which sit perched above a deep sickle-shaped smile that overwhelms all her features whenever she laughs.
I turn to block the evidence. “You just ate.”
“What about dessert?” Jeanine asks.
“How’s ice cream sound?”
“With Magic Shell?”
“Yes, with Magic Shell.”
“I want the stuff that gets hard. Not Hershey’s Syrup.”
“I know the difference between the two.”
My sister leaves the kitchen. I start to unscrew the cap to the milk when I hear the sound of feet sliding on oak hardwood floors.
Jeanine peeks into the kitchen.
“What?” I say.
“I changed my mind. I don’t want Magic Shell now. I want Hershey’s Syrup.”
“Okay.”
“And another thing.”
I grab the edge of the sink in exasperation. “Good Lord, what now?”
“I think we’re out of Hershey’s Syrup.”
“So you want Magic Shell?”
“No…” Jeanine pauses, taps her finger on her mouth. “If we’re out of Hershey’s Syrup, and if all we have is chocolate ice cream, I’ll have mine plain. But if we have vanilla, I’ll have Hershey’s Syrup.”
“You mean Magic Shell?”
“I don’t like Magic Shell.”
“Get out of here!” I push her out of the kitchen. “You’ll eat what I bring you.”
I pour out the gallon of milk. I grab the eggs, shove them one by one down the drain, then turn on the disposal. I throw away the empty milk jug, and wait.
Mom goes to bed around nine. At ten o’clock Dad takes his exalted place on the couch in front of the television. Halfway into the Channel 13 weather forecast, I “suddenly” realize we don’t have any milk or eggs for breakfast. Dad asks if I wouldn’t mind making a late night grocery run.
The five screen Regency 5 Theater sits behind my neighborhood on the corner of Regence and Farr, a mile from my house. I look at my Swatch as I pull into the theater parking lot, trying to discern the time. The face of the Swatch has no numerals. The small hand is pointing to a mint-green triangle in the upper left corner, and the big hand is about halfway between a fluorescent-orange squiggly line and a yellow circle near the bottom of the watch. 11:35 p.m. is my best guess. Dad is falling asleep right about now in the middle of Carson’s monologue.
Regency 5 used to be a two-screen theater, a nondescript brick building tacked onto the south end of a Hills department store. Then, two screens became three, and then they skipped four and went straight to five. The biggest mystery is how they managed to add three extra screens without ever expanding the building itself.
I drive a cheap-ass, late-seventies Subaru even though my father has an entire parking lot of brand-new Oldsmobiles, mostly because I have an affinity for wrecking brand-new Oldsmobiles. I park my red Subaru wagon in a handicap spot at the front of the theater. A row of glass doors wrap the front of the theater below the marquee. I give the doors a shake. They’re locked. The lights are dimmed inside, but I see someone walking toward me. She opens the doors.
“You’re early.” She closes the door behind me and locks it again.
“I know. Just thought I’d surprise—”
Her arms are around my neck, her lips already pressed against my own. She pretends to rub her lipstick off my lips but leaves it there. Laura likes to mark her territory. I can’t get enough of her: her smell, her taste, her touch, that smoky lilt in her voice when she pouts to get what she wants. We kiss again.
“Sorry, but I just want to eat you up,” Laura says, nibbling my neck. She rests her cleft chin on my shoulder.
Laura’s long, brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail, a few stray curls sneaking out the sides. Even smelling of popcorn oil and garbed in her Regency 5 standard issue uniform—white oxford, red vest, blue pants—I find her irresistible. Her shirt looks a size too small, but that’s just her breasts. I’m not going to lie, they’re the first thing I ever noticed about her—soft and big, with a slight downward slope to them, almost too large for her age. Not belly dancer perfect, but as perfect as I’ve ever felt. Next to her substantial rack, her most striking feature is her mass of brown curls she spends hours teasing and spraying into something
