The Score

Virginia May Simms sat next to me in her parent's living-room. It was a little past ten at night. She was three or four years older than I was, which brought her roughly into the neighborhood of twenty-three. We'd met this night in a bar where I was underage. Her parents weren't home and she mentioned once or twice, maybe three times, all casual and off the cuff-like, that they weren't expected home this evening.

We were on the couch sharing a bowl of popcorn which she held on her lap between silky smooth legs. She wore short shorts out of which her tan legs exploded like water from a fire-hose; they seemed to project clear across the room.

She saw me looking.

Virginia May Simms leaned over toward me and started to say something and then stopped. She bit her lower lip. Then she looked down at my mouth, and back up to my eyes again, her lower lip caught in the clutch of one white tooth. Time stood still.

And then, as though my own idea, I leaned in and kissed her on the mouth in a do-or-die, here goes nothing, please, God, if you're really up there-- kiss.

She closed her eyes and I closed mine. She smelled like VO5 shampoo. Suddenly I was tasting minty fresh toothpaste mixed with Orville Reddenboccer extra buttery.

I opened my eyes briefly and saw that her's were still closed. It was a moment where the realization of hope and dreams seemed suddenly near at hand.

Virginia May Simms' tongue was warm and little and vibrantly alive.

It was now that a loud knocking erupted from the vicinity of the front-door. It sounded all too much like knuckles coming hard against wood. Then a doorbell rang repeatedly; a harmonic symphony of bells and cymbals rained down from overhead. I looked at Virginia May Simms, and she looked at me.

“Oh, God!” she said. She looked deeply distressed.

“OH God, what?” I asked.

“It's Bruce,” she said and rolled her eyes. She put her index finger inside her mouth like she was trying to gag herself.

“Bruce?” I asked as the sounds at the front door went from bells and chimes to annoyingly loud pounding, to the unmistakable sound of someone trying very hard to break into the house by busting through the door. I heard, or imagined hearing, the door-frame splintering.

“My ex,” she said, as though that explained something, or maybe forgave it.

I nodded my head as though it did.

The pounding became two fists pummeling the wood. It was so loud my own knuckles hurt just listening to it.

“I don't want to talk to him,” she said.

“Then don't!” I said. I was in total agreement. I leaned in for another kiss. I was trying to take our minds back to happier times of a few minutes past.

“He is such a jerk!” she said.

She sat back on the couch and sneered at the incessant pounding at the door.

I didn't know this Bruce. I didn't know anything about him including how big he was, or what exactly it was he was after. Maybe he had forgotten his photo-album...

As though reading my mind, she said, “Well, he's a wimp!”

“He is?”

“He's a total wimp!”

I tried to feel better with this new information, but the sounds of fists rifling the door like a boxer working the heavy-bag made me nervous all the same.

“He's your ex-boyfriend?” I asked in a vaguely curious sort of way.

“Well, husband, really,” she said.

“He's your ex-husband?”

“Pretty soon,” she said.

“He's not your ex-husband yet?”

“Not exactly,” she said. She looked worried.

I probably did too.

The mail-slot squeaked at the door and I heard his voice for the first time.

“Ginny!”

“Go away, I hate you!” she said, directing her voice to the door. She looked at me and rolled her eyes again.

“I just want to talk!” the voice said.

“I have com pan eee!” she said.

Oh, sweet Jesus! I thought.

There was a long silence.

The silence sat there and waited. I held my breath and waited right along with it. I was prepared to go all night.

Virginia put the popcorn bowl on the coffee table and stood up. I asked her what she was doing as she began walking toward the front door.

I stood up, watching in horror as she snapped the bolt back and reached for the doorknob.

“Wait, wait!” I said.

She opened the door and I prepared myself for a wimpy, crazed psycho with bleeding knuckles to come busting inside with flames of revenge leaping from his eyeballs.

“Oh, how cute!” she said.

Those were perhaps the very last words I expected to hear.

I saw her bend down outside the doorway and I came over to investigate.

A box of three kittens lay on the welcome mat. A note attached to the outside of the cardboard said, Please Help!

Virginia brought two of the mewing little critters to her face. “They're so cute!” she said and looked hopefully out into the night, searching, no doubt, for a wimpy psycho to thank. There were none to be found, however, and I took this moment to edge past Virginia May Simms and her short shorts and her long legs, and her cardboard box of black and white kittens. I walked quickly for my car. I could feel eyes in the darkness.

“Aren't you going to stay and help?” she asked.

I wasn't sure who needed the help, her, the kittens, or her “soon” to be ex-husband, but I left her there on her knees mewing to the kittens. I drove myself home with the doors locked, watching my rear-view mirror.


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