Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [67]
“They’re PAYING YOU to have SEX on CAMERA!” Mindie screamed.
“…GUIDANCE AND PROTECTION! PROTECTION IN A FRIGHTENING WORLD!”
“YOU MAKE PORNOGRAPHY?”
Silence.
The car fell absolutely silent except for the sound of the wind rushing past, the thrum of the engine, and a dead squirrel I had trapped somewhere in the undercarriage that thumped the floor occasionally. I focused on the road with the pastor, and in the rearview mirror I could see Mindie, flushed and steaming, staring in fury and horror and revulsion at Ms. Waboombas, who stared right back at her with equal venom.
“Yes, I make ‘por-nog-ra-phy’,” Ms. Waboombas said. “What do you think I’ve been talking about here, bitch?”
“Bitch? You called me ‘bitch’?”
“It’s an expression.”
“You’re a…a stripper. The dancing,” Mindie squeaked. “The dancing is in strip clubs.”
Ms. Waboombas looked at Mindie as though there were ugly bugs crawling out of my darling fiancée’s ears carrying picket signs. “They don’t let you out much, do they?”
Mindie simply continued to stare at, what was now her greatest adversary—fuming, lips quivering. Then without looking at me, she said “Corky. Stop the car.”
“What? Why?” I asked.
“Stop the car.”
“But we’re only ten miles out of town. Can’t we…”
“STOP - THE - CAR!” she howled.
I pulled to the side of the road.
Mindie still hadn’t taken her evil-eye off Ms. Waboombas.
“Get out,” she said.
“What?” Waboombas asked, annoyed.
“Get. Out.”
“Fuck you, bitch, ‘get out’.”
“I am not riding any farther with a pornographer. Especially one that calls me the ‘b’ word.”
“So you get out,” Wendy told her.
“No, you get out.
“You.”
“You.”
“This is my car!” Mindie said.
“Fuck if it is,” Wendy responded. “This is that hot old lady’s car. Corky’s aunt.”
Aunt Helena was hot? What a disturbing thought.
“And I am Corky’s fiancée. That makes this my car by relation.”
“Fuck if it does.”
“Would you please stop using foul language?”
“No. Fuck.”
“I asked you to…”
“Fuck.”
“Please stop…”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“This is entirely…”
“Fuck, fuck, ass, cock, shit, fuck, fuck.”
“Get out of the car!”
“Make me, bitch! Fuck!”
“Corky, make her get out!”
“Corky’s not gonna make me do shit. Corky’s afraid of me.”
How did she know? I thought I’d hidden it remarkably well.
“Corky!” Mindie demanded. Now—of course—the question was: whom did I fear more?
“Mindie,” I tried. “We’re miles from anywhere.”
“I don’t care! Make her get out!”
I hesitated.
Mindie became incensed. “It’s her, or me, Corky!”
For some reason, not seeing the out, I still hesitated.
“Keep in mind, Corky,” Ms. Waboombas said, her voice filled with giddy confidence. “I fuck. She doesn’t.”
Mindie gasped, then turned on me.
To me. Turned TO me.
“Corky! Did you have relations with this woman!”
Okay, maybe ‘on’ was the better word.
“Relations?” Ms. Waboombas asked. “Hell, no. We fuuuuucked!”
“CORKY!”
“Mindie…”
“Wendy!” Morgan threw in. I think he was just tired of feeling left out.
“Get out of this car!” Mindie snarled. “Both of you!”
“Yeah,” Ms. Waboombas said, not even trying to be helpful, “Let’s get out, Corky. You, and me. We can do it in the road till someone else comes along and picks us up. Then we’ll do it in their car with them.” She grinned at Mindie. “’It’ means ‘fuck’, by the way.”
Mindie leaned over Ms. Waboombas, and opened her car door. “Out,” she said flatly.
“Make me,” the stripper/pornographer/sadist said, grinning.
“Out!”
“Make me!”
Mindie did. She surprised us all by shoving Ms. Waboombas so hard they both tumbled out of the Duesenberg, and onto the side of the road.
The car was parked on a long stretch of two-lane country highway with ocean on one side and trees on the other. Both sides sloped downward slightly, one toward the sea, the other into a drainage ditch between us and the rising tree line beyond. Mindie and Ms. Waboombas now struggled on the edge of that ditch, and as they did, Morgan, the pastor, and I sat up and leaned out to watch. Morgan snacked on popcorn and offered me some. I declined, realizing it would