Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [48]
“But I can't do that.” Tears spring to her eyes. “They both love me.”
Uh, good grief.
Sliding a sardine between my fingers to squeeze out the excess oil, I pop it into my mouth, even though I know I shouldn't, followed by a tomato—ohmygodohmygod, has anything on this planet ever tasted so good?—and put an end to this discussion with a curt “I'm sorry, dear; I don't know what else to tell you.” Then, after giving her a super-sized hug because she's looking so downcast, I quickly return to my plate of sardines. Mmmmmm. Mmm.
Luckily, Joanna has the attention span of a two-day-old puppy. Realizing this is all the sympathy she's going to get from me, she's already put the paramour situation behind her and is on to a new topic. A topic she's obviously been thinking about for a while, and which is troubling her just as much.
“I have something to ask you.” She puts down her glass and fixes me with those large olive-green eyes.
“What's the matter?” I'm busy squeezing sardines, only half-listening.
Casting a quick defensive glance in both directions in case her weirdly petite mother is within earshot, she places a hand on my arm, rubs it gently, and says:
“Cash, please, will you let me have your baby?”
Wha???
Like a torpedo, the sardine I'm holding flies from out between my fingers and shoots across the table onto the floor.
1 Any genitalia, really, including my own. People laugh when I tell them this, but I swear I'm not lying. In particular I am highly vaginaphobic (technically known as eurotophobic). Back in my youth, I remember a friend opening a porno magazine in a shop in North Wales and showing me a close-up of a vagina. This came at the beginning of puberty and changed my life. Hot, dizzy, and nauseous, I stumbled into the street and collapsed to the ground, denting a car on the way down and chipping one of my front teeth. And exactly the same thing would happen today too. The cause has yet to be satisfactorily diagnosed. However, it's no worse, I'm thinking, than people who suffer from aulophobia (an irrational fear of flutes), or lutraphobia (a fear of otters), ostraconophobia (a fear of shellfish), automatonophobia (a fear of ventriloquists' dummies), or, possibly the worst one of the lot, Walloonophobia. Although, quite honestly, when you get down to it, who among us isn't afraid of the Walloons?
2 Probably.
3 And before you go copying this in your TV show, I'm currently applying for a patent to protect it. So back off.
4 Patent pending.
5 Another disaster, by the way. The Monastery of Pithariou, an isolated twelfth-century relic up in the hills, was closed when we got there, with its gates chained up, and no amount of loud heckling or throwing stones at their chapel windows would bring the monks out to greet us. It was a huge disappointment.
6 I don't want to spark mass panic, but I fear the world's lesbian resources may be running out, and it's a real worry. I'm doubtless not the first to blame global warming for this, although I probably am the first to advocate rationing them as a result. At the very least we all need to come together and conserve as many lesbians as we can, before they become as rare as bald eagles, bees, and Republican senators without some kind of secret sexual past.
9
More Crew Looks
“So what did you say?”
“About what?”
“When she asked if she could have your baby.”
Tasha is goggle-eyed with shock next day at the airport when I tell her.
“I said no, of course.”
Alas, to a desperate, unmarried woman whose biological clock is ticking fast, a definite no, even when it's accompanied by a wagging oily finger and a stern glare, clearly still leaves wiggle room for negotiation, because Joanna continued arguing for some time.
“I want a baby that's as tall as you, with your beautiful blue eyes and your sense of humor.”
“And let's not forget the glorious hives I'm bound to get all over my forehead after eating oily sardines,” I thought.
“It would be wonderful.”
“Yes, it would—for you. But