“They mean... you can do whatever you want?” I offer sarcastically.
“Oh, gracious, no!” she cackles defiantly. “It’s not like that at all, Libby-love.”
“Oh jeez, here we go,” I sigh, rolling my eyes.
She holds up an instructional finger. “No, you should hear this,” she starts in. “It’s not like those movies you watch, girlfriend. Good loving isn’t just all juices and shaved girl parts and making cow eyes. It takes time to get a good dicking, you know what I’m saying?”
“You’re talking to me from the 1950s, is what I am hearing.”
“Mm-hmm, I’m sure that it is what you hear, but that’s only because you don’t know!” she continues, undiscouraged. “I know you think being a freak liberates you, but the reality is that life is not like porn. Real sex takes practice. No pizza guy you just met is going to give you the proper dicking that a real, dedicated, practiced man can give you!”
“Yeah, all right, sure,” I answer, just to be polite. “And where do the heart-shaped pubes come in?”
“Eh, that’s just for encouragement,” she shrugs, lifting her chin toward the sun. “Just to let him know I was thinking about him.”
“Ha-ha, yeah okay,” I chuckle. Not sure she has a point, but it is entertaining to hear her old-Southern-gal way of explaining things.
“So, what are you planning on doing this weekend, you freaky little thing?” She yawns magnificently, dragging me out of my reverie.
“Actually… I’m not really sure,” I answer. “Dad has to go out of town for a little while, so I was thinking I might pick up another shift at the Krazy Mart? I could pretty much work the whole two weeks solid. Get all caught up.”
“Wait, what?” she asks breathlessly, twisting to face me. She shifts her whole body so that the mountainous curve of her hip is illuminated in glorious detail. Wow, I really wish I looked like that. If I lie on my side, I am lucky to get a foothill.
Mona snaps in the air between us.
“Libby? Are you listening to me?”
I open my eyes all the way and nod seriously. “Totally listening,” I affirm.
“You have a weekend off? Wait… You have two weeks? Alone? Without Sergeant Dad watching your every move?”
“Yeah. Actually he is a colonel...” I mumble, but she is not listening. She has been calling him Sergeant Dad behind his back since I have known her. She thinks he is “smoking hot.” Her words.
She reaches out to me with her metallic nails, scraping plaintively on my forearm and leaving tracks in the sunscreen.
“You gotta hang out with me!” she insists, pulling a face. “Come to Sweeney’s!”
“Oh, I would love to hang out with you! But I really gotta make money to finish out the semester. If I can get enough together to transfer to New York, that would be amazing.”
She nods avidly, her eyes wide. “That would totally be amazing!” she agrees. “Sergeant Dad would definitely have to let you go if you magicked up all the cash all by yourself.”
I squint at her suspiciously. “Right. That is basically the plan…”
She pokes me with one long, pointed nail. “Which is why you should definitely come out with me! Don’t go to the Krazy Mart! Come out with your best pal, crazy Mona!”
“Oh, wait. Come on. No way,” I object, leaning back on my lawn chair. It creaks a warning, and I realize if I go any further I will be dumped out onto the lawn.
She sits up fully, not even caring if the sun is more on her left shoulder than her right shoulder now. That is how I know she is really serious.
“Come on, Libby,” she cajoles. “You can make two, maybe even three hundred dollars a night. How much do you make at the Krazy Mart?”
I shrug one shoulder.
“Libby? How much do you make at the Krazy Mart?”
I do a little mental math, though in truth I know all the numbers by heart. I have run through them so many times, they are practically a mantra. Twelve dollars an hour. Twenty hours a week. A bunch of mysterious deductions later, and I somehow have a hundred and eighty-five dollars dumped into my checking account about ten days later.
“So, it’s less than two hundred dollars, right?” she prods, her voice clear as a bell.