THE LADYBUG

 

 

“Hello,” Charlie calls at the door.

“It’s open.” She’s drinking iced-tea, of all things. “In here.” She may have a glass of wine later with Charlie. “Oh no.” She can’t believe what she’s looking at—Charlie, in a turquoise wrestling mask and shiny black overalls, black leather high-tops, and a quilted pouch dangling from a shoulder strap. He leaps from the hall into the big room and lands like a gymnast, feet well apart, arms outstretched, the quilted bag swinging like a pendulum.

“I’d say you nailed it.” She claps her hands again; she can’t stop applauding for this guy. “Who are you anyway?”
“You don’t know?” He points to an ivory crown embossed on the turquoise. “This doesn’t give it away?”

Pina shrugs.

“Didn’t Vince give you an introduction to his most important masks? Yo soy Rey Mysterio, the Mystery King.”
“How do you do?” Pina folds her legs underneath her on the couch. “You know that mask offers absolutely no protection.”
“Why would I need it?” He beats his chest with his fists. “The lucha libre máscaras cover everything except the nostrils and mouth because the mightiest among us need no protection.” He stretches his arms out again and repeats, “Yo soy Rey Mysterio.”
“Have a seat, Rey. I know Mexican wrestlers never take off their masks, but . . .”
“No, no, I’d have to be unmasked. I have something for you.” Charlie/Rey Misterio pulls a plastic bag from his sack and extracts another wrestling mask. “It’s Xenia, I’ve always wanted to wrestle her.” He tosses Pina the mask, which feature an abstraction of horizontal lines.
“So you’ve come to wrestle,” she says, standing.
“That’s who I am.”

What a wonderfully funny fool of a man. Now she regards the mask skeptically.

“Nobody’s worn it. I just took it off the wall.”

Strangest fucking mating ritual she’s ever seen. Charlie’s quite a guide to alternative realities: first an African parrot that aspires to be human and who has a grasp of the facts of life, and now a tour of Mexican wrestling. Is it good that she’s sober or would she be better off bombed?

She quickly pulls the Lycra monstrosity over her head and drags it down her face. Now she’s smothered by it. At least it’s not as warm as she expected.

“Xenia,” he says, flashing her a big-toothed smile through his mask.

Is she really going to do this? Why the fuck not? Pina/Xenia makes a warbling echo in her throat. Yes, she can play his game, she thinks, as she rushes him. Before Charlie/Rey Mysterio reacts, she has him in a hammerlock, a move Corky Eichorn taught her forty years ago. She jerks his pinioned arm up high and waits for him to resist, but he doesn’t. So now he’s disrespecting her. No matter, one quick motion with her free hand and she peels off his disguise. “Ha,” she says, and marches around the fictive ring with her prize, going full Greek widow with her deep-throated warble.

Charlie’s hair stands up in a wild cowlick. “I should feel humiliated, but I’m exhilarated.”

Pina/Xenia continues to circle the big room, throwing her fists in the air and flexing her muscles. “Yeah, not so macho anymore.” His cowlick gives him the look of a man-child in serious need of a haircut.

“Aren’t you going to take your mask off?” Charlie asks.

She gets into a warrior’s crouch. “See if you can take it off.”

He rushes her. But what does he do?  He insults her again, this time with a limp headlock. How do you to expect to strip off a wrestler’s mask when you have them in a headlock? She’s out of his hold in a jiff and slips behind him, bringing her forearm across his Adam’s apple. “We’re not playing here. Can you survive this?”

Apparently, he’s had enough. He breaks out of her hold like it ‘s a band-aid and digs his arm down between her legs, up against her bare crotch—so much for social distancing—and lifts her to his shoulder, yanking off her mask. Then he twirls her around the room several times before taking a crooked a path to the bedroom and letting her fall in a heap onto the bed.

“Now for the Plancha,” he says, and drops down on top of her, expertly managing his weight with his hands so that she doesn’t absorb any of it. He pins her arms down. “Uno, dos, tres.”

Pina is lost in the blue of his eyes. “My master.”
“Forgive me.”
“For what?”
“For imposing my madness on you.”
“I’ve enjoyed it so far. Let’s see what else you’ve got.”

All of her body is awake in a way it hasn’t been forever. He tugs on a hank of her hair and the follicles of her scalp tingle. She closes her eyes as he drops small kisses on her lids, and then on the bridge of her nose with a little trail to the tip.

“I love your nose.”
“Be careful,” she says, “It’s sharp and I’ve used it as a weapon before.” Her voice sounds husky to her. Has her warbling affected it? Or is this her new love voice?

Now the moment she’s been waiting for—he begins unfastening her buttons. She takes his face in her hands, rubs them pleasurably against the grain of his two-day growth, and then kisses him fully on the lips. She wants to know how well he multi-tasks. Oh my, his hands are on her breasts and the nipples respond at once, standing tall.

 

She opens a Sauv Blanc, and prepares a cheese plate with a very local Vella Mezzo Secco, and a soft Brilliat Savarin. She has no bread or fresh crackers so she breaks open a box of matzo she bought when it went on sale after Passover.

“Ah,” Charlie says, “Matzo in bed.”
“Yes, we’ll be nicked by hard crumbs all night, reminding us that we’re living in the middle of a plague.”

Still standing, she takes him in, all curled up like he belongs in her bed. She loves that Charlie’s a guy who’s comfortable with his body and who shares it nicely.

He props himself up with a couple of pillows. “And the matzo reminds us that we are like the Jews, making our bread in a hurry, well not that much of a hurry.” He shoots her a sideways smile.

The top of his hairy chest is a small joy sprouting above the quilt. Pina lays the tray down beside him on the bed and pours them each a glass of wine. She raises her glass to him. “Chin chin.”

He offers a singular Chin in return. “Also, the matzo recalls the Exodus.”

She climbs into bed beside him. “You’re really stuck on the matzo.”
“No, I’ve been thinking about this,” he says. Two cute worry wrinkles spread across his high forehead.
“The Exodus is a good corollary for our time, don’t you think? We all need to make the crossing from our old lives to the new, whatever that is.”

She spreads Brillat over a couple of pieces of Matzo and hands him one. “Have some manna from heaven.” She washes a big splash of the cold, dry wine around her mouth.

“Hmm,” Charlie says as he inhales the creamed matzo. He props himself up on an elbow. “The thing is, no matter what the Trumpites say, there’s no turning back on this journey, there’s no old life to return to.” Charlie pauses for a sip of wine. He holds up a finger to indicate that he’s not finished. “And the Exodus will not happen quickly. The Jews wandered in the desert for a generation ”

“Do you think our Exodus will take a generation? Will there be Golden Calves and a new set of Ten Commandments along the way?”
“Of course, the whole shooting match. Greed has a way of manifesting itself everywhere.”
“And there will be new doctrines?”
“Of course.”
She pours them each of them a fresh glass of wine. “You see I know all about the Exodus—I watched Charlton Heston in “The Ten Commandments” on TV when I was a kid.”
“Makes you an expert. Myself, I was always fond of the burning bush.”

She prepares another matzo for him, this one with the dry Monterey Jack. As he nibbles on it she drops a kiss on his forehead, but it doesn’t seem like enough, so she continues all the way down to his neck, riding the lump of his throat as he swallows the last of his Exodus matzo.

When their repast is finished, they make love again. “How can you do that, Charlie? You’re not twenty anymore.”

“It’s you, darling. You’re the inspiration.”

It’s clear that they’re not going to sleep much tonight. She falls off for a half an hour or so. Now she can say she knows what it’s like to sleep in Charlie’s arms. “Did you sleep?” she asks, rubbing her eyes.
“No, but I watched you sleep.” He kisses her again on the bridge of her nose. “You still haven’t used it as a weapon on me.”
“Just wait.” There’s only one thing she wants to do—shower kisses on his chest and slowly slide on down. “Look, Charlie,” she says, “I have a theory of my own: I believe I’d be happier in love during the great Exodus, than not.”

Charlie massages his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “The great Exodus and beyond. That’s the kind of theory that I can subscribe to.”
“But we’re only talking theory,” she reminds him.
Charlie burrows his nose into her neck. “I know. Let’s keep it that way,”

 

At noon they get out of bed and have their coffee on the deck. She’s done an excellent job of keeping any thoughts of Vince at bay. Neither of them have spoken of Vince. She turned off her phone before Charlie came and only checked it once in the night. There’d been no calls. But now when she goes to make more coffee, she feels the phone vibrate in the pocket of Charlie’s red flannel, walks to the second bedroom, and shuts the door.

Vince’s breathing sounds like that of a man who needs oxygen.

“Hello.”
“Pina. I got you. I must be blessed.” Vince sounds like he’s speaking in a room full of fog. She can hear the noise of the street—cars going by, voices, incoherent arguments.
“How are you, Vince?” She tells herself not to ask where he is, though that’s what she needs to know.
“Oh well, let’s not talk about me,” he says, and laughs, and then chokes a moment on his laugh before corralling it. “It’s the same old, same old with me. I’m down here with the strange people. If you ask them what time it is, they say, ‘Night time.’ And that’s during the day. You’ve got to mind your P’s and Q’s down here. Do you know that expression, Pina? You should, you’re a drinker. It pertains to pints and quarts, but let’s leave it at that. I don’t know why you brought that up. So any-who,” he says, drawing out the word in a sorry imitation of his debonair self, “I have a situation here that’s troubling me. I’m temporarily out of cash. Things are not as liquid as I’d like. What would be nice, what would be really nice, is if at your earliest possible convenience you could bring me some cash, that would be tip-top and I would be eternally grateful.”

She can’t keep herself from asking him where he is.

“Well that’s the thing. Where I am and where I will be are very different matters.”
“Can you give me a street corner?”
“Let’s just say Leavenworth and Eddy, though I stay away from street corners. That’s where bad things happen.”
She takes a long breath. “I can meet you there, Vince. Leavenworth and Eddy, but not at the corner. Give me two hours and I’ll be there.”
“Two hours, huh? Two hours is a long time out here. Are you getting your nails done, Pina?”
“I’ll see you in two hours, Vince,” she says and ends the conversation.

 

Back out on the deck, Charlie has a big grin on his face. “Pina, Pina,” he says, “look what I’ve found.”

He’s still seated where she left him. Pina goes to him and wraps an arm around his shoulder. He has ladybug perched on the middle of his left thumbnail.

“She’s been sitting here the whole time you’ve been inside. That’s a lot of good luck. Put your hand out here. Let’s see if she’ll transfer to you. That would make for double good luck.”
“But what if she flies away?”
“We have to live dangerously, Pina.”
“Won’t that spoil your luck?”
“My good luck has already been made with you. Open you hand.”

She offers her hand and brings his thumb to meet, gently spilling the orange bug into her palm where it rights itself and settles.

“Good luck abounds,” says Charlie.
Pina wants to cry, but forces a smile instead. “Funny, I’ve been collecting all manner of creatures since I’ve been up in Sonoma. Maybe they’ll come along on the Exodus.”
She notices Charlie’s empty cup. “Oh no, I’ve forgotten all about the coffee.” She manages to pass the congenial ladybug back to Charlie. “Be right back.”

She’d rather not tell Charlie about Vince, but she has to. Over coffee she has to tell him.