Beauty Series: Beauty From Love Part 31

He flicks on the bedside lamp. "Wow. s.h.i.+t. I think you're right. Oh, baby, I am so sorry. Let me get some ice. I have WaterGel in the jump kit, but we should maybe eat first, don't you think?"

I don't know if I should cry or scream.

"Here. Just try this." He reaches into the bag of chips and scoops sour cream, guacamole, refried beans, and an olive onto a chip. "Here comes the airplane!"

Instead of opening my mouth, I grab a handful of his culinary masterpiece and smear it all over his face. Ahhhh, that feels better.

"What the-geeze, Hollie, you're going to get this all over the bedding now."

I respond with another handful, this time across both cheeks. Now I'm laughing. He's not sure what to do. I lick my fingers. Mmmm, that guac is good.

"Pa.s.s me the chips." He swipes his finger down one cheek and pops it into his mouth. Hands me the bag.

"d.a.m.n. Not bad."

The Yorkies are onto us. They can smell the food. Now they're whining outside the door. Keith, for once, tells them to quiet down. They do. He kneels next to the bed and removes the washcloth from my left nipple. Stares at it closely, then looks back up to me. I think he's asking for permission.

He pops it in his mouth and gives it a little twirl of the tongue. Feels decent enough. Until he suddenly releases and runs to the bathroom. "Still hot. Still hot!"

The bedroom door thrusts open and I'm a goner. Three Yorkies are on the bed like, well, like Yorkies on an open buffet.

"Keith! The DOGS!" As much as I want this to be erotic, it is exactly the opposite. I don't mind a little kink, but b.e.s.t.i.a.lity is not on my list.

"Trixie! Pixie! No! Moxie, get down!" he yells, shooing them away. As soon as he drops one dog on the floor, another takes its place.

"Get them out of here, dude! Jesus!"

"I'm trying!"

The nachos-what's left of them-are completely inedible. "Hand me a towel, please. Now."

With two dogs under one arm and me holding the third one back from eating through to my navel piercing, Keith tosses me a towel. I scoop and dump the remaining Mexican feast onto it.

"I'm taking a shower."

"So ... are we not going to ..."

"No, Einstein. We're not."

The Yorkies bark at me, p.i.s.sed that they can't have the rest of the nachos. "Come to Daddy. Mommy's not mad at you, babies, don't you worry. Come here, mwuah, mwuah, mwuah." He's kissing them again. Those dogs get more action than I do. Which is disgusting. And pathetic.

I'm sensing a trend here.

"Not their mommy," I mumble, moving in for my second shower in under thirty minutes.

Once cleansed of nachos-nipples still on fire-I dress in clothing decent enough to leave the house. Throw on my coat, grab my keys.

"Where you goin'?"

"I need food, Keith. Unless you have some kibble in the pantry that the Yorkies haven't eaten."

"I don't feed them kibble."

"Leaving now."

"Wait, I'll come with." He dresses and turns the monster TV in the living room to kids' programming.

"I don't think the dogs like Thomas the Tank Engine."

"They like the songs on this channel. Keeps them calm." Duh, Hollie.

Keith throws on his ginormous parka with, you guessed it, huge pockets filled with medical supplies. Just in case. He's a caricature of himself.

"Leave the steth, Keith."

"What? No way."

"You look like a tool. Leave it."

He stares at me for a second, that hurt look I'm sure he gave his mother when she told him to stop operating on the neighbor with her kitchen utensils, and pulls the stethoscope from around his neck. He kisses the Yorkies again, three little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds licking his face and ears, and moves away from the couch.

"If someone dies at the restaurant, it's on you."

"Wouldn't be the first time today."

My phone chimes in my pocket en route to the car. Text from Dad. "Call me. Have a surprise for you." I hate surprises. The last one involved me wearing a ridiculous pink taffeta gown and a cupcake hat-seriously, a silk and taffeta hat sewn and stuffed into the shape of a cupcake-for my non-sister's wedding to a creepy guy who smells like other women's perfume most of the time.

As we're in the drive-through for Noodle Yu, another buzz from my phone. An email. I should never have introduced my father to technology. I open it to find a registration confirmation from a resort. Dad, what are you up to?

It reads "Revelation Cove, British Columbia, Canada. Gift registration, four days, three nights, Sweethearts' Spa & Stay Package for two. Love, Dad."

"What the h.e.l.l?"

"What is it?"

"Umm ... my dad ... you know that resort we were talking about?"

"The one up north?"

"Yeah."

"What about it?" Keith shoves a fortune cookie into his mouth before his debit transaction has finished. He chews with his lips open. The young girl working the drive-through window looks unimpressed.

"He bought us a gift certificate. For four days, three nights."

Keith finishes chewing. "What will we do about the dogs?"

I stare at him. Seriously? The f.u.c.king dogs? How about, "Thanks, Mr. Porter, for spending a grand on a weekend that will undoubtedly provide many opportunities for me to practice impregnating your daughter."

"Well, uh, I don't think the dogs are invited."

"Does it say when we have to go?"

"You don't have to go anywhere, Keith. If you'd rather stay home with your dogs."

He stabs a straw into his soda cup, driving with his knee. "You know what I mean."

"I'm sure you can get your sister to dogsit. It's only four days."

Keith stares at me, as if I've just asked him to donate a kidney to a walrus. "Uh, I don't know if that's possible. I don't trust her to take proper care of them."

"We're not taking them with, if that's what you're getting at."

He pauses too long at a green light. Someone honks behind us and he flips them off. But the vacancy in his eyes confirms that I've clearly just delivered terrible news. "Why not?"

"On a floatplane? And Yorkies on a romantic getaway for two is way not romantic and very much not a getaway. We might as well stay home."

"I'm not comfortable leaving them behind, Hollie."

"With your sister?"

"Yes, even with my sister. She kills things. You should see her plants. Nothing but stems and dirt." So this plan is better than I thought. We leave your three Yorkies with Yvette and come home to no Yorkies. I like this plan. So much. Must resist cackling and witchy wringing of hands.

"Well, then find a plan B. I don't want to take the dogs with us."

"But I wuvs them ... what will they do without their daddy and mommy to tuck them in at night for a four whole days?"

"If you wuvs me, Keify, then you'll stop talking like you've spent your childhood eating lead paint and find a dogsitter." I quickly email my dad back and tell him I'll call tomorrow, and thank you but you didn't have to do this. I'm out of the car before Keith has it in park. My appet.i.te has been replaced with annoyance.

Time to give this body some narcotic sleeping aids and put it to bed.

But before that, before I can sneak upstairs and sedate my frustration, I have to get past The Door.

Her door.

A finger against my lips, I motion to Keith to shut up. At all costs, do not speak.

Squeeeeeak, mutters the first step. s.h.i.+t.

"Hollie? Is that you?" Keith shoves past me and bolts up the stairs. I throw my Chinese takeout box at him, hoping it will explode against his back. It does not. Merely bounces and flies over the railing, splaying open on the gra.s.s. a.s.shole actually laughs at me.

"Yes, Mrs. Hubert. It's Hollie."

A tiny wrinkled body that I think was at some point human shuffles to her screen door. She's wearing the same housecoat as usual-snaps up the front, pockets bulging with spent Kleenex, her lucky, fifty-year-old Avon perfume pin clipped limply over where her left b.o.o.b should be, if it weren't dangling down around her belly b.u.t.ton. Suntan knee-high stockings crumple around bony, knotted anklebones, her feet stuffed in slippers that were pink in their former lives. Behind her, a sickly meow echoes through the kitchen.

"Hollie, I need half-and-half and some frozen peas. And Mr. Boots needs wet food. Go get it."

"Mrs. Hubert, I'm exhausted."

"And I'm a lonely, dying woman who spends her days and nights praying that Jesus will come for her. Have you seen my hands?" She thrusts her hands through the gap in the screen door. Her skin is so translucent, it's easy to trace the bulbous veins snaking up her arms and disappearing under yellowed sleeves. "Hurry up. Jeopardy is on soon and I don't want to have to get up again."

I lock eyes with this-this-creature, wis.h.i.+ng the apocalypse would happen right this second and I would be saved from her terrible wrath. A look up the stairs proves that Keith is nowhere in sight.

Lifting my purse strap back over my shoulder, I do the only thing I know how to do.

I turn around and slither back to my car so I can go to the market to do Mrs. Hubert's relentless bidding, hoping that while I'm gone, Satan will come and claim the prize that's been missing all these years from his wicked collection.

"Take Mr. Boots too," I mumble.

end.