Fit for a King
Ray Timmins
Leonard Schwartz w
as the owner of a semi-successful chain of flower shops. Profits weren’t astronomical but along with some well-placed investments they afforded him the second largest home in his imperturbable, complacent upper-middle class neighborhood.His old lady was a quiet suburban housewife who enjoyed tending to her vegetable and flower gardens. She was a large woman who liked cooking for the family and often included a side dish which had been grown in her very own garden. She was well provided for and content with the doldrums of life in middle-America.
Leonard was a caffeine and chocolate fiend and quite heavy himself.
He stood at the door of the back porch watching his wife pick her fresh new cucumbers. He gently fingered a King Size Snickers in his front-right pocket.
Their son was away in the Army, which made Leonard proud. He had attempted to enlist during the war but was rejected due to his excruciatingly flat feet.. Though it was a huge disappointment to him at the time he excelled in school and graduated with honors. He had met Ellen in college—she was an anti-war activist. Leonard hated the hippies and their Marxist ideals; but love won him over and he fell deeply for Ellen, and she for him, though he was the square business-type that she had normally avoided. There was just something about Leonard she couldn’t resist—his peculiar attention to detail, his sense of security, his drive.
They had a traditional wedding and both families were satisfied with the union. Everyone saw great things for them in the future.
Leonard had always remained satisfied, inspired even, under the scrutiny of mediocrity. Sometimes, even blissful. But lately, it seemed, his mask of confidence and security was slipping.
One weekend, his daughter Desiree brought her boyfriend, Leo, home from college. Leonard stood up to greet his daughter with a peck on the cheek and a loose, sweaty handshake for Leo. Leonard looked the new boyfriend up and down, suspiciously sizing him up while getting his hand lost in Leo’s enormous grip.
“Good to meet you, son.”
“You too, sir. Desiree speaks very highly of you.”
Leo stood nearly a foot taller than Leonard. He continued eying him from head to toe. Leo draped his arm around Desiree’s neck, his big black hand dangling past her fair, bare shoulder.
“You two have the same name, Daddy. Isn’t that funny?”
“I guess that’s the way it goes?” Leonard muttered.
“Huh?” she said.
“Oh yeah,” he laughed, “that is funny, sweetie.”
Eventually, they sat down to dinner.
“This zucchini is delicious, Mrs. Schwartz,” Leo remarked which made Ellen blush.
“I grew it in my garden.”
Leonard put down his fork. “It’s a little soft though, don’t you think?”
“Oh stop, Daddy—it’s delicious!”
“Yeah, just a bit soft is all I said. I like my zucchini hard and crunchy.”
“News to me,” Ellen said, frowning a little, but quickly smiling again seeing Leo enjoy the bounty of her feast.
“Well, now you know!” Leonard said in a slightly raised, shaking voice, his fork held tight in his primary hand.
Ellen looked at him and rolled her eyes. She turned to Leo and said, “Those zucchini were this big when I picked them.” She held her hands far apart.
Leonard choked on a sip of water.
“Are you alright, pumpkin?” Ellen said, visibly concerned, holding out her napkin to him.
Desiree chimed in, “Wow, you called daddy a pumpkin—it’s a kind of squash, just like a zucchini.”
“I see our money’s being well-spent on your college education.” Gasping, he said, “I’m full! And it’s stuffy in here—I need some air. I’ll be in the backyard if anyone needs me,” Leonard said shortly and got up, the silverware clanging in the hallowed dining room.
“But pumpkin, you didn’t even touch your meat!” Ellen pleaded to Leonard’s hunched back as he shambled toward the rear of the house.
“Sorry, Daddy needs air.”
Leonard had been putting in more time at his downtown store which was, by far, by far, the busiest of his shops. Profits had been low this summer. Summers were usually slow, but this had been a particularly slow one. Although Leonard usually didn’t put much time in at the office, he felt that lately things were falling apart due to his absence.
He sat down at his desk in his plush, but still firm, swivel chair.
“This chair never felt so comfortable,” he said so his accounting clerk could hear him.
Linda continued shuffling papers with her gleaming newly-manicured fingernails.
“I like your nails. They’re very . . . colorful,” he said, staring at her large chest perched like gargoyles behind a silken lavender blouse.
“Thank you, Mr. Schwartz.”
She continued shuffling through files.
Leonard sat in cold silence biting his pencil, exchanging glances between his empty desk calendar and Linda’s ample bosom. He licked his lips and there were chips of wood and yellow paint on his tongue.
Linda stood up and turned to Leonard: “Mr. Schwartz, I’m going to lunch.”
“OK, dear.”
He watched her wide hips sway side-to-side as she walked out the office door. She peeked back in and his gnawed pencil dropped to the floor.
“New pants, Mr. Schwartz?”
“Oh, yes. Black—very slimming, ya know.”
“They look good.” She smiled, her stunning face dissipating from the doorway like a mirage.
Leonard smiled, looking down at his pants. He readjusted his crotch and giggled a bit. He picked up his pencil from the floor and tossed it in the wastebasket from across the office. Leonard raised his hands in victory and quietly cheered himself. Standing up, he arched his back and loosened his neck. He sucked in his fat gut, looked down at his new pants again, smiled and left the office to make his rounds.
He smiled at Lisa, the counter clerk, and asked about her day.
“Lots of orders today. Three of them funeral arrangements.”
“Good. Very good,” he said, not taking in what she said.
He fingered the petals of a fresh arrangement of pink carnations, put his nose to them and sniffed. His eyes lolled in ecstasy.
Outside, the delivery van pulled up. The window was down and he could hear loud rock music blaring from the inside. The driver stepped out, slammed the door and flicked a cigarette butt across the parking lot. Leonard watched as his driver, Johnny, grabbed his crotch and yanked on it, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. Johnny noticed Mr. Schwartz staring and gave him a crooked smile and a wink.
Leonard marched up to the front door and held it open as Johnny swaggered in.
“Afternoon, Mr. Schwartz.”
“Yes, yes . . . must you blast your music so loud?”
“Was it too loud? I’m a little deaf, I suppose.”
“Wonder why?”
Johnny turned and peered into Leonard’s dark eyes and Leonard shook a bit: “Good one, Mr. Schwartz!”
“Yes. Make all the deliveries on time, did you?”
“Absolutely! Oh, ‘cept this funeral—the guy was already buried before I arrived with the bouquets.”
Leonard’s eyes were aflame: “What?!”
“Gotcha! Mr. Schwartz.”
“Of course,” Leonard said, feigning a smile.
“Goin’ to lunch, man.”
“Alright, man.”
“Alright, man,” Johnny snickered.
Leonard wandered around a bit till he decided to go to the break room for a soda. He reached in his front right pocket, felt the King Size Snickers and smiled. His eyes twinkled as he stepped through the doorway; Linda and Johnny sat inside looking intently at each other, talking and slowly eating from a bowl of fresh strawberries. The glistening fruit looked delicious.
“Hey, Mr. Schwartz,” Linda said, looking up. “Would you like a strawberry—they’re really good.”
“No, that’s alright—I’m not hungry. Just came to get something to drink.”
Johnny had a little strawberry juice dripping from his lip. “They’re really juicy and sweet!”
“I see,” Leonard grimaced and walked over to the soda machine. He pulled out some change from his candy bar pocket and bought a diet Coke.
Linda took a napkin and wiped the juice from Johnny’s face. They were laughing and talking about something; Leonard only heard the words beauty and sculpture.
He walked outside hoping to catch a cool breeze. There wasn’t one. He pulled out his candy bar and opened it with Halloween-glee. The chocolate was melted, but he ate it anyway, masticating like a hog at the trough. There was chocolate on his face when he was done. He wiped with his hand, but only got some of it off. He was rejuvenated now, ready for anything. He walked back in, since there was no breeze and he was beginning to sweat. He nodded at Johnny and Linda, they looked up briefly then quickly back at each other.
Leonard went back into the store. He heard muffled laughs from the break room. He ignored it, went to use the bathroom and saw his chocolate-stained face in the mirror—a small spot right next to his lip. He left the bathroom, forgetting to pee. He wiped his face with his hand and stormed out of the shop without saying a word. His luxury sedan screeched, madly speeding onto the road and into afternoon traffic.
Leonard arrived home, still furious. He tore through the living room. Leo and Desiree were sitting on the couch watching television.
“Hello, Daddy.”
Leonard grunted and walked briskly upstairs to the bathroom. After locking the door he sat down on the toilet and began rubbing his crotch. It felt good, but he couldn’t get hard. He grunted again. He sat and looked around aimlessly. He played with his wife’s seashell-shaped soaps—soaps that were for show, not use. He hated those soaps. Their powdery, flowery scent disgusted him. He thought back to the time he used one of the seashells while taking a shower—just to see how well it worked as soap. It hadn’t lathered much, but he managed to masturbate with it—it offered a good balance of lubrication and friction. He had been thinking of the neighbor who had just moved in—a recently divorced woman about his age.
Leonard then remembered that he had to piss. He did. He washed his hands and face with a conch-shaped soap and brushed his tangled hair neat. He descended the stairs like a gladiator. Leo and Desiree were snuggled up on the couch, she was sleeping in his arms. He smiled, gently kissing her forehead now and then.
Leonard stepped quietly past them, forcing a smile. Leo smiled back with restive eyes. Leonard moved with immense purpose toward the front door, into the yard; his neighbor, Katherine, was watering her flowerbed. She was bent over. Leonard stared at her behind twitching underneath the soft cotton of her pale blue sun dress. In the past, they had exchanged glances and hellos. Leonard liked the spark in her eyes and the warmness of her smile as well as her voluptuous body.
“I know flowers,” he said to himself. Straightening his back, he walked over to her. She looked around from her bent position and till she saw him. Biting her lower lip, she grinned.
He began naming the flowers in her bed.
“I’m impressed,” she said.
He talked about his business for a moment and she remembered having gone there before and the wonderful assortment of flowers it had.
“I love chrysanthemums so much,” she said.
“Yes,” Leonard agreed.
“Have you ever read that Steinbeck story?”
“Hmm?”
“The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck—ya know—Of Mice and Men.”
“Oh, they made my kids read that in school. Good book? I read the paper. As far as books go, I like history. War books, mostly. Revolutionary, Civil, World Wars. History. Guess you find that stuff dry, huh?”
“I don’t read too much non-fiction. I’ve got some tea brewing. Care for some?”
“Sure. Tea sounds nice.”
They talked for a few minutes. The conversation drifted to Johnny at work and he became visibly irritated.
“He’s just so damn cocky, that Johnny. And I think he has plans for my accountant, Linda. You should see the way he looks at her. Talking about sculpture and eating strawberries with her. He’s just trying to get in her pants, it’s so obvious. And she just eats it up like he’s this wonderful guy. So cocky—all these young guys just want one thing. She’s such a sweet and pretty young thing.”
“Well, maybe he does really like her. Of course, he has hormones too. What’s wrong with that? And what about sculpture?”
“There was this painter my wife was seeing right before me. He used the whole sensitive artist thing on her too. I’d see him around campus sometimes and he had that same cocky look on his face—and always doped up, I might add. He said that he wanted to paint her in the nude. He did—several times. And I saw one of those paintings—perverted crap. Just glamorized pornography. That’s all those artists are—perverts and homosexuals. All cowards who steal and ruin our young girls and boys with their talk of beauty and art and truth. Just a line—a ruse to their perverted and immoral ends.”
“Is that what you really think?” She could no longer keep eye contact.
Leonard kept on with fire in his eyes, heavy perspiration building on his forehead. “Not what I think, it’s what I know. You wanna know what that artist did to my wife?”
“What?”
“He found a new subject and began painting her in the nude. Turned out, he was sleeping with her too. While he was seeing my wife, he did this. Probably had other impressionable girls in his stable, I would imagine. Swinging that damn thing around all over campus! And I’d see him with his artist friends sometimes. One of them fags leered at me, licked his lips and raised his eyebrows at me like he saw something he liked. I saved Ellen from him.
“That poor beautiful Spanish girl at work needs to be saved too. That Johnny swinging his thing in her face whenever he walks by. I see it. I see it all. And I’ve seen it all before.
“And that goddamn spook is doing the same thing with my daughter! They’re sneaky. Desiree says he’s a business major, just like me. They’re all trying to take our jobs and our little girls! So smug and cocky with that Sambo smile from ear to ear. He’s smiling cuz he thinks he’s gonna steal my little girl away from me. But I’ve got some news for him!”
Katherine was visibly disgusted—she looked away, hoping he’d take the hint and leave.
But Leonard continued the hateful barrage:
“Her whole life I told her. I warned her about them. I told her how they wanted to feel superior to us. I warned her. She was such a sweet girl till she went away to college. And they’re all in college now. Not that there aren’t good ones who understand.”
“Understand?”
“It’s the young ones—so cocky and stubborn!
“The way they breed in the ghetto, they’re gonna outnumber us all. And the ones not in the ghettos are mixing with us. Look at the Puerto Ricans—
all mixed you can’t tell what’s what anymore.
“That girl Linda’s Puerto Rican. And Johnny—a cocky young white kid—he just wants her for sex—what else, talking about sculpture and staring at her ass as she walks by.
“I even saw him touch himself once while she walked by. He looked at me and looked away. He had this smirk on his face and he licked his lips. The world is going to hell!”
Leonard pounded his fist on the table—his tea glass fell to the floor and shattered.
“Goodness, Leonard!”
“Sorry, just got a little worked up. Look at me, I’m sweating.”
“It’s OK, I’ll clean it up.”
“I didn’t even get to try the tea. What kind was it?”
“Chamomile and Rosehip.”
“Maybe I should have drank some—wouldn’t’ve gotten so worked up.”
“I don’t think simple tea would have been enough, Leonard, quite frankly.”
“Let me help you.”
Katherine said, stuttering a bit, “Maybe you should just go, Leonard!”
“Oh no, Katherine, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll calm down. Just had a rough day, ya know? And I’ll let you talk. I’ve said enough. I’m not really all that angry. And I’m not really all that hateful either—just a little over-cautious. I love my daughter and don’t want her to get hurt is all.”
She smiled sympathetically: “Alright, Leonard. But no more yelling! OK? And enough of the racial epithets, as well.”
“Yes. Yes. I apologize.” Leonard squirmed in his chair like a tadpole.
He composed himself a bit and said, “So, Katherine, do you have any children?”
“Yes. Two boys, Craig and Sam. One’s an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. Very successful. The other is a painter and sculptor.”
Leonard swallowed hard: “Oh?”
“That’s right, Leonard, he’s an artist. He’s been married ten years—to a woman, I might add—and has two children. He has his art displayed in museums around the country. He’s also very successful.”
“And your attorney son?”
“What? Oh, do you mean, is he married?”
“Sure, yeah.”
“Yes he is, Leonard.”
“Any kids?”
“No, he and his husband have decided against it for now.”
Leonard squirmed more.
“I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
“For saying all those things before about artists and homosexuals and all. I just don’t know what’s happening to me lately,” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s OK, Leonard.
“What’s wrong with me, Katherine?”
She shrugged.
“I run my business well, but . . . it’s everyone else. Conspiring one way or the other. This whole world dead set against me.”
“What is it you want, Leonard?” she asked in a soothing, maternal tone.
“For my children to be happy. And Ellen. I know I’ve made them miserable. I just don’t know how. I’ve tried and tried my best. I really do love them.”
“That’s obvious. But what do you want, Leonard?”
Leonard began to squirm again: “I just don’t know.” He looked into her sympathetic eyes.
She stood up, turned her back and began straightening up. “Sounds like you need to figure out what you want out of life. Find a new hobby—
ya know, something on the side?”
Leonard awakened, his eyes glowed from the inside of his brain. He stared penitently at her behind while she worked. Something on the side, huh?
“I know exactly what you mean.” He felt the urge to pounce, but hesitated.
After cleaning up the mess, she said, “If you’ll excuse me, Leonard, the gardener will be coming over soon and we have a lot to do.”
The sound of her voice shook his heart, instilling a strange fear. He heard his name repeat in his head over and over in her soothing aria and felt helpless to her claws. He writhed like a snail out of its shell—trying to regain some form to his boneless body, he stood up and said good-bye.
“I’d like to talk later, Katherine. Very much.” He emphasized talk with a raised eyebrow.
“Alright then.” She turned to face him and shook his sweaty hand. “So nervous, Leonard. I’m sorry I scolded you earlier.”
“I deserved it, I suppose.”
He went home and ran into his bedroom. His head was dizzy with anticipation. Such a lovely body. Oh, the things he could do. He felt his crotch for a moment and effortlessly passed wind. The room stunk up quickly. “All those damn garden vegetables,” he said as he walked to the window to let in some fresh air.
He spotted Katherine outside in her backyard. Her dress was blowing in the breeze. Then he saw the gardener. Thirty-something, tall and broad. He had an unshaven face and was wearing loose-fitting overalls covered with dirt and grass stains. Leonard felt a burning envy, but watched curiously, nonetheless.
The two of them kissed in the middle of her small apple orchard. She grabbed his crotch and he rubbed her behind gently. She led him to a tree and got down on her knees, pushing him back against it. Leonard began stroking. She stood up and hiked her thin blue dress up, standing against the gardener. Leonard saw just enough of her ass and got even more excited. He ejaculated onto the window. He heard footsteps. Trying to zip up, he turned around and looked in horror as the bedroom door opened and Ellen stepped inside with her dirty trowel and her earth-stained clothes.
She looked up and said, “I thought I heard you come . . .”
Ellen looked away and began walking back out: “. . . up here, Le—“ Her voiced trailed off, Leonard’s gut wrenched in embarrassment. He looked down: a long pearl string was dripping from his hand on to the carpet.
“Ellen?”
His voice cracked.
“Ellen, honey?”
He cleaned up quickly, ran downstairs and caught her as she was about to walk into the backyard and said one last time, “Ellen, baby?”
She looked down: “Your fly, Leonard.”
He looked down and he was unzipped, a ball of semen on his black pants, shimmering like a diamond. He yanked the zipper up without looking, caught himself in it and began howling. The kitchen shook. A decorative plate fell from above the sink and shattered on the floor. It was from the Franklin Mint: a Gone with the Wind plate which had been an anniversary gift for Ellen three years ago. Rhett and Scarlet were now scattered into thousands of pieces on the tiled floor of an otherwise spotless kitchen. Leonard fixed his fly—in an excruciatingly swift motion—and wiped his pants. His armpits were sweating profusely, his forehead was boiling over. He darted out the front door, slammed himself inside the car and sped away down the quiet suburban street.
The sun was unbearable. Leonard wiped his sweaty face. He looked in the rear view mirror and stared at his twitching reflection. There was blood on his forehead. He looked down at his hand and it was covered with blood as well. He swerved on the empty street but regained control. He pulled over and unzipped. Where the zipper had caught there was a small cut. He grabbed some napkins from the glove compartment and blotted the wound. He left the napkins in his pants, zipped up, and drove towards the beach. It felt like the place to go.
His mind raced, his paranoia came to a head. He sensed eyes staring behind sunglasses as he turned on to the main road heading east.
The searing heat of the sun made him dizzy. He realized that he did not have the AC on, or the radio, so he turned the AC all the way up and reached for the power button to the radio. Ice-cold air gushed from the vents which were all pointed at him. As he cooled down dried blood cracked off his fingers. He tuned from station to station.
Leonard normally listened to the easy listening station, but wanted something different now. He didn’t know what. He ignored the stares, but felt all eyes crawling on him like bugs. He had something that everyone wanted. They wanted to drain every corner of his soul till he withered away, he saw it all clearly now.
“Animals!” he screamed as he stopped on a classic jazz station. He hadn’t heard jazz like it for many years. He fondly recalled the days of his youth when his father would play jazz records all night while he worked in his den. Count Basie and Louis Armstrong. Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker. Duke Ellington. Leonard would listen through the walls, enjoy the notes buzzing through them. In the solitude of his room, lying in bed he dreamed in music. Notes and chords and lines of melody shifted and jumped around in his head. His father often talked about jazz, seated in his mighty chair in the living-room or at the dinner table in between bites.
His father would eat ferociously and talk about jazz. About how improvisation had developed over the years and was molding the music into something beyond the grasp of the old masters. His father would sometimes smirk and cast a doubtful eye on the new players, but still listened, nevertheless with an open mind. Jazz was the one thing he knew that his father had really liked. He never even knew what he had done for work. Accountant maybe.
When he was in grade school Leonard took up the clarinet. He liked to think of his name as Lenny now, after Lenny Bruce. He spent hours in his room improvising with what little skill he had learned from basic lessons in school. His father never praised him but never discouraged him either. Leonard would sit in his room for hours and improvise to the jazz through the wall hoping that his father could hear him, hoping for some acknowledgment. His father walked in on him one day—Lenny kept on playing, happy to have an audience. His father scolded him for the noise, saying he needed peace while he worked. Then he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Lenny sat in silence and heard the phonograph get louder. The music screamed through the apartment while his father was hard at work back in his lair of solitude. Lenny turned in his clarinet at school the next day. He never picked up another instrument again.
Now the jazz pumped through the speakers of Leonard’s luxury car. Paid for by all the beautiful flowers, he thought, smiling. The music was more than perfect. He looked out his window at other cars and saw every smiling face and each winking eye behind black sunglasses. He could smell the scent of the ocean filtering through the AC vents with the chilly air. He turned the air down halfway and could hear every wonderful note piping through his speakers, the syncopated rhythms thumping with his heartbeat.
When Leonard arrived at the beach he parked and filled the meter with change. He walked down the beach road looking from side to side, nodding at every passerby with a magical smile, suddenly over his deep suspicions of the world.
Hello whore, he nodded at a woman with an exquisite body dressed in a red bikini.
Hello little fag, he nodded, pantomiming the tipping of a hat to a young, effeminate man in casual beach-wear.
Hello young mama, he subtly curtsied to a woman walking with her young daughter, both in bathing suits with ocean-soaked hair and sand on their sunburned legs.
He winked at a tall muscular man in a white Speedo: Hello, stud!
Leonard was in love with the world for the first time in his life. He moved through the streets like a long flowing line of improvisation from an old jazz tune. He looked down and saw a huge bulge in his pants. He remembered the blood-soaked napkins. Laughing, he looked up and spotted a middle-aged woman smiling at him.
“Madame,” he said politely, bowing slightly.
Leonard walked a few more blocks, then walked back to his car. Every face he saw seemed both vaguely familiar and completely new. With a feline pounce he hopped in his car and looked in the rear-view mirror as he fitted the key in the ignition. There were two small patches of dried blood on his wrinkled forehead.
He shuddered from an icy chill that wouldn’t leave his body for a couple minutes—it felt like a demonic possession. He stared directly in front of him, wiped the blood from his forehead and headed straight for the flower shop—to his office and his cushy seat. He thought of nothing now but the progression of his speeding car—point A to point B—blind to anything beyond, completely gripped by that one obsession.
Suddenly, he knew what to do without the hampering indecisiveness he had been a slave to his whole life. Set things right. Envy and fear were dead. The past—distant memories blinking out like the lights along an early morning highway. Dawn was opening up before him in the waning heat of late afternoon.
Johnny was locking up the delivery van. Leonard walked past him, not looking. Johnny shook his head and Leonard quietly stepped into the flower shop and made a bee-line to his swivel chair.
He sat down and swung side to side. Linda stepped in.
“Oh, goodness, Mr. Schwartz—didn’t see you come in.”
He put his fingers together, held them to his lips and stared at the cubicle wall in front of him, rocking his chair back and forth.
“Linda?”
She crept around his cubicle to greet him.
He did not look at her. The alien curves of her body were working a spell that bounced off his newly-found psychic armor.
“I need you to get something for me.”
“Yes, Mr. Schwartz. What is it?”
“I need to get a present for my neighbor’s birthday. She’s single and all. Just as a gag, understand?”
“Yes, but what is it?”
“Thought you could help. Can you help me, Linda?”
His black, insect eyes looked up into hers
“Yes, what is it?” Linda said again with a perplexed expression.
“Oh, it’s nothing really.”
He smiled, she smiled back.
“It’s just that she’s a lonely middle-aged woman and I wanted to get her a toy.”
“Toy?”
“Ya know, an adult toy. I’d get it but I’m too embarrassed to go into such a place and buy it. Don’t want them thinking things, understand?”
“But, Mr. Schwartz?”
He pulled out a one hundred dollar bill and put it in her trembling fingers.
“There’s a place just down the road—that-a way. I’ve passed it many times. I really want to give it to her tonight. As a goof. So get the biggest one you can find, huh?”
“Look, Mr. Schwartz,” she said, her voice softer, “maybe we should talk or something?”
He stared back at the cubicle wall and said, “Certainly, we can talk when you get back. It’s her birthday today. Don’t know why I put this off. It’s what she wants—she’ll get a kick out of it. Talk. Certainly. Please hurry, precious. Keep the change.”
His stare grew emptier and emptier. The words had just come from his mouth, he knew nothing of Katherine’s birthday. Even the purpose of the dildo was a mystery to him. He just knew he had to have it. Linda shook her head and hurried away.
Time stood still while he waited; he found a King Size Snickers in his desk drawer and pocketed it.
Finally, Linda arrived back. She slammed a large plastic bag onto his desk. He looked up and smiled. He started to thank her and saw her enraged eyes welling up with tears.
“I won’t be in anymore, Mr. Schwartz. Sorry.”
She dropped the change on his desk and he watched her wiggle out the door as the coins clanged to the floor and desk. His cheeks began to ache from grinning. He peeked inside the plastic bag and saw the edge of a large black phallus packaged neatly in cardboard and plastic. He left the change on the desk and headed, bag in hand, to his car.
Linda was in Johnny’s arms as Leonard unlocked his car door and got inside, still grinning, his pupils narrowed to pinheads.
Johnny yelled, “You fucking old perv!”
Leonard drove home and began to recall all the cards he had somehow ignored which were lined up on Linda’s desk. He remembered seeing a candy dish with a heart-shaped balloon and a small wooden carving of a buxom figure. He shook the thought off—it was making his head pound.
He got home and headed straight for the upstairs bathroom with the seashell soaps. He remembered, as he opened the bathroom door, that there were party decorations—balloons, a banner—up in the kitchen, and that his family had stood still as he had stormed up the stairs.
Leonard sat down on the toilet and pulled the giant dildo from the bag and stared at it. Then he remembered what day it was. It was both his daughter’s birthday and Linda’s. He shivered, trying to ignore the thought as it seemed to make no connection to anything real in his new world.
Carefully, he took the dildo out of its package, unzipped his pants and stared at the bloody rags. He yanked them off, pulling off the scab where he had cut himself earlier—it begun bleeding again.
Leaning back against the cold toilet, he spread his legs. He aimed the dildo and carefully brought it in. He thought of Linda and Desiree and his poor wife with her giant zucchini. He remembered the candy bar in his pocket and Johnny’s swagger and his daughter’s black buck who shared his name. The gardener giving it to his neighbor while he stole glances and climaxed on the bedroom window. The strange scene at the beach and all the eyes descending upon him. This was one place where no one could see, this was now Leonard’s little universe. The king was upon his throne.
He flinched at first, then sighed in ecstasy as a deep understanding filled him through and through.
