21-ch14

The Statistician wakes up and smells the coffee. Literally.

He rubs his eyes and glances at his watch on the bedside table. 6:11 a.m. It is unlikely that any of the other Not-So-Super Friends are awake this early on a Sunday morning. Who could possibly be brewing coffee already? Maybe Mr. Nice Guy has one of those coffee makers with a timer on it.

Regardless, The Statistician’s foggy brain sure could use some caffeine. He didn’t get much sleep last night, with The Perfect Pair banging their headboard against the wall in the adjacent room, over and over and over again, making at least four separate attempts to start a baby growing inside SuperBarbie. He was also pretty sure he also heard soft moans of pleasure emanating from Hippie Avenger’s room down the hall.

These nocturnal noises did nothing to put Time Bomb in the mood for similar exertions. Neither did his whispering in her ear, “Hey, sweetie, do you want to have a baby?”

She responded by snorting, “After all the work I’ve put into getting my abs in shape? Yeah, right!”

And thus they set a new record for marital abstinence: fifty-seven consecutive nights.

The Statistician rolls out from under the covers, staggers through the door, and pauses in the hallway at the top of the open staircase. The dark aroma of the coffee wafts up from the kitchen, and triggers a vague memory in his waking brain: it smells like the inside of The Protégée’s apartment. He remembers the warm, slick feel of her lips around him, and his erection surges against his biplane-patterned pajama pants.

He can’t go downstairs in this state, so The Statistician tiptoes back into the wood-panelled bedroom, and he holds his breath to avoid waking Time Bomb. When he has finally saturated the Kleenex plucked from the box on the dresser, he allows himself to exhale, slowly, quietly. The Kleenex lands with a wet slap inside the metal trashcan beside the bed.

Time Bomb stirs, but does not wake.

The Statistician rebuttons the fly of his pajama pants and tiptoes down the creaky cottage stairs. Coffee time.

When he is halfway down, he sees her standing at the kitchen counter, pouring the black liquid from an aluminum carafe into an assortment of mugs. His feet fly out from under him, and there is a racket like an off-tempo Saturday-morning-cartoon drum roll — bumpBUMPbumpBUMP bangBANGkaTHUMP! — as The Statistician descends the rest of the staircase on his ass.

She spins away from the counter, rushes toward him, stops halfway. The aluminum carafe slips from her grip, clattering on the floor. Coffee splatters everywhere.

The Statistician is sprawled on the tile floor at the bottom of the steps, heart pounding, adrenalized. He sees her stoplight-yellow panties under her short black skirt. Proceed with Caution. Prepare to Stop.

“What are you doing here?” she says to him.

“What are you doing here?” he says to her.

“Hey, bro,” The Drifter says as he wanders into the kitchen. “You okay?”

“Uhhhhhhh,” says The Statistician.

The Drifter helps his older brother to his feet.

“Your eyes are as big as saucers. I hope you haven’t got a concussion.”

“Ummmm, just a little dazed by the fall.”

“Hey, I see you’ve met my girlfriend. Her Not-So-Super Friend nickname is ‘The Stunner.’ I picked it for her.”

“The Stunner,” The Statistician repeats. It takes a moment for his sleep-deprived, impact-addled brain to put it together: My brother’s new girlfriend is The Stunner. The Stunner is The Protégée. The Protégée is my brother’s new girlfriend.

“Uhhhhhhh,” he says again, rubbing his temples.

“He’ll be okay in a moment, I think,” The Drifter says to The Stunner. “When we’re all here together at this cottage, we call my brother here The Statistician,”

“Umm, hello, Statistician,” says The Stunner, her eyes as wide and dark as The Statistician’s.

“Um, yes,” The Statistician says, “hello, um, Stunner.”

Their fingers barely touch as they shake hands. They avoid looking directly at each other, as if they might turn into pillars of salt.

“Hey,” The Drifter says cheerfully, sliding his arm around The Stunner’s slender waist. “I fell for her the first time I saw her, too.”

“Ha,” The Statistician laughs weakly, rubbing the bruises darkening on his behind and lower back.

“Ha, ha,” laughs The Stunner, who is just as shocked to see her former statistics professor here as he is to see her.

The noise of The Statistician falling down the stairs wakes everyone else in The Hall of Indifference, and soon the other Not-So-Super Friends wander downstairs, yawning, stumbling, not-so-ready-for-action.

First comes Mr. Nice Guy, who wipes up the spilled coffee with a handful of Charmin Extra-Absorbent Paper Towels. He is followed a few minutes later by Time Bomb, who, despite sleeping for most of the previous day, is nevertheless sluggish and raccoon-eyed. Hippie Avenger skips down the stairs, radiating Peace and Love. Her extended, multi-orgasmic self-pleasuring session resulted in a very satisfying night’s sleep.

“Hey!” cheers Hippie Avenger, “look who else is here!”

Miss Demeanor descends the stairs, wearing the same clingy black outfit as a few hours earlier, her glistening she-vampire lipstick reapplied.

“God,” Time Bomb moans, “how do you manage to look so fucking hot first thing in the morning?”

“Never leave your bedroom without putting on your lipstick and your nylons,” Miss Demeanor says, sitting next to Time Bomb at the square, rough-hewn dining room table.

“I could put on a ball gown and have my makeup, hair, nails, and brows professionally done,” Time Bomb says, “and I still look like shit if I wake up before noon.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t kick you out of bed,” Miss Demeanor says, catching a look from Mr. Nice Guy that says, Already? She adds, “I mean, if I were a guy.”

The Perfect Pair are last to join the group at the kitchen table. They are “morning people,” and, to use one of SuperBarbie’s own expressions, they are even more “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed” than usual. After twenty minutes of listening to the legs of their bed hopping percussively on the floor directly over their heads, each of the other Not-So-Super Friends quietly wonder if The Perfect Pair has finally achieved their objective of getting one of SuperKen’s sperm into one of SuperBarbie’s eggs. Since she always has “that glow,” it’s difficult to know for sure if the mission was successful. Either way, SuperKen looks happy. He’s limping more than usual.

The Stunner is instantly liked by everyone when she brews up another pot of her sacred coffee blend for the drowsy group of anti-heroes. When she’s poured a second cup for everyone, she heads for the back door and says, “Well, since all the bedrooms are taken, I think I’ll go outside and start pitching our tent.”

Damn, thinks Mr. Nice Guy, watching her recede from the room, she’s making me pitch a tent. Then, as if there is a comedy-club audience in his head, he adds, In my PANTS!

“I’ll go give her a hand,” The Statistician says.

“Hey, that’s nice of you, bro,” The Drifter says. “I think you’ll like her. She’s really something, eh?”

“She certainly is.”

The Statistician closes the door behind him as he steps outside.

Mr. Nice Guy wanders over beside The Drifter, who sips his coffee in front of the dining-room window, watching The Stunner untie the rolled-up tent from the luggage rack over the rear fender of the Norton Commando. The Statistician stands off to one side, arms folded.

“Looks like your brother and your girlfriend are having quite an animated discussion,” Mr. Nice Guy observes.

“Cool,” says The Drifter. “They’re really hitting it off, eh? I really want him to like her.”

“How could he not like her?” Mr. Nice Guy muses, as he watches The Stunner on her hands and knees, smoothing weathered red canvas across a patch of flat, grassy ground.

My God, what a body, thinks Mr. Nice Guy. Oh, yeah, stretch like that! Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Nice! Nice! Nice!

“Sorry?” says The Drifter. “Did you say something?”

“Oh, I said, ‘nice!’ Like, wow, that is one nice bike you’ve got there. Yeah.”

“Are you crazy?” Hippie Avenger says, partly to Mr. Nice Guy and partly to The Drifter. “There’s nothing nice about it.”

Mr. Nice Guy shrugs. “Hey, I was just being …”

“I know it looks a bit beaten up,” The Drifter says, “but it’s really quite reliable.”

“Why on earth did you have to go and get yourself one of those things?” Hippie Avenger scolds The Drifter. “Like, what’s with this male obsession with speed, anyway?”

“It’s not about the speed,” The Drifter says. “It’s just about being … exposed, I guess. To the open air. To the surroundings.”

“It’s dangerous,” says SuperBarbie, in a matriarchal way.

“Life is dangerous,” The Drifter says, shrugging.

“We just don’t want you to die,” adds Hippie Avenger, her eyes glassy.

“But someday I am going to die, whether you guys want me to or not.”

“You don’t have to go looking for it,” Hippie Avenger says.

“Should I just wait around for it to find me instead?” The Drifter says, his sandpaper voice becoming even more gritty than usual. “Should I sit at a nice safe desk in some generic office cubicle, or in front of a nice safe TV in some cardboard-box suburb, and wait around for a heart attack or a stroke to come take me away?”

The bit about the cardboard-box suburb strikes a chord in Hippie Avenger. She shifts in her seat, sucks on the lip of her coffee cup.

“Why should I settle for that?” The Drifter continues, his raspy voice calm and even. “I’d rather risk dying on my bike, while seeing things I’ve never seen, going places nobody else ever goes, feeling the wind on my face and the vibration of the engine through my body, than to wait trembling and alone inside a box for death to come get me.”

The Drifter pauses. He isn’t accustomed to being listened to by everyone in the room. Not in this crowd, anyway.

Hippie Avenger lays the trump card. “We’ve already lost one friend to a motorcycle crash. I can’t take another phone call in the middle of the night, telling me that someone I care about has …”

Then she winces, looking tentatively at Miss Demeanor. She didn’t mean to mention Psycho Superstar. Not yet, anyway. Nobody has had enough to drink.

“Well,” The Drifter says, “with all due respect to Jake, he had a motorcycle for an entirely different reason than I do. He was only in it for the speed, for the quick-fix adrenaline rush.” He looks at Miss Demeanor and adds, “No offence.”

“None taken,” she says. She knows that Psycho Superstar was into her for the same reason.

“But that’s not what I want out of it,” The Drifter continues, his voice like a tradesman’s rough hands across smooth, soft skin. “I’m in it for the slow, satisfying journey, with lots of stops along the way. I want to take in the scenery and breathe in the air. I’m not interested in the short, fast thrill ride. I want that long, scenic, magical trip, with lots of twists and turns and hills and valleys. I don’t want just the simple thrill of motion; I want that feeling of time and space wrapping around me, making me whole.”

Everyone in the room equipped with a clitoris understands exactly what The Drifter means. And it’s not just what he said. It’s also the way he said it.

SuperKen sees SuperBarbie’s doe-eyed expression, and he rolls his eyes and whispers to Mr. Nice Guy, “What’s with the freakin’ Jack Nicholson impression, eh?”

“Yeah!” Mr. Nice Guy sniggers.

“It’s not an affectation,” The Drifter says, “if that’s what you guys mean. I got pretty badly dehydrated a couple of times in South East Asia. More than once I breathed toxic air, and a couple of times I mistakenly drank things that never should have passed though my throat. It all changed my voice. And it changed me, too.”

Neither SuperKen nor Mr. Nice Guy say anything else. They are unaccustomed to The Drifter talking back like this.

“Tell us more about your trip,” SuperBarbie says.

“It must have been amazing,” says Hippie Avenger.

The Drifter has changed. He’s grown. He’s no longer just The Statistician’s little brother. He’s something else now. And they want to know more.

Just outside the window, the conversation is animated.

“But, but,” The Statistician stammers, “I thought something had happened between us.”

“It was just a blowjob,” says the girl for whom fellatio is but one step from a handshake on the intimacy scale, to the man for whom the Quest for a Blowjob has been the Holy Grail of his adult life.

“As far as the university is concerned, there’s nothing preventing us from being together now,” The Statistician says, pacing back and forth in front of the half-assembled tent. “I’ve submitted the final grades!”

He gave her final theoretical paper a mark of 100 percent without even looking at it. He knew the calculations were perfect, because he’d done them himself.

“There is something preventing us from being together now,” The Stunner says, continuing to knock tent pegs into the ground, avoiding The Statistician’s eyes. “I’m seeing somebody now.”

“Seeing somebody? You’re seeing my little brother, for crying out loud! You’re seeing my little brother.”

“How was I supposed to know he was your brother? We met in a Chinese noodle place. And he’s really not so little.”

The Statistician continues pacing back and forth, rubbing his temples.

“But I thought …”

“It was just a blowjob.”

“But …”

“It was just a blowjob.”

The Statistician stops pacing.

“It was more than that to me.”

“Please,” The Stunner says. “I’m sorry, okay? Don’t make it into more than it was. It was nothing.”

“Well, then,” he says, “I suppose you won’t mind if I tell my brother about it, then. I’m sure he’ll agree that it was nothing.”

“Please don’t tell him.”

“Well, if it really was nothing, I don’t see why …”

“Please don’t tell him!”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“If you care about him, you won’t tell him.”

“If I care about him, I should tell him.”

“Please don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because … because I think I might be falling in love with him.”

“You think you might be falling in love with him. There are a lot of variables in that sentence.”

“I think I’m in love with him.”

“You think you’re in love with him.”

“I’m in love with him.”

“You’re in love with him.”

“I love him.”

“You love him? Oh, come on! You just met!”

“I love him.”

“You love him.”

“Yes.” The Stunner kneels in the flattened grass beside the tent. “I love him.”

The Statistician straightens to his full height, feeling the pain in his back and buttocks from his tumble down the stairs.

“Well, then,” he says, “I guess that makes everything all right, doesn’t it?”

The Stunner wipes the tears away, and says, “Okay. Listen. You don’t tell your brother, and I won’t tell your wife. Deal?”

The Statistician’s breath catches in his throat. He hadn’t even considered including Time Bomb in his calculations. How could he have forgotten to include that variable?

“And that, my Protégée,” he says, turning toward the cottage, “is an equation that balances.”