Can't Get Enough of Your Love (9 page)

There's not much else to do in Roanoke in February, you know.

“Well, I'll get right to the points, I mean, point, Miss, um”—he looked at a card—”Cole.”

He had noticed my points. I checked my girls, and my points were still right pointy. Karl says they're “half dollars.” Juan says they're
pesos
or something. Roger would later call them “pepperoni.”

“You have a name?”

“Oh. Yeah. I'm Roger McDowell. Um, Miss Cole—”

“Lana.”

“Um, Lana, have you ever thought about where you might go when you die?”

“Heaven, I hope,” I said.

His face got all red. “No, um, I meant, have you ever thought about where your body would go?”

“Huh?”

He smiled, and he had a decent smile, a little toothy but not bucktoothed. “I get that a lot.”

“Get what a lot?”

“That ‘huh.'” He handed me his card. “I represent Fairview Cemetery, and believe it or not, we're having a sale.”

That's when I started cracking up.

“That's right, Lana, for a limited time, you can get two plots at Fairview Cemetery for the pre-need discounted price of seventeen hundred dollars, and if you act quickly—”

“Before I die, right?”

“That's right. If you act quickly before you die, not only will you pay as low as twenty-five dollars a month, perpetual care included, but you may also qualify for thirty-six months of interest-free payments and”—he raised his eyebrows—”you can pick out a pair of nice plots in the front row.”

I liked him and his sense of humor immediately—I'm impulsive like that—so I invited him inside and had him sit on Mama's favorite couch. The couch is black-and-white checked, and Roger was red, white, and embarrassed all over it.

“I knew you weren't interested,” he said, “so I went off the script.”

“There's a script?”

“Yeah.”

“That's creepy.”

“I know.”

“Does it work?”

He nodded. “But it only seems to work if the person I'm talking to is sixty or older. It's usually the discounted headstone that seals the deal.”

“No way.”

“You'd be surprised how often people actually come out to browse the cemetery, looking for a prime piece of real estate.”

“They actually come out to pick their planting places?” I know spit was flying when I said that.

He shrugged. “Some want a nice view of the valley or the mountains, and others just want some shade.”

I have never laughed so much about death in my life. He told me about people who asked the strangest questions: “Where's the nearest sewage line?” “Does this cemetery have a drainage system?” “What if there's a flood?” “Do you really put the caskets six feet deep?” “Why six feet and not seven feet or even eight?” I watched Roger light up as he talked, focusing on his little dimples, his curly red hair, the red hair on his legs sprouting just above his black dress socks, the overall smoothness of his skin, his man-gina and what that might feel like on my stuff.

“I have an easier time with women,” he told me, “because most of the time, their husbands precede them into the great beyond—or they're
about
to.”

“It costs seventeen hundred dollars?”

He nodded.

“And that's a discount?”

“You wouldn't believe how much it costs if you wait until someone dies, and we only take cash then.”

I blinked. “How much?”

“A couple thousand.”

D-damn.

“As the script says”—he cleared his throat—”your cost is always much, much less if you plan ahead.”

“To be dead,” I added.

He smiled. “Yeah.”

“Um, isn't it kind of, well, creepy to bring death into people's houses?”

He nodded. “I get a lot of doors slammed in my face.”

What a crummy job
, I thought,
but he has to be paid pretty well
. “How does a person get your job, Roger?” I asked.

“I was born into it.” He sighed. “It's a family business.”

“Oh.” In a way, I was glad. I mean, if Roger had actually gone to some school to learn how to plant people, I would have been even more freaked out. “Um, what happens if your cemetery, um, runs out of space?”

He squared his shoulders and changed his voice to someone older. “At the present rate of interment, Fairview should have burial space well into the twenty-second century.”

Creepier.

“That's what my father tells people.”

“And you just … go door-to-door like this?”

“When the weather's nice. And if I'm not doing this, I'm putting flowers out on graves—you know, the graves of those whose families have forgotten them.”

“That's sweet.”

“A lot of people forget. But mostly, I am the perpetual-care man, cutting the grass and trimming around the graves. I also assist my father at interments. Pretty soon I'll be supervising interments on my own.”

That has to be the hardest job of all! All that pain and sorrow, maybe daily, and, what, there may be three or four funerals some days? It made me appreciate dealing with developmentally handicapped kids a lot more. All I have to do is push a wheelchair, help a kid feed himself or herself, or make sure they get in and out of the bathroom okay. Roger has to watch people at their lowest, their most grief-stricken.

“I've taken up too much of your time,” he said, and he stood, all six feet of him.

I like a man who's taller than I am, and I especially like a man who has a sense of humor. He was someone I could talk to, unlike Karl or Juan Carlos, so I had to
get him to come back. “My mama might be interested.” I knew she wouldn't be interested at all, but at least I'd get to see him again.

He took out a little notepad. “How old is your mother?”

I blinked.

“Sorry. I shouldn't have asked.”

“No, it's all right. I suppose you have to ask. Mama is pushing fifty, but she looks much older.”

He wrote it down. “I'll have to come back before it's too late, then.”

I nodded, biting my lip to keep myself from smiling.

“Is there, um, a Mr. Cole?”

“No. He doesn't live with us. Um, can you come back later tonight?” I didn't want to be with Karl two nights in a row, and Juan Carlos was working too late again, so I thought … why not?

“Sure.”

“Around seven.”

He smiled. “Seven. See you later, Lana.”

I tripped all through dinner with Mama, asking her all sorts of questions.

“How are you feeling, Mama?”

“Fine, just fine.”

“How's your blood pressure?”

She looked up from her greens at me. “Normal.”

“They check you for diabetes every time you go, right?”

“Yes.”

“You haven't, um, gone through the change yet, have you?”

“No. What's this about?”

“Nothing.”

When the doorbell rang at seven—Roger is a punctual man, too—I burst out of the kitchen to the front door. I returned to the kitchen with my hand firmly grasping Roger's arm.

“Mama?”

Lots of delicious blinking.

“This is my friend, Roger.”

“Uh-huh,” Mama said.

“Roger has something to tell you, Mama.”

“He … does?” Her eyes were like soup bowls, I swear!

“Yes, ma'am,” Roger said. “May I sit?”

Mama nodded, never taking her eyes off his red hair.

“Mrs. Cole, have you ever thought about where your final resting place will be?”

I knew Mama was shook up because she always corrected people when they called her “Mrs.” By the time he finished his question, however, she turned back into Mama.

“My final what?” she asked.

“Your final resting place. Have you ever thought about where you will be buried in the event of your demise?”

Mama straightened up and looked hard at me. “You're from some cemetery, right?”

“Yes, ma'am. Fairview Cemetery.”

She shot a look at me. “Uh-huh.” She turned to Roger. “I am
not
interested.”

Roger looked at me, and I half expected him to say, “But you
said
she'd be interested.” He only looked down at the table, smiled, and looked back at me … differently, as if he knew why he had made a second trip. “I understand,” he said to Mama. He stood.
“Iunderstand,” he said
to me!
“It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Cole.”

“It's Miss,” Mama spat.

Roger nodded to Mama, nodded to me, and then headed for the door, me trailing behind. At the door he turned, his face getting all pink. “Um, Miss Cole—”

“Lana, remember?”

“Lana. Um, normally two people go out a few times before, you know, meeting the parents, so, uh …”

Damn, he was quick!

“So, are you doing anything, say … tonight?”

I stepped closer to him and whispered, “No.”

“Would you, um, like to do something tonight?”

I nodded. “And since you've already met my mama,” I whispered, “maybe we can take our relationship to a whole new level. Where do you live?”

“I'm practically your neighbor.” He pointed behind Mama's house to some apartments. “I live about a block away.”

Perfect
, I thought.

I had messed with some white guys in high school, but I had never been with any of them in the biblical sense, so that night was illuminating in so many ways.

I drove (so Mama wouldn't be suspicious) to his place, a one-bedroom A-frame apartment within shouting distance of Mama's back deck. It was a clean, neat, and sparse apartment, hardly a bachelor pad. Actually, it was practically empty. A counter with stools sectioned off the kitchenette from the rest of the apartment, which was devoid of any furniture—even a couch—save a thirty-six-inch TV on a stand containing stereo equipment, thin gauze covering the only
large window, which looked out onto the second-floor walkway.

“Um, Roger,” I said, but I didn't finish asking where his bed was because he took me by the hand to the back corner of the apartment to a twelve-by-twelve section of linoleum. He kissed my neck.

“Where's your bed?”

He kept on kissing. “You're standing on it.”

“You sleep on the floor?”

“No.” He tapped the back wall. “That's a wall bed.”

“Oh.”

He worked his way to my girls, introducing himself slowly with his tongue with a lot more tenderness than Juan Carlos or Karl.

“Roger, are you going to—”

I froze. Through the gauze, I saw the outline of someone walking by.

He had my shirt off.

I covered up my girls. “Roger, can they see us?”

He was working on my pants using his teeth on my zipper. “What if they can?”

I didn't stop him because the danger thrilled me right down to my stuff. I let him strip me naked, I stripped him naked, and then he devoured me, right there on that cool linoleum floor as shadows walked by and his skin illuminated the apartment. He didn't glow or anything like that, although he sweated pretty freely … or maybe it was my sweat that caused … Okay, we were both sweating like Michael Jackson at a middle school dance at an all-boys school, sliding all over each other. The sex was better than good, despite how sore my stuff was, his lips and hands touching just about every inch of my body, even my crusty toes. And the wholebody
massage he gave me afterward lasted even longer than he did. He finished and yet he kept going, taking cuddling to a whole new level, whispering to the parts of my body. At first, it was creepy. I mean, how many men have conversations with an elbow? But after a while, I wanted him to talk to my stuff again, and he was oh so willing.

Roger is an
excellent
conversationalist.

And we didn't use the bed until our fifth date.

On our fourth date, a plastic tarp covered the linoleum, and in the corner was a can of black paint and a paintbrush. I didn't ask what they were for. I just got naked.

He first painted my booty (that shit tickled!) and pressed me up against the wall that hid the bed. We stepped back, and he admired my booty print. I painted his ass and did the same to him, putting his booty next to mine.

His booty was much smaller.

“Paint my girls,” I whispered. He did, and now there's a strange set of breasts hanging above my booty, like somehow I was able to twist my upper body completely around. You know I painted his stuff extra carefully, and I used his stuff to sign our names on the wall.

Twice.

In big block letters.

We have been using the wall bed exclusively since then but sometimes we put it up and make love and more art at the same time.

Dangerous. The boy is dangerous, and I like it.

We made a list of all the places where we
might
like to do it, not that we ever would. The list includes the movie theater (back row),
the movie theater (front row),a phone booth (unlighted), a phone booth (lighted), a city bus (at night), a city bus (during the day), a taxi (anytime), a restaurant (crowded), a restaurant (no crowd), the men's room, the ladies' room, and right up against the big window of his apartment behind the gauze. We've done that last one twice, and the second time I popped my head out to smile at a stranger walking by who actually smiled back.

That was a rush.

And afterward, we always eat something: popcorn, chips, ice cream, Easy Cheese, cake frosting, pudding, or anything else he has in his fridge. I brought over some freezer pops one night, and let's just say that I will never have something that cold against my skin—or inside me—again. Though it did keep Roger down there a long time. Roger likes the taste of, um, freezer pops.

While we eat, we watch old black-and-white movies with the sound turned off. Then we “nasty them up” by playing the different parts. We were watching an ancient version of
Frankenstein
one night with Roger playing the monster and me playing the sweet little girl by the pond …