At ten, he called. Hey, this is Elroy. Were you sleeping?
I was meditating.
Are you busy today?
I have a lot of homework to do.
So you don't have time to do dinner then?
Do you want to do dinner or do me?
Her question surprised him. He stammered. Um, well…
You could come over to my place and have some lunch and we could talk some more.
What do you want me to bring?
I have everything. She gave him her address. See you at twelve, OK?
OK. Bye-bye.
At Andronico's, he bought a large bottle of lemonade Calistoga and two pounds of vegetarian Tortellini. He got to her place fifteen minutes early. He knocked on the door.
Hi.
Hi! She kissed him on the lips. What did you bring? I told you not to bring anything.
I stopped at Andronico's-
Pasta! I love tortellini. You want some?
I bought vegetarian-
It's perfect. This can be our starch. Take your shoes off. Have a seat. I'll cook this.
She padded off on her bare feet and he watched her hips move in her cotton gym shorts. The living room was sparsely furnished, a large old Oriental rug with some cushions thrown on it and a TV with a mini entertainment center. A DVD was playing.
On the TV screen a man was standing up to his ankles in water at the beach. In his background was the ocean.
Make yourself at home, Kim called from the kitchen. She came out with a glass of Calistoga over ice and her loose breasts jiggled under her San Jose Sharks hockey shirt. Do you want something stronger? Elroy looked at her blue eyes that lit up with her smile.
Thanks, he said as he took the glass from her with two hands. This is just fine.
I got some two-toke smoke.
I'm your guest.
She pulled out a joint the thickness of a small cigar from a redwood stash box in the entertainment center. You got a light?
Do you want to smoke now or after lunch?
Everything I got can wait. All I have to do is boil and wash the tortellini. Are you listening to him?
Just a little.
I'll go back to the beginning. She grabbed a remote control and pointed it at the DVD player and pushed buttons. She torched up the joint and inhaled deeply and exhaled and took another big hit and held it. Here.
The man in the DVD had started speaking. I learned that our sun someday would go nova but before that it would be a red dwarf and kill everything on earth.
Bummer, joked Elroy.
Shhh, she silenced him.
I was a kid and consoled myself with the fact that all that would happen fifty thousand years from now. In the next chapter, I learned about entropy, the second law of thermodynamics.
She refused the joint. Elroy continued smoking.
Someday I would be gone too, I figured out that day, my entropy would be part of the universe's. Ordered systems go to disorder but in the other part of the book I read about black holes and dust becoming stars and saw disorder becoming order. My entropy would be regenerated. My entropy would be go on forever.
Isn't that beautiful, she asked.
Elroy was so stoned that the joint had gone out in his fingers. Excuse me?
Don't you like what he said?
It's heavy.
Do you want to see my tattoo?
OK.
She stood up and in one movement; her shirt was over her head and off her body. A dragon's head started on one arm and its body snaked completely around each breast and the tail went out onto her other arm. Her nipples were pierced with rings. Her stomach was flat.
She sat down next to him. The artist signed it, she pointed to some small characters behind the dragon's toes. He touched them and kissed her quickly, slipping the tip of his tongue in her mouth. Her tongue played with his.
He pushed her down without breaking the kiss and put his hand in her shorts and fingered her. She moaned. She wasn't wearing panties. She pushed her shorts off and he unbuckled his belt and pulled his hard on out of his pants. She put on a condom on the head of his penis and rolled it down and scooted her hips towards his crotch and pushed his dick into her. She pushed him down and rode him hard and bit his ear. Good, good, she gasped. He grabbed her hips and played with her breasts. She bounced harder and moaned and kissed him and stopped. Did you orgasm, she asked.
Almost.
She moved up and down, circling her hips, pulling up until only the head was in and slamming down, repeating the movements almost on cue like a machine.
Yeah, yeah, he gasped.
Come! Goddamnit, come.
He bucked up on her down stroke and did and slid out of her. She smiled when she saw the semen in his condom and pushed her vagina on to his face. He pushed his tongue and fingers into her and she moaned and bucked against his face and then stood up.
I want to make tortellini.
She kissed him on the lips and put her and went to the bathroom naked. She came out and put the hockey shirt back on. He had already buckled up and had tied the condom into a knot.
I have his book, if you want to see it.
Sure.
You can look at it while I finish lunch.
The shirt came down to just below her ass. You can wash up if you want. My house is your house.
There was a Kandinsky calendar over the toilet. He washed his face and groin after he took a leak.
Kim had put some dishes on a low folding table. He looked at the book and half listened to the DVD. …are all energy. Our brains run on electricity. We are organic thermodynamic machines.
Do you mind if I see what's on TV?
Don't you like that? She was holding a strainer full of tortellini over a pot.
I want to hear what's happening in LA.
The riot? That's all over.
When did you hear that?
I saw it on TV this morning. They sent the Army in.
What else?
I don't know. I changed the channel. She returned to the kitchen.
What happened?
