Best Laid Plans

Chapter 3: Can I help you?

"CAN I HELP YOU?" I find a peeping tom watching me go at it and my first response is 'can I help you?' I'm more messed up than I thought.

Pants on the floor, the remnants of an almost orgasm scattered all over the bed, and I'm doing some mental head smacks for leaving my first floor window wide open. My peeper is Kevin Miller. Kevin has never heard the words "you're fine," by a doctor. He thinks Cheese-its are a food group and made Mtn. Dew millions of dollars last year alone after he swore up and down that it gave him super human powers. I had met Kevin two years ago after a finals week fiasco. He flirted, I waited patiently for prince charming. We'd never made out, and I was a better person for that. Kevin fashioned himself a comic book aficionado. He wasn't as fat or as lonely as the stereotype, but he was one brazen mother fucker for peeking in on me while I did myself.

I forgot about the whole naked thing and scrambled up and out of my room. Mother hen screaming, 'Don't forget your jacket' as I passed through the foyer. Physical head slap. I snatched one of those thin shawl things that was supposed to look good for layering. Looks great for layering, looks ridiculous for running out of your house with no pants on.

"Kevin Miller you sick son of a bitch!" I yelled searching high and low for a weapon. The garden gnomes looked promising. Kevin had slipped off the ledge he was using to look into my window and had bounced his front teeth on the bricks. I felt no pity for his chipped tooth or for the giant bruise I was gonna give him when I threw little Doc at him.

"You had your window open, Callie. You were hot. I mean like pay-per-view hot." Glad I'm not TBS hot, that would have been devastating. Kevin rubbed his jaw line and tried to put some space between himself and the lawn ornaments I was chucking at him. His hands were covering his junk. Of course, because what's the most important thing to protect in life for a man, his doodle and company. But then I caught the sight of flesh.

"You were masturbating!" I screamed aiming for his chest with a pink flamingo and pointing an accusatory finger at his crotch.

"You were masturbating!" He yelled back pointing an accusatory finger at my crotch. Kevin struggled to zip himself in and got caught on some hay colored puberty.

"I wasn't a pervert watching my neighbor do it!" I tossed the flamingo as it bent and broke its neck on the way. That's what I get for using flamingos.

"I would pay good money to watch you do that." As opposed to bad money? Kevin hiked up his trousers and continued tramping his doc martins all over the begonias. I felt my temperature rising. I had planted those flowers earlier and they'd lasted three months already. I'm no gardener, but I would like to keep my place from looking like a frat house.

Kevin eyeballed my tits through the thin material blocking my bare naked ass from the rest of the world. This time I pitched a faux bullfrog at him. There were people stepping out on their front porches to stare. Go back inside, mother hen kept jabbering. This was a neighborhood, lovingly referred to as The Brothel, was two blocks east of the college bars. We'd seen our fair share of bush pissers and drunken break up fights. Every other weekend the stop sign was uprooted by some frat boy trying to prove that he had a y chromosome. And we knew if we found a tampon in the yews, there was probably a condom close by.

"Callie, I'll give you fifty bucks if you finish." Kevin said dodging the bullfrog. He had his hands up in surrender, and I was going nowhere with the front yard pitching practice.

"A hundred." Was I a business woman or what?

"I've only got fifty." Kevin stepped forward. His eyes were dark and there was a little boyish grin curling up the sides of his face. My butt was getting cold and I had run out of reasons why I was still standing outside. I stomped up the steps and back to the land of sanity and clothes. Aware that Kevin had followed me, unsure what I was gonna do about it.

"I was walking back from band practice when I saw you in the window. I knew you lived in the area and I had a sip of beer earlier so I was feeling pretty horny." Everyone's favorite quantity of beer. A sip. "I've been watching those infomercials on t.v. at night. You know, the ones for girls gone crazy. They're so hot. They take off their shirts, you know, IN THE INFOMERCIAL. But then they block it out with this black bar. I haven't seen a real girl's boobs in a whole fucking year. It's getting so bad that any black bar is a turn on."

He was standing there looking dopey with his hands waving about trying to persuade me to go through with it. I thought about fifty bucks. I could pay off rent with seven hundred dollars,not fifty bucks. I go through cash faster than my grandma goes through Jack Daniels. Fifty bucks would be gone by Thursday. Tops.

"Jesus, Kev just go home and go online or something." I had covered myself up with a floor length blue robe. I checked my phone to see if Chase had called. Big no there. I paced, waiting for Kevin to leave but like a lost puppy, he was sniffing around, touching things, and turning around in circles looking for a place to sit down.

"They're all big and not real. You're real." Real pissed off. "Come on I was so close."

My eyes bugged out of their sockets, "YOU were so close, I was so close until you ruined it." Calm down, Callie. There will be other orgasms. "I have a boyfriend, Kevin. I'm not going to let another guy watch me go at it."

Kevin sighed. He put his hands up and sighed again. What was with the sighing? I looked around for something to throw at him that would do some damage. No more pink flamingos, I was going for a table lamp.

"Alright, fuck. I didn't want to tell you this but you've left me no choice. Chase is snogging with a blond Tri Delt. I saw them tonight at the Big Bang. He had his hand up her skirt. She was wearing a red lace thong. I remember because I almost came from the sight of her perfect ass cheeks."

I still had my eye on the table lamp. When the hockey player in 2 A moved on to the big ice rink in the sky, his parents sold all of his crap. I bought a practice stick thinking it would make a good security system. It was now ten feet away with Kevin in between. He turned around at the hockey stick, then turned back at me, then back to the hockey stick putting together the puzzle pieces.

"Please don't kill the messenger."

When the messenger is jacking off while watching me naked, I kill the messenger. What is snogging anyway? Is that making out? Is that feeling her up? Screw it. I'd done worse things. I think I still had bruises on my knees from when I gave Chase a blow job in the bathroom at McNally's. I grimaced at the memory.

"I'll let you watch. No touching. No touching me, no touching yourself. Got it." Kevin stared back at me wide mouthed. I saw drool trickle down his chin. Just to be sure, I dug out my one roll of pink duct tape. It came with a whole set of pink tools. My brother figured I'd be more apt to use the hardware if it was in a girly color. I duct taped Kevin's hands together while he whined about not be able to touch himself. Then I duct taped his mouth shut.

"mis mif mucking ot," he murmured.

"This is a safety precaution. You tell anyone about this, and I will gut you like a pig." I had a good role model in the art of empty death threats. My mother once threatened Mary Alice Jenning after she came to the church bake off with the exact same great-grandma hand-me-down flourless chocolate cake. I heard through the cane walkers Mary Alice tripped over the bingo card table. She also dropped out because the seniors weren't too pleased when their game was delayed. You don't piss off bingo players and you don't piss of an Irish mother of seven children, six of which are boys.

We went into my room, he sat down in my desk chair, and I closed the window, shut the blinds, and pulled the drapes across. Funny thing, I was actually getting excited to start up again. If Kevin stayed quiet in his corner, I would be able to finish, get paid, and send nasty text messages to Chase by the end of the night. I kept myself covered with the blue robe, and Kevin mumbled a curse of discontent. Stage shy was not my middle name, but I figured I was going to give him the least I could for fifty bucks.

I found Barney shoved under a pillow and showed Kevin so he could tell this was the real deal. LET'S JUST GET THIS OVER WITH, I thought splitting open the robe from my hips down. Kevin leaned forward in the chair to get a closer look. I tried not to pay attention to what he was doing, but I could hear a distant humming. Barney turned on with a prompt buzz, I looked over at Kevin as he sat still. The egg slipped into its usual spot, right on top of my button.

The humming in the corner got louder. I let my legs flare out to the sides, the temperature in the room rose a few degrees and I tried to drown out the humming with my own thoughts. It wasn't working.

"Shut up, Kevin!" I yelled turning toward him, feeling like the exorcist chick. All splayed out and ready-to-go and he was humming Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. I don't know why and I also didn't care.

"Orry," he grumbled, put his duct tapped hands under his chin, and leaned forward as if in deep thought.

Barney continued his buzzing, through the charade. Every once in a while, Kevin would creak in the chair, and I would shoot him a dirty look. Not the sultry why-don't-you-join-me dirty look, the I'm gonna-slit-your-throat-if-you-make-another-noise dirty look. The first wave of contentment had me pushing my hips upward and onward. The robe slid open fully exposing myself and I heard Kevin fall out of his chair. My butt cheeks clenched together as tightly as I could make them, enough to bounce several quarters off of, and I slowly came back to earth, unaware I had a spectator. Actually, where had Kevin gone?

"aof uck!" Kevin groaned. He'd tumbled onto the floor and was furiously trying to rub his hard on through the duct tape and through his jeans.

I wrapped myself together, rolled Kevin onto his stomach and fished out his wallet from his back pocket. He started flailing around like a beached whale. Inside was eighty bucks. Payment well deserved. I flipped him over like a pancake and dropped the wallet onto chest. His boner had disappeared and he was red and sweaty. The only pair of scissors I had were the kind Kindergarten teachers hand out to the knuckle head student who forgot theirs. They came complete with safety blades, but they cut through the duct tape.

Kevin lay spread eagle for a while trying to get his bearings. The duct tape was still on his mouth, and he was breathing not so successfully through his nose. I ripped it off.

"OWE! Shit!" He rubbed his face and found his way up to standing. It was a while before he said anything that wasn't a curse.

"I'm taking this," I showed him the money, "And your keeping your mouth shut."

"Whatever. I'll see you around." Kevin trudged out of my room and out of the front door. I heard it slam and heard a few other expletives as he stormed outside. There it was again. 'I'll see you around.' Is that like their default good-bye line?