Shane and Carmen: The Novelization
Chapter 15 Come Back Shane, Mother Wants You
On the alternate weekends that they were in town and at home, Shane and Carmen attended the Sunday morning brunch services at
The Planet
, the one time during the week when all the Friends gathered together in fellowship to share gossip, catch up with each other, commiserate, trade fashion advice, news and tips, comfort each other (as necessary), and discuss sex, life, love and women in all their many forms and ramifications. When Carmen had been with Jenny she had attended these church services and became acquainted with the liturgy and all the celebrants at the table. Now that she lived with Shane as her partner and lover, she was a fully vested member of the choir. She not only loved each and every member of the group as they loved her in return, she fit in extraordinarily well. She was kind, polite, well-spoken, funny, playful, smart, compassionate, plain-speaking. She had no pretense about her, never played mind games, and was never bitchy or catty. She was cheerful, enthusiastic, exuberant, supportive. She was wonderful company, a good talker and a better listener. No one doubted she was the best thing that had ever happened to Shane. She was a Boy Scout with a vagina.
Without actually comparing notes and without having any appreciation of Carmen's sexual skills, tastes and abilities, both Tina and Alice came independently to the same conclusion, that Carmen was the single-most-perfect lesbian ever created. Be that as it may, in the beginning nobody in the group -- except Shane, who never considered the question -- thought Carmen would last a month, and when she was gone they knew they'd miss her. Amazingly, she had already lasted three months with Shane, with no signs of trouble on the horizon. Alice had Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not on speed-dial.
"Hey, guys, there you are!" Alice greeted the happy couple as they walked into
The Planet
late one Sunday morning. Alice, Dana, Tina and Bette were already seated around "their" table, the one Kit kept reserved for them no matter what.
Kit came over and insisted on giving them hugs. "My sugah sugahs," she said happily. "Okay, everybody's here now around my table, Mama's happy all her precious daughters are here! Sunday services can now begin! Please turn to page 147 in your menus and we'll all sing the opening appetizer."
"So how was Santa Barbara?" Tina asked, knowing that's where Shane and Carmen had spent the previous weekend.
"It was great," Carmen said. "We stayed at this terrific bed-and-breakfast." She described their romantic weekend being tourists and visiting antique stores and vintage clothing shops. Shane sat back in her chair. Her eyes were half-closed (for she was not fully awake yet, it only being 11 a.m.), and she basked in the company of those she loved, listening to Carmen tell her tale.
"I'm so jealous of your getaway trips," Tina said. "Santa Barbara. Catalina, San Diego, uh ... ."
"Hearst Castle," Shane said. "Big Bear Lake."
"I'm telling you, you guys are like the Traveling Wilburys," Alice said.
"Well, we have so much fun on these trips," Carmen said. "You guys should come with us."
"We would, if we could get away," Tina said. "And now we've got Angelica. I'm not sure what kind of romantic weekend it'd be, two couples and a baby. It'd cramp your style."
"I'm stuck here, in training and then going off on tournaments," Dana said.
"I know," Alice said, mournfully. "But hey, tell us," -- she lowered her voice conspiratorially -- "how many times do you guys have hot monkey sex on these romantic weekend trips? How many orgasms?"
Carmen and Shane looked at each other for a moment, and Shane shrugged. "You talking about vaginal, or just clitoral?"
Everyone laughed.
"But to answer your question, Alice," Shane continued, "I'd say 'Not very often.' We're usually too busy sight-seeing and stuff. What would you say, Car? Once in the morning, before breakfast. One after, if the weather's bad."
"One right after lunch," Carmen picked up with a straight face. "Then a long nap. Another one again right before cocktails. That one's usually in the shower before we dress for dinner. Then, what? Twice after dinner."
"Sounds right," Shane said.
"One in the surf, and once up on the beach, naked, in the moonlight."
"One in the shower back in our room, washing the sand off."
"Plus the goodnight fuck."
"Oh, right, absolutely. The goodnight fuck. That's always one of the best."
Alice shook her head as Dana leaned forward and deliberately banged her head on the edge of the table half a dozen times, and everybody laughed.
"So," Tina said. "Sounds like you guys are slowing down, then, am I right? Because at the beginning, there, you were going at it hot-and-heavy."
"Oh, I'll say," Bette added. "We had to call the cops on them three times that first week after Carmen moved in. There were screams coming from next door all night long. I thought it was the Tate-LaBianca Murders all over again. It sounded like Charles Manson was slaughtering somebody over there." Everyone laughed, including Shane and Carmen, who actually blushed.
"One night I said to Tina, 'Listen, what's that sound?' It's 11:30 at night. It sounded like waves pounding on the rocks during a storm. We go to the kitchen and look out the back window at the pool, and there's these massive two-foot, three-foot waves lapping out of our pool all over the deck. It's these two, fucking in our pool. Out of the darkness I hear Carmen yell, 'Surf's up!' and then this one" -- she gestured with her thumb at Shane -- "this one yells out, 'Thar she blows!' It was like Jaws was back there bumfucking Shamu."
Everyone was laughing so hard Kit came out of the kitchen to see what she'd missed.
"Bette," Shane said when she could talk, "if you thought you saw a whale's spout back there, I can promise you that was no whale spout!"
Everyone howled, and Carmen turned to Shane and wacked her on the arm. "Shane!" she said, "I can't help it if you make me squirt!"
Laughing and fanning herself with a menu, Kit went back into the kitchen murmuring, "Oh, my, oh my, oh my."
***
Later, when things had settled down and their sandwiches and salads had arrived, Tina said, "Shane, I've been meaning to tell you. The film school at the California University is having a film festival in a couple of weeks. The theme is on classic western movies, and they're going to be showing
Shane
."
"I'm sure Shane has seen it a hundred times, until she's sick of it," Dana said.
"Actually, I never have seen it," Shane said, sipping her soda. "Didn't want to."
Carmen's head snapped around and her jaw dropped. "Really? Shane, are you kidding me? You've never seen
Shane
? That's incredible. That movie is probably your namesake. I never knew you'd never seen it!"
"Nope. Never have."
"Shane, we have got to go! That's what we'll do for our getaway, we'll go to the film festival at Cal U. Shane, that's like one of the best cowboy flicks of all time. I can't believe you never saw it. I know you've heard that line, right? 'Come back, Shane, come back! Mother wants you.'"
"Yeah, sure, I've heard it all my life. And I don't especially like it. That's why I never saw the movie."
"Okay, I can get that," Carmen said. "But still, you've got to see this movie, and I'm going to take you. Shane, it's one of my all-time favorite movies, and I have this special connection to it. There's this little boy in it named Joey, played by Brandon De Wilde. He's the one who is shouting at Shane to come back. And he's was so cute and so precious and he was only nine years old when they filmed it, and he got a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for this part."
Shane was laughing. "All right, Carmen, all right! Jesus. What's your special connection?"
Carmen turned somber. "Brandon De Wilde died when he was only thirty years old. He was in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, driving his motorcycle at three in the afternoon, in a rainstorm. They were installing a new guard rail around a curve, and the installation truck was stopped in the road. Going around the curve in the rainstorm Brandon hit the guard rail, and then hit the tractor trailer truck. He was trapped in the wreckage for a couple hours before they could get him out. He died that night in the hospital. At the time of the accident he was on his way to that hospital to visit his wife. They'd only been married for three months."
Nobody said anything.
"My dad also died in a motorcycle accident, on his way to the hospital to visit my mom," Carmen continued. "He was coming home from work, in a rainstorm, on the outskirts of Cancun. His bike went off the road and into the jungle, and they didn't find him for two days. Like Brandon De Wilde, my dad was thirty years old when he died."
"Brandon's father," Carmen said, trying hard to control her voice, "was also an actor, but mostly he was a stage manager, on Broadway. His name was Frederick De Wilde, and he was stage manager for a lot of famous plays and musicals you'd all have heard of.
