Penny

In Sarah's Citrus Heights apartment, we are all very drunk when the girl I'm thinking
of breaking it off with, Penny, begins to rattle off her past experiences with some
of the boys who'd entered and left her life. There was, she says, Jacob, the boy
she met years earlier in church and who had cried when Rocky Balboa was defeated
by Apollo Creed in the first movie. "Such sentiment," Penny says, looking over
everyone in the room and raising her beer bottle in front of her face.

I try to get her to stop, to relax and enjoy this small gathering of old friends.
But from where she sits across the room from me, Penny just gives me a hard look
and goes on with her mantra.

Then, she says, there was Louis, the Spanish boy who wooed her in high school.
She remembers and describes his slick accent, how he had spoken when he called her
at home to apologize for coaxing her into the alleyway behind the movie theatre
which was next to what is now the big Sam's Club on Greenback. Louis had made rough
love to her on top of a flattened empty cardboard box. Penny opens her eyes wide
and tells everyone how the moon shone behind Louis's head and while he continually
thrust himself against her, she stared at the big RCA letters on a box leaning against
the brick theatre wall.

Our hostess, Sarah, gets and goes to the kitchen. She calls out, asking who wants
another beer. Penny raises her arm and I tell her she's had enough. When Sarah
returns with a tray full of bottles, Penny removes not one, but two beers from the
tray. She then raises her arm and gives me the finger. Everyone in the room gets
a good laugh out of that.

Penny then brings up Carl and Craig, the two brothers who lived behind Sunrise Mall,
how they'd sandwiched her in the back seat of their father's parked car and from
either side of her worked their hands -- all four of them -- over her body. But
Carl and Craig's mother came out of the house and crossed the lawn without any of
them hearing her to discover them in the back see of the car. She had stuck her
face close to Penny's and threatened that if she ever saw Penny around her sons
again, she would phone Penny's mother and let her know how slutty Penny was.

The way Penny uses her hands to demonstrate and the way her face crumples and tightens
and the way the words slur from her lips has everyone in the room roaring with laughter.
Everyone except for me. Then she looks across the coffee table at me and says out
loud that it won't be long before I am included in her litany of lost lovers.

This brings about another round of laughter in the room.

Even Penny can not keep herself from laughing. She laughs so hard she frequently
has to swipe at her moist eyes with the blooming sleeve of her pink blouse.


***
© Robert Aquino Dollesin

Brief Bio:

Robert Aquino Dollesin resides in Sacramento, where he manages to pen out a short story now and again. He sometimes blogs here: http://robertaquinodollesin.blogspot.com