Kurt's Date with Cheri

This story is written for A Horse With No Game! :)

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____Mrs. Felicia Donner lay upon a steamer chair, beside a small table littered with empty margarita glasses, and cursed the sun. The ultraviolet penetrated her eyelids, burned its way down her optic nerves, and set the ethyl alcohol in her capillaries to a boil. She felt like her head would split in two and spill her brains all over the bluestone deck. She had been out here at poolside all day long, working her tan to the point of physical abuse, and had been cursing all the while. There had been a point behind this episode of self-desecration, which she now had to struggle to recall. Oh, yes. Self-desecration. That had been the point, or more precisely, the prelude. Andy had taken it upon himself to invite them to another one of Hank Beckworth's weekend long parties. Felicia had barely survived the last one. Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration, but not by much. Hank Beckworth had to be just about as jaded and cruel as they came.

____Hank Beckworth's parties started at night and lasted for days. The Donners typically made themselves fashionably late, by showing up sometime before one in the morning. The kids would be left to their own devices all weekend, but they were used to be being left to fend for themselves. Andy had often joked about leaving the twins alone, and taking Cheri along to the parties. Felicia would respond with her iciest look, and he would back off with the insistence that he had only been fooling. Felicia, jaded and drunk as she typically was, did not get the humor.

____Most of the Donners' friends were merely swingers, but Hank Beckworth and his crowd were given to more extreme forms of entertainment. A lottery would be held. There was no sitting out. Hank Beckworth had only one rule at his parties: everyone had to participate in the lotteries. Everyone. Felicia would leave her last will and testament in the top drawer of the sideboard in the foyer, for the kids to find, just in case.

____They had been invited to another one. Again. The last big bash of the summer. Another evening of frivolity at Hank Beckworth's Ipswich cliffside manse, where inevitably, one of the happy revelers would win the lottery. One day the winner would be Felicia herself, and she had hours upon hours to dread the possibility. In the meantime, she had to get herself as drunk as possible. She studied the empty margarita glasses, tried to sit up to reach the pitcher and salt, and fell back into the steamer chair with a groan, knowing she was not nearly drunk enough yet, despite being so dysfunctional as to be incapable of refilling the glasses.

____By way of placation, Andy had promised an après-summer family barbecue for tonight. Quite possibly her last supper. Or his. Hank Beckworth's lotteries were blood-curdling, yet equitably gender neutral.

____Hank Beckworth, Man of Men, the last true egalitarian.

____Neither Andy nor the kids would be back for hours, and Felicia had no idea how to operate the grill.

____She tried again. She carefully sat up and took care not to jostle her fragile, ethyl-infused brain. Now, more or less upright, she slowly filled each of the four margarita glasses, as though she were handling nitroglycerine. She drained the pitcher in the process, which would be a problem in another hour, because the tequila bottle on the counter was still half full, and something would have to be done about that, somehow. She tossed a pinch of salt into each broad-rimmed glass, dug into a little plastic container, and garnished with fresh lime wedges. Felicia Donner, thirty-eight, ex-office accessory, and the spitting image of Cheri, apart from the worry lines, fell back into her steamer chair. She reverted to her former task, which had been to curse the sun that burned through her eyelids and seared her retinas. She wistfully thought about cooling herself off in the pool, yet had just enough presence of mind to know that if she dived in, she would most likely never emerge. She wondered whether, four margaritas hence, she would be able to summon the same circumspection.

____Later— hours later— the twins returned. Brian and Meghan, high school A-List and varsity players, both. She could hear them at opposite ends of the house. Meghan would be starting the shower. Brian would be jerking off in his bedroom.

____Meghan was the chaste ice princess of the family, cute as a button, studious, and never-been-kissed. To the girl's credit, she perceived no deficit and had no use for boys, whatsoever.

____Brian had never been kissed, but neither for lack of trying nor for lack of desire. Brian hovered around Cheri much more than was good for him. Brian needed a girl of his own, and fast, or he would grow up to be a compulsive pud-puller, just like his Dad.

____Meghan strode out onto the deck in a one-piece suit and hair cap. She sniffed disdainfully and glared briefly at the empty margarita glasses before heading, without comment, to the far end of the pool. Felicia watched her daughter. Meghan took up position at the edge, toes curled, legs bent, hands over tucked head. She filled her chest with air and leapt, an uncoiling spring of bone and muscle, to inflict a deep slice upon the water with barely a splash. She carved through the lane with clean, powerful strokes, crossed the forty foot length without taking a breath, and executed an impeccable flip-turn at the opposite end, kicking off the wall with her lean, muscular legs.

____Felicia watched her daughter's flawless form with grudging admiration. Seven hours ago, the mother had come out to the pool with the intention of giving her body a workout, but she had never gotten around to it. She imagined herself immersed in a lane of her own, pushing the water behind her svelte frame with powerful limbs, holding pace with Meghan through fifty laps. She imagined herself young and adept, but each time she tried to rise from the steamer chair, a thousand minor pains welled up in silent protest. She picked up a glass, tipped it, grimaced, and spat out a mouthful of slushy salt.

____Meghan hopped out of the pool, dashed for the fence, and returned with the pole skimmer. She had nearly inhaled a dragonfly. Nasty.

____Felicia called out, "Be a dear, and make me another pitcher of margaritas."

____"Make it yourself," suggested Meghan.

____Andy Donner appeared on the pool deck, still dressed in his Brooks Brothers suit for the workday. His eyes flashed distractedly at Meghan and involuntarily lingered. Light brown hair peeked from under her cap in thin wet tendrils. The nape of her neck traced a straight vertical plane down her spine to her slender, muscular butt and long, lean legs. Meghan already stood nearly as tall as Cheri, at five foot six— an imposing elevation for a girl her age, which put her head and shoulders above most of the boys at school and effectively compelled them to maintain a respectful distance. Meghan would grow taller, too. The sleek blood-red, one-piece Lycra swimsuit leant her the appearance of a deadly waterborne predator. Cheryl and Meghan were as opposite as sisters could be. Fair, soft, dimpled Cheryl had a body and demeanor that invited men in and encouraged them to linger. Meghan had a body made of broken glass and razor wire, and she acted just about as inviting as she looked. Yet her obdurate physique attracted the male eye with an uncompromising irresistibility, and one could not help but dwell on what it would be like to have one's meat forcibly clamped, pumped, and milked by the girl's vise-like abdomen. Andy Donner imagined that Meghan would one day extinguish men like a snake, that she would constrict and smother the life from them in the process of extracting what little tribute their dying bodies would have to give, and that she would arise, barely assuaged, from their contented and fulfilled corpses in search of her next victims.

____Meghan caught him looking, ignored him, and continued to gather bugs with the pole skimmer.

____Felicia said to her husband, "Make me another batch of margaritas."

____"Did you get your messages today?"

____"Something about Cheri having a date."

____"Not that part. I needed you to go to the grocery store."

____"I'm not your maid."

____"Bitch," he grunted, stomping away.

____"Take the pitcher! You can share."

____"I'm out of time. Thanks to you. I have to run to the store."

____"Jesus Christ," Felicia cursed, feeling sorely beset. She tried to sit up, watched the entire pool deck tilt up toward her face, and fell back into the chair.

____Andy had already started to walk away.

____"Wait," his nearly incapacitated wife slurred, "what are you doing here, anyway?"

____"What is that supposed to mean? I live here."

____"Yeah, right. It's Friday. When are you ever home before midnight on a Friday?" Before he could summon a coherent retort, she forced herself upright on the chair with a deep frown. "Hold on. Weren't you supposed to be in Malaysia or Thailand or somewhere this weekend? Catching the clap in pre-teen brothels? Yet you're dragging me to Hank's for the weekend to drown in your sorrows with all the other losers."

____Not so drunk, after all. Or at least, not quite drunk enough.

____"The Malaysia trip fell through."

____His explanation hardly satisfied his ostensibly inebriated wife. "Just what the hell are you doing here, anyway? Home early, grocery shopping, and running the grill, for Cheri's date?" Felicia's mouth suddenly formed the shape of an 'o,' and her eyes filled with maternally fueled rage. "Who's coming here tonight to see my daughter? You're bringing a customer here? For Cheri?"

____"Now hold on! It's not like that at all!"

____"My daughter is not an office accessory, asshole!"

____"Calm down and listen!"

____"Don't tell me to calm down, pig!" She tried to rise out of the steamer chair, tripped over it, and sprawled across the deck. "Shit!"

____He tried to help her up.

____"Let go of me!" she yelled, shaking him off, and staggered onto her feet.

____Meghan, in the pool, witnessed the entire sordid scene and barely reacted. Meghan knew that she had perverts for parents and a slut for an older sister.

____"He's not a customer, and he's not even a man," Andy attempted to explain. He doubted that he penetrated the wall of obfuscation that shrouded his wife's deeply veiled lucidity.

____"Not a man? He's not a man? What the hell is he, then?"

____"A high school kid. The son of an employee."

____"Which employee?"

____"Martin Lowell."

____"Marty Lowell? That swine! He's an even bigger pig than you! Trading Cheri off with Carl Ryan for feisty-Faith is bad enough. But Marty? You gave your daughter to that prick?"

____"No! No, goddamn it! Will you just listen for a second? His kid is coming over for a blind date. He's never had a girl. I doubt he'd be expecting anything more than a good night kiss."

____"Does Cheri even know about this?"

____"I've told her."

____"Then where is she?"

____"The Ryans'. She'll be back for dinner."

____Felicia laughed hilariously and said, "Sure she will. Good luck with that."

____He shook his head contemptuously and stalked away. His head whirled with uncertainty. Cheri had threatened to run off to a party at the Ryans' house, probably to be sandwiched by her ex-boyfriend, Steve Ryan, and his old man. What if she didn't come back for dinner? What if she really ditched on Marty Lowell's kid? Ahh, hell; what difference would it make? This had only ever been a shot in the dark, anyway. Andy didn't believe for a second that setting his eldest daughter up with Marty's kid would give him a real leg up. It had only ever been a fool's hope.

____He stomped back to his wife and snatched up the tray and its contents. He took them back to the kitchen, rinsed out the margarita glasses, and put them in the freezer. Felicia had left the tequila, triple sec, and mix on the counter. He filled the pitcher with ice, added the rest of the tequila and triple sec, and topped off the pitcher with lime juice. He took the four glasses from the freezer, plunged their edges into a bowl of sea salt, set up the tray, and carried it back to his wife.

____She eyed the replenished tray suspiciously, tried to glare at him, and caught the late afternoon sun directly in both eyeballs, where it seared her optic nerves. Her brain spun a full circle within her cranium, in a desperate and vain attempt to escape the fire.

____"I have to go for groceries. I'll be back soon. Listen for the doorbell."

____"Go to hell."

More if you want it.