After days on the road in a filthy rental van there was nothing quite like the southern hospitality of a beautiful woman. Lee hadn’t seen her since their college days together, but she was as gorgeous as ever. She now had the glow of a mother, the proud smile of an independent woman.
Amber peeked through the blinds before opening the door. Lee had exchanged a few emails with her but was too nervous to actually call before showing up at her doorstep. She was genuinely happy to see him and held on to their hug for what seemed to be a long time. The smell of her perfume brought back a rush of memories that made him dizzy, a tangible feeling of the passionate youth they had shared and, Lee now recognized, had lost. From behind the screen door appeared a little boy holding a toy truck. He stared at his mother as she embraced this stranger. Night was falling on the horizon and the chant of the cicadas was throbbing with its arrival.
Ian had been hearing Lee talk about her for years and now finally understood why his friend was so enamored. He watched in silence as they embraced and nodded a hello when Amber’s bright eyes met his.
Ian and Lee worked together often but this was their first assignment together in two years. They had both changed drastically since last seeing each other. Ian had separated from his longtime girlfriend and when he got the call that would bring him to the American South he was still in the throes of a dark depression, a downward spiral of binge drinking with less than caring friends in less than reputable Manchester pubs. Ian was a recognizable TV persona in Britain, the off-kilter tour guide of a travel show that took viewers on worldwide adventures they couldn’t otherwise afford. The show had been somewhat popular on cable for several seasons before being relegated to a mid-afternoon slot that preceded a new primetime line-up of reality shows. Ian was sometimes parodied on British comedies and had become the butt of more than one joke throughout the country. In America he enjoyed relative obscurity and thus relished the occasional trip overseas.
Lee was Ian’s regular cameraman, and on this particular show he had also become producer so as to prevent the network from sending someone else to baby-sit the two of them. They had become great friends over the years and were an efficient team mainly because they actually had fun together. They were the proverbial dynamic duo.
This time things were looking different.
Lee had also divorced his wife since their last job together, and though she had kept custody of their four-year-old son he was more contented than he could ever have imagined. Still, not used to being alone, he would find himself pacing back and forth throughout the empty house, his mind rife with possibilities. He was also having trouble sleeping, but he enjoyed the extra time insomnia allowed him. He would wake up in the middle of the night and lie on the living room rug with his dog. They listened to the neighbor’s cat meow incessantly in the backyard, and Lee studied the bastardized reflection of the moon on the grimy window. He felt restless and invigorated. He was ecstatic to get such a long gig on the road with his old friend, especially one that would take them through the entirety of the American South, through places he half-remembered or dreamt of knowing.
Amber welcomed them into the house and introduced them to her son Jordan. Ian remained quiet and being that it was the first time he’d shut up since meeting at the airport in New York Lee took this as a sign of trouble, perhaps unfairly.
“You have a lovely home,” Ian finally muttered as he put down his bags.
“Oh, thank you. Yeah, we like it here,” Amber responded with a shrug. “Can I offer you guys somethin’ to drink? Water, juice, a beer?”
“A beer for me, love,” Ian responded quickly, glancing at Lee as he did.
“I feel like I know you from watching the show, isn’t that funny?” Amber said pulling two bottles of beer from the fridge, handing one to Ian and offering the other to Lee.
“Well, most people hate me from watching the show.”
“Really?” this time Amber was the one looking at Lee as she spoke to Ian.
“Ian is quite the celebrity in old England,” Lee responded with a smirk.
“Something like that,” Ian chirped before taking a long swig of his beer.
The three of them stood in uncomfortable silence for a moment until Ian and put his bottle down on the counter.
“Well… are you guys hungry?” Amber asked, “I could run and pick something up, something quick. I’ve got nothing in the house.”
“How about I go get something so you can stay here with Jordan?” Lee responded.
“Orrr… I go with you so we can catch up,” Amber said before turning to Ian, “If you wouldn’t mind hanging out with Jordan for a couple of minutes, Ian?”
Ian glanced once again at Lee, trying hard to read his friend’s expression, unsuccessfully.
“Sure. I’d love to.”
“He doesn’t get to hang out with guys very often… especially not celebrities,” Amber joked as she picked up her purse from the counter. “He’s in the other room, hypnotized, won’t even notice I’m gone for a few minutes. We’ll be right back,” she added.
“Okay,” Ian responded, once again sharing a loaded look with Lee. Ian was surprised Amber would choose to leave her son with him, but he had understood upon laying his eyes on her that, just as Lee had insinuated, she was a carefree, intuitive spirit. And maybe she really did feel she knew him well. All the stories Lee had told him about Amber were beginning to make sense and the ethereal woman was becoming real.
The truth is Ian had no experience with children and was essentially terrified of them. He was convinced children did not like him, inherently, inexplicably. In fact he’d felt jealous of Lee’s natural ease with children, of his connection with his son. He was in awe really whenever in the presence of parents with their children. He couldn’t comprehend such casual intimacy.
Ian entered the living room and found Jordan splayed out on the rug, his head resting on his hands staring at a cartoon on the TV. Ian paced to the couch cautiously and sat down. Jordan looked back at him, quietly acknowledging his presence, then back to the cartoon, unconcerned. Ian figured he could just wait it out until Amber and Lee returned, figured there was no need in disturbing the kid with useless banter. He relaxed on the couch and watched the cartoon in silence. Within moments he found himself laughing out loud at the slapstick on the screen. He became engrossed. He remembered watching cartoons with his sister as a kid, remembered the old house in Manchester, the old man in the garage, a can of beer in his greasy hand, the savory smell of his mother’s cooking wafting in from the kitchen, seemingly disparate memories interconnected by the joy of laughing at bright moving drawings.
The kid looked back at him every time he laughed, as though he were trying to understand what Ian found so funny. Ian finally noticed then that Jordan did not react to what was happening in the cartoon even though his big green eyes were transfixed on the screen, barely blinking. When a commercial break came on Jordan began rolling around with the toy truck in his hand, mimicking the sound of an engine. Ian stood up to go to the kitchen.
“You need anything, buddy? Some juice or something?”
“Nothankyou,” came the response amidst the engine’s groan.
Ian stood in front of the fridge for a moment studying the artifacts held up by colorful little magnets. A crayon drawing of a helicopter shooting at a burning building, a stick figure hanging desperately onto its landing skids, Jordan’s frail signature in the corner. A photograph of Amber holding Jordan as a toddler, her bright red hair blowing in the wind. Another of Amber in a yellow bikini running through a sprinkler with Jordan, her ample breasts in full display. Ian leaned in closer to get a better look.
From the other room came a loud whine from Jordan, “Eeeewww!”
Ian snapped out of his trance, quickly grabbing another beer from the fridge and returning to the living room. Jordan hadn’t budged from his previous position, still mesmerized by the screen on which there were now two oily naked women entangled in a sixty-nine position feverishly licking each other’s vaginas.
Ian stood frozen for a moment and frowned in confusion.
“Where’s the cartoon?!” Jordan yelled.
“What did - did you change the channel there, mate?”
“No! What happened to the cartoon?! This is gross!”
Ian stepped up to the television and tried pressing the first button he saw while using his body to block the screen. The sound of the women’s gasping moans rose to ear-piercing levels and Ian started pressing all of the unmarked buttons at once. A settings menu now overlapped an extreme close-up of a tongue twirling inside a vagina. Ian finally pressed a button that turned the television off in a quick static burst.
“What happened?!” the kid yelled out again angrily.
Ian turned back to notice his bottle of beer spilling onto the carpet. The abrupt silence was then interrupted by the sound of the backdoor swinging open and Amber calling out to them in a sweet voice from the other room.
“Boys? Who’s hungry?”
