A Leak In The Safe

Madam

I’m standing in a crowd, waiting to cross the street. There aren’t any cars coming so a family steps off the curb, but the moment they do this greasy, long haired street preacher type starts bellowing Don’t walk, it says! Don’t Walk! That means you ain’t supposed to walk!

Being me, I’m contrarian enough to cross anyway, and the guy is furious, following me and shouting in my ear. I try to lose him, cutting across campus and ducking into a large, official looking house. It’s unlocked, empty except for a few stray pieces of furniture wrapped in plastic, evidently in the process of being redecorated.

An attractive and professional woman in her late thirties or early forties comes in and I apologize and explain my situation. She’s very understanding and friendly and shows me through the house, explaining the design plans.

We really hit it off and she invites me back to see the progress. I begin visiting regularly, dropping in when I’m in the neighborhood, eventually realizing that rather than a bed and breakfast as I’d thought, the house is going to become a bordello, and my friend the madam. I witness the whole process, the decorating and the hiring of the girls, helping whenever I can..

On opening night the woman says You’ve been such a good friend. I want to give you a freebie, on the house. You can pick any of the girls you like.

Oh, come on, I say. You know who I want.

Katie: Part Five

"Pan?" Katie seemed to become alert for the first time. Since Pan didn’t go to our school, most people had a hard time categorizing him as anything other than some variety of weirdo, a weirdo, however, with enough of an underground reputation to make them wonder if maybe they weren’t missing something.

"Yeah, full moon," I said with exaggerated cool. "You know Pan’ll be having a party."

"But isn’t he, I mean, doesn’t he live…" She wasn’t really sure where he lived, or much else about him. There were so many stories and confabulations about Pan that even I, who knew him better than most, had a hard time separating the B.S. from the frequently equally improbable reality.

"Near New Kensington. It’s not that far, we’re practically half way there already.."

"Pan." As she considered her eyes narrowed to near invisibility. Katie was brave but not especially adventurous – she probably would have rejected the idea of going to Pan’s out of hand if boyfriend Bill weren’t back there in a bedroom feverishly consoling himself with Ungie.

"Come on, it’s better than starting a fight. Somebody might get hurt."

"I wish." She slowly uncrossed her legs and hopped off the table, standing there, rolling up one sleeve of her yellow button down shirt, not speaking again until she’d started rolling up the other. "Listen, you’re not like, thinking that I’m going to go for some kind of revenge screw type thing, are you? Because you can just get that out of your head, I can tell you right now it’s not ever going to happen." She’d obviously heard the word orgy applied to Pan’s parties.

"Hah, yeah, thanks a lot, Katie," I said. "But, really, that didn’t enter my mind, not that you’re not hot and everything. I just thought you might, you know, want to get your mind off things, try something different. I’m going over there anyway, so I’m just saying, if you want to come along…"

She swayed slightly, the way she did before the 440, tensing one leg and then the other. "This isn’t going to be some kind of drug thing, is it?"

"No! Well, yes, but nobody’s going to make you. I mean, there’ll be a keg there too."

I think that was what clinched it. Like many of the athletic crowd, Katie considered beer the one controlled substance whose consumption didn’t entail breaking training, and this party was only offering downers and a murky punch made by the indiscriminate mixture of everything in the parental liquor cabinet.

"Oh, all right." She looked back at the house regretfully, no doubt picturing the effect of one good right to Ungie’s pasty face. "But we’re taking two cars."

Well, UBUFANS, I’m making a little jaunt northways to the big island to commune with the Great Spirit and watch fireworks, so there won’t be another broadcast from RADIOFREEUBU for a week…why not take your own tour through the now extensive archives and have a refresher dose of UBUANITY ? And go ahead and celebrate independence any way you like….

Though we were far from soul mates, or even especially sympathetic, there was something about Katie I admired, admired not only, with her compact gymnast’s body, long straight hair and resolute blue eyed squint, in the sense of regarding with pleasure, but also, with her abundant courage, grace and confidence, in the sense of having a high opinion of.

In order to circumvent the draconian athletic requirements of our prep school, I’d become the manager of the girls’ track team, and, despite my less than macho role, had become friends with Katie, one of the captains. If we’d been of the same sex we might have even been enemies, but female athletes didn’t have the sense of entitlement the guy jocks did and were, in fact, usually flattered when anyone took them seriously. I’d used my quick and occasionally devious tactical ingenuity to further the cause on various occasions but had also impressed Katie with my irreverent wit, which had defused a few over emotional situations.

And, yes, there were moments when she was standing there on the track, psyching herself up, hands on hips, her round muscular ass (generally considered the best in the school) curving in the drastically cut-off jeans the really cool girls wore to practice, the elaborate french braid laying straight down the middle of her back, that I lusted after her, but, come on, I was seventeen, and there weren’t many girls I hadn’t lusted after at one time or another, and our differences and attractions stayed firmly on the safe side of friendship. Besides everyone knew she’d been hot and heavy with Tad’s pugnacious brother Bill (or Twin Bill as we liked to call him) from almost the moment she’d strode into our school with the other girls as a freshman.

Katie had told me to go to hell more times than I could remember, and I no longer took it personally. “So, uh, how was your spring vacation?” I hazarded.

“It sucked,” she growled. “Bill and I broke up.”

“So what else is new.” Katie and Bill were known to regularly take short “breaks” from each other, and then, just as regularly, get back together again.

“And I just walked in on him and Ungie in the bedroom,” she continued, tight lipped. “Slut.”

“Ahhh….” Things were becoming much clearer. Ungie was the most boy friendly girl in our class, but even though she was often called a slut that really wasn’t the case. It was more of a convenient category – many of us had seriously groped around with her, but, despite all the compromising situations she’d been in, and all the boasting that had been done, in the end her main man Buddy had been the only one who’d gone all the way with her. She was, however, just the person to comfort Bill during his little hejira from Katie.

And was I just the person to comfort Katie in her hour of need? I admit the thought did enter my mind by way of a lower organ, but it didn’t linger long. I hated seeing plucky Katie beaten down and realized that I had the perspective that she lacked at the moment. I knew that this was just another speed bump in Katie and Bill’s little spin through adolescence, a trip that would no doubt end with high school. Bill didn’t really have much going for him beyond a letter jacket and a hot car, but Katie, with her smarts and determination, was clearly destined for some kind of success, a success that, as hard as it was to believe now, would leave Bill far behind.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” I said. Let’s go over to Pan’s.”