Bawdybodies.com

Every woman Ernie Summers dated possessed a fatal flaw. A case in point: the previous winter the thirty-five year-old mechanic spent time with a woman of Chinese background. An English major, Maureen Kwong went back to school for an advanced degree in education. When the vice-principal at Brandenberg High School left on maternity leave, Ms Kwong got bumped up to the administrative position.

"There’s a school committee meeting tomorrow night," Maureen explained, "so we can’t get together." They were sitting at Starbucks down from the Emerald Square Mall sipping mocha latte cappuccinos. "The PTO is considering a car wash to raise money for the senior dance. I suggested selling magazine subscriptions or a bake sale."

"What's wrong with a car wash?"

She scrunched up her bronze nose. "High school girls… they dress too provocative. The skimpy clothes and all that fleshy exuberance - it sends the wrong message."

The statement made no sense. It was the middle of December with a foot of slushy snow on the ground. Nobody would be prancing around in halter tops and cutoff jeans! And even if they were, it was a carwash. Ernie gawked at the woman. "You see," Maureen pressed her point with brittle obstinacy, "these dopey parents lack common sense, so I constantly need to redirect their misguided energies elsewhere."

The skimpy clothes and all that fleshy exuberance - it sends the wrong message. This from a woman who was wearing a slutty, low-cut blouse and stiletto heels when Ernie met her three months earlier at the Foxy Lady lounge! Maureen Kwong had no compunction about cleavage, risqué small talk or casual sex on a first date but was worried half to death about middle-aged men getting erotically aroused at a car wash. Despite a doctorate in education administration, the vice-principal suddenly seemed like the stupidest cow on the planet. Sipping at his tepid drink, Ernie glanced about the coffee shop. A pimply-faced youth several booths down was ogling Maureen Kwong with a fawning expression. The horny teen wished he had an exotic, oriental firecracker of a girlfriend. "What about the graffiti outlaw?" Ernie asked shifting gears.
"I'm still working on it. These things take time." The week after New Years, somebody decorated a stall in the second floor, boy's bathroom with an obscenity-laced poem. The first stanza read:

Roses are red
Lemons are sour
Open your legs
and give me an hour.

The janitor scrubbed the rather lengthy verse away but not before Ms. Kwong took half dozen digital pictures of the raunchy musings. A week passed and a second somewhat shorter and more intellectually challenging poem appeared on the same spot. Both were scribbled using indelible markers.

Sex is like math
You subtract all the clothes
Add in the bed
Divide the legs
And Pray to god
You don't multiply.

The pithy verse was far too clever to be the work of an adolescent mind. Ms Kwong hypothesized that the writer had plagiarized it from a collection of erotica, passing it off as an original creation. Needless-to-say, no Brandenberg student claimed literary credit. The vice-principal, who was in charge of disciplinary matters, grilled a handful of prime suspects, who pleaded ignorance; long after the metal walls had been scoured clean, the woman was still hard at work trying to solve the adolescent caper. "A few dirty words scribbled on a bathroom stall," Ernie assumed a breezy tone, "it's a victimless crime - hardly worth getting your panties twisted in a knot."

"Maybe for you," Maureen's voice soured. "I’m having several photos enlarged."

"What for purpose?"

"To check handwriting against samples from some of our more troublesome students."

Ernie imagined her brandishing a high-powered magnifying glass over the script, examining each verse for distinctive flourishes, embellishments, misspellings and grammatical inconsistencies, as a prelude to more extensive interrogations. "That almost seems like an invasion of privacy." He no longer made any effort to mask his irritation.

"We're running a public school not a Bonanza Bus station."

"Are the poems in bad taste? Yes, of course. Are they mean-spirited, vulgar and crass? Yes, again, but teenage boys - and I speak from personal experience - are like that."

"And you're not embarrassed to admit as much?"

Ernie leaned halfway across the table. "Not in the least." He wasn't even trying to humor the woman anymore. "It's a quasi-degenerate stage most kids go through… a pubescent rite of passage."

Roses are red
Lemons are sour…

No heroic measures! In the Starbucks Coffee Shop on a Saturday night in the middle of winter, Ernie decided to pull the plug on Maureen Kwong, the newly-minted vice-principal of Brandenberg High School. Not that the Asian woman was an anomaly. There were a million females out there just like her - well-educated, bright, sexy, professionally competent and dangerous as hell. You couldn't marry a woman like Maureen Kwong. Even as a casual date, Ernie could tolerate her fusty eccentricities for no more than a few hours back to back.

* * * * *

Easing a corroded water pump out from under the hood of a Ford pickup, Ernie gingerly placed the damaged part on the concrete floor and wiped his grimy hands with a rag that didn’t appear much cleaner than his fingers. Only when he stood fully erect did he notice the olive-skinned woman waiting patiently near the hydraulic lift. In her late twenties, Jillian Crowley was short with black hair gathered in a tight bun. The face was equal parts guileless ingénue and femme fatale. "Can I help you?"

She gestured with her eyes at a maroon colored sedan parked near the furthest bay. "My Toyota Celica... the air conditioner’s busted."

"Leave a number where you can be reached. We’ll take a look and call you in a few hours."

She pursed her lips and stared at a mound of gashed, punctured, crushed and otherwise ravaged tires heaped in the far corner of the repair bay. “I work over at the library in reference and am on a rather tight budget."

"I'll see what I can do."

After replacing the defective water pump, Ernie did a brake job, junking the scarred rotors on a late model Subaru. Around eleven he pulled the Toyota into the bay and raised the hood. Twenty minutes later he called the library. "The compressor is shot… completely dead."

"Oh dear!"

"New units cost a small fortune, but I can scare one up at salvage for a fraction of the cost. Even though it's used, we’ll warrant the part for a year just in case anything goes wrong." He wasn’t quite sure why he said that as the garage never offered warranties on used parts.

There was a short pause. "That sounds fair enough."

Three weeks later in mid-July, Ernie visited the library on his lunch break. "How's the air conditioner?"

"Wonderful! I can't thank you enough."

"Well just remember," Ernie added magnanimously, "if anything goes wrong, you bring it back to the garage and I’ll set things right." He shifted back and forth on the heels of his feet. "I was wondering…" His original intent was to ask the librarian out but his mind got hamstrung. "Reading material… I was wondering if you could recommend a good book."

Jillian folded her hands together on the desk. "What type of fiction do you prefer?"

Ernie became flustered. "I don't know… nothing too demanding. Since high school, I mostly favor hot rod magazines."

She led the way across the room to the stacks and in the very first row pulled a slim volume down from the shelf. "Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. It's an American classic."

"Anything else?"

Yes, you voluptuous vixen..., you mouth watering, luscious, heavenly creation. You can go out with me - a first date leading to a second, and then carnal relations followed by a trip to the marriage altar and half a dozen babies, each one more beautiful than their divine mother. "No, I think that about does it," Ernie replied meekly. Jillian stood there with her delicate fingers laced together, the nails polished with plum colored lacquer. He turned to leave.

"He sold paint."

"Excuse me?"

"Anderson…when he wrote Winesburg, Ohio, which is generally considered his greatest work, he was writing advertising copy and working days for a paint factory." Uncoupling her fingers, the hand drifted down to her hips. "It's just a bit of literary trivia that I thought you might like to know."

The day that the librarian had her air conditioner fixed, Buddy Evers, who pumped gas, stuck his head in the garage. "Are my eyes playing tricks on me yesterday, or was that Jillian Crowley?"

"Where do you know her from?" Ernie asked.

"Went to high school together. The guys used to call her the 'Virgin Mother' ‘cause she was such a prude. Even though I never moved in her circle, Jillian always treated me swell."

"Which circle?"

"You know… the straight 'A', goody two-shoes set.” A rusty van pulled up at the self-service pumps. “You still seeing that Chinese teacher?"

Ernie grimaced and shook his head violently. "That blockhead?"

"I thought she had a half dozen sheepskins hanging on the wall."

"Just one - a PhD in stupidity," Ernie muttered. "What else can you tell me about Ms Crowley?"

“Her parents brought their Chevy Cavalier here for oil changes but moved to Florida a few years back. She shares an apartment over behind the fire station with a younger sister."

"What's the sister like?"

"Abigail?" Buddy flashed him a queer look. "Nothing like the Virgin Mother!"

"Which tells me nothing."

"Town slut," Buddy smaned. "Jillian... she's plenty smart but don't flaunt it. Always had a kind word for everyone." "Of course, that slutty sister of hers is a whole different story," Buddy lowered his voice several notches. "The parents took out a 'wayward child' petition against Abby after she ran away from home for the third time. The girl did a stint at juvenile hall, but that only made her twice as ornery. Next thing I heard, the Crowleys relocated to Florida, leaving both daughters to fend for themselves." Buddy made a disagreeable snorting sound through his nose. "Ain't life swell!"

Ernie promptly went home and read the book. He liked it well enough but wasn't terribly sure that he understood the half of what he had read. Winesburg, Ohio - it was sort of like Jillian Crowley. The woman confounded his sensibilities, but if Buddy Evers said she was a decent sort that's all Ernie cared about. Buddy had been married to the same woman since a year out of high school. He coached Little League, never drank to excess or fooled around. Buddy mentioned that it was no great surprise Jillian, who was always reclusive, became a librarian. The only mystery was why such a ravishingly pretty woman was still unattached.

The following Tuesday Ernie returned to the library. "Which story did you like best?"

"The one at the beginning about the middle-aged school teacher."

"Yes, it's rather sad but beautifully written." Jillian agreed. "Are you looking for more books?" Ernie nodded. Again he trailed her across the slate blue carpet to adult fiction where she gathered up an armload of hardcover offerings.

"I was wondering," Ernie screwed up his courage, "if you might like to go out for dinner this Saturday… maybe catch a movie."

"A date?" She handed him the books.

"I don't mean to -"

"I live with my sister, Abigail." Jillian scribbled her name and telephone number on a scrap of paper. "Usually one of us is home in the evening." She suddenly reached out and pulled the topmost book from the pile. "This novel is grossly overrated. Let me suggest something else." Several rows over, she pulled a tattered volume off the shelf. "Read the third story then go back and take a look at the others if you like."

"The third story?" Ernie opened the volume at random. The page was yellowed and frayed. He thought to ask why he should skip the first two offerings but thought better of it.

Thursday evening Ernie called Jillian at home but she was out. "Could you tell your sister Ernie called?"

"Bernie?"

"No, Ernie… from the garage. I'll pick her up around seven this Saturday night." There was no immediate response. "Around seven." After waiting a discrete interval he added, "Could you make sure Jillian gets the message?"

"Yeah, whatever." The line went dead. The following day he called Jillian at the library. "Did you get my message?"

"What message?"

Ernie felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that quickly fermented into blind rage. "Your sister didn't mention I called?"

"Abigail's a bit scatterbrained. She's not good with directions, but Saturday's fine," she replied. "Did you read the Turgenev?"

The question caught Ernie unawares. It had been a rough week at the garage. He single-handedly pulled a drive train on a Chevy truck, which backlogged the scheduled repairs. Since the beginning of the week, he hadn't closed shop much before seven. There was no time or residual brain power left over for intellectual calisthenics. And anyway, he was far too excited about the date to worry about musty, nineteenth-century Russian literature. "Yes, I read the Turgenev story," Ernie lied.

"And how did you like it?"

"Oh," he was getting flustered now, "I'll tell you all about it Saturday night." The response seemed to please the woman immensely and they ended the conversation on a happy note. Later that night, Ernie took an early bath and climbed into bed with the bearded Russian. It seemed to take almost as much personal investment reading the damn story as it did pulling the drive train! If his mind wandered off from the printed page, Ernie lost the gist of what the author was saying. And more often than not, the writer spoke at several different levels at once.

A young Russian girl from an aristocratic family falls under the influence of a crazed, religious zealot and her life is ruined. Ernie was hoping for a happy ending but no such luck. The Turgenev story - it was a stupid, stupid, stupid bit of literary fluff! Putting the tattered book aside, Ernie killed the light and lay on his back in the dark. He ran a thumb over a scab on his index finger where an errant wrench had opened a deep gash earlier in the week. Why did Jillian insist that he read such a crappy tale? Ernie momentarily turned the light back on and gazed at the formidable stack of books on the bedside table. Returning home from the library, he skimmed the table of contents on one beefy volume. All that unfettered truth and wisdom - it was like a talisman, an omen of good things to come.

Saturday evening Ernie arrived around quarter to seven at Jillian's apartment. Abigail let him in. "You're the grease monkey?"

"Mechanic," he corrected.

The younger girl wasn't nearly as pretty as her older sister. She had the same dark hair and burnished Mediterranean complexion, but that's where similarities ended. Scrawny and disheveled with a wide, mannish jaw, she wore raggedy jeans below a wrinkled T-shirt with no bra. Her hazel eyes flitted distractedly about the room as though she couldn't wait to be rid of him. "You don't seem like my sister's type."

Ernie coughed self-consciously. "Jillian's not here?"

"Director called a last minute staff meeting at the library. She's running late and asked me to entertain you in her absence." Flinging herself down on the sofa, Abigail's unencumbered breasts swung lazily from side to side.

"Do you work locally?"

"I'm between jobs." She teased a piece of lint off her jeans and deposited it on the rug. "I was employed over at the Dairy Mart until I had words with the assistant manager. Now I'm thinking of going into business for myself."

"What exactly did you have in mind?"

Abigail shuffled over to a computer tucked away in the far corner of the room. "Ever heard of bawdybodies.com?" Without waiting for an answer, she typed an address into the search engine and brought up a screen. Ernie leaned over and read through a raunchy doggerel. "You're gonna sell sexual toys and herbal supplements?"

"Hell no," Abigail seemed genuinely miffed at the suggestion. "The smutty crap is just a lost leader." She tilted her head at an angle and smirked impudently. "You do know what a lost leader is?"

"Something a businessman gives away to get customers to shop in the store." Ernie was getting aggravated. He wanted Jillian, the Virgin Mother, to rescue him from this crazy woman.
"Over to the right... what do you see?"

"A bunch of naked women in erotic poses."

"Correctamundo!" Abigail scrolled down the menagerie of topless females until she reached a slightly pudgy blonde with a strawberry birthmark on her inner thigh. "That's Bethany Garret."

"Name doesn't ring a bell."

"Beth was a year ahead of me at Brandenberg High."

"Not necessarily the valedictorian." Ernie was feeling light headed.

"When some horny-as-hell male clicks on this racy photo," she positioned the cursor over the blonde’s lumpy left breast, "the hyperlink transports him directly to Bethany's personal website where, for a small fee, they can view more photos and steamy videos." "Bethany went from dead-end jobs punching time clocks to a six-figure income."

"How far along are you in your start-up venture?"

"I need a professional camera." She reached for a cell phone resting on an end table. "All I got for now are these grainy nudes I shot with -"

"Sorry I'm late." The door flew open and Jillian hurried into the room. "We had this spur-of-the-moment staff meeting and then I got stuck in traffic.

"I just been bringing Ernie up to speed on my latest business venture." Edging closer to the computer, Abigail flipped a switch and the monitor faded to black. Lifting up on her toes, she kissed him on the cheek. "He's a real peach of a guy."

"Business venture?" Wiping the wetness away with the heel of her hand, Jillian clearly had no idea what Abigail was talking about. "We're already ten minutes late, but I do appreciate your keeping him company in my absence.

"You sister's got a bit of a wild streak." Ernie and Jillian were hunkered down at the Cathay City Chinese Restaurant with a pu pu platter and pot of Oolong tea.

"Abby's all bluster and false bravado." Jillian maneuvered a pair of wooden chopsticks over a nugget of Colonel Tso’s chicken. The supple fingers moved with a ballet-like precision as she effortlessly lifted the food. "At some point my kid sister has to grow up."

"I read the Turgenev story."

"Yes, you told me." Jillian's eyes, which normally were opaque, sparkled with a rich luster. "And did you understand it?"

What was there to understand? A religious kook hoodwinks an unwitting admirer. "I lost focus and had to go back and reread certain passages."

"But you grasped the underlying message?"

"Yes, of course."

Jillian suddenly leaned across the table and kissed him on the cheek. "It's not right," she mused out loud, "my kid sister should smooch with a date before I do."

Later in the car before he turned the engine over, Ernie kissed her on the mouth. "I want to see you again."

She placed her lips next to his ear. "Yes, I'd like that."

Reaching the apartment complex, Ernie accompanied her to the door, and, slipping his arms around her waist, pulled her close. "If you don't mind my asking," he was feeling quite giddy, "What was the big deal with the Turgenev story?"

"Was there something you didn't understand?"

"No, not really. When the religious fanatic started spouting all that jibberish about personal atonement..."

“You lost me.” Jillian's eyes narrowed and her voice assumed a hard edge. "What are you talking about?"

Just then, the apartment door opened and Abigail stood gawking at them. "The crackpot who ran off with the landowner's daughter… he ruined the girl's life, and at the very end of the story, when they reached the inn during the rainstorm -"

"You read the wrong story." Jillian's face was livid. "I told you to read the third story, and you read the one before it."

"I did what you told me!" Over the woman's shoulder he could see the braless younger sister smirking vicariously. Kachunk! Kachunk! Kachunk! Ernie felt the turgid blood thudding in his ears, the precursor to a full-blown anxiety attack.

"Apparently not very well, because you read the wrong story." There were no more kisses, hugs or terms of endearment. Jillian Crowley disappeared into the apartment, and her future porn-star-of-a-younger-sister slammed the door shut.

Ernie went home and had a good cry. Then he got drunk and threw up all over himself and fell asleep on the couch still dressed in his vomit-soaked clothes. In the morning, hung over and overwhelmed with self-loathing, he took a closer look at the tattered Turgenev book. Yes, he had read the wrong story. Punin and Baburin - that was the name of the one he should have read. But Ernie, incorrigible dope that he was, began counting from Edward Garnett's scholarly introduction, leaving himself one short. One short - he might as well have been a thousand pages off the mark!

Punin and Baburin - it was another stupid story! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Baburin travels about the country with his friend Punin, who is bald with a head shaped like an egg. A thoroughly stupid story! Ernie stopped reading around lunchtime. He was only halfway finished but needed protein in his stomach before soldiering on. The kitchen phone began ringing with shrill insistence until the answering machine finally picked up. The caller left no message. Brinnng! Brinnng! Brinnng! The phone erupted again, demanding, begging, pleading to be answered. Fleeing the apartment, Ernie wandered down to the lobby and gathered his mail. When he returned the red LCD light was flashing on the answering machine. A thoroughly remorseful Jillian Crowley would be calling and leaving the first of many unanswered apologies for his public humiliation. Ernie pressed the message tab.

"Hi, it's Maureen. Just got back from an education seminar in Palo Alto. Still upset about that silliness with the graffiti? Give me a call. We'll patch things up over a bottle of wine and a porno flick." Ernie slumped down in a kitchen chair. He hit the playback tab a second time and listened to Dr. Kwong's officious nasal twang. A third and a fourth time he listened to the message, and then Ernie tried to imagine Ms ‘Poisonality’, the despotic oriental, married with family. She would structure domestic bliss with the same autocratic efficiency she favored at Brandenberg High School.

Around seven Ernie called Jillian's apartment. "She doesn't want to talk to you." Abigail was sounding particularly self-righteous.

"If nothing else, would you at tell her I read the story… the right one."

"I'll do no such thing." She slammed the phone shut.

An hour later, Ernie showed up at the apartment. "Punin and Baburin… I finished the story earlier this afternoon."

"And what did you learn?"

"Baburin was a republican."

"Which tells me nothing."

Ernie began to cry, making crude snuffling sounds and blotting the wetness away with the back of a hand. Abigail was sitting on the sofa, looked back and forth between her sister and the uninvited guest. Only when he began blubbering did she rise to her feet, yawn languidly and disappear down the hallway into the bedroom. "For Baburin being 'republican' meant respecting the freedom of other people… he took care of Punin even though he did no work, spouted sappy poetry and acted like a halfwit."

"Turgenev's nothing like Tolstoy." Jillian wet her lips with her tongue. "He doesn't bludgeon you half to death with all that mystical malarkey."

"I don't give a crap about Tolstoy," Ernie protested. "I don't even like to read. I only did it to get to know you."

"And the young girl?" Jillian pressed.

Ernie paused to catch his breath. "Baburin takes Musa Pavlovna under his wing. She elopes with the college student, but Baburin doesn't rush after her. He simply lets her go."

"He doesn't force his will on her."

"Baburin… he's a nihilistic, a republican." Only now did he cover his moist eyes with his calloused hands. "This is all new to me. It's all getting mixed up in my brain."

"It's a package deal," Jillian replied dryly.
"Yes, I figured as much.” Ernie understood intuitively that they were no longer talking about the Turgenev tale. “It makes no difference to me."

His tormentor moved closer and, wrapping her arms around his waist, rested her head up against his chest. "It's package deal," she whispered what she said a moment earlier but so softly her words were barely audible.

"I need to speak with your sister before I go."

"Okay."

The door to Abigail's bedroom was open. Ernie entered, closed the door behind him and flopped down on a straight back chair in the far corner. Abigail was resting in a full lotus position on the top of the covers thumbing through a copy of People magazine. "What are you doing?" Ernie continued to sit staring morosely at his penny loafers. Five minutes passed in total silence. "I want to go to sleep. How much longer are you going to sit there like a retard?"

"Bawdybodies.com… I don't think it's such a great idea, but everybody's got to make their way in life. God knows I've done some dumb-ass things that I regret even to this day."

"You're freaking me out!" Abigail muttered, throwing the magazine on the floor.

"If your entrepreneurial, startup venture doesn't pan out, my brother-in-law works in human services over at Walmart. I could get you an interview. Pay isn't the greatest and you would have to work your way up."

She shut the light and the room went totally dark. "Anything else?"

"No, that's about it." Ernie rose to his feet. "Goodbye, Abigail."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Loyalty… that was a big thing.” Back out in the foyer, Ernie picked up where he had left off. “Turgenev kept yammering on and on about how, even after Baburin went into political exile, the man stood by his friends… his friends and his principles." He fished about in his pocket for the car keys.

"Baburin was loyal in ways that most people couldn't even begin to imagine," Jillian confirmed. "I thought you said you didn't like books."

"And the ending worked out rather nicely, don't you think?" The mechanic and the reference librarian seemed to be communicating at cross purposes.

“Yes, it did.” Jillian kissed him on the side of the mouth. "Come over for supper tomorrow night. I'll cook a small pot roast with baked potatoes, glazed carrots and string beans. What would you like for dessert?"