Redhead
Wolfgang Wright
Eric’s eighteenth birthday was right around the corner and his mother was getting on his case again about throwing him a party, even though he’d already told her a thousand times he didn’t want one. And why would he? By his own account he had exactly zero friends that lived in town and he could just imagine what his gaming buddies would say if he got down on his hands and knees and begged them to drop their controllers for a minute and cross state lines—or, in the case of Oddvar, an ocean—just for cake and ice cream. So what was the point of having a party if no one was going to be there? But his mother, as always, had her own “special” answer for that.
“We’ll invite my friends. They like you. They think you’re sweet.”
“But can’t you see how embarrassing that’ll be? Everyone’s gonna be asking me why none of my friends are there.”
“We’ll tell them you already had that party. This one’s just for grownups. Plus, you’ll get lots of presents, and we’ll sing happy birthday, and play games—it’ll be fun!”
“No. For the last time, I don’t want a party.”
“Well too bad, bucko, ’cause you’re getting one.”
The guests began arriving at noon. Tom and Alice, the next-door neighbors whose lawn he mowed and driveway he shoveled, were the first to come sliding through the door, Alice carrying the present because Tom’s walker took both hands. From the size and shape of the box, never mind the pastel blue wrapping paper, the present was most likely a sweater, something that Alice had knitted herself while watching Ellen or The Wheel. Soon after Barbara appeared, his mother’s closest friend since high school, what his friends, had he any, would have called her BFF, though he generally thought of her as an aunt. She’d brought with her the cake for the party, because the burnt odor of the one his mother had tried to make the day before still haunted the whole house. She’d left his present in the car, hoping that he wouldn’t mind being a doll and getting it for her. He didn’t mind, thinking it could be the big surprise he’d overheard his mother discussing with her over the phone, though the heft of it, once he had it in his hands, suggested a book. Then the other guests, all women, began filing in one-by-one, only two of which he’d ever met before. They all said hello and wished him a happy birthday and then set their presents, mostly cards, on the coffee table in the living room, after which they moved into the dining room and began chatting with each other and laughing all while drinking wine from plastic cups. Where were the men? Who knew? Maybe his mother had told her friends not to bring their husbands or boyfriends as a means of keeping her own boyfriends apart, since she couldn’t have invited the one without upsetting the other. Or maybe, like Barbara, they’d all had it up to here with men and were content to remain single for the rest of their lives. As far as his father went, well, he was busy as usual, and couldn’t make the trip, though his presence was felt when his antique clock—the one Eric’s mother had fought so hard for in the divorce, purely out of spite, because she knew how much it meant to his father—cuckooed one o'clock. At last, it was time to blow out the candles.
The guests sang happy birthday and jolly good fellow, and while they devoured the cake, they complimented Eric on how handsome he looked in the gray suit and maroon tie that his mother had forced him to wear. Compliments which sounded sincere, though because his neck and waist were literally stuffed inside this getup he felt fatter than usual, like a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Then came the questions, about how it felt to be an adult now and what his plans for the future were. The first he answered with a shrug, because he didn’t know how else to respond. Adultness, as far as he knew, wasn’t something you felt, but something arbitrarily assigned to you by the law. And the second he answered with a joke, saying that he wanted to be a horse jockey, it garnered a good laugh, though when he told them the truth, that he was hoping to become a professional food critic, they laughed just as hard. It seemed to confirm his growing suspicion that the whole reason his mother had wanted to throw this party wasn’t to celebrate his birthday but to give her an excuse to entertain her friends, making him less the guest of honor and more the main attraction. Doubt was cast, however, when the doorbell rang again and his mother, with a scheming grin, asked him to answer it, even though his face was stuffed with food and the guests were still showering him with questions. He knew then that something else was up, something that was sure to be far more humiliating than having to perform like a dancing bear.
His first thought when he opened the door and saw a woman standing there in a low-cut skin-tight dress was that his mother had ordered him a hooker, though why she would have gone with someone her own age rather than his did as much to dispel the thought as the fact that his mother’s shamelessness was almost never to his benefit. And in truth, the neckline wasn’t all that low, not even to the bottom of the breastbone, but in comparison to the mock turtles and sweater cuts her other friends had worn, to see any skin at all in that area was a shock to the system. Not to mention the size of her breasts, which were huge, like something out of a porno or one of his video games rather than anything he’d ever seen in real life. On top of that she had an attractive face, with soft brown eyes, a dimpled chin, and lightly-freckled cheeks, features he could have sworn he’d on a single face before but was unable to recall exactly whose it was with this other face so vividly before him, glowing like honey in the sun. It was she, however, this woman, who started in with the compliments.
“Damn, look at you,” she said, covering her cleavage with her hand. “Your mother needs to update her photos, because they do not serve you well. And just look at that suit on you. Darcy, are you seeing this?” She turned her head, searching for Darcy, who was not standing next to her, as she seemed to have assumed. “Darcy?”
Darcy, as in Darcy Dupriez, as in the girl he’d had a crush on since freshman year, was just coming up the walk, indifferently shaking a package wrapped in polka-dotted paper, no bigger than her hand. She was wearing a T-shirt that read “HANDS OFF” in big, bold letters and a pair of sexless gray sweatpants, in case words were not enough. If she had heard her mother’s question—for the resemblance was apparent now, despite the difference in cup size—she chose to ignore it, preferring whatever she was doing on her phone to anything in her more immediate environment.
“You forgot the present, Valerie,” she snarled without looking up.
As if ashamed by it, her mother swiped the present away from her and buried it behind her back. Then she laughed, a bit forcedly, and said, “Answer my question.”
“What question?”
“Why didn’t you tell me he was so handsome?”
“Who?”
“Eric.”
Finally, Darcy looked at him, in much the same way a disgusted child looks at a freshly crushed squirrel in the street. It was a look he’d already seen on the faces of numerous girls at school, including her own, the few times that she had acknowledged his existence, and yet to see it from her now stung a whole lot deeper, perhaps because none of her peers were here, expecting her to regard him with such disdain; this was a look that she had chosen all on her own.
“He’s not,” she said. “He’s not handsome, like, at all.”
Her mother frowned, and hunched forward a bit, negating the difference in their heights brought on by her heels. “Show a little respect. It’s his birthday for Chrissakes. And besides, you’re wrong. He’s very handsome. And I just love your hair. It’s so…so red.”
Darcy snickered, her eyes already back on her phone. “Yeah, that’s what they call him in school. Redhead.”
“You know,” her mother went on, “I used to have a boyfriend who looked just like you. A little taller maybe. How tall are you?”
“Mother! What are you doing?”
“Nothing. I’m complimenting the birthday boy on his appearance.”
“Can we just go in already? I have to pee.”
“Yes, Eric,” his mother said, coming up from behind. She put a hand on his shoulder, clearly pleased with herself for having gotten the Dupriezes to come to the party, and acting as if he should be pleased with her as well. “Why don’t you show your cute friend where the bathroom is, and I’ll take care of her mother.”
Someone was already using the bathroom on the main floor, so he led Darcy to the one upstairs. Right away she turned and wrinkled her nose at him.
“Phew, were you just in here?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Because it smells like ass.”
“It must have been someone else.”
“You mean one of your mom’s friends,” she said, and with a cruel grin, shut the door.
He glanced down the hallway at his own room and saw that his mother had closed the door on it. He tried to think of what was behind the door, whether he had ever left anything out that would have tipped his mother off about his crush on Darcy, because he was certain that he’d never told her about it, had never even mentioned Darcy’s name to her. In fact, he couldn’t remember repeating her name to anyone, not even Oddvar, who was always asking him whom he wanted to screw in his class, and if he could send pictures of her, or of any of his female classmates, because he had a thing for Americans. Once, in one of his notebooks, he’d absentmindedly written her name down and put a heart next to it while listening to one of his teachers drone on about differentials or the imperfect subjunctive or some other pointless thing, but the second he realized what he’d done he erased it and then scribbled over it, hard, like he was trying to scratch it out rather than cover it up. So how the hell had his mother figured it out? Or had she? Maybe it was just dumb luck? Maybe she just happened to meet Darcy’s mother at the grocery store, or the hair salon, and after finding out that “Val” had a daughter the same age as her son she’d whipped up a plan to get them together, wholly ignorant of his actual feelings for Darcy—because why should his feelings ever factor into anything his mother did? After all, they hadn’t stopped her from throwing a party he didn’t want.
Suddenly, the bathroom door flung open.
“Uh, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Were you listening to me go to the bathroom?”
“No. I swear, I didn’t hear anything.”
Darcy closed in on him, allowing little room to breathe. “Let’s get something straight, okay? I only came to your stupid party because Val made me. So if you even think of telling anyone at school I was here, I swear to God I’ll tell everyone I walked in on you while you were jerking off to kiddie porn. Got it?”
By then the guests had crowded into the living room and were waiting for them to return. Their mothers were seated on the couch, Eric’s hugging tightly to one arm cushion while Darcy’s was pressed up against the other, leaving the middle wide open for their children to nestle in between. Eric paled at how brazen they were being, especially his own mother, who had obviously orchestrated the seating arrangements, but Darcy appeared to be indifferent to it all. Tapping at her phone again, she plopped down right where she was, right on the bottom step of the stairs, kicked her legs out in front of her, and crossed them at the ankles. And if this weren’t proof enough of just how little she cared about what was going on around her, she twirled one of her feet around in a circle, brushing with her big toe the tennis ball on the leg of Tom’s walker. Wanting to avoid a scene, Eric rushed over to the couch and planted himself smack dab in the middle of the open cushion, equidistant from either mother, making it look as if everyone were in their proper places, then reached forward for one of the cards, and began to open it; but before he could even get the corner torn, his mother seized him by the forearm and urged him to slide over, all the while shooting a look across the couch at Darcy’s mother.
“Darce,” her mother said.
“What?”
“Put that thing away and come sit over here.”
“No thank you.”
“Don’t you want to sit with me?”
“Not really.”
“Well, do you want to drive your car next week? Because I’d be happy to drive you and your friends around instead, especially that Jake friend of yours.”
“Fine,” Darcy said, and got up. “God, what’s the big deal?” and after rounding the coffee table and squeezing herself into the open space, she looked up and down the entire right side of her body, making sure that nothing of hers was touching anything of Eric’s, even tugging on the baggy leg of her sweatpants so as to create a clear divide between them.
“Kids these days,” her mother said, apologizing to the others. “The only thing they respond to are threats.”
“In my day we used a belt,” Tom muttered, examining his walker for damage. “That got them to think twice before disobeying their elders.”
“Well,” Eric’s mother said, clasping her hands together, “now that we’re all situated, why don’t we get started? Eric?”
For the next several minutes Eric tore open wrapping paper, read aloud cards and passed them around, and thanked everyone individually for their present—and he was thankful, because almost everything he got was something that he actually wanted or could use. Yes, there was that sweater from his neighbors, orange with a picture of a lion’s head embroidered into it, and a giant dictionary from Aunt Barbara, which he joked he could use to kill bugs, but he also received a wireless gaming headset, a vintage Return of the Jedi poster, a leather wallet with his initials engraved into it, a food subscription box from his father, and a high-end drone from his mother, which she told everyone she hoped would get him out of the house more often. And just as he had hoped, most of the cards were filled with cash, more than he was expecting, and those that weren’t contained gift cards to his favorite restaurants, which was just as good. All told, it was the most lucrative birthday he’d ever had, and if it weren’t for how stilted and uncomfortable the party itself was, he might have actually turned to his mother and thanked her for having bullied him into it.
“Only I don’t think I’ve opened your present yet, Mrs. Dupriez.”
“Yeah, Val,” Darcy said, suddenly perking up, “where’d it go?”
“You know what?” her mother replied, looking around as if not entirely sure where she’d put it. “Silly me, I…I think I brought the wrong present.”
But her daughter was suspicious. “Whose did you bring?”
“Cli—Uncle Clifford’s.”
“Uncle Cliff’s birthday isn’t for another six months.”
“Yes, but I bought his present ahead of time.”
“And wrapped it?”
“Yes.”
“So you bought him something in advance, which you never do, and wrapped it in paper with polka dots of different colors on it, even though he’s color blind?”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“You’re lying.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Dupriez,” Eric interjected, hoping to put an end to the badgering; but Darcy was on to something, and she wasn’t about to let up.
“No,” she barked at him. “If I have to participate, then she has to participate,” and she swung her head around in the other direction. “Give him his present, mother, or I swear to God I’ll—”
“Alright,” her mother said, reaching for the present, which she’d stuffed into the corner of the couch. “It’s not a big deal, really.”
Still, she laughed nervously when she handed it over, this small, fist-sized box that was partly mashed now, with its paper all crinkly and torn on one corner. And right away Eric ripped into it, wanting to move on as quickly as possible to whatever the next torture was that his mother had in store for him, thinking the whole time that the present was just going to be something he didn’t want, that “Val” was just trying to protect him from having to make a phony thank you to her, because in spite of having conspired with his own mother, she didn’t seem quite as awful. It never occurred to him that the present might be something inappropriate.
“What is it?” Barbara asked. She was seated in a foldout chair next to his mother, and had to lean forward in order to make out what everyone else had already grown silent because of—not out of horror perhaps, but certainly because they didn’t know quite how to respond to a box of extra-large condoms, ribbed for her pleasure. And neither did Eric, which was why he said nothing at first, opening the way for someone else to speak.
“Valerie,” his mother whispered, “I think you misunderstood. When I said we should try and set them up, I didn’t mean—”
“Wait. What?”
“No, it’s, it’s a joke,” Valerie pleaded, ignoring her daughter’s biting glare, which wasn’t something she’d be able to quell with words anyway. More pressing were the looks of the others, including the confused look on the birthday boy himself. “You know, a gag gift.”
“You wanted me to go out with him? Him?”
“Anyway, it’s just the box,” and she swiped it back from Eric, who made no effort to stop her. She then opened the lid and flashed everyone the cash that was inside before reclosing the lid and handing it back. “Obviously I wasn’t going to give a kid a box of condoms.”
But Eric knew better. He knew from the weight of the box that the money was just something that she had slipped on top, unless there was a lot of cash in it. And he figured Darcy must know it, too, from having held the box herself, and if she were given a second to think about it, she might remember how it had felt in her hand and say something to make her mother feel even worse. And so, seeing as it was his birthday, he decided to throw himself on the grenade instead.
“Actually, I’m not a kid anymore,” he said. “So if you’ve got any. Anyone? You’d really be helping me out here. I can’t wait to start having some sex.”
Tom was the first to laugh, and then shortly after his wife, whose seniority seemed to allow the other women to let loose as well. Soon, the whole room was in stitches, even his own mother was laughing, though it wasn’t entirely clear she got the joke—so that, by the end, only Darcy refused to join in, preferring instead to sit back, roll her eyes, and mope.
The condoms went with him to his room. So did Darcy, oddly without objecting, perhaps because it was his mother, and not hers, who had asked her to help carry the presents, though Eric suspected some other, more sinister reason for her sudden willingness to comply. And in fact, as soon as she dropped the cards, wallet, and dictionary onto his desk, she began looking around his room, as if probing for something she could use to make fun of him, either now or sometime down the road. Luckily, there wasn’t much for her to work with, because other than his action figures, posed upon every flat surface available, his room was fairly ordinary, not unlike any other teenage boy’s, and even they—the action figures—were clearly being used as decoration, and not for regular play. But that hardly deterred her, because somebody had to suffer for her having to be here, didn’t they? And who better than him?
“So, you’ve never had sex,” she said.
“What?”
“You heard me. You’re a virgin.”
He ignored her, or tried to. He laid out everything he was carrying onto the bed, then grabbed the new headset and took it over to the TV. He got down on his knees and unhooked the old headset from the game console, and after wrapping the cord around the earcups, set it aside and hooked up the new one.
“I bet no one’s even kissed you before, huh?”
Again, he didn’t answer her. He put the new headset over his ears and adjusted the headband until it felt comfortable and then fiddled with the microphone in order to get it the right distance away from his mouth. Then he turned on the TV and sat Indian-style against the bed, thinking that maybe if he began to play a game that might encourage her to leave. Instead, she came around and stood in front of him, so close that her feet were underneath his uplifted legs. He saw that she had one of the condoms in her hand, still in its wrapper. She leaned over and began flicking his nose with it.
“Eric the Redhead sitting in a tree, j-e-r-k-i-n-g.”
He tried to turn away from her, but she persisted.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Stop doing that.”
He snatched the condom from her and flung it across the room.
“Geez, Redhead,” she laughed. “I’m just having a little fun.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What? Redhead? But that’s your nickname.”
“No, it’s not. People only call me that when they’re making fun of me.”
“And you think I’m making fun of you?”
“Why don’t you just leave?”
“Am I making you uncomfortable, Redhead?”
“I told you you can go, so go. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
She placed her hands on her knees and leaned over, face-to-face. “Maybe. Or maybe what I want is to strip off all my clothes, get down on my hands and knees, crawl over to that condom, and bring it back to you between my teeth. Is that what you want, too, Eric?”
He tried not to but he began to cry. He closed his eyes and brought his hand up and wiped away the tears as they began to trickle onto his cheeks. Darcy laughed. She flicked his forehead and stood up. When he reopened his eyes, she was already by the door.
“See you at school, Redhead.”
Oddvar was online, exploring the mountains of Bagu for warlocks and hidden treasure, and so Eric joined him, crossing the Lunga River to get there. Oddvar’s avatar, a muscular mutant penguin, waved at him, then went back to slaying a magical boar.
“Ah, it’s E-man to the rescue!” he exclaimed as orange blood oozed out around his sword. “Happy birthday! How was the party?”
“Well, nobody’s died yet,” Eric said, and after examining their surroundings for further danger, he caught his friend up to speed, being careful to leave Darcy’s name out of it, because though the odds that anything he said to his Scandinavian friend would make it back to the states were pretty slim, having seen how malicious Darcy could be if the mood were to strike her, he wasn’t about to take any chances. Instead, he skipped over her completely and went straight to the part about the condoms.
“I do not understand,” Oddvar replied. “A friend of your mother gave you condoms? Is this custom in America?”
Eric laughed. “No, it’s like a gag gift. Like a joke. Like funny ha-ha.”
“People laughed?”
“No, we were all freaked out about it. At least I was.”
“And this made people laugh?”
“No. Nobody laughed, dude, at least not till I said something funny, and then that made everything cool again.”
“What did you say?”
“That I could use some condoms right now.”
“But you said she gave you some.”
Eric shook his head to no one. “Look, just forget it, okay? I obviously didn’t tell it right.”
“Obviously not,” Oddvar said, and laughed. “What will you do with them?”
“The condoms? I don’t know. Why, you got any bright ideas?”
“Mail them to me.”
“Yeah, right. Like they’d fit you. Based on the size of that sword you’re wielding, you’re clearly overcompensating for something.”
“Or displaying my wares. Displaying wares? Is that a phrase?”
“Not from this millennium. Actually, I kind of want to try one on just to see.”
“Do it.”
“What? You mean like now?”
“What can it hurt?”
“My ego, that’s what. Also, everyone’s still here. What if someone walks in on me?”
“Put your back on the door.”
Eric’s avatar, a giant lizard-like creature, paused on the mountain they were climbing together. “You really think I should?”
“I shall wait here and enjoy the view.”
“I’m not sending you pictures.”
“The view of Bagu.”
“Oh, right. Alright, hold on.”
He set down his controller and retrieved the condom he’d thrown across the room, then got up and walked over to the door. It wasn’t completely latched from when Darcy had strutted out, so he quietly closed it the rest of the way and then leaned his back against it. Cautiously, he tore open the wrapper and extracted the condom, holding it close to his eye like a monocle.
“How is it going?” Oddvar asked.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“It’s for your own good.”
Laughing, Eric tossed the wrapper into his wastebasket. He began by unrolling the condom by working at the rolled-up part itself, but when that felt like it was taking forever, he stuck his middle and index finger inside of the condom and then rolled it over them like he’d seen kids in health classes on TV roll condoms down bananas, although once he reached his knuckles, he took the condom off and reverted back to the way he’d been doing it before.
“It’s actually not as round as I thought it was going to be,” he said, holding it up by the reservoir tip. “Although the length is a mouthful.”
“Don’t put it in your mouth.”
“Gee, thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.”
He undid his jeans, then pulled them and his underwear down to just below his crotch and slipped the condom on.
“Does it fit?”
“Like a glove, what do you think? I don’t even have a boner.”
“We should travel to the Waker Inn.”
“Yeah, because those blue-skinned chicks that work there really do it for me.”
They both laughed—though Eric’s laughter was quickly cut off by a knock at the door.
“What was that?” Oddvar asked, but Eric didn’t answer him. Instead, while rapidly doing up his pants, he spoke to the door, pressing his back even harder against it.
“Who, who is it?”
“Val. Darcy’s mom.”
He thought she’d say something else, like why the hell she was knocking on his door, but when she didn’t, he rushed back to the floor, picked up his controller, and pretended like he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“Come in.”
She opened the door just far enough to stick her head in. “Your mother wanted me to tell you we’re getting ready to play murder mystery now.”
“All right, tell her I’ll be down in a minute, thanks.”
She turned her head, like she was going to leave, then stuck it back in again, lowering her voice. “She’s a real piece of work, isn’t she?”
“Who? My mom?” He tried not to smile. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“Would ‘bitch’ be another?”
Now he couldn’t help himself. “You said it, not me.”
“Yeah well, I have my own handful to deal with.”
She paused now, as if not sure what next to do or say. She seemed to spot something, and came into the room. Leaning over, she reached into the wastebasket and pulled out the condom wrapper. She looked around the room, as if for the condom itself, and when she didn’t see it, looked directly at him. As soon as their eyes made contact, he looked away from her, his face suddenly redder than his hair.
“You know,” she said, “I wasn’t lying about that boyfriend.”
He glanced in her direction, at her feet. “What?”
She sat on the edge of his desk and rubbed the wrapper between her fingers. “I really did have a boyfriend who looked like you. Treated me like a princess, too, which is why I broke up with him. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Some girls, they think all they deserve is to be treated like dirt. And luckily for us, there’s plenty of guys out there happy to do so. What about you? Is that how you’d treat Darcy if you were dating her? Like dirt?”
He waited for as long as he could, until the silence became too much to bear. “No.”
“Not like she’d ever let you have the chance.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“You’re better off anyway. She’d just make you miserable.”
“She already does that.”
She laughed. “That’s because she’s like me. She doesn’t know a good thing when she sees it.”
Finally, Eric raised his eyes to her. They stared at each other, searchingly, until his mother came to the open door.
“Eric?” She looked at them, suspicious. “What’s going on?”
Darcy’s mother stood up, and without drawing attention to it, curled her fingers around the condom wrapper, concealing it entirely. “Eric was just showing me his video game.”
“He can play that later,” his mother said, frowning. “C’mon, Eric, everyone’s downstairs waiting on you. Except for Darcy—I don’t know where she’s gone.”
Darcy’s mother groaned. “Ugh, I’ll find her,” and she whisked out of the room like someone was chasing her out.
“C’mon, Eric. Chop, chop.”
“Fine, just let me say goodbye to Odd.”
“And do me a favor.”
“That’s what I was born for.”
“Put that sweater on. Alice thinks you don’t like it.”
“Gee, I wonder what gave her that impression.”
Oddvar, who’d heard everything, was certain that Darcy’s mother—or, as he called her, “that woman with the sexy voice”—wanted Eric’s bones, and that if his own mother hadn’t interrupted them, “you’d have your winky inside of her as we speak.” Eric laughed, but denied his friend’s take on things, saying that it hadn’t felt like that in the room. Afterward, however, when he had signed off and was changing into the sweater, the possibility continued to linger in his mind. He started to get nervous about seeing her again, and wondered what he should say to her when he did. But it was all in vain, because when he got downstairs, into the basement, she wasn’t there.
“Where are they?” he asked his mother, because Darcy was missing, too.
“Beats me,” his mother shrugged. She seemed frustrated, and was pulling at her dress.
“I’ll go look,” Eric said to her, and ran off before she could object.
As he reached the main floor, he heard voices coming from outside. He pushed the curtain back and peered out the living room window. Darcy was seated on the passenger side of a car parked across the end of the driveway, while her mother was standing right beside her, on the other side of the door, yanking at the handle. She was yelling at Darcy to get her ass back in the house, but Darcy was refusing, and was holding on tight from the inside. He could hear her repeating what he had said to her, about her being free to leave, and he was astonished by how immature, how childish she seemed, and couldn’t believe that he had ever had a crush on her. Her mother, on the other hand, just looked like a beautiful mess. He wanted to go out and help her in some way but didn’t know how, wasn’t sure that there was a way to help; not all problems can be solved. Finally, she gave up, walked around the car, hopped in the driver’s seat, and drove away.
“Did you find them?” his mother asked, just coming up the stairs.
“They left,” he said, letting the curtains go.
“Now why would they do that?” She came to the window to have her own look, then glared askance at him. “What did you say to them?”
“What? Nothing.”
“Eric.”
“I didn’t say anything, I swear.”
She frowned, clearly dubious, but what could she do? “Well, c’mon then. We still have other guests to entertain.”
It was only then, as he was making his way back into the basement, that he remembered he was still wearing the condom. He could feel the latex against his penis, wriggling loosely around in his underwear, and as his mother went about explaining the rules to everyone, and handing out assignments, a sense of calm washed over him. He smiled to himself, knowing that he held this secret, and that none of the others in the room, not even his mother, could take it away.
