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Very Large Man |
by Dan Vierck
The bartender brought Jody her first summer punch. She jabbed her straw at the crushed ice, took a sip and dug her phone out of her purse. She opened it to text her friend to see how far away she was, to see how long it would be before she was there. As she was rapping at the plastic with her long polished nails the large man to her right, in his tie dyed tee, leaned over and complimented the phone.
Jody nodded and kept typing, adding a note about the creeper, a rude fatty. With her eyes not wandering she took half the drink in her first pull. "I just mean," the man began, jutting his chin out, looking at his beer and the polished wood bar more than her, "it's what I do. I'm a regional manager for LexiPhone. My name is Terrance." She nodded politely and mouthed an 'Oh.' Both hands wrapped around his beer, he rapped his fingers across his other fingers and tried to let it go, not bother her.
"I'm sorry to interrupt again," he began, and Jody let her eyes open widely, visibly in annoyance. "Is that an Edge 2270 or an Edge 3000?"
"It's a 3000," she sighed. He nodded, tried to let it go, get work out of his head.
"Have you had any problems with the video messaging?" He asked. Jody had a lot of problems with the video messaging. She didn't respond to him. "Like," He started again, "When you send the video does the person you're sending it to get just a message without the video?" That was exactly what the problem was with her phone. She pressed the send button and turned to him.
"Maybe." She said. "Sometimes. I don't know."
"Well," he said and pinched the phone from her with his index finger and thumb, "I can fix that." He spread a couple napkins over the bar and grabbed a cloth folio of small tools from his front shirt pocket. Jody didn't have a moment to do anything. He was too fast. As he slipped the rubber pink case off and slid the back cover free she couldn't help wondering at how he was so quick and agile with such thick, incredibly thick, and so round fingers. They were clean, she noticed. Clean and thick and round and incredible. She imagined them on a construction worker instead. Or her father. She imagined his hands forever doing hard labor, construction, or smashing up cities like The Incredible Hulk. They should be dirtier, she decided.
Her eyes slid past the fingers up the back of his hand to his wrist and then to his arm. She brought her skinny straw up into her mouth without looking at it. The man's skin was smooth, looked smooth and didn't have any little freckles or spots or moles, that she could see. He was saying something, to her, about what he was doing, what the problem was, but she followed his arm to the shoulder, then his back so far away to his other shoulder. The great, smooth, rainbowed hill of his back.
She blinked, put her eyes back on the phone - organized in several pieces over the two napkins. He had unscrewed bits that the instructions, had she read them, said not to unscrew. He pulled one small round piece off where it clipped onto a little green piece of plastic and then replaced it the other way down.
"The company that manufactured the phones had a mix up with their machines, so most of the phones came with this piece upside down," Terrance explained. She took another sip of her drink as he started to re-assemble the phone. It was getting down to water. "You'll probably have to re-program the time," he said.
"That's okay," Jody replied and flagged the bartender for another. Terrance handed the phone back to her. "What was your name again?" she asked, chin apologetically down and eyes apologetically up.
"Terrance," he said. He took a quick pull of his beer, turning back to it.
"I'm Amanda," she said.
"Nice to meet you, Amanda."
She kindled a conversation. She told him she was the maître d' at a restaurant downtown and that she liked to come to The Times because of its quaint, homey charm. She told him that she was originally from California and that she went to college in Wisconsin. Jody told Terrance about the pets she had growing up and about the cats she had now and how they liked her apartment and about how her niece was always begging for a pony. "Who can afford a pony?" She said. She told him about how her friend was supposed to meet her but that might fall through. Her friend was kind of a flake.
Terrance traveled for his job and had a small apartment in New Haven, Connecticut. He was on a bowling team until he got promoted and had to travel all the time. He said he didn't mind it. He said she was right about The Times, it was nice. Better than a lot of places he'd been.
She hadn't been around many men Terrence's size, but she always thought they would constantly jiggle, all the time like Santa. He didn't. She thought he would start sweating or something, or that he would smell, but he didn't. Instead, he was nice and pleasant and asked her about her cats by name. He bought her third punch and she decided that she didn't know how she was going to do it but she was going to sleep with this very large man.
She began to imagine him on her, sweating and shaking. He'd be jiggling a lot then, for sure. But would that work, with him on her? Could she even breathe under him? She imagined it the other way around, then. If she was on top would she have to push his stomach up and around to find it? She started to think maybe his unit would look really small compared to the rest of him, the very large rest of him. But she had decided to go ahead with it, she had already decided, so she convinced herself that despite how it looked compared to everything else, the rest of him, it would probably be an average size and would feel the same once she got it inside her. Maybe, she considered, it'd be bigger. Maybe it'd be considerably bigger. She squirmed in her seat and sipped her punch.
"So I have my neighbor, he's a nice guy, taking my packages in while I'm away." Terrance said.
"That's so sweet of him does your girlfriend miss you?" Jody asked.
"My? Oh, no." Terrence said. "I was kind of seeing someone in the bowling league, but, I didn't win that tournament if you know what I mean." She nodded, emphatically.
"Has anyone ever told you that you look like George Clooney?" She asked, furrowing her brow.
"My sister, once, when I was sick" he said. Jody wondered if when they were doing it, if he would start seizing or something, if his heart could take it. She frowned.
"Are you okay?" She asked.
"Oh I'm much better, thanks. Back to my usual self." He said.
"Where are you staying?" She asked.
"Oh I'm at the Traveler's Lodge." He said. "Just across the street." He looked across the bar at the shelves of liquor and the dim Schlitz clock moving slowly toward 12:45.
"I've never been there is it nice there? Do you have a suite?" she asked.
Terrance took his wallet out and put down enough cash for his bill.
"Actually I should probably be going" Terry said. "I have to drive to St. Crois tomorrow morning, but it was nice to meet you, Amanda." She watched him get up.
"Okay," she said. She watched him open the door, and turn sideways to get out. As the door was swinging shut she saw him readjust the elastic on his jeans. She turned back to the bar and straightened up. There was a man in leather to her left bent over and sleeping on the bar. She tipped her glass over so the melted ice and pinkish water pooled over to his nose. He didn't notice. The bartender saw, called the bouncer, who removed him, and the bartender wiped up the water.
Ten minutes later Jody's friend arrived, walking in patting her hair into place, a high pile on top of her head. She said her son threw a fit and refused to go to sleep, that's why she was late. She asked what happened with Creeper Fatty.
"Actually he was okay," She said. "He, fixed my phone I think. He works for...phone people. But," Jody added, shaking her head and looking into her friend's eyes, "I wasn't going to fuck him or anything."
"What was wrong with your phone?" The friend asked, sitting down, and they both ordered tall summer punches. They turned from the bar and scanned the rest of the people there. They whined in each other's ears about hair gel, and Homer Simpson guts. And about skanky, big-titted sluts.
Jody imagined Terrance in his dirty, saggy-in-the-crotch, boxer briefs. He rolls into bed. No, he's sitting on the toilet with his underwear down thinking about her, thinking about a muscular, handsome, chiseled version of himself fucking her. She pictured him, jerking it into the hotel sheets then falling asleep with the TV on.
Dan Vierck is one of three editors of the prompt-centric e-journal Title Fights. He is currently participating in Vermont College of the Fine Arts' MFA in Writing program. He has only lived in towns or cities that begin with the letter M.
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