The loveliest woman in all of Washington State swayed into our local Jazz Club last week, and when she bent those perfectly sleek legs to slide into a corner booth my buddy Joey Constant choked on his bean dip. I couldn’t believe it.
Nobody in our city would believe that tale about Joey; Joey doesn't stammer. Say a woman as foreign as a freckle on Kim Kardashian’s face peters along our patch of Washington on any Saturday night; she’ll awake Sunday morning with the name Joey Constant writhing on her naked lips. That’s just Joey.
But the indomitable giant tripped on his laces and I thought somewhere, somehow, a law of the universe had shattered.
Joey quickly collected his breath and was already swaggering towards the sultry stranger, a little punk-rock groove in his shoulders. I hurried to the soda machine and played decoy, listening.
He glided into the corner seat directly across from her and, dear mercy, I think I crapped myself a little, just a pinch. This woman was lust. Warm hair darker than sin, pulled back and wrapped into an eloquent bun; her forehead was a sparkling caramel glaze under the dimmed lamps. Her lips—shallow, pink and slim, just as suggestive pressed and pursed as sealed and silent. Her nose alone could be the cover of Sexy magazine.
So when Joey extended his hand across the table, and she accepted, I thought this devil might combust into a ball of hell for he touched the skin of a golden goddess.
Joey took the classical, intelligent stance. “Lady, you're like poetry to me; symmetrically beautiful, elegantly shaped, and impossibly difficult to read.”
Her neck kinked at Joey’s extra floss—of course—and laughter leaped from between her lips—of course. But suddenly the most abominable act possessed Joey, the most deplorable rule of romance was ruined and with it went godliness. He threw his hands against his mouth and gagged, recoiling from her face as if her bumhole and mouth had flip-flopped. Gagged as if his tongue became a bucking bull, and a hundred horses charged up his esophagus and stampeded against his teeth. And the woman’s eyes bulged. Joey’s hand was cemented to his mouth. I think he crapped a pinch, too. You would have thought Michael Phelps had drowned in a pool or that the TV preacher didn’t mention tithes.
“I’ve, forgive me—gut’s got a terrible ache, that bean dip coulda been democratic—”
“You’re fine—”
Instantly Joey’s entire body contorted, possessed; he reached his head over the edge of the table and released the most violent, acidic, bottomless belch that God ever cursed upon a man.
Joey bolted up from the booth. His face was purple. He looked at the woman and shook. “D'you swallow a landfill, girl? Ya stanky—!” He spun and bulleted towards the exit.
The entire Jazz Club turned cold. Even the Sax player waned a note.
The woman looked stunned, or slapped. I hurried over to apologize, and when I got there she was holding a small spray bottle and squirting it into her mouth.
“Hey, I seriously apologize for that. I can’t…”
She looked up with a smirk. “Oh, no. I expected that.” Her breath was pleasant solstice.
I must not have moved, for she laughed and motioned me to sit, then brought out from her purse another spray bottle and held them side by side.
“This scent,” she said, waving one hand, “repulses the city trash.” She waved the other one. “This scent keeps the gentlemen. Gentlemen like you, maybe.”
We dined that evening, laughing, and even though the loveliest woman in Washington State wouldn’t awake the next day with my name writhing on her lips, she did kiss my cheek goodnight, and, I suppose, gave me a parable to remember.
