Always Happy Hour: Stories(42)

She presses her lips to his and he opens his mouth, using a lot of tongue like she likes, and she gives him the soft moans he likes.

“Hold on, get up,” he says. He takes the red blanket off the back of the couch and spreads it over the white cushions.

“That was easy,” she says. “You’re so easy.”

“We’ll get more.” He runs to get the condom, tearing at the wrapper with his teeth, while she removes her tank top and panties. She looks at her body and wishes the blinds kept out more light. Or it was dark out. And then he’s kneeling in front of her and she’s feeling for the ring at the base of his dick before guiding him in.

“Go slow,” she says.

“I will,” he says, plunging in too fast like he always does, but after that he’s gentle. He looks at her like he might cry, says nothing more vulgar than how good it feels. Darcie holds his gaze for as long as she can and then buries her face in his chest, the hairs dry and graying; she breathes in his neck and shoulders and underarms, gets a whiff of his deodorant. She doesn’t like to smell deodorant on him—it’s like he could be any of the millions of men who use Speed Stick when she only wants his body above her, his weight. She puts her feet on his shoulders and grabs his ass, digs her nails into the backs of his thighs. She comes so easily for him, like she’s never been able to do for anyone else.


At twelve o’clock, Darcie turns the sound back on and they watch the news. The Doppler radar shows pockets of rain all over central Texas.

“Bullshit,” he says.

“I bet it evaporates before it hits the ground.”

The weatherman says it’ll be 107 again today and reminds them that the city enters stage 3 water restrictions on August 1st: no pools can be filled, no lawns watered, no cars washed except at commercial facilities or with a bucket of water filled directly from the tap. These things won’t affect them but the rolling blackouts will. So far they’ve only heard rumors of these blackouts. Darcie likes the sound of them. She went to the dollar store and bought batteries and tall Mexican candles: The Sacred Heart of Jesus, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Then the weatherman talks about the fires in surrounding counties. He gives them statistics she finds impossible to grasp—acres and miles—numbers that seem preposterously large.

“Are you comfortable?” he asks, because she keeps moving around, adjusting her pillow.

“Yes, baby. Are you?”

“Yes,” he says.

She presses her body to his so closely that she can only look at one of his eyes at a time. She stares at one of them and then the other.

“I hope our baby has your eyes,” she says. He can hardly see anything without his glasses but his eyes are bright blue, cracked and shining.

“I hope she has your wit,” he says, which is maybe the nicest thing anyone has ever said to her, but then she wonders if he finds her physical attributes lacking—what about her legs, her ass? What about her eyes? And then she’s annoyed but feels bad about it.

“Hold on,” he says, climbing over her again.

She watches him carry a chair over to the wall and stand on it, press a button on the smoke detector. It blinks twice and beeps. He makes some affirmative-sounding noises and puts the chair back where he got it. And then he talks about what they’ll do when the end comes, which body of water they’ll claim for their own. It has become his favorite topic, imagining the two of them together in a world that isn’t like this one. He tells her they’ll take Hamilton Pool, which will provide shelter and plenty of fresh water, that this is their best option. They’ll register the guns in her name.


At three o’clock, Darcie has to go to the doctor.

Since Terry’s van is on empty and they don’t want to spend the last of their money on gas, they decide to catch the bus. As soon as they step outside, they notice the haze and the smell of fire, which are new developments. Darcie is excited about these new developments until she thinks about what would actually happen if a fire came along and burned up all her stuff.

On their street, late-model SUVs are parked between cars with busted-out windows, black garbage bags filling the empty spaces. Some of the houses are in foreclosure and others are freshly painted with new roofs and yards full of flowers. The neighborhood is undergoing gentrification—about half the houses occupied by young white couples who are forever watering their tiny lawns and the other half full of people who would be described using words like habitual and chronic, with skeleton cars and underfed dogs.

Darcie doesn’t know where they fit but she likes it here. It’s like the whole world was thrown up into the air and everything got jumbled and nobody missed a beat, as her mother would say. There are roosters and chickens and dogs and babies and Volvos and former fraternity boys and gutted-out cars and old women in housedresses at three o’clock in the afternoon and it makes her feel like people might still be able to get along. The neighbors don’t get along—it isn’t uncommon to see them yelling at each other in somebody’s front yard—but it makes her feel like it’s possible.

They sit at the bus stop with a homeless guy who’s not going anywhere and a man in a pink shirt. The man in the pink shirt stares in the direction that the bus is expected to arrive. Darcie stares with him. The homeless man’s smoke blows past her face in a thick cloud. Sweat rolls down her back, her arms and legs, and she thinks about the clean white walls of their apartment, the space so small it gets nearly cold. She wishes she never had to go outside, never had to wear anything besides a tank top and panties.