Near Terrifying

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“Want to get a pizza?”

“Sure,” I say, without looking up at The Boy. I put down my MacBook, and check my reflection: my bobbed hair’s carefully disheveled, my lingerie romper a crisp black and white. I grab my iPhone and wallet, and– “I just have to get my shoes downstairs.”

“Don’t bother.” The Boy walks into one of his closets, and pushes the button to call the elevator. On the way out he tosses pink, Made-in-China flip-flops at me. The sandals rest on his Persian rug; I stare at them.

“No way am I wearing one of your ex-hoe’s shoes.” I wrinkle my face. “Especially when they’re flip-flops.”

“Just put them on,” he says. “You won’t even get out of the car.”

I tie tight my belted camel coat, rubbing my cheek against the fox fur collar. I finally slip on the rubber sandals. Over the elevator’s rumbling as it rises to our floor, I hear The Boy chuckling in the closet. “Oh, don’t come in here yet. I haven’t worn this in forever.” I hear some shuffling. “Okay, you can look.”

The Boy walks into his bedroom’s low light, and his Greek bust of a body is covered completely by a brown robe dusting the floor. The dirt-dyed fabric is shapeless, except for a peaked hood that swallows his white face into a shadow.

“From Saks?” I ask.

“Turkey,” he says, grinning. “It’s actually incredibly warm. I wore it on the plane home, and the other passengers looked worried, like I’d been praying to Allah.”

“Beautiful, Binnie,” I say. I hold the door open, following him into the elevator, almost like a meek wife. “Let’s roll.”

We slide into the blood-red leather of his Porsche, and the sports car speeds into a missile under his control, weaving between mini vans and sedans, threatening suburban America. He turns on his radar detector, and under the blackness of his hood I see his grin gleam. “For sure I’ll get arrested if they catch me speeding in this outfit.”

We squeal into the pizzeria’s parking lot, and The Boy slows to hunt for a lonely space that’ll keep his 911 safe from any careless cars. Except for two shining eyes, The Boy’s just a tall, muddy shadow in the dark as he climbs out of his Carrera. “Come in with me.”

“You said I could stay in the car,” I say. “I’m not going outside in flip-flops.”

“I think you know why I want you to come with me.” His peaked head bobs as he laughs.

I get out, and my giggle’s soon echoed by teenagers in the pizzeria, as they nervously eye The Boy’s outfit.

“He’s as hot as Paris Hilton, right?” I ask the cashier. “Would you sex a man wearing this?”

“He looks kind of like a monk,” she says. The cafe’s fluorescent lights gloss over her dull hair, her flat eyes, only sparking off her silver cross pendant. Pear-shaped, she is American super-sized, and I think, For you, he will always be a monk. But for me?

“He’s no monk,” I say. “We’re eating this pizza off the stomachs of his harem.”

The Boy hands over his dollars, and wrinkled presidents stare at us before they disappear into the foreign factory-made cash register. Though the pizza’s not greased with crude oil, the cheesy pie costs almost as much as filling a gas tank. I pinch a piece of Swiss cheese off a slice of pizza as we exit. “I think the real oil crisis in America is all the grease that chick back there consumes,” I say. “Even if I was a blind man with a pencil dick and no arms, I would not hit it.”

“The Americans are growing fat and slow,” agrees The Boy. In the parking lot, a Hummer’s blinkers flash, impatient to take The Boy’s parking space. Then the driver sees The Boy’s peaked hood, his robed arm reaching towards his car, and she drives on, her kid’s faces blurry American pies in the SUV’s back windows.

The Boy slides off his hood, and his brown robe looks less sinister and more like a cheap, China-made bathrobe. “God, it’s getting hot in here,” he says.

“So get naked,” I say. “Your other wives can even watch us have sex this time.”

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