Little Devil

She wore her green and gold cheerleader uniform on Friday because there was a game on Friday night. And someone somewhere along the way thought it would be a good idea if the cheerleaders wore their uniforms and football players wore their jerseys on Fridays because it was all for school spirit. Ra-Ra-Ra! And Mackenzie Broward sat on a built-in radiator along the wall of the classroom, which hummed as soft as a thousand purring kittens, and when she got up there were lines on the back of her thighs from the vent and her skin was a soft hue of pink which Leonard Bricker would notice and would look for because those little pink lines were his happiness in 10th grade.

Leonard didn’t need help being turned on by lines on back of his favorite cheerleader’s thighs, however. A Number 2 pencil through the butthole figure of a curled index finger and a thumb turned him on. Mrs. Vogel, their 62-year-old Honor's Lit teacher turned him on when she wore skirts. A squirrel in a tree out the window turned him on because, as he thought, that squirrel was the product of sexual intercourse. Some time ago, in some tree, probably, that squirrel was made by two other squirrels who did what comes natural. And that squirrel will likely make other squirrels in the same natural way. Asexuality being an anomaly. On his notepad he drew a human-like squirrel with big boobs. He called her Darla.

Leonard Bricker was a smart boy, but he was in no way a realist. He was an abstract thinker of the worst sort. He thought that there was a magical combination of words, or some secret potion, that would make him popular with the pretty girls in school. He thought this so intently that he swiped Playboys and Hustlers from his friend’s dad's garage and perused them for information. His mother all the time gabbed about getting cosmetic tips from Cosmos and baking tips from Good Housekeeping, so he figured, logically, dirty magazines would have tips on how to get women and how to please them once you got them. 

He was sixteen. His eyebrows were two banshees that desperately needed tweezed, and he needed to eat more and work out because he was a twig, a beanpole, a runt. In fact, he was still called Squirt by many adults including the barber who always went on and on about his headful of cowlicks, which was another thing. Leonard collected baseball cards and played with his GI Joes still. And sure enough, Scarlett or Baroness would end up having sex with someone, or everyone, or scissor each other, which would mean that Leonard Bricker would end up having sex with himself so that he could go back to being normal for 12 hours or so until he erupted again. He was a walking Mt. Vesuvius, and his decency was all the good folks and animals of Pompeii.

Mackenzie Broward never spoke a single word to Leonard Bricker, except for in Leonard Bricker's overactive imagination. When you are 16, there seems to be an internal counter tallying the words you speak to everyone and you’re only ever as cool as the people you speak to. Leonard was not cool. His clothes, his hair, his nervousness and lack of material things, money, in particular. He got the reduced lunches or brown bagged it. He never made good jokes or spoke at all unless he was asked a question. And even then it was some painful inarticulate response that died tragically right out of his mouth. 

But when Mackenzie needed someone to write her research paper on "The Great Gatsby," she knew Leonard was her guy. She also knew Leonard, as subtle as he was, watched her on Fridays when she sat on the radiator in her cheerleader skirt. So it was on a Friday that she hopped down from the radiator and walked straight for him. When Leonard was taking peaks of her legs, hoping he could part them like Moses parted the Red Sea, waiting for that exact moment that she would turn and he would see those lines imprinted on the backs of her warm pinkish thighs. When he would salivate inwardly, and morph back into a sexual werewolf until he relieved himself once more. Never at school, though. He would wait for 3:33, the time he was home each day. When he would take Mackenzie into the bathroom with him, or Baroness, or Scarlett, or She-Ra, or Darla the squirrel girl or whatever collection of flesh and holes he last looked at in those dirty magazines, all in his mind, until his baby batter painted the toilet bowl its pearlish patina. 

But she came up to him and was all Leonard this and Leonard that because she was willing to let her reputation take a hit so to not have to read that goddamn novel and write a goddamn research paper on it because goddamn was her new favorite word and goddamn Gatsby was so goddamn old and goddamn boring and goddamn irrelevant. And she twirled her curly gold hair and cooed and got close enough that Leonard could smell her skin. He could smell her hair and her breath and her teeth and her tongue and if he closed his eyes he could smell her paradise because pussy was vulgar and paradise was pure and it was splendid and accurate for what it was – the cradle of civilization. The origin of all the species. 

So he carried the smell home with him in his nose and at 3:33 in that bathroom with the powder-blue fuzzy toilet seat cover looking on and the dial soap laying uninterested in the seashell soap dish and the toothbrushes watching but not understanding what they were seeing and the shower curtain with the sailboats sailing and his dad’s aftershave lotion on the shelf like a disapproving brute and the toilet paper on the roll turned the wrong way but ready to shroud his capitulated soldier like a soft robe on a battered boxer, he evoked that smell and paradise ensued. 

It was paradise lost afterwards but he was too young to be depressed by it so he carried on like a little rabbit, like the little devil that he was because his mom always called him little devil and that was before he hit puberty and before she knew what he did in the bathroom at 3:33 everyday because the exhaust fan drowned out his accidental whimpers and the spastic exchange of his lurid inhalations and exhalations, “Vrooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmm,” it hummed like fifty Buddhist monks chanting in the ceiling. Like the throaty engine of a B-52 perpetually overhead.  

Afterwards it was like a crime scene and Leonard never forgot to flush the toilet or clean up properly. There was no errant shot that went undetected, nor a hair that was unaccounted for, which otherwise might lead to suspicion. And he washed his hands like they were filthy. The little devil. Then he combed his hair, popped a pimple or two and flossed and mouthwashed as though he owed some debt to goodness and goodness was his dentist. It was good oral hygiene that Leonard incessantly maintained better than he did anything else. 

She asked him after school a few days later to write the goddamn paper for her because he was so goddamn smart. He agreed simply for that smell. For that slightest bit of acknowledgment she paid him in advance. He wrote his paper and then wrote her paper and gave her hers to turn in the day before it was due so that she could retype and alter it however she wished. But Mackenzie didn’t want to read it, much less retype it, so she turned it in as it was. 

“I trust you, Leonard,” she grinned.

He looked over his bony shoulder and handed her the paper like it was a collection of nuclear secrets and they were the Rosenbergs. He had written on a post-it, “For your eyes only” with two big eyes, which made Mackenzie chuckle. Then they faded into the crowded hallway of school and wouldn't see each other again until 7th period Honor's Lit where Mackenzie needed to bolster her C average to at least a B to get a car from her parents for her 16th birthday. A burgundy 1989 Dodge Daytona Turbo. It rode on this paper. 

Leonard thought later of course that he could have asked for more. Perhaps, a pair of panties if he had been so fearless and bold to mutter the demand. Nothing physical of course. He wouldn't have been satisfied in attaining it in such an unscrupulous way, though the fantasy of a hooker played upon the periwinkle blue walls of his bathroom a time or two. Deep in that mason jar of sea shells and on the wings of the framed seagull print above the toilet. Perhaps, he could have bargained for a racy photo, headless of course. He wouldn't ask her to trust him with a photo of her nude with her face in it. He realized then that he would have to bargain for more than a sniff if ever he was to be successful in life.

But three days later, Mrs. Vogel asked them to stay after class. Mackenzie was in her cheerleader outfit because it was Friday. The seasons had switched from football to basketball. She looked at Leonard with sheer panic in her eyes. Leonard, however, didn't recognize the panic and smiled at her with his perfect teeth and his lips that looked like fat red basking earthworms. He had a handsome tongue as well, but it seldom made an appearance. Rarely do people appreciate a good mouth for the mind is preoccupied with the symmetry and proportion of the face rather than just one good thing. For all the deficiencies God gave Leonard, those hideous eyebrows, that crooked nose and those dogshit-colored eyes, he was awarded good teeth and lips, and for some reason in that moment Mackenzie relaxed gawping at his mouth. She saw the Rolling Stones logo. That famous tongue and lips pasted to his face like an album cover. It was as though Moses was coming down from Mt. Sinai off his tongue. In that moment, as he gawked at her not the least bit concerned by Mrs. Vogel's instruction, she was able to relax and she knew everything was going to be okay. 

They say cheaters never win but that is bullshit. Plenty of cheaters have won and never got caught. Elections are full of cheating. Games. Races. Taxes. Marriages. On and on. Leonard was happy to be kept after class since it meant that he and Mackenzie would be together a bit longer than normal and associated together for whatever reason. He assumed it was because Mrs. Vogel was going to compliment their papers and ask if they didn't mind that she shared them as she had with other papers he had written in the past. He knew they were too different in style and subject to be linked together. But when Mrs. Vogel asked them why the letters "e" and "g" were perforated exactly so in both their papers, Leonard knew that this was the defining moment of his life. Either he could cry and admit his role in the forgery, or he could get away with it and elevate himself in Mackenzie's eyes the way Gatsby wished to be in Daisy's. 

So nonchalantly, with perfect eye contact, as Mackenzie said nothing, he looked at Mrs. Vogel and said it was because he printed Mackenzie's paper for her when her printer failed the night before. And to further his story, he offered Mrs. Vogel the flashdrive Mackenzie gave him to print it, which was a complete bluff. The paper wasn't on that flashdrive. And when Mrs. Vogel smiled apologetically, satisfied with his simple explanation, Leonard gave the flashdrive to Mackenzie and just like that, all was well.

That night he got a call from Mackenzie on his Garfield phone. How she got his number was a mystery to him. She asked him if he wanted his flashdrive back and so he agreed to come pick it up the next day. So on Saturday afternoon, while her parents were out of town, he found himself standing in her bedroom in his socks, thankful he wore clean ones. His shoes abandoned at the checkpoint of the front door. Her walls were covered with posters of various hunky boys and men, mostly actors and singers. Some with shirts on. Some with shirts off. Some with long hair. Some with short. And all of these fellows were looking at Leonard as though they were asking him what the hell he was doing in Mackenzie Broward's bedroom. And he bit that perfect earthworm lip and inhaled deeply, knowing that it would last him all through high school, if necessary. Eat your heart out, Bon Jovi, he said under his breath as she searched for the flashdrive in the clutter of papers on her desk. His eyes followed her perfect body, her smooth legs and ass that was concealed very poorly by short white jogging shorts. 

What came next was a haze. Some Mazzy Star song that sounded like heroin and glitter and moonlight. Mackenzie kissed him and they ended up on the bed, her on top. She slowly stripped off her shorts and humped the hard crotch of his jeans before sliding up to his face where she perched, straddling his mouth, her smooth thighs down his rosy cheeks, suddenly wearing him like a mask. He took one last breath before she sat down forcefully and he inhaled her. Swallowed her. His aggressive tongue whittling her insides, lapping deeper and deeper until she drenched him with an unexpected warm geyser of ecstacy. His face suddenly soused in the tears of a thousand bawling sardines. He drank it. Swallowed her and she writhed and moaned and convulsed, still on him, his mouth for a saddle, clutching his hair with her fists like a rodeo cowgirl and pushing herself down his throat until her legs went numb and she cried out in a guttural war whoop that made her peekapoo scratch at the closed door in concern for her wellbeing. 

Leonard lied there, his face glazed, as she collapsed next to him quivering, whispering the gibberish of an over-exuberant pentecostal, in the euphoria of the spirit, still apparently orgasming. Then finally when she got her breath and her wits about her, she exclaimed the one word that seemed appropriate to her in the moment. "Goddamn." 

Leonard wasn't sure if it was over, but it was over. He had devoured her so well that she was satisfied and needed no more. Besides, she had no intent to lose her virginity in such a pedestrian way, on a Saturday afternoon in January under the watchful eyes of Scott Baio and David Hasselhoff and Michael J. Fox and forty other crushes while Tinkerbell, that peekapoo, scratched at the door. Losing your virginity was meant for the prom or something like that, she figured. In some classy hotel or lodge or limo. Senior year. Junior, at the absolute earliest. But this didn't count. This was a tongue. This was just a face. A mouth. This is how a cat takes a bath. This was practice and being a kid and fooling around. This was experimenting. And no one would ever know. 

For days after, Leonard's tongue was sore. That under part that keeps it in the mouth. He never told a soul about what happened, as he promised her. The rest of high school passed by and he and Mackenzie would never be as close as they were that day, literally and otherwise. They wouldn't have another class together besides a lunch period and a study hall. She began dating a football player soon thereafter, but Leonard didn't really care. He had his day and he wasn't the same kid anymore. He no longer turned into a werewolf and jerked off every day at 3:33. He dated a girl more like himself and they journeyed their way through the rest of high school until college. Leonard got an academic scholarship to some prestigious science institute and he was gone up the highway and out. He saw her at graduation and she gave him a hug, but all he said to her was good luck, and all she said back was, "U2."

If you were to ask Leonard Bricker what happened better than this moment of his life, he would not be able to come up with anything. Although he graduated college and had two children and became a successful scientist, none of that was better. Not that he started his own successful robotics business and moved to upstate California and lived in one of those extraordinary houses made of glass and metal full of technological marvels that the sea sprayed often and the waves crashed and seals basked down below on the rocky, sandy shore. Not that there wasn't another house within 3 miles of it, with a long lane of sequoias to get to it full of ten thousand thousand squirrels, all his. Nor his first million or hundred million or half billion mattered more to him than that Saturday afternoon. That was the moment he realized that he could do or be absolutely anything and that anything was possible, even the most extraordinary of things. It was the day that he began to believe that fortune favored him. The little devil. 

Coming back from a jog, checking the mailbox, he got an invitation to his 25th high school graduation reunion. He thought of going but there was no one besides Mackenzie he wanted to see. The few friends he had he kept in touch with over the years. Flew them out for Giants' and Niners' games now and then. Mackenzie was not on any form of social media, he discovered searching for her, but he heard she had a run of bad luck since high school and that she was a fixture at the town's only upscale bar.

What would he say? I am sorry I ate your soul, because that is what he did. The little devil ate her soul and he went on to eat a hundred other women's souls until he got to this place, where he stands naked against a six inch thick glass wall looking out over the foam-capped waves of the Pacific Ocean watching two seals fuck on the brown sandy beach below. Whenever the slightest bit of doubt or anxiety hits him, he goes out and finds a girl and he wears her like a mask for a while. And afterwards, everything is better and he is again just Leonard Bricker reciting the same old verse he always does. "Leonard Bricker, the pussy licker, who when in doubt, finds a girl and eats her out."

He stared at the invitation. There was a collage of early nineties things on the front of the card. The fucking Golden Girls of all things. The reunion was to be held at an American Legion and Leonard imagined there would be a few old veterans at the bar wearing hats that boast some branch of the military or some war and who would look around at the mingling crowd of mid-forty-somethings as though they were being invaded. 

There'd be plenty of bad music from the nineties. People laughing, faking it. Pretending they liked people they didn't and talking about those who died between graduation and now. That one guy who got into drugs bad and blew up in his meth van. The one guy who was stabbed by his wife. The girl in the motorcycle accident. Whoever went to prison. Every bad decision would be discussed in one way or another. Then they'd talk about what teachers were alive and what ones were dead and what remained would be prefaced by "Remember that time when..." 

There is no people lost more than mid-forty-something people. Not quite old, but no longer young. Suddenly realizing they have more behind them than they have ahead. That life is done giving and is starting to take away. 

Then there would be Mackenzie Broward. Who probably married twice and had three kids. Who was in AA for a stretch after her third DUI and who now works as a nurse because that seems to be the apex of success back home. If one becomes a nurse and makes hospital money, they're in good shape. They can afford a house in a good neighborhood and a Honda and a riding lawn mower. They can afford vinyl-siding and a cruise every five years and a beach vacation once a year and to eat at all the right places and to put their kids in state college. 

Or maybe she married and was happy. Maybe she gained 100 pounds or she looked remarkably the same. Maybe he would go back and find her like she was Daisy Buchanan and sweep her off her feet like Gatsby couldn't. Close the deal. Finish what they started. Maybe she would be wearing that green and gold cheerleader outfit again and be setting on a radiator, just for him. And when she hopped down there'd be those same lines on the backs of her warm pinkish thighs which looked a little like SPAM, in retrospect. Maybe he would go. 

But he grinned and threw the invitation into the fire inhaling that warm salty ocean air as he casually took a book off the shelf. An original first print, signed by the author which he bought for $75,000 from Sotheby's. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Then he looked out into the ocean and there was a green light that grew ever more distant the longer he looked at it until he could see it no more.