They were jostling now, getting into one of their 48 positions, pom-poms trembling, I thought, for !%#*?!!, they're doing that for ME. They formed their line, dressed down quickly, and then it was thrust and surge, offering me first the bulging shelf where the fibers of their sweaters widened from the strain, then the flashing white thighs and the pelvic-pubic pubescence that leaped eye-high for a startling instant before disappearing behind the paltry pleated skirts. Sis-boom! Sis-boom! I was so aware of THEM. And they were so aware of ME.
There was a sharp blow between my shoulder blades. "You wanna sit down, now, Mac?"
"I got a question." I tried to continue.
"That's my DAUGHTER. Was that your question, Mac?"
Tough. Big City. I wasn't prepared for that kind of dialog in Pleasant Village. "You think you'll take Tyson in ten?" I sneered. But it was rapidly turning out wrong. Once again I had tried to be a hero, and wound up nothing more than an eccentric.
"The jerk's got eyes." Someone in the crowd wasn't going to let it go. Redface the Cop loomed at my side, grinning easily. "You want it here or outside, PRE-vert?" I feinted left but he'd been that route before and the ham-fist slammed into my side, splitting the spleen, relocating the kidneys and giving me such a gut-ache, oy.
I grunted: "Oof." From a crazy angle near the bottom bench I looked past his tiny red eyes at the five pairs of dimpled knees and tried to speak.
"Let the jerk talk," said the cheerleader's father's 400-lb. wife. Out of the mist I heard myself ask for a martini. Susie Sweetpants, the 400-lb. wife's husband's cheerleader daughter, sloshed around in her dufflebag and produced a dry gem for me, straight up, no ice, twist of lemon, coming close she bent down and whispered in my ear, "You blew it, jerk." She was so aware of ME.
"I have a large talent," I shrieked, exposing my mind. "There are any number of people in the Village who can write a thousand words of first-rate prose. But only a few who have the Large Talent can go on from there. Do you dig this, Redface?"
A glimmer of understanding came into his piglet eyes. Staring down benignly, he stirred me with the toe of his boot. "You mean you were just getting material, all along!"
"Yes, creep. I'm calling it Lolita. She'll have the equipment to Drive Men Mad, you see, but she'll be Unaware, you understand, of her Power...." It was a desperate gamble. I haven't even read Lolita. But it worked: This was Pleasant Village.
"Let the jerk up," said the 400-lb. wife. "The game's startin'."
--Norm Burnett
Alexandria, VA