I knew coming ‘round the corner in Dayton’s little airport that I would see what I knew I would see which is what I had been seeing in my mind since the no-name red-carpet affair in LA and no amount of imagining it would do anything to change it in the here and now.
Baker was fat.
Standing there with her portly pudgy itsy bitsy top and pants—whoever knew they made such a tiny top for such a big girl!—Baker both hopped and ran toward me and in this smattering of other people waiting in this open-air welcoming area and looking at me! me! me! and at my former fuck buddy C Baker and she smiles and shakes her hair out (still beautiful hair) and it is natural blonde and I have fucked her once since her London child and Baker had said to me the next day, “Matthew, I think this was our best time yet.”
And I said: “I think so too.” But I hadn’t meant it then and I didn’t mean it now even in my own head. This is what I had come to see, to spend my weekend with, to do coke with. My thoughts went to assholes who spoke of beer goggles and coke goggles and I wanted to scream at them that it wasn’t all that simple.
“Hey! Baker!”
She hugged me.
“Good to see you!” I said through scented hair, waves of lighter blonde, the smell of a head you would like to lie down next to, the hints of a pussy downstairs I would like to see again, forgetting if she was blonde down there, too—but no: she had darker hair around her puss it was thin, though, or shaved when I had seen it before. Truth be told, I didn’t spend a lot of time with my face down there but I used to love looking between Baker’s legs while my dick went in and out of her. It looked right, it looked like what was meant to be.
“I’m guessing this is your only bag?”
“Yep. Wow. It’s great to be back here!”
“Here? I would rather be back in a coffin.”
I put my arm around her and she walks me to this old VW Rabbit that has been in her family since before we met in high school.
“You have to help me pay for parking.”
“You drove into this parking lot without enough money to pay for it?”
“I’m counting on you,” Baker says, “to make my dreams come true. Unfortunately that is starting with this.”
“What if I had got off the plane, seen Dayton, and turned right back around and left you here?”
“Is that what you were thinking of doing? Leaving me standing there waiting for you to show up and you become a no show and you never call me again and I don’t even have money to pay to park?”
“Never was I thinking that,” I choked.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” Baker says. “I’ve got such the weekend planned for you—for us!—and it only begins with your four dollars and 25 cents to get us the hell out of here.”
I drop the money in her cupped hand.
“Have a nice day!” says the attendant.
“Have a nice day!” says C Baker.
“Now,” C Baker says. “I bet you’re hung-a-ry!”
“Yes. I want a special meal from my favorite restaurant. We can get it to-go if you like.”
“What restaurant?”
“Uno. I say. “I want the Rattlesnake Pasta with a few additions. Do you have coke at the house? Do you have some on you?”
“Look, I don’t have any on me that’s because Brooklyn took the rest of it we were saving a good amount for us all when you got here but now we’re out. There’s a place we buy it but! but but but it’s kind of expensive but I think you will like it—its quality, in every refinement—I’ve only ever bought coke in Ohio but this shit rips!” says the girl I flew here to fuck who is so much fatter than last time that I don’t know if I’ll be able to find the muscle to stick it in. “The coke you have in California is prob’ly better than it is here.”
“I have no idea, girl. The coke I’ve been doing in LA is all from the same person and it seems very good to me—but what do I know?”
“Exactly. What do I know!” Baker says. She veers onto the highway and I feel the Rabbit sliding across lanes. “What Dayton people do you want to see while you’re here? Do you even know any Dayton people anymore?”
“Yeah, I’m planning on seeing Nik for dinner tonight.”
“Who else?”
“Other than you there’s no one I really want to see this weekend.”
“No ex-girlfriends? The one with the red hair?”
“Which one?” I say.
We both laugh. Baker grabs me between my legs. She runs her fingers here and there.
“I think,” she says. “I will get something from Uno’s too.”
“Get anything you want.”
“I think a lemonade. It’s ‘cause of my hypoglycemic. My blood sugar is low—that’s why I shouldn’t be driving.”
“I know.”
“Since when did you know about that?”
“That you have hypoglycemia? Since high school 🎓. Since I used to go to your house and hang out on the porch, in the basement. You told me about it back then.”
“I did? Huh. Well a lemonade will fix it.”
“We’ll get it.”
“Cool runnings, brew. So, do you want me to catch you up with the events of the last 24 hours at my house?”
I nod.
“Well. It started with Brooklyn—she has this baby named Faulkner—”
“Right. You said the baby’s name was Faulkner.”
“Well, he is. Don’t contradict me. The baby. The child. The man. Faulkners all. So Brooklyn has a baby named Faulkner, and it’s like—this baby was born on Wednesday—so he’s young.”
“The baby’s legal name is Faulkner?”
“Yes! Now please shut up. This is going to take forever if you keep saying things. So Faulkner—Brooklyn’s infant child—is home from the hospital last night and he is the cutest little thang! Oh my southern heart would break if he died! Brooklyn and I bought an eight ball. We were working through that when for like two hours Brooklyn locked herself inside the baby’s bedroom. He sleeps in a crypt—I mean he sleeps in a crib! And I was banging and banging on the door and B was singing all these like Halloween carols and anthems and shit from Halloween movies like da da da! and I was like Bitch, come outta that room! and she was all Make me! and I was like Fuck you, bitch you’re a collar-want-to-make-me whore and Brooklyn opens the door and she’s all on her tippy toes and shit trying to act like she’s older than me, taller than me, much more scarier than me and I pushed open the door, got in that bitch’s face, and I was all like I am the taller one, I am the scarier one! You don’t understand. This bitch thinks she’s got a one-up on me. And nobody in my house has a one-up on me. Even other people in my house. What was I saying? Anyway this bitch is hiding her Baby Faulkner in the crib and you’ve got to see this crib, right: It’s nine feet tall and four foot wide and soft as a feather bed. There are no sheets and no pillows and I said Brooklyn don’t you lay your baby on his back that’s the way they catch fetal bed syndrome or is it on their stomachs just sleep them on their sides and hope for the best if you sleep these newborn fuckers in your bed with you, you run the risk of rolling over on them and squishing them that way! I mean as you know I don’t have kids (except for the London kind) so what can I say? Right? Right? Hold the wheel.”
I touch it, guiding us slightly within the lane.
Baker rummages through her purse, a big white Clinique one.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m gonna see if I have a bump for us in here.”
“Please don’t. Hold the wheel.”
“Matthew. If you’re going to be a party pooper, I’ll let you out on the side of the road. I know I have something in here, a fifth, an eighth, a crow bar, something. You can smoke it, you can lick it, you can pretend it’s my golden little pussy right before you stick it, you’ve got to lick it before you stick it, Matthew, have you heard that before?”
“Somewhere, yes.”
“The guttural maps of the cerebral hemisphere. That’s what I’m trying to get across to you. From the golden hemispheres of the human brain, there never was any chimp DNA there never was any chimp DNA it’s all random sequences of sequences and every time the first sequence changes the secondary sequence-of-sequences kicks in—it kicks in! So you have, in these two sequences, an infinite-appearing sequence that is very hard to predict, cryptographically, and—Are you listening to this?”
“I am, girl. I am. To be honest I think we’ve been reading the same books in different towns.”
“But you’re the genius,” she says.
“Have you been reading my blog?”
Baker laughs.
“Does it show?” she says.
“Um..too much.”
We’re at the Uno’s now. I’m getting out the car.
“Should I come in with you?” Baker says. That whatchamacallit pasta you’re getting sounds good.”
“Yeah, come on.”
I check my door is locked and look around me in the parking lot behind the restaurant. Everything is old and dirty, provincial. Dayton has seven exits for it on the highway. In LA, the neighborhood of Hollies has seven exits. It’s small and crammed here, and dying, and I don’t know why I ever come back.