Instead of calling downstairs and asking Hector (which might be embarrassing), I put on a pair of black, low-rider cords, my rose-stamped silver-buckled belt, a wrap-around lilac sweater with bell sleeves that showed some cle**age and my motorcycle boots. I figured the lilac sweater was pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable at a roadhouse but the boots balanced it out.
Then me and my boots clomped downstairs. It was dark outside but Hector had the overhead light on in the living room and, again, I admired the new walls. The difference was astonishing and it looked like our work took us leaps ahead in making Hector’s house a home. There was actual physical evidence that I accomplished something and that felt nice.
I found Hector in the kitchen sitting on the countertop sorting through mail.
His head came up when I walked in. He did a full body scan, hair to boots then up again, stopping at my br**sts.
His eyes lifted to mine. “You got a tank to wear under that?”
I looked down at myself. “Under what?” I asked stupidly for where else would you wear a tank?
“Your sweater,” Hector answered.
I looked out the window at the darkness. “Is it that cold?”
Hector didn’t answer me so my gaze swung back to him and I saw his face was the same mixture of hard and soft it was when he talked to Ralphie yesterday.
“Come here,” he demanded and, without question, I did.
When I got close he spread his legs and I took that as my cue and walked between them. When I felt his heat, I stopped, put my hands on his hard thighs and his hands came to my neck.
“I forget, with all the shit that’s gone down, we don’t know each other that well so I’ll explain somethin’ about me you gotta understand.”
Oh my.
I didn’t have a good feeling about this.
I decided to gird.
It was a good decision.
“What?” I asked.
His thumbs started circling on my neck which felt nice but even so, I did my best to pay attention when he started talking.
“You were just a beautiful woman. Now you’re my beautiful woman. What you got under your clothes is for me. No one else. They don’t look. They don’t touch. That’s the deal. Yeah?”
I stared at him, speechless, which was a good thing because if I had words, I would have said them so loudly the neighbors would hear.
“Now,” he went on, either not feeling or not caring about the badder than bad vibes emanating from me directly toward him, “go put on a tank.”
That’s when I found my words.
“Maybe I should go put on my ragged white dress and stone necklace and you can put on your leopard skin tunic and we can pedal in our stone car to the roadhouse before you go bowling with Barney and I go shopping with Betty, Fred.”
His thumbs stopped circling and his eyes narrowed.
“You wanna repeat that?” His voice was low with warning, telling me that, no, I didn’t want to repeat it, I wanted to run upstairs and put on a tank.
This, of course, I did not do.
“I’m referring to the Flintstones who lived in the Stone Age.”
“I know what you’re referrin’ to.”
“My point is, Hector and Sadie are not Fred and Wilma. We don’t live in the Stone Age. We live in the here and now, where women show cle**age and men don’t tell their women what to wear.”
“I asked nice.”