Accidental Leigh (8 page)

Now, this
was one of those times when you just know, while it was happening, that a human was about to plummet into the world of the cow. In this case, the human got a little help over the fence. We were pretty close to the exit of one of the psychedelically painted mini-barns. Just as Lindsey flapped her dandelion bouquet wildly in the air, a herd of screaming tiny children broke through the rainbow emblazoned door and charged toward us in a surreal jailbreak scene.

There is always
the one kid who is about a foot taller than the others. This group had a couple of them that were plowing through their daycare mates, as if they were berserkers on a bloodthirsty rampage. The wall of little bodies pushed against the fence, causing it to lean into the cow pen. Lindsey squealed and hit the muddy ground with a very wet plop. The children instantly halted and faced the pen.

Their screams and laughs couldn’t drown out the stream of obscenities that spewed from Lindsey’
s mouth with incredible speed. Kelly and I gaped at the scene before us, trying desperately to contain our laughter. Lindsey stood up. She was covered head to toe in cow dung and mud. Finally, the last of several creative uses for the word
fuck
passed her lips. Her problem was that she had a mouthful of cow manure-tinged mud that she was trying to spit out while she cussed. This worked to her favor, as the kids probably thought she was some crazed woman doing a Daffy Duck imitation in a foreign language. “Theptafuckapthh, bleh thpuck! Thpuck! Moh my thpuckin thbod!”

The cow
seemed momentarily unnerved by the whole ordeal. It must have recovered quickly because with the very next moo, it shamelessly defecated right beside Lindsey. The boys’ cheers raised to a fever pitch at the sight and sickening plopping sounds. Lindsey slogged up to the fence and started to crawl out between the rails. As she made it through the fence, the cow had followed her and placed its head between the rails. I seized the opportunity to examine her eyes. I wasn’t sure if they classified as tears or mucous, but there was something definitely leaking in the corner of the cow’s eye. I scratched her neck and pulled out the small Ziploc bag and a Popsicle stick I had brought along. An elementary teacher always comes prepared for any situation. I carefully scooped off the goo and slipped it into the baggie.

Finally
, we had achieved our goal and made it out to the parking lot. Kelly had a few beach towels and several gallons of water in the trunk of her car. We stood with the towels stretched out to cover Lindsey while she stripped off the clothes that were covered in cow shit and mud. She stuffed them into a plastic grocery store bag and tossed them into the trunk. Lindsey quickly dumped several gallons of water over her head and limbs in an attempt to rid herself of the filth. When she was finished, she wrapped her hair and body with a couple of the fluffy beach towels and climbed into the back seat of Kelly’s car. She grumbled the entire way home while Kelly and I tried our best to stop laughing.

We
made a quick stop at the grocery store on the way back to my apartment. I ran in to purchase a goose liver from the deli. The deli manager explained they do not sell it. They only have it to make a gourmet pate. I begged him for a small amount, telling him that I was a chef and I had been suddenly inspired to create a new goose-liver pate. He handed it over to me for free in an apparent feeling of comradeship with a fellow goose-liver pate aficionado.

The girls dropped me off and head
ed back to Lindsey’s. I was excited to try some real old-fashioned spell casting. Luna greeted me at the door, as if she knew what I was up to and the look on her face was quite condescending. She zipped away and leapt up to my desk. There wasn’t too much to prepare. According to the web page, I needed to print out the diagram of a pentagram surrounded with alchemist symbols. I didn’t know this before, but apparently what real witches used in the past were bowls for mixing their ingredients. Not big cast iron cauldrons, just bowls.

I scrounged through my meager collection of Tupperware and Corelle dishes.
I found a generic plastic salad bowl with a missing lid. It would have to do. After all, the instructions required me to write a magic spell in the bottom of the bowl, and I’d be damned if I was going to use my good dishes.

Luna stared intently. I didn’t have any candles suitable for witchcraft, you know, black tapers or the like. I did have a large
pillar candle that was a gift from my mother. I looked at the cellophane wrapped label,
Morning Rain.
I had never lit the candle, not because I liked the way it looked, but because I was afraid to smell Morning Rain throughout my apartment. To me, those words conjured up thoughts of the scent of a thousand worms dying on the sidewalk. And, I might add, I have a real problem with the reason for all of those worms. I imagine that somewhere deep in the earth, as the falling rain penetrates the inner sanctum of Wormtown, their Jim Jones style worm leader makes an announcement that the end of the world is at hand. OK, maybe not at hand in the worm sense, but perhaps with wormaggedon imminent, they are all ordered to go up to the surface where they lay prostrate in front of traffic, pedestrians, and hungry birds.

The
smell, oddly reminiscent of dead worms on a rainy spring morning, hung in the air of my dimly lit room. I took my sharpie marked salad container and centered it on the paper. Luna jumped down and sat next to me. The herbal ingredients were tossed in and I read the magic incantation as I spun the bowl. Now, on to the nasty goose blood. I opened the clear plastic deli container and took a small spoonful of the red liquid and dripped it in. Next, I scraped Betsy’s eye boogers into the mix. It was disgusting. I was even more disgusted when I saw Luna chowing down on raw goose liver.

I waited and waited
, but nothing happened. I suppose, I had hoped for a sign that the spell had worked. A puff of smoke or an enlightening feeling, something – anything, but I got a whole lot of nothing. I blew the candle out and threw away the bowl full of yuck. Luna disappeared into my bedroom and left me alone. At least I gave it a try, and I really did have a good time at Lindsey’s expense that day. The only thing I could really think about though was Hunter. I was looking forward to seeing him. A real, big girl date. Yay me!

Chapter 10

It’s a Date!

I woke up early and felt thoroughly excited. I wondered what Hunter would have in mind for our date. I really didn’t know that much about him. Probably a matinee, maybe dinner. It didn’t matter to me, though. I didn’t even bother to get my car from Lindsey’s house. I hopped in the tub, shaved my legs, moved on to my nails, and then plucked the stray hairs from every pluckable part of my body. Finally the phone rang, it was Hunter.  He told me that he would pick me up at noon and to expect a fun day. I’m pretty certain my heart skipped a few beats with the anticipation only a first date with potential can bring.

Like any normal, slightly psychotic woman that is trying desperately to impress a man, I tore through my closet like the Tasmanian devil.
It’s hard to pick out the perfect outfit, when you have absolutely no idea what the occasion is. After ten different outfits, I finally settled on a light pink sweater, a pair of white capris, and my favorite silver sandals. My hair, well that was another story.  Should I leave it down? Should I pull it up? I finally decided to leave it down and take a clip with me, in case I wanted to pull it up at any time.

My mind was completely occupied with getting ready for my date that I barely
thought about witchcraft. I had to admit to myself, at least, I was pretty upset the internet spell turned out to be a total bust. It led me to the realization that Kelly was right, no real magic would be out on the internet for anyone to use. In any case, I think I looked about as cute as I could possibly be.

Luna jumped up onto the back o
f my couch and looked out the window. Her tail twitched from side to side as she eyed up her next victim. When Hunter knocked on the door, I paused and counted to ten before I opened it. I didn’t want him to know I had actually been standing by the door waiting for him. How desperate would that look?

“Hi
, Hunter! Come on in.” I held the door open and as Hunter walked in, Luna walked up to him and rubbed her body against his leg. Her tail wrapped around his ankle and she made a small noise. That little tramp! My cat was actually flirting with my would-be boyfriend. God knows that I would have loved to rub up against his leg and purr!

“Hi
, Leigh and hi Leigh’s cat.”

“Wow! This is amazing. I’ve never seen her take to anyone like this before. She
’s normally an anti-social and violent psychopath.” I looked at Hunter and noticed how nice he looked again. He wore a very nice, blue button down dress shirt, jeans, and brown leather shoes. His hair was short, but not buzzed like you see so many guys do. Working in the sun made his blonde hair look almost golden. His bright blue eyes were a stark contrast against his tanned skin. I could easily find myself lost in his eyes. I looked at his clean shaven face and the way he filled out his shirt. I blushed a little when I remembered how muscular and sexy he looked that afternoon working on Lindsey’s roof.

“What’s her name?”

“Who’s name?” I had completely lost the conversation.

“You
r cat’s name.”

“Oh
, sorry. That’s Luna. We have what you would call a very dysfunctional relationship, although it has been getting better lately for some reason.” Which was absolutely true. Ever since I started playing with magic, Luna began acting different. Almost as if she were more interested in being with me. Huh, I’d have to file that information away for later. This wasn’t the time to bring up my witchy experiments to Hunter.

“Good name! I like that. So, are you ready to go out and have some fun?”

“Sure! What do you have in mind?”

“Well, this time of day there isn’t a whole lot going on. I was thinking that since it’s a nice day
, we could head over to the little amusement park. The one with the go-kart track and mini golf course.”

“Sounds fun!”
For once, I didn’t have to lie too much. It sounded like a lot of fun and I was really looking forward to spending time with him!

Once again,
he held the door of his truck open for me. I have to admit that it is a very sweet and romantic thing to do, but for a moment, I worried that he might be in the market for an old-fashioned girlfriend. Maybe he hoped for a meek and mild girl? Then again, we had met when I was in a bikini and half drunk, so that couldn’t possibly be the case.

It was a picture perfect summer day and it was even better
because I was out doing something with Hunter. I was nervous about one thing. Mini-golf. I hate it. Well, I only hate it because I completely suck at it. I detest the full size version of the game even more. The sight of the course’s sheet metal lighthouse and plastic gorilla summoned up a few traumatic childhood memories. When I was young, every summer my parents would take us up to Wisconsin for a week long adventure at Yogi Bear Campground. We stayed in one of the small log cabins, because as my father said, “What, they expect us to stay in a tent? We’re from Skokie for God’s sake.” He said it as if people should excuse us from any expectations that we would ever truly leave our urbanized shells.

We always played the campground’s mini-golf course on the first day. It was invariably hot, humid
, and filled with children as miserable as my sister and I. It seemed like it was also the norm for frazzled parents to bring your most ADHD afflicted children for mini-golf therapy on the same day. Those parents were literally hanging onto their sanity by a hair. Every so often, a child would flail on the ground in some horrendous tantrum, as if they were possessed by every demon they could squeeze into their sweaty little heads. The most at-risk parents would confront the convulsing little monster, not with the Roman Catholic Rite of Exorcism, but with a complete psychotic break. The screaming imp was no match for a mother yelling a verbal tirade that would make Satan himself cower in fear. I always wondered why they thought it would help the situation by recalling every single transgression, real or perceived, the child had committed in the past two years.

So you had
that
to set the tone for your golf game. My father would get so upset. He thought these incidents destroyed our pace, or as I believed it to be, our spiraling descent into dysfunctional family hell. In an effort to expedite his nine-hole path to mini-golf fame, he would join in the fray by yelling at the parents to “go screw up your lives some other place. I paid good money to be here.” I wondered, did he mean as a paying customer, he should be able to screw up his family with speed, unencumbered by the mental carnage going on around him? He would turn on us, determined to showcase us as model obedient children who were completely subservient to his newly founded dictatorship. No praise, accolades, or support. No, it was only impatient criticism laced with sarcasm. “Hurry up, we don’t have all week for this! What are you doing? Just hit the ball!”

Needless to say, mini-golf wasn’t anything that I wanted to partake in, but I didn’t want
Hunter to think I was dragging around a baggage cart full of weird hang-ups. We went to the small stand to pay our fee and get our golf clubs and balls. Hunter insisted that I take the first turn. The first hole looked nearly impossible. The green carpeting rolled out before me to create a snake shaped path. The course ahead went directly between the four limbs of a giant crouching plastic gorilla. I don’t know why the gorilla was facing away from me. Perhaps intimidation was the latest in mini-golf design, as if bouncing a ball through a shifting mouse hole wasn’t tough enough.

I set my bright pink ball on the little rubber pad and I had to lean down to use the club. I realized I had received the child size golf club. When I tried to set up an excuse before I even took my first pathetic swing,
Hunter was happy to give me some assistance.

“
Hunter, just so you know, I completely suck at this game.”

“Don’t worry about it
, Leigh. I just thought it would be fun to play around. I didn’t even grab a scorecard. Here, let me show you how to hold the putter.” Hunter came up behind me and brought his big strong arms around to meet my hands on the club. “Now, hold your hands just like this.” He moved my hands around to the correct grip and left his hands on mine. My entire body tingled from his touch. The whole scene was oddly erotic. “Next, swing the club back and don’t squeeze your grip too tight, or you’re likely to hit it too hard.” He moved the club back to simulate the speed that I should use. I could feel his muscular chest up against my back. His head was leaning down so that the side of our faces were touching. “There, just like that. Now, let’s hit this one together. Just keep your hands on the club and I’ll hit it.” Each time he brought that club back I could feel him against me, and I was suddenly and incredibly turned on by the way he was moving me. I didn’t even realize that he said
he
would hit the ball.

We brought the club back and our combined forward swing was more like a major league baseball line drive. The little pink ball went airborne
. A hollow thud ricocheted off the gorilla’s left ass cheek. The ball came right back at us and I instinctively ducked. There was a sickening sound as the golf ball caught Hunter right in the forehead. I was so shocked that I spun around to see if he was all right. The only problem was that I had never let go of the club. If I had been in a martial arts tournament, I would surely have earned my black belt. The club came up and nailed Hunter right in the crotch with full force.

Hunter
doubled over, his hands cupping what I imagined to be his mashed testicles. He dropped to the ground and tried to speak. To his credit, he didn’t cuss at me or call me any names that would have been well deserved. “It’s- OK… Leigh… I’m OK… I think- argh.”  With my mouth agape, I watched him writhing in pain, and then I noticed the contusion on his forehead swelling, as if a horn was about to burst out above his right eye. I finally meet a super-hot and nice guy and I fucking neutered him. It appeared that I may have caused some brain swelling as well. All in a single move. “Just give me a minute, Leigh.”

I wanted to cry.
Hunter tried to shake it off and slowly stood up. He forced his hands away from his crotch, but was still leaning slightly forward. My eyes were now fixed on the red, bulbous lump on his head.

“See, just fine!”

“Hunter? I’m not so sure. You have a pretty big bump on your head.”

“Aw, I’m sure it’s nothing.” He gave me a smile that seemed slightly forced. I could have sworn the thing was doubling in size before my very eyes.

“Well, how about we just give up on the golf? What do you say we just walk past those carnival games over there?” I wanted to get as far away from the mini-golf and the gorilla’s ass as quickly as possible.

“Sure! That sounds safe…
I mean, that sounds fun.”

The first place we passed by was the shooting gallery. A colorful assortment of plush stuffed snakes, bears, monkeys
, and other animals hung from the awning. I couldn’t help it, I had to give a little squeeze to a plush orange and purple alligator. Hunter noticed that it had caught my attention. “How about I win one of those for you?”

He paid for his chance and with three shots from the cork gun he had three direct hits. He turned to me and handed me the prize, the psychedelic alligator. “Here you go. One grand prize. How about you give it a try?”

“I’ve never shot anything. Not even a cork gun.”

“I’ll show you!”
Hunter threw down another five dollar bill and started to demonstrate how I should hold the little gun. I did my best to do it completely wrong.

“OK, I suck at this
, too. I think you should come here and help me aim it.”

I was pretty happy when my plan worked and much like he did with the mini golf lesson, he came from behind and showed me the best way to hold the little rifle. I took as long as possible
, because I was trying to let him know I really liked him being close to me. Time to get a little flirt on.

“So, do I hold my head back, like this?” I leaned my head back against his chest. “And do I hold my hand back here?” I grabbed the stock close to my body and awkwardly waved the barrel.

“No, let me help you.” In order to get to my hands, his arms came completely around me, as if he were holding me more than helping me with the gun. I leaned my head back a little and looked up. I was trying to build up the nerve to tell him that I wouldn’t mind him holding me as long as he wanted. He surprised me. “This is kind of a nice way to spend an afternoon. I really like being with you, Leigh.”

I laughed a little. “I was just thinking the same thing. Now, h
ow do I make this thing shoot?”

By n
ow, Hunter had probably realized I had sort of tricked him into holding me like this and he got his flirting skills on as well. “Well, you take one hand and grab around this part, then take just one finger and put it on the trigger. You want to touch it lightly and easily at first so it doesn’t just shoot off unexpectedly.” He took my hand in his and placed it on the curved grip of the stock. Slowly he wrapped my fingers around it. I was amazed at how he could touch my hands in such a sensual way. He took my index finger and placed it on the trigger. “Now, when you are ready, you need to squeeze it. Don’t just go pulling on it. Squeeze it gently, at first.”

“You are sassy! Are you sure? Just squeeze it? How about like this?” I wrapped my fingers around his index finger and stroked it.
“Do you think that would work?”