A tall, long-legged blond with a big smile, red lips, and high heels pranced her two-piece yellow bathing suit into the kitchen for ice. Wesley Marvin sat frozen in shock, unbelieving, holding the hot amber nugget in his trembling hand.

He had studied his favorite forties-era pin-up and imagined the girl the artist had attempted to portray as she might have been in real life. The caption on the poster had read:

Picture me, over your soda pop,
Waiting at your cottage door.
But put out of your head the vision
Of me actually mopping a floor.

Who knew?

Wesley tried making conversation with the girl, but she was just as shallow as the paper she had been printed on. He made a move for sex; but so far, she would only giggle. All she had on her mind was soda pop!

A key turned in the lock at his front door and Wesley froze. Karen! It was his fiancée at the door with groceries. Wesley bolted to catch the package from Karen’s overloaded arms and tried to stand between her and a view into the kitchen.

“Thank you. You’re such a gentleman,” Karen said, closing the door and starting to take off her coat. “Take that to the stove and I’ll get started on our supper. I bet you could use a good meal. I don’t know how you single men stay healthy without a woman around to cook.”

Wesley saw Karen’s eyes go wide and turned to see the blond in the yellow two-piece coming out of the kitchen with two glasses of iced soda.

“There you go,” smiled the long-legged vision, as she set the glasses on the table. She bent low, fully displaying two of God's greatest gifts, in all their ripe glory and splendor. Flashing a big red-lipstick smile she pranced off into the bedroom.

“It’s not what you think,” Wesley said. Karen slapped him.

“Is that right? You know what I think?” Karen slapped him again, and he set the groceries on the table to rub his crimson cheek.

“Listen, Baby, you’ve got to believe me. I don’t know what happened. I think it’s some alien science gone wacky. Just sit down and let me explain.”

“I’m not sitting down and I wouldn’t miss this for the world! My girlfriends and I all have dreams about this speech. ‘Just believe me and forget your lying eyes.’ Go ahead, make a spectacle of yourself.” Karen cupped her hands toward the door of the bedroom and said, “Come on in here, Honey. I’ll bet you want to hear this too.”

The blond flounced right back through toward the kitchen, smiling, “More pop already?”

Wesley told his story as coherently as he could, under the circumstances. By the time he was finished they had four glasses of pop on the table and the blond was back in the bedroom.

Karen looked at the amber nugget in her hand and gave the man credit. That had to be the most creative b.s. story ever thrown down on the spur of the moment.

Karen smiled at Wesley, “Nice try.” Turning to the door, she opened it, stepped outside and slammed the door behind her.

Walking to the car with tears in her eyes, Karen said goodbye to the life she had dreamed of having with Wesley. Holding the amber nugget in her trembling hand, she sat in her car and focused her mind on what a disgusting creature he had become to her. Then she keyed the ignition, tossed the nugget into the woods and promised herself that she would never think of him again.

Back in Wesley’s house the blond was cheerfully chatting with her companion. “I bet you want to go to bed with me now, don’t you Wesley?” Pulling the sheets right up to her dimpled chin, the forties-era pin-up in the yellow two-piece smiled at the green, wart-covered toad sitting on the pillow beside her.
 

Roger W. Cain retired in 1996 and has been writing full time for two years. When not clattering at the keyboard, he plays “park ranger” on 155 acres of hay field and forest in North Alabama. His short fiction has appeared online in MoXie Magazine and Anotherealm, and in the print pages of The Storyteller.