I’ll Do Anything!

Weird fiction piece by Clark Humphrey

8/20/90

A young man and a young woman are talking in a loud whisper at the University Bistro. The sax player’s great; the rest of the band is adequate.

Twenty minutes ago, she sat alone at a table for two; the other tables were all occupied. He asked if her other seat was taken. “It is now, if you like.” Her voice is soft but audible even over a sax solo. As she drinks, she places the traces of her thick lipstick on the same spot of the glass with each sip. He fights himself to keep from staring at her pale bare arms, at her strapless black dress, even though she has positioned herself so that he would have to look past her to see the band. By the second break, she’s directing him in small talk, touching his hand or shoulder for emphasis.

Two hours later, they are more or less dressed in their sharp evening clothes, on the large and comfortable sofa of the woman’s tastefully furnished living room. It is sometime after midnight. She is warm and relaxed; her skin is soft; her flowing hair holds the scent of the shampoo the movie stars use. He is achingly young, beautiful and tender, with eyes too blue for any contact lenses to simulate. His clothes are the finest his student budget could afford, befitting his first night of legal club-hopping. His anxious lips and trembling hands betray his inexperience. He bears the scent of stale cologne. She gently instructs him in the rituals of passive-aggressive seduction, keeping his timing slow, encouraging him with words of comfort and compassion. She shows him where to touch her, in what intensity, in what order.

At a pivotal stage in the ritual she pulls his hands off of her and sits up. She coos, “You’re so cute. But before I can go on, I need to know one thing. Do you love me? Really love me?”

“Oh, yes, more than anything in the world.”

“I need to really know. Can you swear to be faithful to me?”

“Yes, yes, forever. I’ll have to give two weeks’ notice to my roommates, but forever after that.”

“One more question: Would you do anything for me?”

“Anything! Anything at all, just to let me stay with you tonight. Name it and it’s yours!”

She whispers something into his ear. He thinks he doesn’t hear it correctly. She repeats it, with a wet kiss to his earlobe. He looks perplexed for a second, but when she turns around to offer the zipper of her dress to him, he accepts.

That night, he enjoys the greatest experience of his brief life, while she draws energy from his youthful astonishment.

At 9:30 the next morning, he is once again dressed in his black slacks, suspenders, and polished Oxfords. His white shirt is rolled up at the sleeves. She dresses in a practical white top and slacks. After fixing a hot scrambled-egg breakfast, she reminds him of their deal. She searches the kitchen pantry, hands him the materials he will need to fulfill his promise, blows him a kiss and leaves.

A half hour of staring and wondering passes before he gets up from the kitchen table, picking up the Handi-Wipes she left there into his hand, to start washing her living-room windows. As he opens the plush drapery, he peers outside to see a corps of beautiful young men, none older than about 23, all with delicate smiles and trim sideburns. Some of them seemed to be far under 21; she must have found them in coffeehouses or at all-ages concerts. They are watering her lawn, pruning her flower beds, painting her drainpipes, loading her pickup with full trash cans, fixing her car’s engine, etc., etc.

Upon his first awareness of his lover’s less than total devotion to him, he feels like tossing his Handi-Wipes on the freshly waxed floor and leaving. But he remembers that she had not exactly promised to be faithful to him, she had merely asked him to promise to be faithful to her. And he was well aware that she had known lovers before meeting him; her thorough knowledge of the ways of loving, and her willingness to share them to a near-stranger such as himself, were the factors that had brought him in her car to this house.

As he continues to stare out at the eight or nine almost-identical blue-eyed boy-men, all happily serving their cause without speaking to or significantly noticing one another, he senses another kind of bonding, one different from but just as strange as his attraction toward his beloved. He finds in his heart a sense of family with these young gentlemen, who look so much like him that they could almost be his brothers. He has found his real home, to live comfortably among those who remind him of himself. He begins to work happily. He even begins to forget whose house he is cleaning.