Trombone burped canned turkey gravy. He rushed to jam a menthol cough lozenge in his mouth because he didn’t have breath mints, but it was too late. The odor of the gravy had wafted over to Kittie and her face wrinkled like a car bumper in a low speed crash.
“Gross.”
“Sorry. I...I’m nervous.”
Kittie cracked her left ring finger knuckle with her left thumb and rose. She began to rub Trombone’s back, stopping when her hand went over the collar of his faded Harley Davidson t-shirt and brushed through the thick tufts of dark hair that climbed from his back, up around his neck.
He saw her face make another disgusted expression in the Lite Beer mirror he won at the St. Agatha Carnival after buying forty-two dollars worth of dart balloon tosses with his tax return.
“Don’t be nervous, sugar. Your sister took care of everything. I’m gonna finish this pint of SoCo, maybe hit that joint one more time if you don’t mind, then I’ll make you feel good.”
“I want you to have fun,” Trombone said. “You know, like a real date.”
“Are we goin’ somewhere, Big Fella?” Kittie asked, “like a real date?”
She yawned, raising her arms, and she could see her own rib cage in the beer mirror.
“We could go somewhere free, like the park... or something,” Trombone said. “I only have like four real dollars, and maybe like seven bucks worth of change in my Mickey Mouse piggy bank.”
He craned his neck to the right to look at his date, who was still examining her own rib cage in the mirror.
“I guess it’s not really a piggy bank if it’s a mouse, though, right? It’s a mouse bank.”
He smiled. Some teeth were missing from his upper row, but his smile was genuine and gentle. It reminded Kittie, in a good way, of her father.
She shook off the thought, but her attitude toward the portly man softened considerably.
She sat back down on the dingy, ripped leather recliner and put her pint of Southern Comfort to her lips.
When the sugary warmth hit her gut she said “ Why don’t you take me for a ride on your Harley?”
Trombone shook his head and belched again.
“Oh, I don’t own a Harley. I wish. They’re ‘spensive.”
Kittie nodded, with true sympathy. She had owned one once, in what she considered the good old days.
“Why don’t you play me your trombone?”
Trombone chuckled sadly and blushed, red skin dawning from under purple gin blossoms.
“Awww, I don’t know how to play the trombone. Jus’ a nickname.”
“Why do they call you Trombone?”
Trombone stiffened and he sat back, then he jerked forward to reach for the joint on the small metal tray, as though the answer to Kittie’s question was underneath it. He lit the joint, hit it, hit it again without exhaling and handed it to Kittie.
She took the joint, still looking at Trombone, feeling the moistness where he had lipped the paper.
He asked “Why do they call you Kittie?”, still holding the pot smoke in his burly chest.
“I asked you first,” she said, smiling and winking like she imagined she would on a real date.
Trombone hung his head, watched his own feet shift back and forth in the gaudy gold shag carpeting that seemed to have half an inch of dust laid over it.
When he raised his head he looked serious, the look of someone being honest with a judge even though they knew the answer might incriminate them.
“Because I have bad luck. They started calling me Sad Trombone. Then they just shortened it to Trombone. I didn’t like it, but I don’t really like my real name either and…”
Kittie saw his lip quiver a bit and shake little flecks of sweat off the roll of fat underneath it.
Deirdre did not hire Kittie to make her brother sad.
She stood, nearly a small hop.
“They call me Kittie because I have reflexes like a cat, like an untamed tiger,” she said, reaching her left hand to unsnap her blue bikini top, the back coming loose but the shoulder straps holding the cups in front of her breasts. She reclined to her knees in front of Trombone and reached for his belt.
“How long have they called you Kittie?” Trombone asked, squirming a bit.
“Oh, a long time now.”
She unhooked Trombone’s belt and began to pull it through the loops of his pants.
“My mom and my boyfriend still call me Katherine though.”
Trombone grabbed the elbow that tugged at his belt, quickly, but without malice.
“Stop. You have a boyfriend? Dee Dee didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend. I thought this was...kinda sort of...a date.”
“We have an open relationship,” Kittie said, not for the first time.
“Oh no. If I was your boyfriend...no, no you have a boyfriend. We can’t...whatever we were about to do. No.”
Trombone stood and began to reattach his belt, emblazoned with the old number 77 of his favorite NASCAR driver.
Katherine Elise Costello panicked. Probation was Monday. The pandemic had closed the clubs. She couldn’t in good conscience take Dierdre’s money for twenty minutes of conversation with her allegedly virgin thirty-five-year-old brother.
“It’s ok, Trombone, my boyfriend doesn’t care...he...he wants me to...have fun. Forget about him, let’s me and you--”
Trombone shook his head back and forth, eyes closed.
“No. Sorry. No, you have a boyfriend. It’s not a real date if you have a boyfriend. I want a real date.”
“This is a real date, Trombone, we can go to the park, or…”
Kittie pulled off her bikini top and cupped her breasts, smiling at the big man in the Harley t-shirt.
He blinked and stared, then blinked some more, then looked down at the dusty carpeting.
“No. No. You have to leave. If I was your boyfriend I would be mad. And I don’t want him to be mad at me. No.”
Kittie realized Deirdre would just loan her the money if she told her the truth.
“You sure, Trombone?”
The guy just nodded, eyes closed, back stiff. When he opened his eyes he truly looked sad.
Kittie grabbed her pint and hit it on the way out the door, realizing she would have to stop soon for her morning Breathalyzer.
Before she could close her car door she heard Trombone slam the front door of the little gray ranch.
Inside, Trombone turned on the TV. The race was in a rain delay. He muted the TV, dropped the remote on the table next to the weed tray and called his sister.
“Hi Hector, having fun with Kittie?
“No. She left,” he said. “Her boyfriend is an asshole. He doesn’t feed her, Dee Dee. She’s too skinny. She’s yucky skinny. She’s nice, but, I dunno, Dee Dee. Yuck. I don’t want a date with a skinny girl, especially one with a boyfriend.”
“Ohhh myyy, Hec, I’m sorry. I thought…”
Hector “Trombone” Wiltmeyer cut off his sister.
“What about Donna from Chicken Chalet? Do you know her? Black hair, my size? I want a date with her, Dee Dee. Get me a date with her.”
***
Photo by Jairo Alzate on Unsplash
that might be the best opening paragraph of yours that i've read yet.