I'm With the Band
I was playing with our high school garage band, the Misfits, on a Friday night. We had a rare, paying gig. It was at a party held by one of our best friends, Sharon. And we had a lot of fun. There were no parents in the house that evening. There were a few beers. There was dancing. We provided the music ourselves, of course, with cover tunes and originals. And around us, it seemed like a good time was had by all.
The band played late into the night. I banged on the keyboard and sang. For a couple numbers, I got up and crooned the lyrics into a ball microphone on a stand. I danced and leaned sideways with the mic stand in my arms. And at the end of the evening, I headed home with a girl. She drove me to her house. We crept downstairs. She folded out the basement couch into a makeshift bed.
We had sex in her home with her family upstairs, although she assured me it was just her mother. I wasn't as uptight as I'd been when I was in this situation before. For her part, my girl seemed to be rolling in the flow of the moment. She forgot about being quiet or she didn't care. Afterwards, looking flushed, she held me close. She drifted off to sleep before I did, still partly dressed in the bits of clothing that neither of us, in our haste, had taken off her body. She looked warm. She felt it, too. She made me feel cozy. I drifted into dreamy half-consciousness while staring at her basement ceiling, satisfied and warily affectionate about being in someone's embrace, naked under the makeshift covers.
Hours later, I woke to light seeping between the leafless backyard trees. The ruddy glow shone through the plate glass. The basement of the townhouse had been built with floor to ceiling windows and a sliding, glass door. In here, facing southeast, it got bright early. Over the span of half a minute, however, I became aware it wasn't the luster of morning that had woken me. It was the sounds upstairs.
Above my head, someone strode across the floors wearing hard-soled shoes. The steps clacked from the tiles in the kitchen, to the rug next to the hall closet, and back into the kitchen again. Someone opened a drawer. A kitchen implement rattled. A pan hit the burner on a stove top.
Dimly, I remembered how seldom anyone's parents ever seemed happy to see me. I'd never met this girl's family. I'd wanted to. She hadn't introduced me, though. Even if she lived with only her mother, I wondered how unhappy a parent would be to find me, a stranger, in the house. Would her mother scream and throw things? Should I try to sneak out? There was nowhere to go. This place was a long way from home. I had no car and no money. Besides, the fast-paced movements upstairs signaled to me that slipping out would be difficult.
The pattern of footfalls changed. Next to me, my girl murmured something in her sleep. I must have moved. In reaction, she curled closer into my shoulder. She had been resting on my arm. Now she occupied the whole left side of my body.
The hard-soled shoes clicked into the hall. They paused. Someone had to be standing near the top of the padded stairs that ran from the ground floor down to the basement. How well did this young lady get along with her mother? Suddenly, that seemed important. Would her mom want me to introduce myself or would she rather knife me? For that matter, had I heard quiet footsteps on the stairs, earlier? I'd stirred. Was it from the padded, quiet sound of feet? Maybe her mother had already crept down and seen us lying on the fold-out couch. Maybe some barely-aware part of me had taken note.
The person at the top of the staircase decided to come down, maybe for the second time. I jostled my left arm. It seemed smart to wake the girl next to me, just in case we needed to move fast. Step, step, step, the footfalls approached. The blonde head next to me turned. The blue eyes blinked. They followed my line of sight - or more accurately, they tried. Her eyesight wasn't so great without glasses. She'd told me. I'd forgotten.
My eyes were perfect. I could see brown, low-heeled office shoes on the stairs. I could see shoes and blue slacks. I could see the torso of a middle-aged woman.
Finally, I saw the woman herself. She was brown-haired and looked a little rumpled, although in business-style clothes. She wore a plain blouse. She stopped on the stairs when she saw me studying her. In one hand, she held a spatula. The other hand, she rested on her hip.
"How do you like your eggs?" she said.
"I'm sorry?" I thought I had misheard. I turned to the girl next to me. She couldn't see the situation but she knew her mother, surely. She would understand what was going on.
"Well?" she prompted.
"The eggs?" repeated her mother from the staircase.
"My mom is making us breakfast," she explained.
"Oh." This was so far from what I had expected, I had to replay the conversation in my head to make sure I understood. "Sunny side up?"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes?" Well, I was sure my girl and I were teenagers. And that her mother was the calmest parent I had ever met.
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