Bawdybodies.com - Barry Rachin (ebook reader ink txt) 📗

dinner this Saturday… maybe catch a movie."

"A date?" She handed him the books.

"I don't mean to -"

"I live with my sister, Abigail." Jillian scribbled her name and telephone number on a scrap of paper. "Usually one of us is home in the evening." She suddenly reached out and pulled the topmost book from the pile. "This novel is grossly overrated. Let me suggest something else." Several rows over, she pulled a tattered volume off the shelf. "Read the third story then go back and take a look at the others if you like."

"The third story?" Ernie opened the volume at random. The page was yellowed and frayed. He thought to ask why he should skip the first two offerings but thought better of it.


Thursday evening Ernie called Jillian at home but she was out. "Could you tell your sister Ernie called?"

"Bernie?"

"No, Ernie… from the garage. I'll pick her up around seven this Saturday night." There was no immediate response. "Around seven." After waiting a discrete interval he added, "Could you make sure Jillian gets the message?"

"Yeah, whatever." The line went dead. The following day he called Jillian at the library. "Did you get my message?"

"What message?"

Ernie felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that quickly fermented into blind rage. "Your sister didn't mention I called?"

"Abigail's a bit of scatterbrained. She's not good with directions, but Saturday's fine," she replied. "Did you read the Turgenev?"

The question caught Ernie unawares. It had been a rough week at the garage. He single-handedly pulled a drive train on a Chevy truck, which backlogged the scheduled repairs. Since the beginning of the week, he hadn't closed shop much before seven. There was no time or residual brain power left over for intellectual calisthenics. And anyway, he was far too excited about the date to worry about musty, nineteenth-century Russian literature. "Yes, I read the Turgenev story," Ernie lied.

"And how did you like it?"

"Oh," he was getting flustered now, "I'll tell you all about it Saturday night." The response seemed to please the woman immensely and they ended the conversation on a happy note. Later that night, Ernie took an early bath and climbed into bed with the bearded Russian. It seemed to take almost as much personal investment reading the damn story as it did pulling the drive train! If his mind wandered off from the printed page, Ernie lost the gist of what the author was saying. And more often than not, the writer spoke at several different levels at once.

A young Russian girl from an aristocratic family falls under the influence of a crazed, religious zealot and her life is ruined. Ernie was hoping for a happy ending but no such luck. The Turgenev story - it was a stupid, stupid, stupid bit of literary fluff! Putting the tattered book aside, Ernie killed the light and lay on his back in the dark. He ran a thumb over a scab on his index finger where an errant wrench had opened a deep gash earlier in the week. Why did Jillian insist that he read such a crappy tale? Ernie momentarily turned the light back on and gazed at the formidable stack of books on the bedside table. Returning home from the library, he skimmed the table of contents on one beefy volume. All that unfettered truth and wisdom - it was like a talisman, an omen of good things to come.


Saturday evening Ernie arrived around quarter to seven at Jillian's apartment. Abigail let him in. "You're the grease monkey?"

"Mechanic," he corrected.

The younger girl wasn't nearly as pretty as her older sister. She had the same dark hair and burnished Mediterranean complexion, but that's where similarities ended. Scrawny and disheveled with a wide, mannish jaw, she wore raggedy jeans below a wrinkled T-shirt with no bra. Her hazel eyes flitted distractedly about the room as though she couldn't wait to be rid of him. "You don't seem like my sister's type."

Ernie coughed self-consciously. "Jillian's not here?"

"Director called a last minute staff meeting at the library. She's running late and asked me to entertain you in her absence." Flinging herself down on the sofa, Abigail's unencumbered breasts swung lazily from side to side.

"Do you work locally?"

"I'm between jobs." She teased a piece of lint off her jeans and deposited it on the rug. "I was employed over at the Dairy Mart until I had words with the assistant manager. Now I'm thinking of going into business for myself."

"What exactly did you have in mind?"

Abigail shuffled over to a computer tucked away in the far corner of the room. "Ever heard of bawdybodies.com?" Without waiting for an answer, she typed an address into the search engine and brought up a screen. Ernie leaned over and read through a raunchy doggerel. "You're gonna sell sexual toys and herbal supplements?"

"Hell no," Abigail seemed genuinely miffed at the suggestion. "The smutty crap is just a lost leader." She tilted her head at an angle and smirked impudently. "You do know what a lost leader is?"

"Something a businessman gives away to get customers to shop in the store." Ernie was getting aggravated. He wanted Jillian, the Virgin Mother, to rescue him from this crazy woman.
"Over to the right... what do you see?"

"A bunch of naked women in erotic poses."

"Correctamundo!" Abigail scrolled down the menagerie of topless females until she reached a slightly pudgy blonde with a strawberry birthmark on her inner thigh. "That's Bethany Garret."

"Name doesn't ring a bell."

"Beth was a year ahead of me at Brandenberg High."

"Not necessarily the valedictorian." Ernie was feeling light headed.

"When some horny-as-hell male clicks on this racy photo," she positioned the cursor over the blonde’s lumpy left breast, "the hyperlink transports him directly to Bethany's personal website where, for a small fee, they can view more photos and steamy videos." "Bethany went from dead-end jobs punching time clocks to a six-figure income."

"How far along are you in your start-up venture?"

"I need a professional camera." She reached for a cell phone resting on an end table. "All I got for now are these grainy nudes I shot with -"

"Sorry I'm late." The door flew open and Jillian hurried into the room. "We had this spur-of-the-moment staff meeting and then I got stuck in traffic.

"I just been bringing Ernie up to speed on my latest business venture." Edging closer to the computer, Abigail flipped a switch and the monitor faded to black. Lifting up on her toes, she kissed him on the cheek. "He's a real peach of a guy."

"Business venture?" Wiping the wetness away with the heel of her hand, Jillian clearly had no idea what Abigail was talking about. "We're already ten minutes late, but I do appreciate your keeping him company in my absence.


"You sister's got a bit of a wild streak." Ernie and Jillian were hunkered down at the Cathay City Chinese Restaurant with a pu pu platter and pot of Oolong tea.

"Abby's all bluster and false bravado." Jillian maneuvered a pair of wooden chopsticks over a nugget of Colonel Tso’s chicken. The supple fingers moved with a ballet-like precision as she effortlessly lifted the food. "At some point my kid sister has to grow up."

"I read the Turgenev story."

"Yes, you told me." Jillian's eyes, which normally were opaque, sparkled with a rich luster. "And did you understand it?"

What was there to understand? A religious kook hoodwinks an unwitting admirer. "I lost focus and had to go back and reread certain passages."

"But you grasped the underlying message?"

"Yes, of course."

Jillian suddenly leaned across the table and kissed him on the cheek. "It's not right," she mused out loud, "my kid sister should smooch with a date before I do."

Later in the car before he turned the engine over, Ernie kissed her on the mouth. "I want to see you again."

She placed her lips next to his ear. "Yes, I'd like that."

Reaching the apartment complex, Ernie accompanied her to the door, and, slipping his arms around her waist, pulled her close. "If you don't mind my asking," he was feeling quite giddy, "What was the big deal with the Turgenev story?"

"Was there something you didn't understand?"

"No, not really. When the religious fanatic started spouting all that jibberish about personal atonement..."

“You lost me.” Jillian's eyes narrowed and her voice assumed a hard edge. "What are you talking about?"

Just then, the apartment door opened and Abigail stood gawking at them. "The crackpot who ran off with the landowner's daughter… he ruined the girl's life, and at the very end of the story, when they reached the inn during the rainstorm -"

"You read the wrong story." Jillian's face was livid. "I told you to read the third story, and you read the one before it."

"I did what you told me!" Over the woman's shoulder he could see the braless younger sister smirking vicariously. Kachunk! Kachunk! Kachunk! Ernie felt the turgid blood thudding in his ears, the precursor to a full-blown anxiety attack.

"Apparently not very well, because you read the wrong story." There were no more kisses, hugs or terms of endearment. Jillian Crowley disappeared into the apartment, and her future porn-star-of-a-younger-sister slammed the door shut.


Ernie went home and had a good cry. Then he got drunk and threw up all over himself and fell asleep on the couch still dressed in his vomit-soaked clothes. In the morning, hung over and overwhelmed with self-loathing, he took a closer look at the tattered Turgenev book. Yes, he had read the wrong story. Punin and Baburin - that was the name of the one he should have read. But Ernie, incorrigible dope that he was, began counting from Edward Garnett's scholarly introduction, leaving himself one short. One short - he might as well have been a thousand pages off the mark!

Punin and Baburin - it was another stupid story! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Baburin travels about the country with his friend Punin, who is bald with a head shaped like an egg. A thoroughly stupid story! Ernie stopped reading around lunchtime. He was only halfway finished but needed protein in his stomach before soldiering on. The kitchen phone began ringing with shrill insistence until the answering machine finally picked up. The caller left no message. Brinnng! Brinnng! Brinnng! The phone erupted again, demanding, begging, pleading to be answered. Fleeing the apartment, Ernie wandered down to the lobby and gathered his mail. When he returned the red LCD light was flashing on the answering machine. A thoroughly remorseful Jillian Crowley would be calling and leaving the first of many unanswered apologies for his public humiliation. Ernie pressed the message tab.

"Hi, it's Maureen. Just got back from an education seminar in Palo Alto. Still upset about that silliness with the graffiti? Give me a call. We'll patch things up over a bottle of wine and a porno flick." Ernie slumped down in a kitchen chair. He hit the playback tab a second time and listened to Dr. Kwong's officious nasal twang. A third and a fourth time he listened to the message, and then Ernie tried to imagine Ms ‘Poisonality’, the despotic oriental, married with family. She would structure domestic bliss with the same autocratic efficiency she favored at Brandenberg