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Before: Squirrels and Sweatpants


Nick

It was like an hour later before Dogface and I managed to escape the foyer of my mom's house to the basement guest room that she said was prepared for us. We went down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, both of us eager to get away. At the bottom of the stair well, Dogface flipped on the light switch and came to a stop. I stopped just behind her. I looked over her shoulder and saw it. The bed.

The one bed.

She took a slow step into the room and looked around. I looked around, too. But neither one of us saw a second bed. She turned to look at me, then glanced at the bed again. I licked my lips. She looked back at me. We both silently agreed not to speak of it, and both of us busied ourselves with tossing our bags onto the floor and opening them. I kept glancing back at the bed, though, then over at her.

I sleep with girls a lot but I don't ever sleep with them.

And even if I did, Dogface isn't a girl.

She's Dogface.

I ruffled through my stuff, rupturing all the shirts and pants and stuff so my bag seemed to ooze clothing artifacts, and I pulled out the pack of cigarettes I'd stashed down in the depths. I looked around for a window or a basement door that would lead to a backyard or something.

Dogface said, "You better not be planning on smoking those in here." I looked up. I don't know how she knew I'd pulled out cigarettes, considering she was back-to me, changing her shirt. Her back was narrow and smooth, her bra strap green with little yellow polka dots. I stared at her until she turned her head to look over her shoulder at me. "You know I hate the smell of that shit," she said.

"I know," I said.

Dogface bent over and grabbed another shirt from her bag, her jeans hugging her bottom, and she stood up, lifted the shirt up over the top of her head, and shimmied it on. I watched the material fall around her, landing on her hips. And I looked away, back down at my cigarrettes. I broke open the box and took one out and sniffed it, put it between my lips and inhaled without lighting it.

Dogface took a brush out of her bag and sat on the edge of the bed, brushing her hair.

"You're gonna get hairs all over the bed," I muttered around the cigarette.

"I'm sorry, but it was pointed out to me that my hair needs to be tamed," she said, "Not like I just flew across the country or anything, and not all of us a Jackie freaking Kennedy and capable of remaining perfect 24 hours a day."

She was referring to my mother's comments on her appearance when we'd been trapped upstairs. My mother had proceeded to give Dogface beauty tips almost immediately as she walked through the door. Including one where she suggested Dogface get botox on her chin and recommended a good dermotologist that could get rid of her freckles.

The brush made that loud scratching/ripping sound as she pulled it through her hair.

"At least you didn't have to listen to your future step-father tell you about the deer he gutted last week in North Dakota," I said.

"I wouldn't have minded being gutted, listening to your mother," Dogface answered.

"It was like reading the script for Bambi written from the hunter's perspective," I said.

Dogface laughed.

I glanced over at her and she was picking hair out of the brush, balling it up in her hands. "See, that's just gross," I said, waving my fingers at her, "Why's your hairs coming out of your head anyways, they should just stay in there, ugh."

"It's normal," Dogface answered, rolling her eyes.

"You're gonna be bald when you get old," I said in a threatening voice. "You're gonna have to get plugs and spray on hair, like AJ does."

Dogface rolled her eyes. "You're absurd. Like hair doesn't come out of your head when you brush your hair."

I shook my head.

"That's crap," she said, "You shed worse than a cat."

"Do not."

"There's hair all over your house."

"I have dogs," I said.

Dogface grinned, "Your dogs aren't blonde, dumbass."

"This is a stupid conversation anyways," I said. I turned back to my cigarettes, and stood up. "There's gotta be a door to the outside in here," I muttered. And I wandered back toward the stairwell and beyond into the unfinished half of the basement. I heard Dogface's brush start raking her hair again. The other side of the basement was full of boxes of crap all piled high in wobbly towers of cardboard. I moved between them carefully until I wound my way to the far wall, where I found a storm cellar door. "Eureka," I said. I climbed up the narrow cement steps and pushed open the metal doors. I found myself in the side yard of the house. I could see the rental car Dogface and I had arrived in sitting in the driveway.

I sat down on the edge of the grass and lit a cigarette, puffing in the nicotine like there was no tomorrow.

Dogface appeared a moment later, and I have to admit her hair did look better brushed. I wondered whn the last time she'd brushed it was. "Aren't you going to change?" she asked, looking up at me from the bottom of the steps.

"Why? I look good."

"Don't you want to get the plane smell off?"

"I like plane smell," I lied.

Dogface shrugged, "To each his own." She hovered there at the foot of the steps.

"Why don't you come sit?" I asked. She was making me nervous just standing down there.

"I hate the smell of those things," she gestured to the cigarette.

"So go upstairs and talk to my mother, then," I said.

Dogface scowled. "You're lucky I like you or I'd go back to the airport and spend Christmas in their lobby waiting for the return flight."

I laughed. "Don't tempt me. Whoever thought up this spending holidays with the family thing was a total masocist. Sadist? Masocist? Which one likes to fuck up other people?"

"Maybe they were both," Dogface said with a shrug. "They had to know how much being with family sucks if they were being a masocist which means they were torturing themselves by making it an institution, there by making themselves sadists as well."

"You're so fucking smart," I said. I pressed the butt of my cigarette against the step to put it out, and clamboured down the stairs. "That's why I keep you around you know, cos you know like everything in the universe."

"Not everything," she answered.

"It's true," I said. "Everything."




Ashley

The rest of the first day at Nick's mother's was just as awkward as the first hour had been. Jane kept telling me all these "beauty secrets" that were more like backhanded remarks about my appearance. Like suggesting a plastic surgeon for my nose, which she called beaky. I'd spent a good thirty minutes with my hand covering my nose before she pulled my wrist away saying touching my face would only make it more oily.

Nick seemed to be going through the same agony, though. True to his complaints, every time I overheard Jane's boyfriend talking to Nick, it was about some animal that he'd shot and killed. This included a tour of the trophy room, which took about an hour and Nick came back looking like he wanted to go throw up. I would've felt bad for him if Jane hadn't spent at least half of that hour lecturing me about biting my nails.

When Nick used jet lag as our excuse for going to bed at eight o'clock, I'd never been more thankful in my life for his smooth lying face. Jane shoved a cold, green gel pack into my hand. "For your eyes, dear," she said, "You're looking a little puffy."

I chucked the compress onto the desk in the guest bedroom the moment we were down the stairs. "My eyes aren't puffy."

"Squirrels," Nick said, his voice raspy with eagerness to say the word. "The mother fucker has squirrels stuffed and mounted to acorn shaped pieces of wood hanging on the walls upstairs. I'm not fucking kidding you. Squirrels."

"Big game hunter, huh?" I joked.

Nick shook his head, "It was like the room of death."

"So gross."

"Right?"

"In other news, your mom thinks I should get a nose job," I said.

Nick laughed. But he didn't say I shouldn't get one, or anything like that, which hurt. I turned quickly to my bag and pulled out a pair of sweatpants and an old t-shirt of Nick's that I'd stolen forever ago. It was from a Journey concert we went to years and years ago. I pulled the shirt on and shimmied into the sweatpants. When I turned around, Nick was laying on the bed, legs crossed, arms up behind his head in nothing but boxers, and staring at me.

"What in the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked.

"Going to bed?" he said.

"If we're sharing a bed, you're putting clothing on," I replied.

"I have clothing on," he said, waving his big hands at his boxer-briefs.

"You're gonna need a lot more than that to sleep next to me," I answered. "Like a HAZMAT suit would be nice."

Nick laughed. "Shut up."

"I'm serious, put some pants on, I don't wanna be anywhere near that dingdong of yours, I know where that thing's been." I swatted at his legs until he begrudgingly got up and dug through his bag. I crawled into the bed and under the covers on the farther side.

"I hate sleeping in pants," he complained, "They ride up my legs and shit."

"Well you could sleep on the floor naked for all I care, but if you're sleeping in this bed you're putting on clothes."

"Maybe you should sleep on the floor, since you're the one that gives such a shit," he suggested.

"And lose my beauty sleep? Your mom would hang you for suggesting it."

Nick crawled into bed, now wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and socks and tucked himself under the covers. He rolled to look at me. "I have a condom in my wallet if you get to feeling frisky," he whispered.

"Don't hold your breath."

He chuckled as he rolled over and shuffled and moved and shook the bed for several long moments getting comfortable. "Night Dogface," he said finally. And that was it for the night.