House of Holes

Cardell Buys a Gel Pen

Cardell still wanted to meet a nice, smart, sexy woman. His best bet, he decided, was to go to a coffee shop he knew called Tribe of Bean, where women sometimes wore dresses. Cardell had noticed that when a woman wore a dress at a coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon it often meant that she wanted to meet somebody. Of course, it didn’t necessarily mean that she wanted to meet Cardell in particular — but she might.

First what he needed, though, was a pen and a notebook, so that he could be absorbed in writing in his notebook in the coffee shop when a woman in a dress came in. So he went to an office-supply store, and he walked to the wall where all the pens were. A petite, fine-boned women was standing there looking over the display. She had dark hair with lots of body and bounce, and she had big eyes and a small bottom and a little black purse. She was wearing a dress — black with thin vertical stripes.

Cardell wanted to be closer to her, so he began to move sideways. He looked at the roller-ball pens, and then moved sideways some more, to the pastel gel pens. And then he was at the metallics. He was quiet for a while, and she was quiet, as if by mutual agreement.

Finally Cardell cleared his throat. “I’m going to the coffee shop,” he said, “and I need a pen to write with. Do you have a recommendation?”

She pointed to the roller-balls. “If you just want to jot down notes, then I’d say go with one of those.” She had a soft, thoughtful voice, with a hint of South Carolina in it. “What kinds of things are you going to be writing?”

“Oh,” said Cardell, “everything I want in a woman, I guess.”

The woman looked him up and down and then said, “Is that an egg in your pocket?”

Cardell nodded.

“I guessed as much,” she said. “You’ll want something a little more exotic, then.” She shook the pen that she’d been holding. “These are the best.”

Cardell glanced at the package. “Silver gel,” he said. He looked at her questioningly.

She leaned toward him. “You know that if a man signs his name with one of these,” she whispered, “something interesting happens. When he comes, his come squirts out molten silver.”

Cardell was surprised. “Permanently?”

“No, for a day or two. I had a friend a while back who showed me.”

“Do you have a friend now?”

“Well, I have a husband,” she said. “He’s very wonderful and very successful and very jealous. Sometimes we rent a condo at the House of Holes beach, and when we’re there I get a little — ah — urgie-splurgey.” She squeezed his biceps muscle.

Cardell thought it was time for a compliment. “Has anyone told you that you look a lot like Marlo Thomas in her prime?”

She thanked him. “Buy the gel pen,” she said. “See you later, I hope. I’m Betsy.”

Cardell watched her small bottom cheeks shake under the dress as she walked quickly away. He bought the pen and a notebook in a hurry. When he went out to the parking lot, her car was already gone.

At the café he got a huge cup of coffee that he didn’t want, and he sat at a table and hauled out the notebook and tore open the packaging around the silver gel pen. He looked at the white page open in front of him, and he looked around the coffee shop. There weren’t any women in dresses. There was an old guy sitting on a couch, staring. He had a Parcheesi board open in front of him. Cardell didn’t want to play Parcheesi, so he bent over the notebook page and wrote “nice, smart, sexy ass.” He tried to sign his name, but the pen went dry halfway through. He unscrewed the top and looked down into the hole at the top of the cartridge. Then he felt a very strange warm feeling in his testicles. His whole body began to lengthen, and suddenly he was flushed right down into the tiny penhole.

He swam blindly through silver gel particles for a minute, and when he came out at the end he was standing on a beach in front of some footprints. A sign said: “House of Holes Harbor. Swim at Your Own Risk.”