The Traveling Vampire Show

Chapter Thirty-four

Wrong.

Slim’s bed was empty. She didn’t seem to be in her room at all.

“Slim?” I asked, just to make sure.

A fluttery feeling in my stomach, I left her room and walked to the head of the stairway.

“Slim!” I called out.

She didn’t answer.

So I trotted down the stairs. Straight ahead of me was the front door. I suddenly imagined it swinging open, Slim’s mother coming into the house and gaping up at me in shock, blurting out, What’re YOU doing here, young man? Where are your clothes?

Something had gone wrong with her overnight plans, and here she was.

It could happen.

Of course, it didn’t.

It’s been my experience that worst case scenarios are very rare indeed. Rare to the extent that you can almost count on them not happening.

But sometimes they do.

The moment I turned away from the front door, my terror of being caught by Slim’s mother vanished and my fears for Slim resumed.

The kitchen light was on. The back door stood open and the screen door was shut.

Earlier, Slim had entered the house this way to open the front door for me. She had also, probably, gone out this way to take my jeans to the garage.

I walked across the linoleum floor. It felt clean and slick under my bare feet.

At the screen door, I stopped and looked out.

The two-car garage stood at the far right comer of the lawn. Though its doors were shut, the windows of the laundry room were bright.

Slim has to be in there, I told myself.

But what if she’s not?

She is! She knows I’ve got no pants until she comes back with my jeans. She’s just staying with them till they’re done.

Probably.

I couldn’t stand the idea of waiting for her—not knowing for sure if she was there—so I opened the screen door and hurried down the back porch stairs.

Night had come. It was warm. Soft breezes blew against me, and they smelled of rain—rain that had been holding off all day but was sure to fall sooner or later.

Almost naked, I was glad to have the darkness. The trees and fences gave me some protection, but not enough, from the eyes of neighbors who might be looking out their windows. If I should be seen in Slim’s back yard wearing nothing but a towel…

I suddenly realized that Slim would be seeing me in nothing but a towel. I couldn’t turn back, though. I had to make sure she was safe.

It’ll be embarrassing, I thought, but it can’t be any worse than what’s already happened.

After retucking the towel to secure it around my waist, I opened the laundry room door.

I stepped in.

Slim wasn’t there. Neither machine was running, but the air felt hot and smelled faintly of detergent. I stepped up to the washer and opened its top. Bending down and peering into the shadows, I felt moist heat rise against my face. The machine had been used recently, but it was empty now.

I stepped over to the drier. It was a front-loader. When I bent over to open it, my towel started to come loose. I grabbed the towel at its tuck by my hip. Holding it in place, I bent lower and peered into the drum.

At the bottom was a tangle of damp fabrics.

Feeling a little confused, I squatted down directly in front of the drier, reached in with my right arm, and plucked at the clothes. I separated them enough to find my own jeans, Slim’s cut-off jeans and the pants of her powder blue bikini. Nothing else.

“You got me.”

Though I recognized Slim’s voice, it came from behind and startled me. My arm hopped up and banged against the top of the drier’s door hole. “OW!” I yelped. I jerked my arm clear. Grabbing where it hurt, I shot to my feet and twisted around.

The laundry room had its own door into the rest of the garage. Though the garage housed the big old Pontiac that used to belong to Slim’s grandmother (who’d checked out in the Super M checkout line the previous year), it was mostly used for storage. They kept a freezer chest there. And an extra refrigrator.

The door had been shut when I came into the laundry room. Now it was open and Slim stood in the doorway, a look of concern on her face, a beer bottle in each hand. Her shiny black blouse was large enough so that it reached below her groin. Cut higher at the sides, it let me see bare skin to her hips. Her legs were bare all the way down to the sneakers on her feet.

I noticed all that in about half a second.

During the same half second, while my arm rang with pain, I realized that I’d lost my towel.

The hand of my wrecked arm was almost where I needed it to be. Fast as I could, I cupped myself.

Slim smiled as she watched me squat and snatch up the towel.

When I had it around me again, her smile vanished. “Sorry I startled you,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

“You really whacked your arm.”

“It’ll be okay.”

“I keep messing you up.” She looked serious when she said it. But then she must’ve found some humor in her wording, because a smile crept across her face. “Rusty would’ve liked that one,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, I’m sorry.” She stepped out of the doorway and came toward me, the bottles swinging by her bare hips, her breasts moving softly under her blouse. She set the bottles on top of the washer. “Let me see your arm,” she said.

Holding the towel together with my left hand, I raised my right arm. The front of my forearm was crossed by a red mark. Slim frowned at it. Then she gently took hold of my wrist and elbow, lifted my arm toward her face, and kissed the red place. I still felt as if someone had whacked my arm with a crowbar, but now I could feel Slim’s lips. They felt cool and soft.

Looking up into my eyes, she asked, “Does that make it better?”

“Makes it fine,” I told her.

She lowered my arm and let go of it. “I didn’t mean to surprise you,” she said. “I thought you were in the house.”

“I got worried about you.”

“I was just out here.”

I shrugged. “Guess so. It’s just… you were gone so long.”

“I couldn’t come in till the wash was done.” She lowered her head to look at herself. Her open hands, down by her sides, gestured toward her bare thighs. As if to point out that she was naked below her hanging shirttails.

As if I hadn’t noticed.

“Since I was doing a wash anyway,” she said, “I figured I might as well throw in some of my own stuff.” She blushed slightly, looked as if she might add something, then turned away. “Only trouble is, I can’t get the drier to work.”

I found myself smiling.

“Looking forward to wet jeans?” Slim asked.

I shook my head. “It’s just… I thought you’d vanished again.”

Her eyebrows soared. “What do you mean, vanished again? I’ve never vanished.”

“I thought you had.”

“Ah, but I hadn’t. I always knew where I was.”

“I guess so.”

“I know so.” She laughed a couple of times. Then she said, “So what’ll we do about the drier?”

After shrugging, I asked, “What’s wrong with it?”

“It doesn’t go. Watch.” She went to the drier. As she bent over to shut its door, the tail of her blouse slid upward a couple of inches. I tried to look away. Before I could succeed, however, she straightened up.

Before I could feel either relief or disappointment about that, however, she leaned over the top of the drier and reached for the control knobs and her blouse tail really slid up.

“See?” she asked.

I saw, all right.

“It should be going. But it’s not.”

I said, “Hmm.”

She straightened up and turned around. I must’ve been as red as ketchup, but she acted as if she didn’t notice. She also pretended not to notice the front of my towel sticking out. “Why doesn’t it want to work?” she asked.

“I’m sure it wants to.”

She smirked, but I could see she was a little amused, too. “You know what I mean,” she said.

“You sure you’re turning it on right?” I asked.

“I know how to turn on a drier.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

I tried not to grin. “Oh, nothing.”

She reached up with her right hand, flicked her middle finger and thumped the tip of my nose. Not very hard, but hard enough to make me blink and take a step backward. Also, my eyes watered.

“Oh, no,” Slim said, suddenly looking appalled. “I’m sorry. God, why do I keep doing this stuff?” She put her hands on both sides of my face, drew my head toward her and kissed me on the nose. Then she kissed me on the mouth.

I almost reached for her breasts. I remembered last time, and how they’d felt. But I also remembered the result.

Taking her by the wrists, instead, I moved her hands away from my face. Her mouth went away, too.

“I’d better take a look at the drier,” I said.

Looking me in the eyes, she nodded slightly. “Good idea,” she said, her voice low and shaky.

She stepped aside. I went to the drier. “Nothing at all happens when you turn it on, right?”

“The drier?”

“Right, the drier.”

“Right. Nothing at all happens.”

“Sounds like it might be a problem with the power.”

“Sure,” Slim said.

“Was it working before?”

“Yeah. Mom did the wash a couple of days ago. It was working fine.”

Holding on to my towel, I stepped around the side of the machine and looked behind it with high hopes of finding the power cord unplugged. But it looked secure in its socket.

“It is plugged in,” Slim told me. “I already checked that.”

“You did?”

“I’m not an idiot.”

I looked at her and grinned. “I know.”

“So what do you think it is?”

“It might be a dead outlet. Have you got an extension cord?”

“Sure. Right back.” She whirled around. Her blouse fluttered and rippled behind her as she ran toward the doorway. The air flapped its tail.

She leaped through the doorway and vanished into the other side of the garage.

While she was gone, I squatted beside the machine, scooted it away from the wall, reached behind it and pulled the plug out of the wall socket.

Slim came back with the coil of an extension cord dangling from one hand. “Here you go,” she said.

“Thanks.”

I took it from her and pushed the dryer’s plug into the extension. Holding my towel with one hand, I stood up and followed Slim to an outlet near the door.

“Try this one,” she said.

I pushed the prongs of the extension cord into the holes of the outlet.

Slim said, “Ahhh” as the drier came to life.