Kit Crumb: Body Parts

“I got fired,” Jan said, tears running down her face. “The manager wanted me to sleep with him.”

“Hey, good riddance, I say. Come on, Starbucks isn’t a job worth crying over.”

“It’s not the job or even getting hit on, our money’s running out. This is the beginning of the end. I’m taking a bath,” Jan sobbed, stripping as she walked to the bathroom.

Crystal shouted over her shoulder as she opened the refrigerator door. “You get settled in the tub, I’ll bring a beer. I’ve got something to read to you.”

She took two Rainmakers from the fridge and set them on the counter, then began rummaging through a drawer, looking for a bottle opener. She parked her gum on the edge of the kitchen sink and grabbed the want ads section of the newspaper.

When she got to the bathroom, Jan was just stepping into the tub. Crystal waited for her to settle in and for the water to stop sloshing, then handed her a beer.

She eagerly took it, taking a first drink as though she’d just crossed the desert. “I hope you brought the comics, cause I could use a laugh.”

“Better than that,” Crystal said, taking a swig of her beer, then setting the bottle between her feet as she sat on the toilet seat. “You ready for some good news?”

“Read on,” Jan said, taking another long drink.

Crystal took a deep breath. “‘Wanted: Aspiring actresses. Must have beauty to match talent and not be afraid of their bodies. High paying with many perks for the right women.’”

“And get this,” Crystal said, pausing to retrieve her beer for a quick drink, “‘Call to qualify for an interview.’ Sounds like a cattle call to me, whattaya think?”

“That’s a cattle call alright, but not the kind you think.”

“How many kinds of cattle calls are there?”

“Crystal,” Jan said drawing out her friend’s name, “that’s a cattle call for a porn movie.”

“Is not, and how would you know?”

“In all the ads we’ve answered for commercials, and all the real cattle calls, how many have cared about our personal regard for our bodies? None!”

“Well if you’re right, and I don’t think you are, and this is the beginning of the end, and I don’t think it is, shouldn’t we be considering every angle?”

“C’mon, how are you going to feel lying naked in front of technicians and cameramen, not to mention some total stranger probing your every orifice?”

“I’m not as naïve as you think, I’ve had a lot of lovers,” she said.

Jan turned her head and looked directly at Crystal. “For crying out loud, these won’t be lovers.”

“I guess you’d be an expert on those things,” Crystal said, sticking out her lower lip.

“I did my share of experimenting in school just like you,” Jan said, crossing her arms across her chest.

Crystal was looking directly at her friend, surprise mixed with shock. “I knew it, I was right. I figured you for the school slut.”

“You what?”

“Sorry, no offense.” “It’s just that the whole school had you pegged as a math nerd, so I figured sure you were using that image as a cover.” Crystal put down her empty beer bottle and nervously thrust two folded sticks of black jack licorice gum into her mouth, chewing vigorously before speaking again. “We haven’t exactly shared secrets, never double dated, you know.” A mischievous smile crossed her face. “Tell me about the first time.”

“I was never the school slut,” Jan said reaching over the edge of the tub to set her empty beer bottle on the floor. “I always figured it was either you or Linda Neville, rumor was she kept a rubber tucked in her boot. But you had the biggest tits hands down, always showing cleavage and chewing that damn gum.”

Crystal stuck out her lower lip again. “OK, I deserve that, but now I want to hear about your first time even more.”

“Jesus, don’t you ever quit?” Jan said.

“I’ll tell you my first time if you tell me yours,” Crystal said, handing Jan a robe and falling in behind her, ignoring the empty beer bottles.

The two walked into the living room, Crystal making a detour into the kitchen while Jan sat on the futon. She came out with a pack of gum in hand and walked over to the giant beanbag chair in the center of the living room. “You go first, and I want all the details,” Crystal said, chewing the new gum vigorously.

“Alright then. It started when my parents decided I was old enough to be left alone. My father was going on a business trip to Hawaii and decided to take my mother. I guess he didn’t want some teenager tagging along.”

“I remember that you were really pissed about something, coach couldn’t figure you out, and asked me if I knew anything.”

Jan ran her fingers through her hair. “Damn right I was pissed. I just wanted to get even with my parents for not taking me to Hawaii. Their worst fear was of me having sex, or getting pregnant. So, that was it. I wasn’t going to get pregnant but I sure as hell was going to have sex.

It was 6:00 am; Rye was on the multi-station weight machine doing incline presses with 150 pounds while Claire began her core workout.

The building that housed Mad Dash Ambulance was an old Victorian house. The bottom floor consisted of the two-car garage that housed the ambulance; the kitchen and workout area were where the living room had once been. Claire had converted the two downstairs bedrooms, the smaller one into a dispatch room, the other into a supply room. One of the upstairs bedrooms was used as a library and the other left as a bedroom.

They worked three days on, four days off. On workdays they were on-call twenty-four hours. They worked out every morning, no exceptions, though often their workouts were interrupted.

They were on their third day of work.

When he finished his last set, Rye stepped away from the weight machine and turned to watch Claire work through her crunches. The sight of her working so hard reminded him of how hard it had been to get the business going—ten years just to get it started. They had been married five years when they jointly decided that they were tired of working for someone else. At age forty-nine, Claire had already worked her way up from emergency medical technician to trauma nurse in the emergency room of Medford General Hospital; Rye was a supervisor at Medford Ambulance Service. He gave an audible sigh at the thought of getting knocked down to the bottom rung, right back where they started.

“What’s wrong, is my butt too high?” Claire said, executing another pushup.

“Nah, your butt’s fine, I was just thinking. Olden can’t really afford to pull our license, that’s why he just reduced our status”

She finished her forty-ninth pushup, one for every birthday, and rolled onto her back. “Great, when they finally do find Rusty we’ll get to work our way back to the top, what, another ten years. Shit, you’ll be sixty-three.”

Rye just shook his head and started his core exercises. Claire began her kicks. She always brought up their age when she was upset. “At least it will pay the bills,” he said.

A crackling sound interrupted their bantering. Both stopped what they were doing and looked expectantly at a speaker up in one corner of the room.

Mad Dash Ambulance held jurisdiction over Jessel County; Medford Ambulance covered all of Jackson County. Mad Dash also represented search and rescue for both counties. Emergency calls were received by the 911 emergency center and dispatched to the appropriate ambulance service.

Rye walked over and pushed the remote button on the wall that rolled back the huge double garage door and started the traffic signal flashing amber, slowing the traffic on Snoop Drive.