Mark Dunn - American Decameron

“Look, Jake. We need to stop doing this color commentary after each of her appearances. It’s only making it worse and it’s hard for me to concentrate on getting this patio finished.”

“I’m hard too.”

“That’s not what I said, butthole.”

Jake laughed. He was having a blast. I was having fun too — too much fun — but I was also starting to feel a little anxious about the whole thing.

Jake’s theory was confirmed with Mrs. Badeaux’s next emergence. It was almost noon. She had brought us lunch. She served it to us wearing an all-white two-piece bathing suit. I couldn’t call it an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny because, in truth, it was actually quite modest as bikinis go, but it gave us a much better look at her plump gazungas, and more gam than a gam-man deserved to see.

“I’m going to do some sunbathing over by the pool. You boys know where I am if you need anything.” She went back inside, and a few minutes later re-emerged wearing sunglasses and carrying her towel and a couple of magazines and a big glass of something pink and cold and condensating.

By this time Jake and I were ready to fill sand in between the pavers in the section of the patio we’d already laid down. After emptying the third bag over the bricks, I handed Jake a broom, but he wasn’t looking at me and the handle end of the broom went into his eye. He held his hand over the poked eye and pointed toward the pool, which was in clear view of the patio we were constructing. Jake could hardly form words. “The — the top is down. The top is down.” It took me several seconds to realize what he was saying had nothing to do with automotive convertibles and everything to do with the fact that Mrs. Badeaux had just taken off her bikini top. And she hadn’t done it in the way that most sunbathing women do it: tummy down, to allow the sun to bronze their strap-free dorsal regions. She had rolled over completely upon her back so that her fully exposed breasts could soak up a little of the early October radiance that had already reduced Jake and me to sweat-drenched t-shirts.

Neither of us could speak. Jake’s broom was poised in midair.

And it wasn’t over.

Something buzzed from just inside the door. It sounded like one of those house intercom systems that builders put into some of the larger homes in the sixties. Without donning her top, Mrs. Badeaux came bounding inside to answer the intercom. “It’s Callie’s day off,” she remarked as she passed. (This she had already told us.) Who then, I wondered, was inside that house, summoning her? And was this person privy to all the fun that Mrs. Badeaux was having out of doors, clearly at Jake’s and my expense?

The top half of Mrs. Badeaux was swinging and bouncing wildly as she disappeared inside. It was as if Jake and I had been unknowingly cast in a comedy sketch from the burlesque-bawdy Benny Hill Show —the difference, of course, being that in the TV show the bobbling boobs of Benny’s sprinting sexpots were never fully bared. Nevertheless, Boots Randolph’s lively rendition of “Yackety Sax” played obscenely in my head.

A moment later, Jake and I could both clearly hear her speaking, apparently into the intercom: “How was your nappy, Mr. Milkman? Now? Oh my good Lord, you are insatiable!”

Almost simultaneously, I said, “We’re packing up and leaving, Jake,” while Jake said, “Fire me if you like, Tony, but I’m going in there. I can be just as good a lover as any son-of-a-bitch milkman.”

As my coitus-crazed assistant made his move to the door, I threw myself upon him. In the ensuing scuffle, pavers were scattered, great areas of smoothed, leveled sand gouged out by our dancing heels. Flashing through my mind was the fact that our tussle had probably added another couple of hours to the job.

If we were to finish the job. I knew now that I had just cause to stop work on the patio. And I had every right to charge Badeaux for all the hours we’d already put in (and for the cost of our materials), though being an extremely successful corporate attorney, Badeaux could have made it hard for Cortner Construction to prevail. Why had Mrs. Badeaux done this? For what possible purpose?

Jake was still struggling as I grabbed the hand tamper to hold him in place on the ground. We remained like this, Jake lying breathless on the degraded sand foundation, me standing equally winded, trying my level best to bring him to his senses.

“Uncle!” he finally cried. “I’ll go. Let me up.”

I’d hardly had any time to consider whether or not I could trust him when the lady of the house stepped outside.

She was now completely naked.

“Why?” was all that I could bring myself to say.

“Why not?” she answered, standing statuesque before us, something out of Greek antiquity in alabaster or marble. “It’s all my husband’s doing, you know,” she tossed out casually, seductively running her right index finger up and down the soft curve of her sunlit right thigh. Jake did a double take, just like a gawking cartoon scamp.

“How can this possibly be your husband’s doing?” I asked, having turned my back to the woman so that I could converse with her without distraction.

“Last month, Henry accused me of having been unfaithful—‘serially unfaithful’ was, I think, the phrase he used — he’s such a goddamned lawyer — ever since we married. The accusation was totally baseless. The trust is now gone from our marriage. If he thinks this is who I am, then this is who I will be. I am now officially open for business.”

“Do you strip for all the men who come to your house?”

Mrs. Badeaux shook her head. “I got the idea of coming out here like this from that Candid Camera movie that came out a few years ago.”

“What Do You Say to a Naked Lady,” offered Jake. “I saw it more than once.”

“I had fun. Did you have fun? Would you like to have more fun?”

Jake looked at me. His expression seemed to say, “All of my future happiness depends on how I am allowed to answer this question.”

I shook my head.

The stunt was over, the prospect for further merriment dematerializing in that next moment. Mrs. Badeaux reached inside and drew out a bathrobe, which she promptly put on.

I loosened my compactor hold on Jake, who immediately began to take deeper and more healthy-sounding breaths. “Get up, Jake. We’re leaving now, Mrs. Badeaux. If your husband asks why, I will leave it to you to explain it to him. I’ll put our bill in the mail next week.”

Mrs. Badeaux looked disappointed to see us go, but didn’t try to stop us.

As I was backing the company truck down the driveway, I noticed that the milk delivery van had been joined by a mail truck, sans mailman. “That crazy woman really is open for business,” said Jake. Then he sighed. “I came this close to getting myself a piece of that action.”

I boxed his ear.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I could not help swinging by the house to see to what additional lengths Mrs. Badeaux had gone to confirm her husband’s suspicions of her. The telephone repair truck in the driveway wasn’t overtly suspicious, but the pink Mary Kay Cadillac parked two days in a row sent Jake on flights of girl-on-girl fantasy that were hard to rein in.

I knew that the day of reckoning would come, but neither Jake nor I was privileged to witness the denouement to the domestic drama (or comedy) in which we had both played small supporting roles. All I know is that in the end, Badeaux did pay us (though he apparently had to pay someone else, as well, to come in and finish the job), and that two years later we were, astonishingly, invited to put in a bid to convert the house’s catacumbal cellar into a modern rec room.