End with: “Only as the full measure of events came to bear did he realize that she was WAY out of his league.”
The envelope was fancy. Paul checked it five times to make sure that the embellished envelope had actually made it to the right destination. But there weren’t that many Paul Pleskins in Southwark County. And only one in the trailer park where he eked out an existence doing day work and temp jobs.
The return address was unfamiliar to him. Somewhere so socially and economically distant from the Roach Ranch that it may as well have been on Mars.
According to the invite, someone was going to pick him up a week in advance to help him ‘dress and appear appropriately’ for his date with Charlize Dayton.
Who the fuck was Charlize Dayton?
He asked around and eventually found a fanboy who described her as ONLY the singular most fantastic example of womanhood ever to breathe air. She was in a whole shitton of movies and TV playing awesome femme fatales and strong women roles without showing off as a sexualized object.
Translated to Paulspeak - she played a lot of frigid bitches.
But the face… the face bought back memories.
No.
It couldn’t be…
Chubby Charlie. The fat little nerd bitch who wouldn’t give it up to him when he was on a hog hunt back in high school. No wonder she was playing frigid bitches, she had so much practice.
Still, it was hard to turn down a limo and free food.
He put on his best job interview outfit on the day. Hell, he even shaved. And waited by the gates for the appointed limo.
It came with a personal assistant. Mark. So gay he farted rainbows and talked musicals. And every time Paul told him to keep his distance, he would say, “Oh. I’m sorry. Did coming on to you in an unwelcome way make you feel uncomfortable? Am I making poor heterosexual you nervous? News flash, boot’s on the other foot and kicking your ass, baby.”
What in the flying hell?
The hotel was fabulous. Luxurious. They spent an entire day just making him clean and relaxed. The food was top-end foreign muck that almost made him retch. But free food was free food and he wasn’t about to refuse just because of wasabi.
Damn stuff nearly burned his whole tongue to a cinder.
And then he met Chubby Charlie again.
She’d grown UP.
Tall, sculpted… almost the perfect ideal of womanhood. Except for the muscles. Damn girl was beefier than he was. And she still fit into Coco Chanel like she’d been poured into it.
“Damn. What happened to you?”
“Ten years of an absence of Hog Hunts, and the assholes who instigate them,” said Charlie. Her voice was like silk with a knife under it. All soft and smooth, but with a dangerous, hidden edge.
There was a security good between him and her on the ride to the shindig they were going to. Paul could feel the bitchiness.
“What’s the big idea of inviting me along if we can’t fuck? I mean, you gotta be regretting missing out on all this,” a gesture towards his loins, “all them years ago to invite me along, right?”
She laughed. The most indulgent laugh he’d heard since grammy caught him stealing cookies and he’d lied about space aliens. “Poor deluded Paul… This isn’t for you. It’d for me to show you what you missed out on.”
The limo stopped. Someone helped her out of the car. Paul trailed behind the security goon to watch the Paparazzi follow her every twitch. She met up with some chippendale-esque hunk on a dias and kissed him.
The hunk also had a lost and confused-looking date. Even the best of dresses and makeup couldn’t hide the lingering marks of drug abuse and low-living. He saw those same marks on the monitor when the cameras focussed on him.
Paul Pleskin, the subtitle read. Charlize Dayton’s charity case.
Charity case? He was a charity case now? For Chubby Charlie?
Only as the full measure of events came to bear did he realize that she was WAY out of his league.
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