But there was fun. He and Arlene had plenty of fun even though they weren’t supposed to have any.
In part, much of it was because they were friends and they played together like friends do. Arlene had taken to telling Bill everything, anything, all about herself, her life, her other friends, her wants, her needs and her preferences. Then of course there was the ongoing saga of her mother, but her mother was doing really well and so, at least these days and as time had progressed, she didn’t have much to say.
For his part, Bill told her about Tim and his wife’s other friends. He told her about his wife’s career and how her career in part was holding back his career. But of course, and for this he was truly sorry, his getting busted and doing time in jail put a big damper on his career. He lamented to Arlene that he could not get a job in the professional world because of his police record, that he really wanted to be a teacher so that he could write, but that it looked like that wasn’t happening. Every time he applied for a job in the professional world, they did a police check and the police check came up positive.
It was messed up.
It is what it is. He told Arlene this often. Sometimes he told her that he thought maybe God had a plan and this was all part of God’s plan even though of course he could not know what the plan was. At best, he told her, you get glimpses of the plan and maybe if you’re lucky some inclination that there was a plan in place.
He told Arlene about the dorm tough in the workhouse and how the tough had come for him the second night he was there. It wasn’t quite night but more like afternoon and the tough came surrounded by his cronies, those who were there to support him and to make sure he kept his role as the tough. He told her how the tough had asked what he was in for and when he had said assault and battery, the tough had asked “Who’d you beat up, your wife?” Bill had said, “No a cop,” without thinking, without hesitating. The words had somehow just come to him.
God! That was God, he told Arlene. Of course he couldn’t know it yet, but he would go his whole life believing that it was God put those words into his mouth.
He told Arlene about the mean son of a bitch, Ronnie, the one who intimated to him that his wife was fooling around on him while he was locked up in there. He told Arlene that Ronnie was mean, just plain mean, and he told her how he made sure not to have any further dealings with Ronnie.
“Think you would’ve fooled around if you hadn’t ended up in kitchens?” Arlene asked. They were sitting on her sofa after his shift on a night when Bill’s wife had once again gone over to Tim’s house.
Arlene was barefoot, having kicked off her shoes, still in her waitress uniform. Bill had not planned to stay long, only long enough to goof around for bit, spend a little time, pop some Quaaludes, drink some wine and head home. She had reached her foot out to him and he had started to massage it, more to play with it than massage it.
“What do I know?” said Bill. “What do I know about anything?”
Arlene smiled. “You know about lots of things,” she said. “And you’re a good soul even if you do the things you do.”
That said, she took back her foot from his hands, put both her feet up on the sofa and reached under her skirt to take down her panties. Panties in hand, she tossed them to Bill.
“I really, really like you,” she said.
