Original Post Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 


                         Disclaimer

This is piece of fiction.  Any imagined resemblance to
people living or deceased is either the result of dementia
on the reader's part or that the reader is, in fact, a
character of this story.   It is assumed that readers of
this story have the permission of the state, mom, dad, and
pastor and are able to tell the difference between real and
make-believe.  Furthermore, the writer is fully aware that
he is bound for hell, but welcomes both praise or/and well
thought out, humourous insults on his writing skill.  Note:
he already knows he cannot spell 'warth shet'.

The events and descriptions of this story are the sole
property of Kenny N Gamera and should not be recorded,
reposted, or profited from in anyway without express
written permission of the person hiding behind that pen
name. Reposting and free archiving will be tolerated given
the writer's name and address remains attached.  Archiving
by Deja.Com and ASSTR/ASSM is assumed and encouraged.

Thank You and Good Day,
Kenny N Gamera
turtlemeat69@hotmail.com

ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Gamera
ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Gamera/Beggars_Can't_Be

                 Beggars Can't Be... Part 6
               An Uncomfortable Sense of Joy
                            by
                      Kenny N Gamera

Other than the typical traumas associated with retail, I
had succeeded in having a calm day upto when Teresa and
Julio came in for the evening shift.  As an added bonus,
Stumpy chose that moment to take his rapid departure.  This
gave me two hours of relative peace to finish my shift.  I
even thought I'd take a chance to grab some lunch, while I
read a boring bit of geochemistry.

   "Hi,  Kenny!"

   Okay, maybe I'd take a chance to grab some lunch and
skip the boring bit of geochemistry.

   "Hi, Jenny," I said to the vision in tight blue denim
and white cotton knit who stood before me.  "This is a
surprise.  I thought we were going to get together this
evening."

   "Sherry stopped over during one of her breaks, and I
thought that she and Kimmy needed some alone time."  She
smiled at me.  "Besides, I thought I could get a few things
for the apartment, now.  And then we'd have more time
together later."

   "Well, I was just thinking about lunch.  Would you care
to join me and hear my tales of woe."

   Jenny glanced down at her watch and said, "it's a tad
late for lunch, isn't it."

   "One doesn't always get a chance to dine at appropriate
times in retail.  And after a busy day of not selling
books, I'm hungry."  I added with what I hoped were sad,
puppy-dog eyes, "I'd love a chance to eat my food-court
slop with you rather than geochemistry."

   "Well," she answered with a totally unconcealed grin,
"since you put it so nice, I guess that I could grab a few
million calories at the cookie place."

   "Good, I'll let Julio and Teresa know where I'm off to."
I didn't even bother to try to resist the urge and reached
over to give Jenny a peck on her cheek.  For her part, she
moved her head into position to receive it.  "I'll be right
back."

   I walked away towards the back of the store where my two
best associates busied themselves at their favorite
pastime, good natured bickering while pretending that they
were doing work.  This particular time, they argued (in low
voices thank heavens) over the cover models of the "self-
help" magazines which they sorted ever so slowly back into
order.

   "I tell you that she is hot, Teresa."

   Teresa took the magazine Julio held and slipped it
behind the plywood barrier which protected any young minds
that may happen to pass on the way to the latest _Fangore_.

   "Christ, you are so immature.  She has the face of a
horse with too much makeup besides.  If it weren't for all
the silicon in her chest, you wouldn't think twice about
her."

   "So what?  She's got a nice body."

   Teresa sighed in frustration, "thanks to some plastic
surgeon.  Those phony utters don't even feel right.  The
other night when my husband took me to Omar's,..."

   I cleared my throat to bring them back to reality before
things got too obscene, which was always a danger with
Teresa.

   "Okay, you two.  I'm off to lunch, so you can't stay
together anymore."  I pointed over my shoulder with my
thumb back to the register.  "Julio, you keep an eye on the
front.  Teresa, I want you to actually straighten the
magazines."

   As she went at her task, Teresa glanced to the front of
the store.  "Who's the cutie?"

   "My lunch date."  Then I added quickly, "so don't go
getting any ideas."

   "Don't worry about me, Kenny," she pointed back to the
front.  "But you might want to get her away from Julio."

   I rushed away as she laughed at my sudden reaction to my
plight.  Not that I had anything to worry over, because 1)
Jenny's taste wasn't as bad as I would've guessed with her
choice of me and 2) Julio isn't as suave as he thinks he
is.

   Heck, he isn't even as suave as I think I am.

   Thus, without much ado, Jenny and I were seated together
in the food court.  While I tore into a half of a
rotisserie chicken, Jenny nibbled at an extra large
chocolate chip cookie.

   She shook her head.  "You can sure pack away the food."

   "Oh, 'tis nothing.  Besides, I'm told that it'll catch
up with me."

   "I hope not.  I happen to like you the way you are."

   "Thanks, I think you're pretty nice yourself."

   "You're just saying that because I slept with you."

   "Maybe I slept with you because I really think it."

    "If you really thought I was nice," Jenny wore upon her
face what my father would have described as a shit-eating
grin (though why a person eating shit would be grinning is
beyond me), "you wouldn't have slept."

   "Thppt!"  I responded (you will note that I have finally
found the energy to look up the spelling in
_Bloom_County_).  I also added, "Well, I was kinda wore out
by someone."

   "Really?"  Her voice was full of mock wonder.  After
giving me a chance to inhale a chicken leg, she asked in
that same voice, "was she pretty?"

   "Very pretty."  I took her hand and held it in mine.
"Maybe the prettiest girl I have ever known."

   She turned and lowered her head to hide the slight blush
forming on her cheeks.

   "You're just saying that."

   "Yes, I am," I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed it.
"But that doesn't mean that it's not true."

   Our conversation settled into more routine and mundane
things, subjects that maybe we should have covered sometime
prior to doing the sort of things that we had already done.
Back and forth, we traded details about our lives,
families, and school days.  I learned about her older
brothers, and she learned of my little sisters, the
obnoxious twins from the extremely bad place with the
outrageous heating bills.  We, even, shared the standard
complaints about our own personal set of parents, but that
soon turned into a contest of bald-faced lies about how
awful they had turned our childhood.

   "Not only did my father cast me out of home, he did it
just because I didn't to tell him how much I liked his
latest project despite the fact that it really sucked.  I
bounced twice when I hit the ground."  She rubbed her fanny
for effect.  "I had thought I had broken my tail bone."

   Not about to be beaten by that particular bit of solid
biological waste, I responded with, "well my mom and dad
not only made me clean up after my own birthday parties
with just a pair of broken tweezers, they would also tie my
hands behind my back and hire the Bee Gees to sing while I
did it."

   "Ouch, you win, Kenny," she said as I tossed the last
denuded chicken bone onto the styrofoam plate.  "Where did
you get that warped idea?"

   "Oh!  Stories my father would tell me about what would
happen to him and his brother."

   "You have an uncle, then?"

   "Had.  He died in prison."

   Realizing that I had just overdid the candor, I grimaced
and hoped that Jenny wouldn't pry any further than I had
already disclosed.  I really ought to have prayed as well;
Jenny's elbows hit the table with an audible thunk, and her
chin simultaneously landed into the cup of her palms.

   "What did he do?"

   "Slipped on a bar of soap and landed on a sharpened
spoon."  Her eyes made a slow transition from wide-eyed
wonder to slited irritation.  I formed my mouth into a
frown and looked upward as if to concentrate.  I decided at
last on another suggestion.

   "Made license plates?"

   Naturally, the second guess had been as totally
inaccurate to the sort of answer that she had wanted as the
first had been.  I was, however, prepared for the resulting
response.  I easily moved in time from her slap for it to
miss.

   "Will you quit played with me!"

   "Moi?"  I gestured at myself with both hands.  "Playing
with you?  I can't be; I left my bat and glove at home."

   "Ooo, you brat!  What did he do to get in prison?"

   "Oh, that!"  I turned serious.  "I can't tell you."

   "Why not!"  (Note to self: Jenny looks extremely cute
when she pouts)

   "Could you guess how much my family would have to pay to
get the Bee Gees to reform?  It would bankrupt them."

   She giggled, "Hmmm, so I take it that it's one of those
nasty, family secrets."

   "Oh yes, the nastiest."

   "Now, you have to tell me, Kenny."

   "Sorry, Jenny.  If I were to tell you, we would have to
get married first."

   "Okay."

   "Okay what?"

   "Let's get married."

   "Hold on a second, Jenny."

   "Why?"

   The next thing out of my mouth was one of those truly
unfortunate things that women take the wrong way.  Of
course, that is mostly because there really is no right way
to take it.  Men still seem to say these sort of things,
despite of this.  This proves that men (senso: male
_Homo_sapiens_) are essentially quite stupid.

   "Uh, I don't get engaged with every girl I sleep with."

   "You don't," asked Jenny in wonder.  "Well, I do."

   "Do what?"

   "Get engaged with every girl I sleep with."

   By the way, women are evil.

   "Wha?"

   "Well most girls."

   "Wha?"

   "Okay, more like half."  Then, she giggled.  "The look
on your face is so precious.  I wish I had a camera."

   "Wha?"

   "I was playing with you this time, mister."  Her
perfectly pink and pointed tongue left her mouth.  I
thought an appropriately naughty thought that those of you
with the appropriate orientation may have appreciated if I
were willing to share.

   "That ain't fair."

   Her smile took on a quality of supreme satisfaction.
"And why's that?"

   "'Cause I left my bat and glove at home."

   That time her slap made contact with my upper arm, as we
both had a good hard laugh.

   Eventually, I packed my chicken residue and
plastic/styrofoam dinner service onto the bright plastic
tray.  The wax paper from Jenny's snack wound up there as
well.  A few steps away, the trash found itself in the
proper place as did the empty tray.  It took only a few
more steps from the food court for me and Jenny to find
ourselves arm in arm. At this point, she leaned her head
against my upper arm.  My uncomfortable sense of joy
quickly grew more so.  I wondered through my discomfort if
she could hear my pulse as easily as I could and prayed
that I hadn't become as stiff (jeeze, not that way, the
other not at all naughty and completely unrelaxed way) as I
felt.

   If I made any outward sign of my feelings of
awkwardness, however, Jenny made no sign.  We just silently
walked through the concourse of the mall, locked together
just as I had previously described.  At least until we
reached the kiosk where they did personalized designs on
coffee cups.

   "Let's go over here, Kenny."

   With her arm still locked  with mine, Jenny began to
drag me over to the stand.  I resisted and pulled against
her.  As a result, we angled in a direction that pleased
neither of us.

   "Sorry, Jenny.  I've got to get back to work.  Can we
come back later?"

   Our forward and sideward progress stopped, and Jenny
turned her head to look at me; her face had lost its little
girl's smile and had acquired in its place a little girl's
pout, that I found as endearing as the former (see previous
note).

   "Kenny, do you have to get right back to work?"

   "Of course," the weight of the world (which I might add
is very heavy) filled my voice, "being a starving grad
student is extremely expensive."

   She replied with a giggle and an extended tongue.

   She left it at that as we resumed the slow march back to
Mr. Slots and the rest of my dreary shift of drugery.  We
parted in front of the store after sharing a full lip on
lip but hold the tongue kiss.

   "I get off in just a few more hours.  I'll wait for you
here if that's okay,"  I told her upon breaking the kiss.

   "Well, I should be done with my shopping by that point,"
said Jenny.  "I will meet you here at about six then."

   We kissed again.

   Between the foreign student trying to return the box of
paperbacks that his friends back home had finished ("but I
have receipt") to the doomed attempts to explain away Petey
the Pervert to a couple of horrified moms ("yes I know he
has been at the X-rated magazines for an hour.  No, I can't
throw him out just because he has an overcoat on."), the
last hours of my shift were remarkably unpleasant.  Relief
damn near overwhelmed me when my boss, Bruce, finally
showed up to finish the day and allowed me to escape.

   Bolting through the wall-less area, I all but ran over
Jenny coming the opposite way.  She had a couple of mall
bag, brown paper with heavy twine handles.  One came from
Conquistador's (the gourmet coffee place) and the other
from Sweet Nothings (need I explain).  At the top of the
Sweet Nothings bag, I noticed a wad of something scrunched
into a plain brown paper bag.

   My curiosity peaked, I look up to Jenny to ask about it.
Before I could get a sound out, however, she went tippy-
toed and, wrapping her sack filled arms around my neck,
kissed me gently on the lips.

   "Hello, lover."  She smiled up at me, her arms still
around me.  "I see I timed everything okay."

   "More than," I shifted a little to avoid the corner of
one of her packages which was poking into my back.  "Let's
get out of here."

   We made our way through the early Saturday evening crowd
to the nearest exit, near which, as good fortune would have
it, both of us had parked our cars.  As bad fortune would
have it, she had parked in the row closest to the mall; I
had used the last row.  We needed to part at hers.

   "Shall I meet you at your place?"

   Jenny developed a bad case of guilty grin.  "Can't.
Sherry and Kimmy have something planned that they hadn't
told me about.  So they have apartment tonight.  We'll have
to do something else with ourselves."

   The grin I developed was not at all guilty but probably
should have been.  "We could go to my place and..."

   "Not without a chaperone, mister," she quickly
interrupted.

   "But..."

   "Remember what I had said about first dates.  Well, this
is our first date and..."

   "We could have a quicky in your backseat."

   "Kenny!"

   "Hey, that would be having sex before the first date,
not after," I teased not intending to back up any promise.
I thoroughly doubted my ability to have backed it up in any
event.  "Which would apparently still be within the rules."

   She leaned up and forward to kiss my cheek and then
whispered in my ear the word "brat."  She surprised me with
a fairly hard slap across my backside.

   "Behave yourself, young man.  Or I'll speak to Sherry
when I get home."

   "Promises, promises."

   "Nope," she smiled.  "It's a threat.  I'm told they're
very effective."

   "Yes," I paused long enough to have a second thought
which I ignored, "dear."

   She smiled at me.  I smiled at her.  The silence between
us danced a slow waltz to something by Les and Larry
Elgart.  Somewhere above, a particularly fluffy cloud
floated by.  Eventually, the quiet broke as we both made
noncommittal sounds in unison.

   "I guess we should go someplace and grab a bite to eat."

   "Yeah, that would be a good idea."
