Chapter 3
The black asphalt driveway simmered and distorted the appearance of everything near its surface as the late afternoon sun beat down on Bunny Ames. She nimbly stepped from the compact car, and headed for the house. Despite the distance and the strong brick wall which separated Bunny from the home's bath, she could hear the sounds of her son singing while taking a shower. He does have a good voice, she thought to herself, as she admiringly listened to him sing his rendition of a current pop hit. She looked at his mud-stained motorcycle and assumed he had spent the day hill-climbing rather than in the high school he seemed to loathe and detest.
"Josh, I'm home," she shouted immediately upon opening the door. "Did you go to school today, Josh? It looks to me like you've been up in the hills with the batch of hoods you call friends."
"I can't hear you, mom. Hold on, I'll be right out," the masculine deep voice of the youngster in the shower retorted.
Bunny had to admit that despite the fact that he never had a male influence to guide him, Josh had certainly turned into a hunk of man, and at a surprisingly early age. Most people, Bunny reminded herself, thought her son was nineteen rather than eighteen and she knew that at times, when he hadn't shaven for two or three days, he could easily pass for twenty-one.
Pulling a cigarette from her purse and lighting it over the stove, she rummaged through the refrigerator for the contents of a light meal before they left the house for the week-end with her boss and his wife.
She knew her son would be hungry and that she'd have a better chance of convincing him that he should escort her to Huntington Beach that weekend if she fed him. It was very important that he go along with her for he'd prove an invaluable buffer for her relations with the Starrs, plus her prior excuses for not accompanying Pete and Sheila would look embarrassingly lame with his absence.
"Hi, Mom," the voice pleasantly said, surprising Bunny who startled and clutched at her heart with her hand.
"Josh, don't sneak up on me like that. You know I can't stand that," she said trying to catch her breath.
"Sorry, Mom," Josh said, "but you kinda surprised me just a second ago when you yelled into the shower."
"I'm sorry dear," she said looking at her son's tall, rangy, masculine body; clad only in a towel. "From now on let's warn each other that we're in the house before we make a single sound."
They both laughed at her words as he affectionately hugged her.
"Did you have a nice day at school?" Bunny sardonically said, hoping to get an admission of guilt from her big, well-built son.
"Well, Mom, let's put it like this. I did get a very good education into the dynamics and inherent properties a wheel, specifically a motorcycle wheel, takes on when its mass and velocity increase abnormally on its descent down a steep hill." Josh hoped his wit and banter would disarm his loving mother but she ignored his ignoble attempts at humor and her voice took on a relatively stern tone.
"Josh, I've told you before, I want you in school, not on that darned motorcycle. You're only a year from graduating from high school.
"I don't want you to throw all the hard work we've both put into your education away simply over a cheap thrill." Her words were meant in earnest, but somehow they lacked conviction as Josh snuggled up to his mother and kiddingly said, "Now, Mom, you know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you. I just wanted to take a day off. You know how it is, don't you?"
His words caught Bunny unprepared, just as she always was every time her handsome son talked to her in his charming disarming manner. She looked at him as he backed away with a devilish smile on his face and admired the broad shoulders, muscular arms and hairy chest on her boy, who over the years had be-come a man right before her very eyes.
"Well, I don't want it to happen again. Do you understand me, Josh?"
"Yeah, Mom," he continued to tease, "I got ya or I'm soon gonna get ya." Bunny was and had been a little concerned with her son's habit of making sexual innuendos an integral part of his humor, but it was the substance of his remarks directed sexually at her that had lately bothered her. Could he be serious about her? she thought, but then dismissed the idea as a foolish, insupportable notion.
Josh continued to towel himself off as Bunny made soup and prepared cold-cuts. She would periodically steal a gaze at her son, hoping to see if he was a normal man in every respect, but would then catch herself and chastise her actions as obscene and ridiculously vile.
"Honey, I wanted to ask you something," she said almost off-handedly. "The Starrs, you know, my boss at the plant, wants me to go with him and his wife to Huntington Beach this weekend and I was wondering if you'd like to go. I mean, I'd really appreciate it if you'd come along with me. I'm very uncomfortable with these people and it would really help if you were along. Besides, you won't have to go to school on Monday, because we won't come back until Monday evening."
"I'll go," Josh said without hesitation. "I'll do anything to stay out of summer school It's just too hot to spend all day long in a boring school room," he went on.
"Well, if you had tended to business during the regular school year, you wouldn't be there so remember that when school starts again in the fall." Bunny tried to sound stern and disapproving, but her love for Josh was too strong for any real rancour to exist in her soul, no matter what he did.
"Hey, Mom, I just thought, what am I going to do down there? I mean where are we staying and what are we going to do?" Josh's voice had a note of concern in it, but Bunny was certain he wasn't about to change his mind.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Pete and Sheila are going to bring their daughter Marcia along. I think you'll like her and she's just about your age. I think you saw her once at the office when I had you pick me up from work one night not long ago." Bunny's voice echoed in her ears as she realized she had put an unmistakably tantalizing inflection in her words.
"Was that the girl that wore those black velvet hip-huggers and that `thing' on her top?" Josh's hands made an exotically lewd gesture over his chest when he got to the word thing and his eyes seemed to bulge out in eager anticipation for the answer to his question.
"Yes, yes, that was the girl," Bunny said, "Now do you have any other questions?"
"Yeah, Mom," he said with a sheepish grin on his face, "When are we leaving?"