Previous chapters:
Chapter One: Georgie
Chapter Two: Guns, Blurbs, and Steal

CHAPTER THREE

Big Jugs and the Hairy Arm

I WISH IT WOULD rain to take the humidity out of the air. It’s also a lot hotter than the Weather Girls said it was going to be. That’s why I’m wearing my flip-flops, my favorite tan cargo shorts, and my “Let the Fucking Begin” t-shirt from The Onion online store. Georgie is sporting some very expensive Prada sunglasses (totally fruity) even though it isn’t very bright. He wears them at night, like Cory Hart, so I shouldn’t be surprised. I never wear sunglasses. I hate them. I don’t like anything put between my eyes and my surroundings that will prevent me from seeing the world as it really is. Why make the world look dimmer when I am so assured and lucid and energized, when I feel like a man in total control of everything? And sunglass-wearing Georgie? I’ve never seen a happier man in all my life. He is ahead of me because he always insists on leading even when we both know he hasn’t the slightest idea where he’s going. I’ve let him lead because he’s British and likes the illusion that he’s still in control. I am sure he knows the way to Big Jugs.

I look back at my house and notice a big section of fence has fallen down. It’s a straight shot to the Acme. That makes sense now.

We pass my neighbor’s window and Georgie turns back with a grin. “Did you see it?”
I nod. It was there. The Hairy Arm is always there, on exhibit in the window above the dying hedges. The blinds are always drawn but raised just high enough so that I can see the lower part of the bicep down to the elbow, from the elbow to the forearm, from the forearm to the wrist attached to the relaxed brown hand that pushes the wireless mouse around. It’s as if the owner wants me to see only this much, to see that he’s hard at work or at play or at whatever it is he does with his time.

“You’re right about that hairy arm,” Georgie says. “It’s always there, and it’s so damn hairy.” He laughs and trots merrily along. “Time for some 911 hot wings at Big Jugs!” he exclaims with a little chim-chimminy shuffle of his feet. “I’ll bet those little Ms. Lovelies at Big Jubblies can’t wait to see me back again. They love me, Jerry. They simply can’t get enough.”

He’s right about that. Georgie is a favorite of the Big Jugs girls. I have to admit he can be charming with all that Cockney bullshit and jolly Englishman routine.

Georgie spins around. “All these places in your development look exactly the same. Have you noticed that? Is Hairy Arm’s place identical to yours on the inside?”

“It’s the same, but the reverse layout.” I know this because Justin and I toured both houses before we signed our lease. Justin picked our house because it’s an end unit with less neighbors bordering us and less ears to hear our plans. The thing I love about Justin is that he’s always thinking worst case scenarios.

“So you’ve really never seen him?” Georgie asks.

“What?”

“Seen him, the man the hairy arm is attached to.”

“No. Never.”

“That’s truly amazing.”

It is. Living next door to someone for over a year and never seeing more than a hairy arm in a window sounds impossible, but it’s true. There has never been an accidental meeting in front of our homes, and he has never made any effort to contact me even when I more than deserved to hear a voice on the other end of a phone or through a crack in the front door bristling with anger. Justin and his friends have raged till four o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday, trying to produce some kind of encounter. It never worked. He never seems to go anywhere, never seems to leave the house. No matter what the hour of my comings or goings, no matter what day of the week or time of year, I always see his arm through the window as he sits at his computer. It’s as if his only purpose in life is to sit there and move a computer mouse around a mouse pad endlessly. This is not to say he lacks a social life. He has four roommates, but that’s even more suspicious because I’ve never met any of them either. I sometimes hear them speaking Arabic on their back patio, and see the aftermath which is usually about five ashtrays overflowing with extinguished butts. One thing I’ve noticed about Hairy Arm and his friends is that they smoke like fiends. They smoke more than Georgie, and that’s saying a lot. They smoke so much that they are obviously unafraid of dying, and there’s only one use for someone who is unafraid of dying, as we sadly learned on September 11, 2001.

“Where’d you say them boys is from?” Georgie asks.

“Saudi Arabia.”

“That’s interesting, init? I never met boys from there.”

“Neither have I.”

That’s when I realized that they don’t want to meet me. They don’t want me to see them. They no doubt have seen me come and go and have guessed correctly that I’m on to their end game and know exactly what the Hairy Arm is doing on that computer all night and day. You have to be pretty brilliant to outsmart a terrorist cell. Fortunately, me and Justin are.

“Yup,” continues Georgie. “Not the friendliest chap, you are.”

I guess I’m not. Who cares? I don’t. Fuck ‘em.

We walk on through my parking lot and I point out Hairy Arm’s vehicle to Georgie. It’s a brand-new Chevy Spark with a bumper sticker of the American flag. It’s in the spot next to my car which is an ’85 Volvo (yeah, it pretty much rocks). Each townhouse has assigned parking spaces which are numbered with our unit numbers.

We step off the paved entranceway to the parking lot and follow a path on the rim of an old drainage ditch. Within the ditch, tall stalks of dead grass wave in the slight breeze. We walk a bit more, through a thick cluster of trees around the perimeter, and then Dekalb Pike appears as a straight path cut through the brown landscape of shopping malls, fast food restaurants, and apartment buildings that all look the same. Home sweet home. Living here is awesome because I am surrounded by places where I can buy stuff. Too bad everything looks brown on account of the dust. The American Appliance directly across from us is brown; so is Sleepy’s, where Justin and I bought our mattresses; so is the Red Lobster in the building next door. Next to that is Big Jugs, our destination and the unlikely bit of color in our Iraqi desert-like surroundings. The short building stands bright green—or what was once bright green—with a front that is dominated by large windows so the waitress tits and ass can pull lonely and sexually deprived customers in from the highway. Towering above the street entrance stands a twenty foot-tall picture of a woman holding two enormous jugs of beer.

Georgie spits and kicks an empty beer bottle and it shatters on the shoulder of the road. The noise startles two birds fighting over a pizza crust. The smaller one flies away with it.

“Sure is humid,” he says.

We cross Dekalb Pike and Georgie stops to light up a smoke. He offers one to me again, but I don’t take it. I need nothing. I can’t possibly feel any better than I do right now. If I could be granted one wish it would be to feel this way forever, which is how a man feels when he finally has a purpose.

We walk through the large glass double doors at Big Jugs and are greeted by a tiny girl named Cynthia. She has the kind of body that nature bestows to prime the pump of the evolutionary machine, a body built to attract the strongest of the herd and send the weak and sickly to knock one off in the crapper. I could totally have her. She wears the standard green shorts, hose, sneakers, and her straight, dark hair rests on a white tank top pulled tightly over perfectly formed fake D cups. Georgie nicknamed her “Cynthetica,” which I have to admit is a great nickname. Some guys say they don’t like fake tits, but I don’t believe them. I’ve never once heard a guy say, “No, I don’t want those perfect-looking ones. I like mine saggy.” You never hear that.

“Hi George,” she says with a large, smiling mouth. Her eyes do not smile, and her voice is South Jersey in its purest Garden State Parkway “Exit Here” form. She shows us dimples that in no way distract from her huge fake cans. “Two for lunch?”

“Is Sophia perchance working today, Love?” Georgie says.

She smiles and turns to me. “Don’t you just love his accent?”

Fucking kill me.