Sun bleached toys peeked from the grass and weeds in Kim's front yard, which had not been mowed in the year we had been dating. I followed the unpaved path to the front door, stepping over a Big Wheel in which a teddy bear sat decomposing; his cotton guts had burst moldy and dirty.
I knocked and heard Jake, her five year old brother, shouting, "Keem! Keem!"
She opened the door and leaned out to kiss me.
My soles squelched from the stickiness of the parquet of the living room. When Jake saw me, he pointed and shouted, "Ted". When my hair was long, he thought I looked like the character from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure".
"Ted! Ted!" He danced in place, more like a standing convulsion, while singing the movie's theme song and ended the ditty by dropping his shorts and playing air guitar with his penis.
"Jake!" she shouted. He shuffled away and flopped face first, ass to God, onto the couch.
We navigated around the debris of toys and clothes toward her bedroom. Kim was oblivious to the piles of unwashed laundry that the family dog was perched on. The mutt, part Yorkshire terrier, was a tangle of greasy brown and grey hair. Jake insisted on naming it Rambo despite it being female. It pointed its milky eyes at our approach and snapped at the invisible flies that buzzed around its demented little skull.
Kim screamed, "You better pick up that dog shit, now!" at Jake who was watching television with his shorts returned to the upright position. As we went down the hall that led to her room, Jake stood at the other end mustering his best pose of five year old defiance. I smirked at his scowl and grimace.
He gave Kim the middle finger and screamed, "Fuck yew, Keem," The dog shuffled down the hall between us. "Shut the door," Kim said. We kissed against it, but were interrupted by a single knock.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Rambo ran into the door. I wish it would die already." She kissed me. "I'm glad you didn't bring the human hormone."
"Yeah, why's that?" I kissed her back and teased, "Why wouldn't you want Jason here?"
She led me to the bed and playfully pushed me onto it. We fooled around; tickling each other, wrestling and kissing until it was time to go to work. I watched from the bed as she got ready for her first day. She shed the light sundress for black dress slacks. Her white underwear glowed against her tanned skin. Her tiny frame and small hips were hidden beneath the men's work shirt I lent her. When she was dressed, she laid down and put her head in my lap. I petted her braids that she had pinned up like a crown. I kissed her freckled nose and decided to forget about Marisa and last night's kiss luckily witnessed only by darkened houses and a hissing blonde girl.
"Do you want to wait for your mom to get home?" I asked. I was never comfortable with leaving her brothers alone in the house.
"Don't worry about those two little shits. They can take care of themselves. Who knows when Mother will roll in? I think she's getting married again."
"Have you met this one?" I asked.
"Yeah. He's been around a few times," she said. "Do you want me to drive?"
"Sure. You've got the better car. So, who was downtown last night?"
"It was dead. There was no one around."
"Was there a band playing?"
"Yeah, but they sucked, hippies. You should have seen how wasted Jessica got. I'm kind of getting sick of them using me for rides."
"Which one was Jessica? Was she at Denny's?"
"We dropped her off before. We had to carry her up to her room. Her parents didn't wake up, thank God."
"Is she the chubby one with the hair that goes like that? She's a skank. When is she not drunk?"
"You should talk."
"I don't drink that much."
"Did you drink last night?"
"You saw me. One or two drinkie-poos."
She rolled her eyes rather than repeat this conversation of ours. I knew why Kim didn't like my drinking. The reasons were scattered around her disheveled house and written on her little brother's filthy t-shirts. The main reason was, as usual, absent from the couch at the center of it all, but her mother's empty glasses scattered around the house suggest she'll return.
As we left, she shouted to Elgin, the eleven year old brother, through his bedroom door, from which music and video game explosions emanated, that he had to babysit Jake.