Fall in May

~2~ Mayhem

"Well, at least you don't smoke anything obvious, so that's something I suppose." She seems satisfied enough to relax slightly, but she still doesn't release my fingers. Instead, she traps them with both her warm hands and holds me captive in her cold embrace.

"Don't smoke. Hate the stench, always have." I reply positively.

"But you do smell somewhat bleachy?" She rocks her head to the side. "But not bleach, something lighter like ...chlorine? You were in a pool recently?" The nightshades peer up at me for confirmation of her olfactory deductions.

"Yeah, I'm a lifeguard at the Annex pool. I help teach swimming to..." I almost say the handicapped kids. But somehow I am thinking that won't go over well with my present company, so I opt for the slightly safer term.  "...the Special Olympic kids."

"O'?" She intones. And that one elongated syllable from her seems to resonate out profoundly like a sacred Buddhist Om.

"So May Bee, do you like need any help? Like getting off the bleachers and back to whence you came or whatever?" I ask awkwardly trying to extract my hand from hers because her warm hands are starting to burn me a little. So I am thinking maybe that's why she has kept my hand for this uncomfortably long. That she might require my help getting back to wherever she wandered in from. Thankfully she must sense my uncomfortableness with her familiarity because she finally releases my fingers.

"Ah ...like no bro." She exaggerates my accent almost perfectly. "Like I totally got up here on my ownsome. So like yeah, I think I can like ...you know bro ...like get down off the third bench step thing all by my alonesomeness? And then like ...get back from wherever whence I came from ...or whatever?"

"Okay, cool." I drone back dryly. Mostly because it's pretty clear to me that she is mocking me hard now.

"Besides, I don't need to leave just yet. My sinister sister will come to find me sooner or later. Whenever the three remaining brain cells in her head get tired of fighting over who's the blondest of them all. But don't tell her I told you this, okay?" She drops her voice conspiratorially.

"But I think all the peroxide they use to keep her super shiny is causing some thinking problems." She taps the side of her skull and leans slightly back into a smug shrug. "So speaking of dam bramage ...are the Freaks back with their big-city urban gang yet?"

"Naw, not so much." I look back around at the empty grass fields before me and see that the Three Amigos are long gone. Probably back to where ever they go to lay low and lick their wounds. Not that I got the chance to inflict any, but still wounded pride counts, I suppose?

"So tell me something, Lifeguard Darren?" She quirks a sly smirk down at me. "What's a tough-guy-nobody like you doing just hanging out on the burner bleachers anyways?" 

"I was trying to..." get my Zen on? Which now sounds even lamer in my own head.  "...to just stay cool?"

"Oh, I think you just might have succeeded in that endeavor, Mr. Tough Guy." She smiles wryly behind the Vader shades with a vengeance. "So not to be all judgey or anything, but you're not really from around here, are you?"

"I'm from Sunset, the beach, not the break." I reply proudly, like this would make any sense at all to an outlander, let alone a girl like Maybe.

"Sorry, never heard of it." She shrugs me off. "So pray tell where is this magic realm whence people speak in strange tongues, and jump into fights with freaks with wild abandon for no apparent reason. Like in relation to where we are currently?"