It was the saddest excuse for a yard sale C.S. had ever seen. Scattered across a bedsheet, Rene’s personal belongings were waiting to find new homes. Post-it notes clung to each item, listing whatever absurd price Brodie was hoping to wrestle from his customers… The host himself was seated atop a lawnchair and sheltered by the shade of a tree, a pair of knockoff Ray-Ban’s over his eyes and stack of comic books at his side. He waved with mock enthusiasm as C.S. locked his car and crossed over the lawn.
“Well hey there, pilgrim! Lookin’ sharp - is that a new shirt?” Brodie patted the seat of the empty chair beside him. “Come, sit. The illustrious Mrs. Bryce made us some refreshments.” He gestured to a pair of glasses and a pitcher of iced tea on the fold-out table between them. “Thanks, Mom! Calvin says hi!” Brodie called out over his shoulder, back towards the house.
C.S. settled into his chair - which was thoughtlessly placed outside the protection of the shade. “Glad I have front row seating for this blatant violation of personal property…” he droned, helping himself to a glass of tea.
Brodie leaned over, grinning like a fox and peering over the tops of his sunglasses. “Glad to have you on board… banker.” Before C.S. could ask what it meant, Brodie lobbed a Ziploc bag of coins at his friend, catching him in the stomach. “Chief Member of the Mathletes, sophomore-through-senior year of high school… I remember, we all remember,” chided Brodie. “As the unofficial winner of ‘Most Likely to Become an Accountant’, I volunteer thee, Calvin Spencer, the Handler of Bills and Counter of Change.” He stretched his legs out, settling comfortably back into the trademark Brodie-Bryce-Slouch. “Your main goal: ensure that no one tries to scam me. This is to be an airtight and profitable operation, do you understand your responsibilities?”
“This isn’t a game of Monopoly…” grumbled C.S., but begrudgingly he accepted the task. “But sure,” he continued, with a sharp edge to his voice. “I’d love to help you sell someone else’s personal treasures.” C.S. skimmed the loot on the sheet, and to Brodie’s credit found most of it to be merely junk: a stuffed dog, a book, a stack of CD’s, a keychain of the globe… He raised his brow as he crossed over a picture of Xena - scantily clad and shooting the viewer a sultry look. “Wasn’t that in your laundry room?” he asked, nodding to the dog-eared poster.
Brodie followed his gesture and waggled his eyebrows. “It was… but you’ll notice my very intentional emphasis on the past tense. Out with the old, my friend. Not only was this a gift from the Banshee, but sadly, the Warrior Princess just doesn’t do it for me anymore.”
C.S. rolled his eyes. “Dare I ask who does?”
Closing the comic on his lap, Brodie presented the cover of the X-Men issue he was reading - featuring Mystique at the forefront. He grinned.
“She’s blue.”
“Au contraire,” rebutted Brodie, flipping back to his page. “She’s a shapeshifter. She’s any woman I want her to be.”
Frowning, C.S. wondered why he was surprised at the answer; it was typical of Brodie to expect change in others while staying the same immature soul forever… A figure that molded to every whim was an apt and telling fantasy of a twenty-three year old man. After a sigh, C.S. tested the waters with a nugget of criticism. “I think you like your collection more than you like the people in your life.”
“Well can you blame me?” Brodie scoffed immediately in response. “The money I’ve dropped into the comic book industry… C.S., I’m only exaggerating a little when I say that I probably paid Robert Downey Jr.’s salary for Ironman.”
Shaking his head, C.S. sipped in silence, but out of the corner of his eye witnessed a subtle change in his friend. Previously encased in the panels of his new, blue lady-love, Brodie’s concentrated brow softened, breaking his focus in a moment of thought.
“Y’know,” started Brodie, cocking his head in contemplation. “It was a conversation not unlike this one that led to that poster’s tenure upon my basement wall…”
“You spending too much time and money on comics?” supplied C.S.
“We were talking about fictional characters that we would bang…” recalled Brodie, lapping lightly at his drink.
It was frustrating, trying to keep up with his thought process. C.S. violently shook his head. “What?” he asked.
A bubble of silence rose, with Brodie lost - a wandering mind stuck behind a cow-eyed stare. Finally, it popped. “Hmm? Oh. It wasn’t important.”
But it was…
Brodie flattened the book before him, trying to get drawn back into the explosive ‘BANG’ and ‘POW’ action, but he was instead warped to memory lane… It was him and Rene during the wintertime - shortly after they had gotten together. They were spending an afternoon lazing about on the couch in his basement. It was drafty and cold; they were sharing a blanket.
“I’m tempted to say Betty Boop,” Brodie started, the first attempt at picking his favorite fictional slampiece. “...because I’d really love all the noises she’d make during.”
Rene shook in his arms, not cold, but laughing. “Brodie, ew!” she scolded, but when she brushed a lock of that pretty, auburn hair aside he could see the amusement in her eyes.
“But we’d be very limited in the position department…” he continued, shamelessly. “She could never be on top. Her head is way too big to keep her balanced. It’d be like fucking a bobble head.”
She sent him a suspicious leer. “It seems like you’ve given this a lot of thought…”
“As much as I would enjoy the constant reassurance of my performance, I’d rather someone scream ‘yes!’ in the throngs of passion than just sitting there nodding like they’re mid-conniption.”
Playfully, Rene slapped him in the shoulder. “You’re disgusting.”
“Hey,” reasoned Brodie, in faux-hurt. “At least I’m sexualizing a woman. There are people in this world that get off on children’s cartoons.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Bronies, Rene. Bronies. Real men that rub off against My Little Pony dolls.”
“What?”
“I kid you not. Cross my withered, black heart.” He pulled a hand from around her waist to draw an ‘X’ on his chest. “There are conventions and internet chatrooms and a special place in hell for anyone who wishes to watch rainbow horses in place of real-people porn…”
She shook again, giggles. “Oh my gosh.” Rene was the only person he knew who said ‘gosh’.
“So take some solace in that, m’lady. You are not, in fact, dating a pedophile,” Brodie paused. “Nor an equine enthusiast.”
“I’m thrilled…” She rolled her eyes.
He laid his head back against the armrest. “But back to the initial question.”
“Oh, right, what were we talking about?”
“Fictional characters that we’d bang.”
“You,” she corrected, jabbing a finger into his arm. “That you would bang. I’m not a participant here.”
“Please, Rene. You’d save yourself for the day Charlie Brown turned eighteen and give the poor kid some much needed play. Which is generous and respectable of you, because we all know Lucy’s a tease - if she won’t let him kick a football there’s no chance she’ll let him into her pants when they inevitably date in high school.”
Rene propped herself onto her elbows, peering down at him with a guffaw. “Ohh, you know this about me?”
“It’s okay, though. I won’t make you say it aloud.”
She rested her chin against his shoulder. “I’m fascinated by the way your mind works.”
Brodie fought off a smirk. “It doesn’t work. That I can promise you.”
“Yeah, I guess it doesn’t…” Rene stopped for a tender moment to tangle her fingers in his hair - as if taking a reading for brainwaves. And even though she found none, she smiled at him, and brightened when he did the same. “So what’s your real answer?”
Without skipping a beat, Brodie responded decisively: “Xena, warrior princess.”
Rene burst at the seams, tackled by a fit of laughter, and for ten second remained inconsolable. She buried her face against his chest and shook her head. “You would! You so would!” she cackled, curling into his embrace.
“Whaaat?” he asked, valiantly fending off the contagiousness of her giggles. “It’s a legitimate choice! I was just discovering what a hard-on was when that show was on! It’s childhood sentiment!”
She only laughed harder.
“Rene, Rene, come back to me,” Brodie joked, cradling her face in his hand. She muzzled herself with her hand, letting a few chortles slip as she tried to look him in the eye…
She had beautiful eyes...
“Brodie…” C.S. prodded him out of his daydream, chasing away the sweet melody of Rene’s laughter. The chilly winter memory melted into summer heat. She had gotten him the poster for Christmas, a year and a half later it was here on his lawn.
Brodie snapped back into place. “Yes, mon frare?”
“... You’ve been on that page for a while.”
He presenting the comic to his friend, exaggerating a sweeping motion across the panels. “Am I not allowed to enjoy the careful craftsmanship a whole team of nerds put into drawing, inking, and coloring Mystique’s tits?”
C.S. sighed, and returned to counting change.