Now that Marge was gone, Homer walked past Ruth into the kitchen with the six-pack. It seemed like he was eager to start working. Or maybe just eager to start drinking. Leo didn't know Homer enough to know if he would listen to Marge's commands while she was gone.
Leo and Ruth stood in the front hall together for a moment as they were left alone.
Ruth lowered her voice without quite looking at him. Then she picked up the foil-covered dish that had been carried in off the porch step and left on the entryway table.
"It's a casserole, Leo."
"I did warn you," Leo laughed.
She carried the dish into the kitchen. Leo went back out to the truck for the next box.
…
With three of them on the job the pace picked up. The work got broken up across the house — sometimes Leo and Ruth were carrying a piece of furniture together, sometimes Homer and Leo were on a box, sometimes Ruth was directing them both from the top of the stairs. They ended up in different rooms more often than not. Leo passed Ruth on the staircase a dozen times in the next hour.
Homer drifted in and out of the kitchen between trips, carrying the smaller things up two at a time. Marge had told him to put the beer in Ruth's fridge and to stop drinking it in front of her. The beer was not in Ruth's fridge. Maybe it was because they hadn't even unloaded the fridge yet.
Homer's position, which he explained to Leo in passing, was that there was no sense loading a warm beer into a warm fridge once they unloaded it later, when a man 'like himself' could be drinking it instead. So the six-pack stayed on the counter. He worked through it as the morning went on, leaving a small graveyard of empty bottles that grew over the next few hours.
The conversations came in pieces, in the moments where Leo and Ruth happened to be alone in the same room. Ruth told him even more about Capital City. Leo told her about his short time in Springfield. At one point he made good and gave her the story of the bent pole out front, the one he had waved off as a long story earlier that morning. A drunk had come off the road one night and put a car into it, and the man had been hauled off before sunup. The rest of it stayed his.
Just like this, another hour passed.
…
At a certain point Leo was alone upstairs. The last of the heavy ones was now in the bedroom Ruth had pointed him to, and he was breathing harder than he wanted to admit. He stood on the landing for a minute, hands on his hips, looking out the small window at the U-Haul down at the curb. Almost empty. One trip, maybe two, and the move would be done.
Voices drifted up from the first floor.
Homer's was the louder one. Ruth's came up quieter underneath it. It had been like this multiple times already, but this time the topic this time seemed much more interesting.
They were in the kitchen. From the sound of it Ruth was up on the counter putting glasses into the upper cabinets and Homer was passing them to her from a box at his feet, one at a time, trying not to let the beer mess him up.
Leo started back down the steps. Halfway down the second flight he could make out the conversation a little better, and decided to slow his pace.
…
"…Uh, and there was something else, Ruth." Homer's voice carried clean up the stairwell. "Something I was supposed to tiptoe around."
"My divorce."
"That's it! Woo-hoo! I'm glad one of us remembered. That could have been embarrassing."
Ruth went on in the usual flat tone.
"Well, Homer, I know what you are thinking, and the answer is yes. I want to be fixed up with one of your friends as soon as you can arrange it. After all. I do have the normal appetites."
"Heh, heh, heh. I know what you mean."
There was the sound of Homer thinking. Leo could picture Homer's thinking face where he stayed silent for a few seconds.
"Uh, Ruth. Just let me make sure we are not talking about food."
"I am not."
"Right! Me neither."
The fridge they had brought in a bit earlier clicked on across the kitchen.
"We're talking about sex, right?"
"Right."
"I hear you loud and clear!"
"So be on the lookout for me and let me know, Homer."
"Will do!"
Another second passed. Ruth had not moved from wherever she was standing. Leo could picture her exactly, despite the short time knowing her. Weight on one hip, the small half-smile already on her face.
"Actually, Homer. While we are on it. I was curious about somebody."
"Mmm? Curious about who, Ruth?"
"The man in the other room."
Leo, halfway down the second flight, stopped on a step.
Homer's brain fired up again and began the slow audible work of thinking. Leo could practically hear the gears turn.
"Hmmm. The man in the other room. The other room. Hmmm."
"Homer."
"I'm thinking, Ruth, I'm thinking."
"Homer."
"Don't rush me. Could be anybody."
"It is the only other man in the house, Homer."
"…Oh!"
"Yes."
"Oh! You mean Leo?"
"I am talking about Leo, yes."
"Oh, Leo! Yeah, what about him?"
"Is he single?"
The fridge cycled off. Leo did not move on the stairs.
"…Leo? Nah. Naah, Leo's single. He came here completely ALONEEE." A thump, probably Homer pointing across the street with his Duff hand. "No wife, no kids, and a great big fancy garage."
Then Homer leaned in, his voice dropping a notch.
"And I think, between you and me, Ruth, he doesn't, y'know. Get around much. Heh-heh-heh. Poor guy."
"Mm?"
"And also." There was the unmistakable sound of Homer rubbing his thumb against the pads of his fingers, the universal money gesture. "I also think he's L-O-A-D-E-D. Loaded."
"Mm."
"Soooo, why are you asking me about him, Ruth?"
She, evenly replied. "Take a guess, Homer."
A long second. Leo could hear, in the silence, the sound of one Homer Simpson brain finally connecting a dot.
"Aaaaaaah!" Homer screamed. "Are you, uh. Are you one of those, uh, what's it called, with the —" There was the sound of fingers snapping unsuccessfully. "With the cats. Who go around. And they hunt 'em, the young ones."
"Cougar, Homer. The word you are looking for is cougar."
"COUGAR! That's the one. Yeah. Yeah. Are you a cougar, Ruth?"
A small huff from Ruth that was almost a laugh.
"Not particularly, Homer. But Leo has been quite the good neighbor. I wouldn't mind going younger for a man like that. Not that I'm even that old. Anyway. Now you know."
"Now I know what?"
"Where to look. Since you said you would be on the lookout."
Homer took another chug from his beer.
"…Y'know what, Ruth."
"What, Homer."
"I think I can be a perfect wingman. I have always wanted to do that at least once in my life. I think I should go tell Leo."
"Should you? While I'm here?"
"Yeah! It's a favor! For the new neighbor! Marge'll love this! She loves when I do neighbor stuff! She'll love it so much!"
The sound of Homer turning fast and the Duff in his hand swinging too wide for the turn. Then the unmistakable sound of an open beer can hitting the inside of a doorframe.
"AAAAAH!"
The Duff went everywhere. It splattered the tile, ran down the cabinets, and soaked Homer worst of all.
"AAAAH! NO! NO NO NO! RUTH!"
"What is it, Homer?"
"I SPILLED IT! I SPILLED THE DUFF! IT'S ALL OVER ME! IT'S ALL OVER MY SHIRT! IT'S ALL OVER THE WALL!"
"It's mostly the wall, Homer, I can see it from here."
"BUT IT'S ALSO ALL OVER MY SHIRT! RUTH, MY SHIRT! I'M GONNA LOSE THE DUFF!"
Leo started walking down the stairs at his original pace, which was not a hurry but was no longer a slowdown either. He turned the corner of the landing and came into the front hall just as Homer was rounding the doorway out of the kitchen, soaked across the front of his white shirt and holding his now mostly-empty Duff can in one hand at arm's length the way a person holds an injured animal.
"No, no, no, nooooo," he wept.
"Homer, you alright?"
"LEO! I gotta go home, buddy. RIGHT now. This is a CODE RED emergency."
"Looks like it. Code ultra red, yeah yeah."
"I gotta go home and get the Brewbacker."
"The what?"
"The BREWBACKER, Leo. The Brewbacker." Homer was already halfway to the front door, leaving a small trail of beer droplets across Ruth's front hall floor. "It is a device I invented. You take a beer-soaked shirt and you put it in the Brewbacker and you crank the handle, and it presses the shirt against a strainer over a glass, and you get most of the Duff back! ALL of the lost Duff! Saved! It is a marvel of human engineering and it lives somewhere in my house and I have to go RIGHT NOW because every minute that the shirt dries is a minute of Duff that goes back into the AIR, Leo. You can't drink the AIR."
"You should hurry then, Homer. Actually, maybe you should use your shirt t— " Leo stopped his suggestion of having Homer use his shirt as a rag to clean up the mess upon realizing it meant Homer would be shirtless.
"I AM GOING."
"Go fast."
"I AM GOING FAST."
"Wait, Homer." Leo remembered there was a part he'd been meant to be told about — the one that would make this easier.
"WHAT, LEO?"
"Weren't you about to tell me something?"
Homer stopped at the doorway with his hand on the frame. Then he looked down at his beer-soaked shirt, then at the Duff in his hand, then back at the shirt one more time.
"I'll tell you LATER, buddy. The BREWBACKER waits for NO ONE."
The screen door banged behind him. Leo and Ruth watched through the front window as he hurried back across the street at a half-run, holding the salvageable Duff can at arm's length, leaving a small trail of beer droplets across the street and up his own front walk. He did not look back or slow down once.
Through the doorway behind Leo, Ruth was leaning against the kitchen frame with a dishrag in her hand. She had already started cleaning up the spill on her floor.
"Did he say Brewbacker?"
Leo shrugged. "Who knows. Maybe Backbreaker... backbender, no clue."
She let out a flat short breath that was almost a laugh and went back into the kitchen for a roll of paper towels.
…
Across the street, Marge was at her own kitchen window with the curtain half-pulled and a mug of cold coffee in her hand she had forgotten to drink. She had not meant to spend the morning watching the house across the way. She had meant to fold the laundry, and she had folded most of it, but somewhere between the second basket and the third the basket had ended up on the counter and she had ended up at the window, and the window had a good angle across the street on Ruth Powers's porch and the U-Haul at the curb and the front door of 740 standing open all morning. A good view towards the new woman that Leo was helping.
She had at least made sure Homer was over there too. That had been the small mercy of the morning. Homer was a chaperone of sorts. He was in the kitchen with Ruth, presumably making conversation, occupied while Leo was somewhere else in the house. That gave her some relief. She knew how charming Leo could be.
The screen door of 740 banged. Marge straightened at her window.
Homer was hurrying back across the street at a half-run. Alone. Soaked across the front of his shirt. Holding a Duff can at arm's length.
The coffee in Marge's hand was cold and she still had not drunk any of it.
She set the mug down on the counter very carefully, then moved towards the hallway.
Her front door opened a second later. Homer had come through it at speed.
"MARGE!"
"Homer? What — Homer, you are dripping on the —"
"MARGE WHERE IS THE BREWBACKER."
"The what?"
"THE BREWBACKER, MARGE! Under the sink! I need it RIGHT NOW! There is a CODE RED in this house! I spilled an entire Duff on my shirt at Ruth's and every second this shirt dries is a second of Duff I am losing FOREVER!"
"Homer, please take the shirt off in the —"
"MARGE I AM TIMING OUT! WHERE IS IT!"
"It is under the sink, Homer, where you put it the last time, on the rig —"
"AAH! THANK YOU MARGE!"
Homer disappeared into the kitchen at the same half-run he had used coming up the street. Marge stood in the front hall for a second with both hands on her hips. The cabinet under the sink banged open. There was the sound of dish soap being knocked over, then a roll of paper towels falling out of the cabinet, then Homer announcing "AHA!" at full volume from his knees.
Marge took a long slow breath through her nose.
"Homer!"
"YEAH MARGE."
"Are you going back over there?"
A long pause from the kitchen. The sound of Homer presumably wringing his shirt over a glass with great care.
"…I, uh."
"Homer."
"I think the Brewbacker is gonna take a while."
"Mm-hm."
"And you know what, Marge."
"What, Homer."
"I should sit down. I had a long morning. I should sit down on the couch and watch some television and let the Brewbacker do its work."
"Of course you should." She rolled her eyes, very annoyed.
Homer stepped out of the kitchen holding a juice glass with about two ounces of recovered Duff in it, and a damp shirt over his shoulder, and a contraption Marge had not seen in eighteen months in his other hand. He went into the living room. The television came on. The volume came up. The couch creaked under his weight.
The front door of 740 was still standing open across the street.
Marge moved towards the window with her cold coffee and looked across the street at the house where Leo was now alone with Ruth Powers. She remembered that the shirt the woman wore when she had went over was awfully tight.
She imagined that thin purple shirt after hours of carrying boxes up and down stairs. It had already looked tight across Ruth's chest. Now it would be damp. Soaked through in places from sweat. The cotton would have gone thin and nearly see-through where the sweat had gathered, especially down the center.
Marge wondered what kind of nipples Ruth had. Whether they were small and tight or the softer, puffier kind that got bigger and more obvious when they stiffened. She pictured them hard from the work, stiff and sensitive after all that lifting and reaching. Two dark points that would be impossible to miss. She imagined Leo standing there with her, eyes dropping straight to Ruth's chest, noticing exactly how those hard nipples showed through the wet cotton. She wondered if it was making him hard. If his cock was thickening in his jeans while he tried to keep talking like nothing was happening. His hard cock that she once felt beneath her. She could tell it was huge.
The thought made Marge's stomach pull tight and low. A hot, unwanted throb pulsed between her legs, sudden and insistent. She pressed her thighs together hard against the edge of the counter, but it only made it worse. Her own nipples had tightened under her blouse without her permission. She could feel them. She didn't want to be thinking about Leo getting hard over Ruth's nipples. But the image stayed anyway.
She kept shaking her head. Leo wasn't like that.
She picked the mug up again and held it without drinking from it.
…
Leo and Ruth stood in the front hall.
Ruth folded the dish towel in her hands once, then twice, then a third time, very precisely. She looked at the towel for a second.
"Want a cigarette, Leo?"
"Yeah, sure."
She tipped her chin past the front hall toward the back of the house. "Out back."
Leo nodded while she explained.
"I like the back porch better. The front porch on this house is for show. The back porch is for sitting on."
"Lead the way."
…
They stood at the back porch rail and smoked for a minute without saying anything. The back porch sat tucked between the side of the garage and a tall fence that ran the length of the property line, and from where they were standing nobody on Evergreen Terrace could see them at all.
Leo discovered, somewhere in that minute, that he liked the silence with her. With Ruth the silence was just silence. The cigarette tasted like a cigarette, and although it had been a while since he tasted one, it calmed him down even more.
She broke the silence first.
"That went faster than I had any right to expect. Truly. Thank you, Leo."
"Don't mention it."
She pulled on the cigarette and let the smoke out slow through her nose, eyes on the yard.
"I took up your whole Saturday morning. I am not sure what to do with a person like that yet, or how to repay them. I think the coffee you mentioned earlier would not be enough."
"Buy me a drink sometime then."
"Maybe I will."
She pushed her sleeves the rest of the way up her arms, slowly. The inside of her arms had a low sheen of dried sweat.
The purple shirt had not survived the morning well. Four hours of carrying boxes had soaked it through in several places, the thin cotton now clinging and semi-translucent where the sweat had dried and re-wet. The worst of it was down the center of her chest. The fabric had gone almost see-through between her breasts, the long V of damp cotton molded tight to the inner curves and the deep line of cleavage. He could see the darker point of her hard nipple pressing against the fabric every time she shifted her weight.
'So suckable.'
Leo glanced sideways at her. The bandana was off-center now. Damp strands of brown hair had come loose from it and were stuck against the side of her neck. She had bent forward to tap the cigarette, and the loose fit at the top of the shirt had fallen away from her chest a half-inch, and the small triangle of naked skin between the neckline and the swell of her breasts had been visible from where he was standing whether he wanted to look at it or not. He looked at it.
"You stayed in better shape than I would have at the end of carrying that dresser up two flights," he said, complimenting her even though he knew that technically he would was in just as good shape.
She chuckled. "I have been told I am stubborn about my own body."
"Stubborn is a good word for it."
"What is your word for it, then?"
"My word would not be polite enough for the porch."
She laughed. The same low laugh she had been using all morning, but longer this time, and lower in her throat. The natural sound did something to him in the lower stomach that he had to pull on the cigarette slowly to cover.
"Mm." She took a slow drag herself. "Homer told me you are single, by the way."
"Did he?"
"Inside. While I had him in my kitchen."
"He was right. Which I think is impressive for Homer. Yes, I am."
"Hm."
She turned her head a fraction to look at him. Her golden earring caught the light.
"Do you ever get lonely over there, Leo, in that big house with the trimmed hedges and the wrecked pole."
"Some days more than others."
"Some days more than others."
"It is a big house for one person to live in, Ruth. Yeah."
He turned the cigarette in his fingers.
"You?"
"What about me?"
"You ever get lonely?" He knew she was single.
She did not answer right away. She looked at the cigarette in her own hand, and then at the yard, and then, finally, at him.
"I am not planning on staying lonely, Leo."
Leo felt his stomach turn warm at her words. The way she had said it sounded so sexy. He felt himself starting to get hard inside his jeans, and the awareness of it made him shift his weight to the other foot before he had quite decided to move. The cigarette in his hand stayed steady as he took a long even pull.
"No?"
"No. I am not a woman who pretends I do not have needs. I lived with a man who pretended he did not have them, and that was a long enough experience for one lifetime. So no. I am not planning on living that way again. I am just being deliberate about who I am not lonely with from here on out."
Leo flicked his cig ashes.
"It's a shame you had to experience that to find that out. Someone like you" — Leo shifted his eyes up and down her body — "deserved to have those needs met from the start."
"You have been quite full of good words, Leo."
"I have my moments."
She tapped ash into the porch railing can. Took another slow drag. Then she leaned even more forward against the rail, both arms on the top of it.
The angle put the back of her jeans on display for anybody who happened to be standing where Leo was standing. The denim was worn pale on the curve of her ass and pulled tighter when she leaned. The back of the shirt had ridden up an inch when she put her weight on her elbows, showing a strip of skin at the small of her back where the sweat had not quite dried. He could see the faint indent of the waistband of her underwear above the back pocket of the jeans.
For one second Leo's brain supplied a different image — Ruth in the smallest possible bikini top, just two tiny triangles of thin fabric that barely covered her nipples, and a matching red thong that disappeared completely between the cheeks of her ass. The same pose. Same lean. Same slight arch in her lower back. The red strings cutting into the soft skin at her hips. He blinked it away, but the image stayed behind his eyes for several seconds, vivid and unwanted.
[image in disc0rd] [Link in book summary]
"Leo."
"Yes."
"I would like you to take me out for a drink sometime."
She was looking back at him. There was a small wet patch on the front of her shirt where the fabric pulled tightest over the curve of her left breast, the cotton nearly transparent there now. She did not try to cover it. Her eyes held his for a second longer than necessary, then flicked down to his mouth for half a second before returning.
"Just so we are clear about it," she went on, in the same flat steady tone she had used for everything else that morning. "This isn't the same as the drink for moving. I am asking you to take me out for a drink. So I can get and learn more. Maybe also get some of those needs. Whenever you get time."
He took a slow pull on the cigarette and let it out.
"I'd want that, Ruth."
"Good. This week is a little full for me. I have to get Laura situated. Next week is better."
"Next week is fine."
"I'll come find you."
"I will be over there."
She tipped her chin at the back door of the house. Her eyes flicked once, briefly, down to his mouth again, and then back up.
"You know where to find me."
"I do."
They finished the cigarettes in silence the rest of the way. She ground hers out in a coffee can on the porch rail that had been her ashtray for a long time before she had ever owned this porch. He followed suit. The coffee can said HILLS BROS in faded red letters and had a quarter-inch of grey ash and at least a dozen old butts in it from previous lives.
…
Once they finished, Leo looked at his watch. One thirty.
"I have to go, Ruth. I've got some Horticultural Society meeting at two."
"A Horticultural Society meeting?"
"Hah, I was just as confused as you. I am told it is less about plants than about which decisions are needed in this town."
"Riveting."
"I'll tell you how it goes. Be excited."