Leo woke up Wednesday morning with Manjula on top of him.
She'd fallen asleep there. They'd finished with her riding him. He recalled the sight.
Manjula sitting straight up on his cock, her hands braced flat on his chest, her wide brown hips rolling forward and back in a slow heavy rhythm, grinding down on him and back up just enough to feel his dick drag against her walls before she sank back down. Her thick thighs had been spread wide on either side of his hips, her brown ass slapping down against his hips every time she dropped. Her soft belly had moved in time with her, the faint stretch lines across the lower curve catching his sight each time she pushed down, her abs flexing under the soft skin as she worked herself on him. Her heavy tits had been bouncing, her braid undone and her hair swinging loose around her shoulders, her mouth half-open and her eyes fixed on his face like she never wanted to take them off of him. At some point afterward, after she orgasmed and Leo came inside of her, she folded down onto his chest, tucked her face into the side of his neck, and fell asleep.
He was still inside her. He could feel where dried evidence of the night before had pooled and crusted between her stomach and his, gluing them faintly together. Her breath was warm and even on his collarbone.
He didn't move.
Tuesday had been a day. Apu at the Kwik-E-Mart in the morning. Bart and Lisa at the kitchen table later. Then the discussion with Marge. And lastly, at seven-ten in the evening, Maude's visit with her black mini-dress.
He'd come up the stairs after Maude left. Manjula, on her bed reading, had set the book down and enjoyed his company. Their talking quickly turned into sex.
Now, he eased her gently to one side without waking her. She made a small sound. She didn't open her eyes. He covered her with the sheet and went to shower.
…
The day passed without incident, and twelve hours later he was walking down Evergreen Terrace toward a place called Moe's.
He'd looked up the bar that morning and discovered it sat practically on his own street, a five-minute walk. The week had been short and ridiculous and he had earned a drink.
The streetlights along the block were the buzzing kind, the orange ones that made every porch look like a crime scene from a TV show.
He pushed the door open, and the smell hit him first. Beer, cigarettes. The floor was sticky under his shoe. The yellow light made everyone in the room look like they were about to tell him something they'd later regret. The jukebox was playing one song.
He stood in the doorway, took a look around, and felt a smile forming.
'Oh,' he thought. 'Of course. This is where everyone is.'
Because everyone was.
Homer Simpson was at the bar in a slumped position so familiar it looked like he'd been carved into the stool. Two seats over, a heavyset man with a five-day beard and an empty pitcher in front of him looked like he had not seen sunlight in a decade. Next to him, two guys in matching plant uniform shirts were talking with two half-finished beers between them, one Black, one white.
And in a booth against the wall, alone, was Apu. Hair flattened on one side like he'd been resting his head against the wall for a while. Eyes pointed at a beer he didn't appear to be drinking.
Leo wondered where the kids were. Manjula was at his house. If Apu was drinking, devastated from the divorce news, then where were the kids currently.
'Hmmm, maybe this can help the divorce proceedings.'
Leo planned to sneak a photo of Apu like this later in the night.
Behind the bar, a small pale man with a loose tie and a face that suggested he'd been behind that bar his whole life looked up.
Before he could speak, Homer turned a quarter-rotation on his stool and squinted in Leo's direction. He processed Leo's face for a slow second, the same way he'd done it on his own front porch, and then his whole face brightened.
"Hey! It's the new guy!"
Leo gave him a small nod. "Hi, Homer."
"What're you doin' here?"
"Came for a drink."
Homer slapped the bar with the flat of his hand, delighted. "Oh, ho ho, my friend, you came to the right place! Bestbarinall'a Springfield." He waved a hand at the small man behind the counter. "This is Moe. Moe Szyslak. Moe — this is the new guy from across the street, Leo. The one I was tellin' you about, ehhh, never. I never told you about him. But he's an alright guy."
Homer slapped the stool beside him. "Sit down, new guy. Moe, get him a beer! It's on me." A pause. "Actually, put it on his tab."
"He doesn't have a tab, Homer."
"Then start one!"
Leo took the stool one over from Homer instead of right next to him and turned to the bartender.
"Whiskey, neat. And whatever Homer's drinking, on me."
Homer made a small awed noise into his beer. "Moe, I love this guy."
Moe poured Leo a generous double and slid it across, then refilled Homer's pint with the careful efficiency. The first sip was cheap and rough but Leo had been drinking cheap whiskey since he was nineteen and he didn't blink. He set the glass down and let the room develop around him.
Homer took a long pull of his refilled pint and settled back in like a man returning to a meeting he'd briefly stepped out of. He turned half away from Leo, planted both elbows on the bar, and addressed the room at large.
"Anyway. Like I was sayin'."
'Here we go,' Leo took another sip.
"Marge has been weird this weekend, fellas. Real weird. Saturday she was fine. She made a roast and everything. But Sunday… she just sat on the couch and stared at the wall."
Carl looked up from the booth. "Sounds like she's stressed about somethin', Homer."
"And Monday — Monday — Bart asks her, real polite too, for a juice box. And she snapped at him like he asked for one a' them organ things, what're they called… kidneys. She snapped at the boy like he asked for a kidney!"
Lenny winced. "Geez."
"So yesterday mornin' I sat her down. I said, Marge, honey, what's goin' on, talk to me. I'm — " he gestured grandly with the pint, sloshing some, " — the HUSBAND. I'm here for ya. I was so serious I even put down the remote."
Lenny spoke quietly into his beer. "What did she say?"
"She didn't say anything."
"…Oh."
"But last night when I get home from the plant… she's hummin' in the kitchen. Hummin'. And she made me a pork chop. With the breadin'. And she didn't even ask what I did to deserve it. She just made it."
"Maybe she got a good night's sleep, Homer," Carl offered.
"No, no, you're missin' it. I FIXED her. I sat her down, somethin' clicked, and now I'm a hero. And today… today, for lunch… she packed me a sandwich. Not just a sandwich. A real one. With the good ham, the expensive kind we save for company. And there was a little napkin in the bag with a smiley face on it. Best day of my life."
Leo, two stools removed from the conversation now, kept his eyes on his whiskey and his face perfectly still, and raised his glass slightly. 'Cheers, Homer.'
Homer was on a roll, gesturing now to Moe with the pint. "I'm tellin' ya, fellas, the trick to women is just bein' available. Just be there. They feel it. They sense it. Like dogs."
"Homer," Lenny said, "women are not like dogs."
"I know, I know, but the principle — "
Moe slid a cold Duff across the bar in front of Leo without being asked.
"Ya gotta have a Duff if you're at Moe's. House rule."
Leo accepted it, took a long chug, and immediately set the glass back down with a face. It was watery, metallic, and tasted like beer that had given up halfway through being made. Moe laughed at him with an unguarded delight that immediately raised Leo's opinion of the man.
"Yeah, you get used to it. Or you don't. Either way it's two bucks."
Leo took another, smaller sip and decided he was just going to power through it.
…
Down the bar Homer was still going.
"I'm tellin' ya, the trick to women is — "
Carl cut him off without raising his voice. "Homer, you don't know the trick to women."
Homer considered this for a beat. "…Carl, that's fair."
Carl shook his head. "I been with my woman for years. You wanna know the trick? The trick is don't ask questions. She got somewhere to be on a Thursday night, that's her business. She got information about who's gettin' promoted at the plant before anyone else does, you don't ask how she knows. You just say thank you and pour her a glass of wine."
Lenny squinted at him. "Carl, is your wife sleepin' with somebody at the plant?"
Carl took a long evenly paced sip of his beer. "Lenny, that is exactly the kind of question I'm tellin' you not to ask."
Lenny thought deeply about what he said, then leaned back in the booth.
"Tell ya what, though. Women are a mystery. I been goin' out with this paralegal for two months now and I still got no idea if she likes me."
"She likes you, Lenny," Carl said.
"You don't know that."
"I been to dinner with you both, Lenny. She likes you."
Lenny shook his head, mournful. "That's the thing. They make you guess. They never just tell you. Not like my first wife. My first wife, she — "
"Lenny," Carl said gently.
"She was a beauty queen, Carl. Miss… Miss something. Miss Springfield, maybe."
"Lenny, you made her up."
Lenny's face went sad. "Yeah. Yeah, I did."
A respectful silence held.
Then Lenny brightened. "Doreen was real, though. Remember Doreen? She was real."
Moe sourly polished his glass. "Yeah, I remember Doreen. Cheated on you with the entire town, Lenny. Cheated on you with Disco Stu. Cheated on you with the mailman. Cheated on you with that guy who sells pretzels outside the stadium."
"She had a lot of friends," Lenny said.
"She did NOT have a lot of friends, Lenny, those were not her friends. I'll tell you what's wild though… she didn't cheat on you with me. I bought her dinner at the Italian place. I bought her flowers. I bought her one of them gift baskets with the little pears. She wouldn't even kiss me on the cheek. The one guy in Springfield she was loyal to."
Lenny took a long, mournful pull of his beer. "That's somethin', I guess."
The heavy guy two stools down from Leo, who Leo had assumed was unconscious, raised his head off the bar.
"Chloe was real."
Everyone turned.
"Aw, Barney," Carl said softly.
The bearded man, Barney, then, had his cheek pressed flat to the wood of the bar and was staring at nothing. His voice came out gravelly and far away.
"Chloe Talbot. We were gonna get married. Seventeen years old. She was the smartest girl in our class. She wrote for the school paper. Then she — " he made a vague upward motion with one hand, " — left. For success."
"She's a famous reporter now, Barn," Homer said.
"I saw her on the news last month."
"I know, buddy."
"She did a piece about a flood."
"I know."
Barney put his head back down on the bar.
Leo, who was many sips into the Duff found himself saying, "In my experience, when they go quiet is when you should worry. The talking is fine. The not talking is the problem."
All four of them turned and looked at him for a second, like the new guy at the bar had just said something unexpectedly true.
"…Yeah," Homer said slowly. "Yeah, that's right."
"That's a good one," Carl said. "Write that one down, Lenny."
"I don't have a pen."
From his booth across the room, Apu spoke quietly without looking up.
"They are quiet when they have already decided."
The bar went still for a half-second.
Homer turned all the way around on his stool and squinted across the room with something that looked, on Homer, almost like real concern.
"Apu, buddy, you alright over there?"
Apu still did not look up. "I am completely fine, Homer. Thank you for asking."
Homer watched him for another second, then turned back to the bar with the deflated air of a man who knew his friend was not completely fine but didn't have the tools to do anything about it.
"He's not alright," Homer said quietly, mostly to his beer.
"No, he's not," Lenny said, just as quiet.
They left it there.
Moe, who had been polishing the same glass through the entire exchange, finally spoke up to break the silence.
"Yeah, well. Relationships."
Lenny sensed the opening. "Hey, Moe. What ever happened with Renee, anyway? You ever hear from her?"
Moe froze with the glass in his hand. "Aw, geez, Lenny, why'd you have to bring up Renee."
"He brought up Renee 'cause we wanna hear the story, Moe," Carl said. "Tell the new guy."
Moe sighed. He set the glass down. He turned to Leo.
"Y'know," he said, "I had a girlfriend once. A real one. Renee. Sold flowers down on the corner. Pretty as anything. I never did figure out what she saw in me."
"Pity, Moe," Lenny said into his beer. "The word is pity."
Leo had to bite back a laugh.
Moe ignored him.
"We had a good run, me and Renee. Couple of years. Coulda been the one, you know? Then this guy — " he jerked his chin down the bar at Homer, " — this guy gets himself thrown in jail for stealin' my own car, which I asked him to steal so the insurance would pay out, which is… y'know what, never mind the details."
"It was a good plan, Moe," Homer said mournfully into his beer.
Moe whipped around. "It was NOT a good plan, Homer. Anyway." He turned back to Leo. "So Homer's in jail and I got the insurance money in my hand, and Renee, see, Renee always wanted to go to Hawaii. So I had to make a choice. Bail Homer out, or take my girl to Hawaii."
Leo took another sip. "Which did you pick?"
The pause was long. Moe polished the same glass for several more seconds than he needed to.
"…Hawaii."
'Hmmm… Hard to say what I would've picked.' Leo thought about it.
"Worst three days of his life, Leo," Carl said quietly.
Moe nodded without looking up. "She found out. Renee did. Found out I was schemin' my way around bailin' my best friend. Asked for her keys back, walked right out the door of this tavern, and that was that." He wiped his eye with the back of his wrist in a motion he'd clearly performed many times. "I can still smell her perfume sometimes. Lilacs. Y'know?"
Homer leaned over toward Leo helpfully. "He cries about it like once a month."
"I do not cry, Homer," Moe snapped.
Leo took a long pull of his Duff.
…
Moe set a Flaming Moe in front of him without being asked. Cough-syrup-purple, on actual fire across the surface. He blew out the flame and drank it.
It tasted like cherry medicine and copper pennies and somehow, against all reason, it was delicious, and the room got pleasantly looser around the edges by the time he set the glass down empty.
Moe leaned both elbows on the bar in front of him.
"But here's the thing. Here's the thing, Leo. I got someone new. I'm seein' someone new."
From the corner, Lenny said pleased, "Tell him about Maya, Moe."
Moe glanced over his shoulder at Lenny, slightly embarrassed. "I'm gettin' to Maya." He turned back to Leo. "Her name's Maya. Met her on the internet. Real beauty. Smart. Funny."
"Tell him about meeting her, Moe," Carl prompted gently.
Moe rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, alright. So we been chattin' online for a while, and she sends me a picture of herself standin' next to the Statue of Liberty, lookin' tall as anything. Beautiful woman. So we set up to meet at the bar. The day comes. I'm cleanin' the place. I'm lookin' out the window. I don't see her anywhere. I'm thinkin', great, I been stood up, classic Szyslak luck, story of my life. And then — " he paused, picked his words carefully, slowed down, " — and then I look down. I just didn't see her. Cause Maya is a little person."
"He said it right that time," Lenny said.
"Yeah, I been workin' on it. So I open the door, and there she is, three feet tall, smilin' up at me. The picture had been at Legoland. She'd been posed next to a tiny statue. I'd been — y'know — fooled by perspective."
Leo leaned in. "And then?"
Moe spread his hands. "And then I went and dated her anyway. 'Cause she's beautiful, alright? She's smart. She laughs at my jokes… and look, my jokes are not for everyone, I'll admit, my jokes are an acquired taste — "
"You once told a joke and a guy left the bar and didn't come back," Homer said into his beer.
"That guy had stuff goin' on at home, Homer, it wasn't about the joke."
"Maya laughs at his jokes though," Carl said. "We met her. It's a real laugh."
Moe got a little shy at that. He looked down at the bar and his voice dropped half a register.
"Yeah. She does. We been goin' out a few weeks. Nice Italian place across town. She's — " he trailed off, and then, almost defensive, started up again, " — and look, I'm tryin' to do it right, alright? I keep wantin' to make jokes, I keep havin' to bite my tongue, 'cause she don't like the jokes about — about her bein' — "
"Short, Moe," Carl said gently.
"Short, yeah, thank you, Carl." He sighed. "I gotta stop makin' the jokes. Lenny here keeps tellin' me I'm gonna ruin it."
"You're gonna ruin it, Moe," Lenny said evenly.
Moe got defensive. "I'm not gonna ruin it!"
"You're gonna ruin it."
Leo, surprising himself, leaned forward and pointed at Moe with the rim of his glass.
"Don't screw it up, Moe."
Moe nodded, very seriously, and held up two fingers like a Boy Scout. "I won't. I swear. I learned my lesson with Renee. This time I'm doin' it right."
Leo made sure to remember all the names of the women being mentioned.
…
After that, things slipped.
Several more drinks. At one point, Moe handed him another Duff and Leo accepted it without thinking anymore, and by halfway through that one Homer had started telling the story of the time he got locked inside an industrial dishwasher at the nuclear plant for six hours, which was not a story Leo would have laughed at sober but which now, with four drinks and a Flaming Moe in him, was the funniest thing he'd heard in months. He laughed with his head back.
Lenny tried to teach him a bar trick involving a cocktail napkin and three peanuts and Leo could not do it, kept trying, the peanuts kept falling. "You gotta visualize it, you gotta see the napkin, the napkin is the future," Lenny insisted, and Carl said he was drunk, and Lenny said that's why it was gonna work.
Apu had not moved from his booth all night. Moe quietly poured him another beer, walked it over, and set it down without saying anything, and Apu nodded once, slowly, like a man receiving last rites.
Leo made sure not to forget to snap a pick of Apu collapsed in the booth. He hoped his drunk self didn't turn the photo completely blurry.
Moe poured Leo something else. Leo didn't ask what it was, didn't care, just drank it… and by the time Leo bought a round for the whole tavern Moe almost cried for the second time that night.
The conversation drifted into a debate about whether the moon was a planet. Homer's position was that yes, obviously, it had its own gravity, he had been there. Lenny pointed out that Homer had not been to the moon. Homer said, "How would you know?" and Lenny had to think about that. Carl tried to introduce the word "satellite" and was shouted down.
Leo sat with his elbow on the bar and a half-empty drink in his hand and thought, with clear-eyed drunken honesty, 'I think this might actually be the most fun I've had since I moved to this town.'
He was just a guy at a bar.
…
Eventually he stood up and had to grab the bar to keep from sitting back down. The world was dizzy.
Moe leaned across to him with sudden seriousness. "Hey. Leo. You're alright, you know that? You're alright."
Leo grinned at him. "Thanks, you're not that bad yourself."
Homer slapped Leo on the back hard enough that he had to grab the bar a second time. Lenny told him he was a great guy. Carl raised a glass. Barney, head still down on the bar, raised one hand in a slow wave without looking up.
Apu, in his booth, looked up briefly for the first time all evening and gave Leo a small, mournful nod that Leo would remember later as the only thing Apu had done all night.
Then Leo was through the door and out into the cool night air, and the difference between the inside of Moe's and the outside of Moe's hit him hard enough that he had to stand on the sidewalk for a moment with one hand on the brick. The streetlight above him buzzed and flickered.
He hadn't driven, but now he wished he did. Stumbling with every step, his house seemed like an eternity away. He peeled himself off the wall and started across the street toward the far sidewalk, fishing in his jacket pocket for his keys in hope his car would suddenly teleport here.
He was maybe six steps off the curb, when he saw a poster of a woman on a nearby wall. He looked up and murmured something, standing still for a moment, but then… something made him turn his head.
Headlights came up on his left.
Sudden. Very bright. Much closer than they should have been.
There was no time at all between seeing them and the sound, which was not a sound he would later be able to describe.
'Oh, fuck.'
*BOOOOM*
Black.
…
…
…
[A/N]: THE END