The late afternoon sun broiled the self-storage units' flat rooftops. A mirage effect created the illusion of a cool lake floating atop wide, low block buildings. Bucky leaned back until his plastic deck chair quivered on the blacktop.
"Why do they call it late?" Bucky said to Baby and no one in particular. "It's here at the same time every day, more or less."
Baby's hair permanently screened her right eye like a curtain of fine blonde steel wool.
"You are the mighty oak that shades my babbling brook, King Dynamite," she said with a yellowish smile. "I dream constantly of your stout trunk and overspreading limbs."
Leonard "Bucky" Sawtooth was not handsome, unless he stood in a crowd of ugly men. Bucky did not seem to be particularly intelligent, unless he was packed into a room full of idiots. He was tolerated and mostly adored by his common-law wife, Doreen Shaker. Bucky called her "Baby."
"We are the cream of the trailer park," Bucky said to Baby and no one in particular. "The top of the food chain."
"Folks such as us, we eat what we want," he continued. "Few if any creatures can eat us in return, what with our mastery of weapons and metaphors and all."
"You got a mind like a fine stainless steel colander, my Hunky Man-Tree," Baby responded. "The big thoughts stay put."
Bucky considered her words. He tugged on the stringy, salt-and-pepper moss that adorned his weak chin.
As far as Bucky was concerned, life itself was a rich and bountiful banquet served buffet-style.
Three months at a job was the maximum an employer could expect from Bucky Sawtooth. Although he never stayed long, Bucky felt any occupation worth pursuing was one that also deserved respect on the way out.
"I choose to end my tenure, right now, here, today," Bucky would declare without warning -- sometimes during the mellow minutes of a day's first coffee -- and walk away, his still-warm I.D. badge and mug of Maxwell House cooling on the shelf next to the time clock.
Sometimes it went other ways. Most recently, Bucky misunderstood a notice on the bulletin board in the employee lounge. That was an exciting Friday: the SWAT team and a TV news crew showed up and Bucky's employment was terminated.
"Why announce a concealed carry-in if you're going to fire anyone what brings a piece to work?" Bucky asked a reporter on the way outside. "That's not a rhetorical question; I'm talking about the right to bear arms and defend my five-layer taco salad."
Having reached the apex of underachievement, Bucky accepted a job as the live-in manager of a Stor-Yor-Stuf on Dixie Highway right where the gas stations and fast food joints end and the long gravel driveways begin. Moving from the suburbs to the sticks wasn't easy but Bucky and Baby took the quarter-mile migration in stride.
"I am like a nomadic camel jockey of the faraway desert badlands," Bucky said to Baby and no one in particular. "It is my destiny to roam."
"If you were a pack of Camels, Love Widget," Baby cooed, "I'd smoke you down to the butt."
The times Baby had doubted her love for Bucky was a number less than zero.
Bucky balanced a glass of iced tea on the sloping arm of his chair. Condensation flowed like the brief rivers that chase summer rain.
"I'll give you exactly one hour to quit talking like that," he told Baby. "Keep it up if you don't believe I'm serious, or are perhaps unsure."
"Unit 76, right now," Baby hissed. "He stopped paying and I just cut the lock this morning."
They shut the gate and hung the "Closed" sign on the office window. The empty 7 x 10 was one row away. Baby's bare feet were the same color as the freshly swept concrete floor. Her toe ring gleamed in the fading sunlight.
"I'm going to bone you, and not like a chicken," Bucky told her, and paused. "Likewise, you understand I am not a chicken boning you -- you will be the chicken what's boned. Except your actual bones will not be removed."
He paused again. "I was using words to paint a colorful, erotic picture."
"Honey Bottle, you go ahead and say or do anything to me your heart desires," Baby murmured. "I'll just lie here quietly until you're finished or one of us falls asleep."
"I love you so much."
"I love you bunches."
Baby smelled like Ivory soap, Altoids, and microwave burritos. Her fingers were stained from nicotine and Orange Crush.
"Your stretch marks are a road map what leads me to my heart's desire," Bucky rasped into Baby's navel. "I enjoy all of your points of interest."
"Please hurry-- and don't stop to ask for directions," Baby replied. "You know every inch of my horny terrain, you Red Hot Love Scavenger."
"Follow me," Bucky whispered to Baby and no one in particular, as if in prayer. "Follow me."
