The Wonder Bread Summer by Jessica Anya Blau Page A

Roger woke up. He lifted his pointer in the air like a walrus lifting his nose, and trumpeted. Allie lifted her chin and trumpet-squealed with him.
    Kathy and Bud stared at Allie as if she’d just insulted Roger. “Will you please stop that,” Kathy said. Roger trumpeted more and more, panting with a smile between his efforts.
    “Fine,” Allie said, and then she turned to Bud. “Why wouldn’t you want your kid in Roger’s movies? I love Roger’s movies! Roger makes the best movies in the whole wide American world!” After trumpeting with Roger, feeding him his dinner and beer, and wiping up his mustache numerous times, Allie was feeling a protective affection for him.
    “You’ve seen Roger’s movies?” Bud was grinning so big Allie could see his fillings.
    “Maybe!” Allie said. “Name one.”
    “ The Summer of Naked Sin Parties ! The Year of Licking Dangerously ! Star Whores !” Bud laughed, lifting his mug as if he were toasting each title.
    “You’re kidding, right?” Kathy asked. She was wearing her nervous line-grin again.
    “No, I’m not kidding!” Bud almost looked offended. “Roger makes porno movies.”
    Allie burst out laughing. “Seriously?!”
    Roger banged the pointer multiple times on YES, YES, YES, YES. Then he and Allie threw their heads back and trumpeted once together.
    “That’s disgusting,” Kathy said. She was leaning away from Bud, her eyes darting around but never landing on Allie. Allie felt a drunken, shameful joy in seeing Kathy’s straight and narrow ideals challenged by the upstanding lawyer boyfriend who they all now knew was defending a porno movie producer in a child porn case. Surely this was worse than smoking pot twice!
    “It’s not disgusting!” Bud said. “Those girls make a lot of money! And Roger treats them well!” They all looked at Roger. He tapped on the YES again. Kathy turned her head toward the wall. The waiter approached with the dessert menu.
    “I’ll order for all of us,” Bud said.
    “I don’t want dessert.” Kathy’s mouth appeared to be made from cardboard.
    “Well then three of those fried ice cream thing-a-ma-jigs,” Bud said to the waiter.
    “I’ll share mine with you,” Allie said to Kathy, and she reached her hand out across the table as if to tell her that even if she was a bitch, Allie was forever grateful for the friendship they’d had and was still on her side. Kathy leaned away from the extended hand.
    “And another pitcher of beer!” Bud said, and Roger squealed again.
    A llie was finding it difficult to wipe the fried tortilla with ice cream off Roger’s face. She wasn’t sure if he was shifting out of reach, or her hand was missing the target. It was like playing darts with a moving board.
    “How do you drive?” Allie asked.
    Roger tapped out D-R-I-V-.
    “You have a driver?” Allie asked.
    “Oh, Roger’s driver!” Bud said. He and Kathy had been tensely whispering to each other. “He said he’d be here with the van at eleven.”
    “It’s eleven ten.” Kathy scowled at her gold watch.
    “I love your watch,” Allie said.
    “You’ve seen it before,” Kathy said. “I got it for graduation.”
    “I know,” Allie said. She was just trying to warm things up between them. And she really did love that watch, although it forced her to recall how painful it had been to have dinner at the Sims Surf and Turf with Kathy’s parents after graduation while Allie’s father worked at the restaurant and her mother was out of the country. Since there had been no one to watch her get the diploma, Allie had skipped the ceremony, but Kathy had begged her to go to the dinner. After Kathy had opened the box with the watch, her mother handed Allie a wrapped present. It was a book about how to survive your first year of college. That weekend, Allie read the book straight through and then, later, found that college was nothing like the book anticipated it would be and none of the advice seemed pertinent. Certainly