From Jenny to Mei Ch. 27

"Or cat scratching to be let out."

"With a fantastic rack. Never seen an Asian girl with tits like those."

"Did you enjoy hitting her like that?"

"Loved it. It feels good to do the right thing."

"I heard the echo off the building across the street."

"Me too," she said, then giggled a bit.

"You're one tough little girl, Miss Ma."

"When I gotta be." She moved into his lap, put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. "Wanna do me?" she offered, knowing he didn't.

"Blow me in the morning?"

"It's Mei's turn."

He shrugged. "Did you really have a cat?"

"Yep. It was a true story. Cats have special knowledge and they prefer to die alone."

"Witch knowledge?" he asked with an eyebrow cocked.

She looked at him quizzically.

"I heard you two talking."

"Cats have more... There is a reason they are always portrayed as familiars."

"And so you think its death was related to your grandmother's?"

"Of course. It's all related, Philip. Everything is related. That's the way the Universe works. The death of her cat was the push my mother needed."

"But you let the cat out before her mom died."

Ai sighed from fatigue and not frustration, but Philip misinterpreted it. "I mean, isn't that what you said?"

"The cat knew."

"That your mother's mom was going to die?"

"That it was her time, for God's reasons. To die that day was her destiny."

"And you believe that? That there is a god that organizes stuff like that?"

"How do you explain the two of us?" She didn't let him answer. "How many escorts did you call before you found me?"

"Um," while trying to remember he understood what she was getting at. "But what about chance?"

"How many?"

"A dozen or so."

"The belief in chance is belief in nothing. So would you rather believe in nothing or in God?"

"Chance."

She pulled back a bit and looked into his eyes so she would better understand his answer. "Why?" she asked. "I mean, with all the beauty in the world, the sunsets and flowers and beautiful babies, why do people resist God?"

"Guilt, I suppose. I don't want the guilt of disappointing a demanding God."

"Oh," she sighed and snuggled back onto his shoulder. "Rub my foot," she said, moving it for him to massage. "My God doesn't do the guilt thing. He's not interested in it. Does nothing for him."

"So you have a hybrid sort of belief?"

"I have faith in love and the universal mind. Guilt is ignorance revealed. It's more of a consequence than a symptom."

"You're one odd duck, Ai."

"God, I love duck," she blurted with excitement. "Can you cook duck?"

"Sure."

"Cook it for my dad. He'll love you like a son."

"So guilt is just the knowledge we've done something wrong?" he asked.

Her thoughts choked on the tautology and wasn't sure if she should answer and make him look stupid. Finally, ignoring his question, she said, "God cannot commit sin because the Universe is omniscient. Do you understand that sentence?"

"Not in the least."

"God is the universe, God is love, God cannot sin because he would know that the total pain in the universe would increase."

"So...?"

"Which is impossible." She raised to look at him, moving back a few inches. "So maybe I'm confusing you. The word 'God' and the word 'Universe' are the same for me and the word 'love' is too. So when I say I love you I'm saying I recognize the Universe's plan for me. Does that help?"

"No. I mean, I get God is love, I've heard that half my life, but God is universe is new."

"Not for a Catholic. God is omnipresent, you've heard that."

"So why do people sin?" he asked genuinely curious.

"Ignorance."

He let it sink in before asking, "And have you sinned?

She scoffed. "Do I appear omniscient to you?"

"Uh..." He wanted a moment to think.

"Philip?!"

"I don't know anyone like you."

"'s'cause you've never been in love before."

'Ouch!' he thought but he realized it wasn't a rebuke or a criticism. It was a fact, or if not yet accepted as fact, a truth that Ai believed, which was nearly the same thing.

"Right."

"So omnipresent and universal are, like, the same thing."

"Yes, but, God is not the fabric of space. Not, like a sentient, living field like some kind of wide-awake force. God is not like a super aware electromagnetism."

"Why not?"

Philip couldn't actually say why not and the longer he fought to form a clear, concise and hopefully witty way to say that's not the way things work, her idea's charm became more seductive.

She took his hesitation as an opportunity to buttress her explanation. "So take the Christian God's properties; eternal, immutable, omnipresent, infinite, all-powerful, and what do you get?"

Philip had never thought about it.

"Our three dimensions aren't enough," she said. "God is multi-dimensional, self-contained perfection. God is wisdom and grace, he's love. And so God is an active, aware, multi-dimensional universe, at least for me."

"Wow. But what about the 'created in his image' thing?" he asked.

"Yeah, but which image? What if our three dimensions are God's public facing dimensions? So in that way everything is made in God's image. I mean, no one can believe God has human form, that he lives in the clouds in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian print shirt. And anyway it's likeness, not image. Likeness means we are 'like God', not 'look like God'."

"Like God..." he asked but not as a question.

"Multi-dimensional."

"So, with a soul."

"Of course. What do you think an orgasm is if not your soul and my soul touching in the other dimension? The love dimension?"

"Then what is this we are doing?"

"This snuggling and talking in low whispers?"

"Yeah?"

She kissed his cheek, "This is us making love, dumbass."

He sighed and felt a queasy thrill as he contemplated yet another revelation into the mind that he was growing so fond of.

##########

Hector both loved and hated his mother. He needed her and he loathed how disappointing her made him feel. He lived with her and drove her to work six days a week in her old Ford Focus.

She was typical of the Hispanic Catholic women of her generation, attempting to pay penance for a youth spent in rebellion. And she felt it her due to share her misery in his failures by taking every opportunity to remind him of them. She belittled, cajoled, nagged and berated him with a dedication she felt was her duty. And when she had cooled and if he were contrite or sorrowful she would comfort him by enveloping him in her fatty body and kissing his forehead.

She was both mother and father to him, both angel and tormenter and he loved her with an unhealthy mix of worship and codependency.

"What can I do?" he asked her while watching her do the dishes and keeping his references to his lost prostitute vague.

"So, she hurt you?" she asked, knowing he was incapable of attracting a female any better than the trash that drifted around the neighborhood. "This one?" she said pointing to the bandage on his arm that covered the scabbing tattoo.

"I don't deserve her."

"Nonsense," she said. "You are my beautiful boy."

"I'm a loser. Can't get anything but skanks to even talk to me."

She resisted agreeing with him and wondered how to raise his spirits other than to lie, which he would see for what it was.

"Pray. Have you been saying your prayers, Hector?"

It was a tired lie he repeated, more in the hopes of avoiding the discussion again than to deceive her. He had no faith except for an malformed Darwinian notion that told him each success was accompanied by someone else's failure.

"What kind of girl?"

"A college girl, smart; too smart for me."

"If you let her see you as I see you she would notice." She didn't like to lie but what was a mother to do? "Maybe you could start taking classes again."

"Momma," he sighed.

"What? You don't think a little education would help? You think your life is going to amount to anything wasting time with those 'friends' of yours? That gang? You'll spend more time in prison than at work."

"Momma."

His grouse was a familiar sound to his mother. She was tempted to scold him again but took a different approach. "If you were in her class then maybe she would think more about you."

"She's not at community college, momma. And I ain't goin' to school."

"And what's the master plan then, Hector?" She pulled away from him and her tone grew less motherly. "You can't be a criminal for long before you get caught and then what happens to your mother?"

He had no answer but an angry glare.

"And if you learned a trade then you could get a good job and find some good girl."

She had no higher expectation for her son than this, that he might become an auto mechanic or a skilled construction laborer. All she wanted for him was honorable labor and a life peacefully lived.

"You don't understand."

"What does this life do for you, Hector? You play at the bad guy, the rough hombre, like a boy with a toy gun while real men work their days, provide for their families, clothe their children and earn the love of their wives." She threw the dish rag in the sink in disgust. "And here you moon for a girl with an education, a girl whose head will turn for a man that can add something to her life." She turned her angry glare at her son and with a cruel deliberation that ignored her earlier commitment to stay positive said, "You don't deserve a woman like that. What have you earned? What have you made of the life God has given you? What do you have but pride you have no right to have? You have no right to want what you are not willing to work for. And before you think about it too much, there is no way to steal a woman's love."

Hector had been listening. He pressed his head harder into the kitchen table with each acidic word. And with the fury that only the truth can inspire, he stood, kicked back the chair he had sat upon and stormed out of the apartment.

##########

Philip awoke as Ai stood to use the bathroom, but contented where he was he closed his eyes and waited for her return.

"Don't let me drink like that," she said as she pulled his hand to make him rise.

"It was destiny," he mumbled loud enough for her to hear. And when she slapped his ass to get even for the quip he chuckled and squeezed her waist.

"Go to bed," she said, "I'll get some water for your girlfriend."

He climbed in with Mei, admiring yet again her beauty by the dim glow of the Minnie Mouse nightlight. 'Those have got to be the most perfect tits in the hemisphere,' he thought as he gazed between her arms that framed soft cleavage. 'And the thing is if it were all she had it might be enough. If she had an ok face her tits would carry her along, but they aren't even her best feature.' His mind tried to decide the hierarchy of her physical charms. It wasn't easy. Beauty has a strange way of hiding when contemplated. He decided her face was most persuasive, then remembered what her tight little butt could do to him, and then thought of the color of her skin, and the taste and soft texture of her pussy lips.

Ai walked quietly to the opposite side of the bed, the side he was facing in his contemplation of Mei. She set down a glass of water on the nightstand, retreated and got into bed behind him, her cheek pressed to his, sharing his view of the sleeping Mei Chun.

"I won't let her out, you know. She can scratch and meow but I won't open the door no mater how much she begs for it."

He didn't answer.

"I won't let her leave. She's our lamb after all."

Philip rolled to his back and kissed Ai with as much 'thank you' sweetness as he could. "I love you," he said.

"Of course you do." She kissed his nose. "Now, either snuggle her or snuggle me."

He turned his back on Mei and fit Ai into the hollow of his chest and whispered a few words of love into her neck before they drifted off to sleep.

So many thanks to Dan_Kidall for his tireless work on polishing up this mess.