Page 21 of You've Got Hate Mail
“What?” I say on a sigh.
“Do you mean you saw hundreds of women naked when you were an EMT, or did you actually mean like, you’ve seen hundreds of naked women on internet porn?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t do internet porn.”
I drop my voice to a hiss. “I don’t do internet porn.”
“I wouldn’t judge you if you did. I just want to know if you’re one of the creepers playing Cricket’s video on repeat since you don’t need to pay a subscription fee to get free beaver.”
“Stop talking.”
She looks back inside the house again. “Donottell Cricket this, but someone took the video where she had her wardrobe malfunction and flashed her goodies on a livestream, fed it through AI to animate her vulva and labia and make them sing and dance to seventies’ disco songs, and started aCheeky BeaverGrippaBeav.com channel with it. I’m working on getting it taken down before she finds out, but it’s proving to be a bitch.”
I open my mouth.
Close it again.
Then take the rest of Mabel’s wine and down it.
Except it’s not wine, and the startling flavor of pomegranate juice makes me choke.
Mabel leaps up and pounds me on the back.
“Daddy?” Lav calls from inside through the open window. I hope we’ve been quiet enough in this discussion.
“Mabel told a bad joke,” I wheeze. “I’m okay.”
“We’re drawing walruses!” she calls back.
“Who’s drawing uteruses?” Pip’s distinct old-lady-who-used-to-smoke-a-pack-a-day voice drifts out the window too.
“Walruses, Aunt Pip.” Lav giggles, then holds up her stuffed walrus that my parents sent her as a random gift from their travels last year. “Like this one!”
“Oh. Walruses. They have uteruses too, you know.”
“Is she dressed now?” I mutter.
“She’s wearing her hot pink miniskirt and sunglasses. Otherwise, no.”
I clear my throat twice. “Lav, dinnertime.”
“I wanna stay with Ginny and Elizabeth and Aunt Pip,” Lavender whines.
It’s a small miracle that she’s not meowing.
I know I’ll miss it when she stops entirely, and I can roll with it most days, but today is not most days. “Okay, but if you do, I’m going to walk Fluffy by myself.”
“No!” my daughter shrieks, as expected, since she loves walking the cat.
Something rattles, then I hear a thump, and then?—
“No!” Ginny shrieks too.
“I got it!” a familiar-but-unfamiliar voice yells.
“Cricket,no!” Elizabeth cries.
