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“Ryan!” she whisper-yells as she tosses one of her rolls over the first palm tree by the front door. “What are you waiting for? An invitation?”
Shit. I cannot believe I’m doing this. Am I really going to do this?
Carly giggles softly, her face damn near lighting up the whole street with her glee. She’s fucking ridiculous and possibly insane, but she’s also so adorable, I can’t help but want to be near her. And near her right now means over there, on a little old lady’s lawn, spreading toilet paper over every surface I come in contact with.
Despite resistance from every rational cell inside my body, I follow her lead, running across the grass with one arm holding the nine remaining rolls and the other releasing the white paper damage to Nan’s lawn with every step I take.
By the time I reach Carly, she’s moved on to the second palm tree, and I busy myself with wrapping the paper around the bushes.
We get through three more rolls, and the wild woman instigator moves to the middle of the yard while I finish up the column on the porch.
When I hear her cackling, I look over my shoulder to find that she’s managed to create a giant outline of a penis.
Oh, sweet mother of mercy, it’s at least ten feet long.
I can’t not laugh, and I’ve almost completely forgotten about the fact that what we’re doing is definitely punishable by law, but when the familiar sounds of a golf cart engine vrooming off in the distance catch my ears, my heart starts pounding in my chest like a motherfucker.
“Shit! Carly!” I shout as quietly as humanly possible.
But she’s too busy adding balls to her masterpiece to actually hear me.
“Carly!” I say again to no avail, and when I spot the faint sight of two tiny headlights in the distance, I drop the rest of the toilet paper and sprint to the middle of the lawn.
“We have to go!” I tell her, and she turns to look at me with a tilt of her head.
“What? I’m not done.”
“We have to go!” I repeat, but this time, I don’t wait for her reaction. I suspect we’re about ten seconds away from a Wild West-style showdown with Sheriff Betty Matthews and her deputy, Nan. I squat down, toss Carly’s body over my shoulder like a fucking fireman for the second time tonight, and make a mad dash across the street before whoever is coming’s lights reach our section of the road.
“What the hell, Ryan? You’ve got to stop doing this. We’re not in an episode of Chicago Fire, for God’s sake!”
“Shh!” I shush her, still running. “Be quiet. I think that’s Nan and Betty heading up the street, and I’m not yet prepared to dive in front of any bullets, intended for a woman as beautiful as you or not.”
Once I know we’re safely behind two giant evergreen trees of some kind in the yard across the street, I put Carly to her feet again, and we both peek out from behind the leafy blockade like a pair of Peeping Toms.
“Holy shit!” she exclaims into my ear, her mouth moving a mile a minute and her breaths coming out in quick, fatigued pants. “I think you were right! That’s them!”
Not even ten seconds later, Betty’s golf cart whips into Nan’s driveway, her friend’s scooter mounted to a lift on the back. The instant the headlights land on the house, highlighting the new décor, she slams on the brakes and skids to a stop, rocking the whole rig so hard, Nan has to reach up and grab the roof to keep from sliding off the seat onto the pavement.
“Oh fuck,” I mutter and try to slow my heart rate down by steadying my breaths like my CrossFit trainer in New York taught me. “Shit is about to go down.”
“What the heck is this?” Betty shouts and hops out of her seat. “Nan! What did you do?”
“What did I do?” Nan questions, still sitting in the cart. “You really think I would do something like this to my own yard?”
“Tomorrow is trash day! You know that’s when I make the rounds! How are you going to get this cleaned up before then? You’re almost making it impossible for me not to give you a citation!”
“A citation?!” Nan screeches and attempts to jumps out of the cart. She doesn’t make it, though, her need for her always-present red scooter obviously legitimate as she just sort of bounces on the seat. “But I’m not the one who did this!”
Betty huffs and walks over to the lawn to consider whether or not she wants to help her friend get off her golf cart and onto her own method of mobility, but when she gets a gander at Carly’s art installation in the center, she tosses both hands up in the air. “This is a wanker, Nan!”
