Condoms for Mary

The words didn’t make sense, how could it be the best and the worst of times at the same time.

“Maybe” he thought “it’s the heat.”

He reread the sentence, the first in a long book. It still seemed crazy,

“Maybe the next will make some sense?”

This thought was interrupted by the arrival of Mary in her battered ute. Widowed these three years she was still a healthy, fine figure of a woman. Strange that she hadn’t remarried. For some reason the dog raised his head, thumped his tail twice, groaned once and collapsed.

“You got condoms?” she asked.

Tom thought for a moment.

“Bottom right hand drawer of the desk.”

He had laid in some when those uni kids had been around. Sold most. He had assumed the remaining two would not be sold.

Mary strode into the store, opened and closed the drawer, filled in the account book and was gone in a whirl of dust. Tom wondered who Mary had hooked up with, then forgot her because the words on the page now reported a coffin chasing a kid down the road.

“Definitely the heat.” He muttered.

Two days later, he had found a mammoth drinking session and was just rereading it when Mary’s ute arrived in a cloud of dust. She got out, clutching a beer cooler. Tom eyed the cooler with some interest.

Just then a fancy, new ute arrived and a uni type character got out.

Mary opened the cooler and extracted two filled condoms. The uni character took them reverently and held them up against the light.

“Still alive and healthy. Clever to store those tadpoles in condoms. Thanx.”

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