Pretenders (Firsts and Forever 3)

I let myself into the yard through the waist-high wrought iron gate, and Cole grinned at me and said, “You’re right on time.”

There were several folding chairs leaning against the house, so I grabbed one and took a seat right next to him. Cole’s caramel-brown curls were tied back with a red bandana, and he and his husband were both dressed in shorts and Hawaiian shirts, which made me say, “You should have told me the dress code was beachy casual when I called and invited myself over.”

“The theme just sort of developed over the last hour,” River explained, as he leaned forward and smiled at me around his husband. “It started with Nana wanting pina coladas and feeling we should dress accordingly. But then she went and changed into what she calls her combat uniform, so I guess it’s more of an Apocalypse Now theme at this point.”

“Makes perfect sense,” I said, as I waved to Darwin. The young, slender brunet was sitting at the far end of the line-up with a digital camera at the ready, and I called, “Where’s your honey?”

“Josh is leading the air assault,” Darwin explained. “He’ll join us afterwards.”

As Cole handed me his cocktail glass, I whispered, “Has Nana finally cracked and decided to nuke her neighbor?”

His dark eyes sparkled with mischief as he said, “You’ll see.”

I took a drink from his glass before handing it back to him. A few moments later, I became aware of a low, humming sound. It grew louder and louder, and Darwin grinned, jumped to his feet, and started filming.

Nana leapt up too and yelled, “Shit, I almost forgot the soundtrack!” Then she pushed the button on a huge, old school boombox, and Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries” began to blast from the speakers. I shaded my eyes, then looked up at a dark cloud that appeared to be heading our way.

Apparently the music alerted Humpington, who ran into his front yard and looked around. He was dressed in a three-piece suit and had a napkin tucked into his shirt collar, which told us we’d interrupted his lunch. As soon as he spotted Nana and her crew, he began to turn red in the face. He yelled, “Turn off that racket, Dombruso! You know I’ll call the cops and—what the hell is that?”

Suddenly, the sky was filled with drones. Maybe thirty quad-copters were flying in an approximate grid pattern. The underside of each of them was outfitted with a net containing some type of cargo, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

The drones hovered over Humpington’s yard, and then they began releasing the clamps holding the back end of the nets. As their payload began to rain down, I sat up straighter and exclaimed, “Are those—oh my god, they are!”

We cheered and laughed delightedly as several hundred plastic dicks fell from the sky. Some were brown, some pink, and they clearly weighed next to nothing, since they bounced off everything with just a little plink, kind of like an empty Solo cup hitting the ground. That meant it was pretty melodramatic when Humpington shrieked and shielded himself by pulling his suit jacket up over his head.

“That man is terrified of dicks,” Nana yelled over the music. “I don’t even know how he takes a piss. Maybe he uses a pair of salad tongs or something.”

The neighbor rushed back and forth in a panic before running to grab his garden hose from the side of the house. Apparently the hose got caught on something, because he was abruptly pulled up short as he ran back into his yard. He fell on his ass but was back up in an instant, pulling and tugging on the hose.

Then he tried to spray the drones, but the water was off, so he ran back to the side of the house to turn it on. By the time he returned, the drones had all dropped their payload and taken off in the direction they’d come. He tried to spray them anyway, but all that did was soak him as the water fell back to earth.

Nana was chuckling and looked extremely satisfied as Humpington turned to her and yelled, “This isn’t over, Dombruso! I’ll get you for this!”

“You have no proof I did anything,” she shouted back. “That could have just been a drive-by dicking!” That made us laugh even harder.

As the neighbor gave up and stormed inside, I said, “I’m so glad I was here to witness that. Y’all need to tell me when shit like this is going down.”

“This happens about once a week,” River said with a big smile, as he tucked his shaggy, sun-streaked hair behind his ears. “Not the drones, specifically. They were new. Nana’s revenge tactics keep reaching new heights.”

As we headed inside, I asked the tiny senior, “How on earth did you pull that off, Nana?”