Jennifer's Eggnog by Jake Malden Page B

just have a whole bunch
of horny ancestors on your Mom’s side of the family.” Lawrence was grinning,
but some stronger emotion was at work beneath his amusement.
    “Have you met my Mom?” Jennifer laughed. “Seriously
though … When my Grandma told me, there was something odd about her.”
    “Odd?” It showed in Kimmie’s eyes – the girl was possessed by a
need to know more.
    “Yeah,” Jennifer said. “It wasn’t long before she passed away,
God rest her. I was with her and she told me she’d made eggnog from the recipe
once – when she was a girl – and that she’d shared it with some friends. Said
it was like no other experience she’d had in her life.”
    “Your Grandma was pretty confused towards the end of her
life,” Trent reminded her.
    “I know, but not when she told me.” Jennifer could recall the
moment like it was sealed in amber. Her grandmother reaching out and taking her
hand, eyes glowing with a lucidity that had not been there for years. It was
amazing, like nothing else I’ve ever known. A girl should try it once,
Jennifer. It’ll open her eyes. But … But she needs to be careful. There’s a
price to be paid. Maybe it’s worth it though … No. No, don’t listen to me, my
dear. It’s just an old woman rambling. Forget I told you this. Forget I said a
word.
    Jennifer had not forgotten – how could she? Her pious Grandma’s
hand clamping to her wrist, the fire of memory in the elderly woman’s eyes...
She wondered if her late grandfather had even suspected that latent passion.
    “After Grandma passed,” she told her friends, the levity having
departed from her voice, “I was helping Mom go through her things. She had a
whole attic full of stuff. And there in this ancient recipe book I found it.
All the ingredients listed like she’d described them to me. The writing was
almost faded, but I wrote the whole thing out and saved it.”
    “So what’s the big difference?” Lawrence stroked Kimmie’s bare
shoulder, clearly happy that his girl had discarded her sweater as well.
    “Well it’s got all the usual things in it – bourbon, brandy,
cream – plus a few extra.”
    “You must have noticed the flavor,” Trent said to the others,
arm coiling around his girlfriend’s waist. “Tell them what’s in it, Jenny. Get
a load of this, guys.”
    “Okay, well …” She enjoyed listing them off. “There’s ginseng,
catuaba, sarsaparilla, horny goat weed …”
    “Horny what?” Kimmie let out a burst of laughter, Lawrence
grappling her close as she rocked with mirth.
    “ Goat weed . But …” Jennifer adopted her hokey
ghost-story tone once more. “It’s not just what’s in it. You got to stir it a
special way while you make it – so many times clockwise, then counter-clockwise
– and you got to incant.”
    “Incant?” This time it was Lawrence with the question, his
voice incredulous.
    “Yes, it says so in the recipe. It even supplies the words. They
were… They were… What were they? Luxuriosus per se secretum . Or
something. I didn’t even know if I was saying it right.”
    Kimmie stared in awe and no little concern at her glass’s
contents. “You mean … you did all that stuff while you made it?”
    “That’s my girl,” Trent said, stroking Jennifer’s thigh through
her leggings. “No half-measures. I was there.”
    Yes – and you fucked me afterwards on my parents’ bed, you
bad boy. Like the fumes alone had infected you…
    “Alice Lincoln would go absolutely crazy if she knew you’d done
that,” Kimmie said, summoning up the spirit of the chief elder’s wife. “She’d
say you should leave the church.”
    “Alice Lincoln thinks Harry Potter is Satanic,” Jennifer
reminded her. “Kim, relax. It’s a piece of family folklore, that’s all. Which
is kind of a good thing, as I’ve made bottles of the stuff – the kitchen’s full
of it.” She giggled at the look on Kimmie’s face at her cheeky flourish. “Chill
out, it’s a