Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (33 page)

Before long, I’d passed through town and reached ‘Nuckeby’s Bar and Grill’, a quaint little English pub kind of place, the type you rarely see, even in England. I pulled into a small parking lot that was fairly well filled with cars, and stopped beside a Harley Davidson, wondering about the rider. Would he be wearing just a helmet? Chaps? Boots? Would he be naked on the bike, but have to wear clothes inside a place of business? Or vice versa?

What the hell were the rules in a place where wandering around in public with nothing on was rule number one?

I got out of the car, as did the others. A few people were coming down the street and heading toward the entrance of the restaurant— all sans garment. I was still shirtless, but now felt overdressed. Mindie came and stood near me, apparently uncomfortable enough to need the reassurance of closeness, if not actual physical contact. The pastor looked around nervously, as if expecting at any moment for Saint Peter to show up and toss him into Hell just for looking around. Morgan was smiling like a horny schoolboy—which, come to think of it, is pretty much Morgan in a nutshell—and Ms. Waboombas was naked.

Ms. Waboombas was naked?

Why should that surprise me?

The pastor gasped. Mindie gasped. Morgan smiled appreciatively and popped another coke.

“When in Rome,” Waboombas said, smiling and dropping her panties into the back of the Duesenberg.

“But we don’t know if it’s clothing optional,
inside
,” I said. “Are you
kidding?”
Mindie asked. “Look through the
window!
Everyone
in there
is stark,
raving
,
naked
!”

I’d just noticed that myself. You really couldn’t avoid it.

Nuckeby’s Bar and Grill was—well—I guess the
gentle
way to put it would be—a slightly
common
diner-style restaurant with basic fare, simple décor, and large, clear windows on all sides to show off all the naked people. It was the kind of place old folks visit to have their arteries hardened—the kind of ‘family’ restaurant parents with a minimum of two-dozen feral children frequent so someone else will have to clean up after them.

Through the glass, partially obscured by brightly painted specials and lunch deals of various organ meats, we could plainly see roomfuls of happy, naked folk joyously ordering, receiving, or dining upon extravagant portions of food that would never have been approved by the surgeon general except under the Bush 2 administration, and only then for purposes of torture. Lunchtime among the common, and the bare.

Despite this, I was eager to go in. Somewhere inside, someone
had
to know where to find Ms
.
Nuckeby. Or rather,
Wisper
, to be more specific in a place potentially filled with both Mister and Ms. Nuckebys. I felt tingly again, though quite nervous. My direction in life was becoming clearer, but in a hazy, foggy, uncertain kind of way.

“I don’t know,” I said, and turned to the others. “You want to wait out here while I go in?” I hoped they’d say ‘yes’. I wanted privacy to track down my nude model.

“Not me. I’m hungry,” said Ms. Waboombas, apparently this time actually meaning ‘for food’.

She strutted away from us toward the door wearing nothing but high heels, ragingly comfortable in her own skin. I looked at the others—who, thankfully, all rapidly shook their heads ‘no’—and I hurried to follow her lead.

The stripper and I arrived at the door together, and with some aplomb, she threw open the entrance and framed herself

conspicuously in its opening. She put one hand on her hip, leaned the other against the doorjamb and slowly looked around. Or, rather, slowly waited for everyone
else
to look around and see
her
.

No one did more than casually glance. They all went about their naked business. Ms. Waboombas became a bit agitated, strode forward, and—coughing loudly—did a slow pirouette near the cheesecake display.

No one even turned her way. It surprised us both.

Becoming annoyed, Waboombas cleared her throat, threw out her chest, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a brass band began to play.
Now
all eyes turned our way.

Still standing in the doorway, I turned to look back at the street and saw a local marching band of some kind, complete with nude, fuzzy hatted drum major and clothes-less baton twirlers, parading down the street and playing to…uh…beat the band. I supposed they were rehearsing for some nude-centric festival event later in the weekend, though it was possible they did this all the time just for fun.

I mean, again, who knew the rules?

The overall effect on Mindie, Morgan, and the pastor would have been the same if a sniper had opened fire on them: they all scampered about like cockroaches escaping Raid. Skittering here and there, desperately trying to find cover, they eventually gave up and ran over to where Ms. Waboombas and I stood in the open door of the restaurant. Frantic, they pushed past the stately stripper and I, into the diner, holding their ears as if—somehow—just
hearing
the music would seduce them, Pied Piper-like, into racing off a cliff so they’d fall to their deaths atop a pile of naked people.

Ms. Waboombas and I followed them up to the hostess station, and I moved to the front as everyone else stood to one side trembling—paralyzed with fear. A carved wooden sign nailed to the podium read: ‘No Shirt, No Pants, or No Service.’ I waited patiently for a moment, then noticed a bell on the hostess station podium and dinged it gently.

A pretty young girl (naked) talking to a cook (naked) near the counter began backing our way (naked) as she finished her conversation. He laughed at something she said that I couldn’t hear, most likely a joke about a minister, a stripper, a comic book fan, and a clothing executive lost in a nudist colony. As the hostess backed toward me, I managed to drag my eyes, as though wrestling with alligators, away from her shapely rear-end, and somehow note that she wore a cute little choker-bowtie, wrist cuffs, and an apron. Aaaand—that was pretty much it.

“How many?” she asked, turning to smile at me brightly.

Both our smiles fell like snow off a roof in springtime as we each realized whom the other was.

I was myself, and she was my Ms. Nuckeby.

“Ms. Nuckeby!”
said I.

I could feel Mindie’s body temperature rise to dangerous levels behind me.

“You
know
this woman?” she asked.

My mouth flapped uselessly.

Ms. Nuckeby glanced over at the others. She wore the sort of expression you’d find on someone staring at an oncoming train while trapped inside a gasoline tanker and tied atop high explosives, as someone carelessly attempts to light a cigar with a blowtorch.

“You don’t remember me?” Ms. Nuckeby asked Mindie, clearly stunned.

“
I
do not associate with
nudists
!” Mindie sneered, dismissively. “Why would I remember
you
?”

Ms. Nuckeby’s fear was bussed away, then quickly replaced by a heaping helping of anger, and a side order of disdain.

“No reason,” she said and turned to me. “Lovely woman,” she said, not meaning it. “Your fiancée?”

“I am,” Mindie announced.

“Excellent,” Ms. Nuckeby said, her eyes never leaving mine. “How wonderful for you both. How many?” she asked, clapping menus, her voice filling with courteous distance, as if she had never,
ever
rubbed her breasts against my back or squeezed my whatchamajigger, and I shouldn’t try to convince anyone otherwise, or else.

“Five,” I said. “But some of us are still dressed.” I nodded toward the sign.

“And we are
not
eating
here
,” Mindie snarled.

Our hostess turned and looked at her carefully, sizing her up. After a moment’s assessment, she scanned slowly over the rest of my little troupe, and eventually returned her furious attentions to me. She looked at me for so long that I furtively brushed my face to make sure there wasn’t something stuck there, sucking blood.

Abruptly, a smile popped back onto Ms. Nuckeby’s face, and she said, overly cheerily in some kind of bizarre, hick accent: “Yew folks’ve never bin to Nikkid Baw-dums buh-fore, have yew?”

“Yew kin tell?” I asked, smiling. I’d lost the war; I may as well enjoy the final battle.

“Well, I can see
some
of you are trying to fit in,” she said in her normal speaking voice, looking at Waboombas and Mindie. “But the rest…”

“I am
not
trying to fit in,” Mindie snarled, interrupting. “This is the
last
place
I’d
try to fit in.” She folded her arms and half-lidded her eyes in an attempt at superiority. “We had a clothing accident.
I
fell in a ditch.”

“I
pushed
you in a ditch,” Waboombas corrected.

“I
tripped
.”

“Because I kicked your pasty white ass, you tripped.”

“Really?” Ms. Nuckeby cut in, glaring at Mindie. “I can’t imagine
anyone
would
ever
want to kick
your
pasty white ass.” I’m not sure why she said she couldn’t imagine it. Her voice told us all, distinctly, that
she
was doing so—repeatedly—right this second.

“So, if you’re not here to
eat
, then why did you come to our lovely establishment?” Ms. Nuckeby asked me, rather pointedly. And was that a hopeful note in her voice?

Probably not.

“Um…well…” I began. “It’s difficult to explain. The simple answer is: we’re looking for a repair place. A Duesenberg specialty shop.”

“Duesenberg? Is that a car?”

“It is.”

“Foreign?”

“No, it’s American. Old, though. Built in 1934.”

“That is old.”

“Older than me.”

“Older than most people. What was that name again?” “Duesenberg. Sound familiar?”

“No. It’s just a funny word. I wanted to hear it again.” “
Duesenberg
.”

“That’s enough.”

“I’m done anyway,” I said. “My tongue isn’t what it was this morning.”

“Maybe because you were chewing on fire ants?”

“That’s a distinct possibility.”

“Distinct is a funny word,too,” she said. “It’s sorta got ‘stinked’ in it.”

“Sorta,” I replied. “Hadn’t realized that before. Any reason that’s occurred to you at this particular moment?”

“No. It just did. Sounds German.”

“Distinct?”

“No, the name of the car. I’m back on that.”

“Oh, right. The brothers who made them were German, but they lived in America.”

“They don’t anymore?”

“I believe they’re dead now.”

“How sad,” she said with seeming sincerity. “Got lost somewhere and couldn’t find a repair place?”

“I think I saw their skeletons just outside of town.”

“Were they heading this way? Because we don’t have any Duesenberg repair shops. Or cemeteries.”