Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (52 page)

I wrote Doctor King a check for his services and thanked him profusely. He told me if Mindie returned, I should get her to a hospital immediately, and I promised I would, knowing innately that it would never happen. She was running wild now, running free, and likely wouldn’t stop until she’d made it home.

“Good riddance,” Waboombas snarled.

I couldn’t agree more. I felt sympathy for her pain, but not much. I was now a man with a mission. Meeting Wisper’s mother in the lobby shop had changed everything for me. She could accept me if I made her daughter happy. So I would make her daughter happy. Somehow.

And given time, I might even become comfortable here. Or—if not—her mother would still be a potential ally, and that made the situation immensely more promising. I could handle being the weird son-in-law if it meant I were sleeping with Wisper every night, and seeing her naked, a lot.

As Ms. Waboombas sat on one of the twin beds, still nude, cleaning her toenails, I began cobbling together a plan. I paced back and forth across the room and thought things out. Morgan—carefully hiding his anchovy beneath the stack of comics and magazines—sat on the other bed and read.

Suddenly something struck me.

“Where’s the pastor?”

“In our room,” Waboombas said, as something flicked out of her toenail and hit me in the eye. “Taking a bath. He made me leave.”

“He
made
you,” I said, stunned. “
You.
”

“All right, he
asked
me. Nice. He seemed kinda upset, was breathing hard, all wild-eyed and shit, so I came up here and found the doctor trying to get in. The rest you know.”

“Are you okay, here?” I asked her. “You in a hurry to leave town?”

“Not really. The convention’s pretty much over for today, and tomorrow’s the better selling day anyway. And I kinda wanted to look around the place. It’s interesting here. Why? Are we staying?”

“I
am. And I need your help with something.”

“It have something to do with the hostess from that restaurant?”

“As a matter of fact, it does.”

“I figured.”

“She’s also the model from the closet last night,” Morgan said, not looking up from his girlie magazine.

“I
knew
you knew her,” Waboombas said to me. “You were too cute together.”

“Will you help me?”

“Of course!”

“You will?”

“I’m a stripper. I know true love when I see it.”

That’s why she hadn’t ratted me out to Mindie in the restaurant. Why she’d stopped harassing me.

“You’re a romantic.”

“Shut up!”

“You are!”

“I could tell you never really wanted pasty-tits. But when I saw you talking to that honey in the restaurant—whoo! Splendor in the grass, baby!”

“Really?”

“I told you. I’m a stripper. I’m trained in the arts of love.”

“And you’re okay with it?”

“What? You think I’m
hurt
somehow?
Get over yourself.
You ain’t even my type, Corky.”

“But all those comments…”

“I’d marry ya, ‘cause you’re rich. I’d even fuck ya, ‘cause you’re cute, and ya got a nice wee-wee. But I ain’t in
love
with your ass!”

“I need you to go with me to this Summertime Soiree auction and party tonight.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll go?”

“Suuure. Looks like fun. I hear they’re going to sell white people. Maybe I’ll buy one.”

“I was hoping you would actually.”

“You were?”

“Remember that tall, dark, Tarzan looking guy at the restaurant?”

“The one with the great dick?”

“Um…yeah.”

“Thought a lot about him in the tub,” she said steamily.

“I’ll bet. How would you like to
buy
him?”

“
Buy
him? I don’t now. Guy like him—could go for a bundle.”

“I’ll pay.”

“
You’ll
pay?”

“
I’ll
pay. Whatever he costs, I’ll cover it for you. Just keep bidding and win him.”

“Whatever makes you happy. How about that gas station attendant?”

“I want you to focus on the restaurant guy.”

“Okay. It’s all good.” She studied me. “This is probably gonna cost you. The Nuckeby girl worth it?”

She knew her name. She really did pay attention.

“And more,” I said.

“Just her ass
alone
is worth it,” Morgan said, still not looking up from his magazines.

“So what’s it all about, Corky?” Waboombas asked, curiously amused. “What’s going on?”

“I want to buy her at the auction tonight, and her brother wouldn’t like it.”

“Tarzan?”

“Yep.”

“So you want me to keep him busy.”

“I do.”

She licked her lips. “Works for me.”

Two floors down, the pastor was in the tub, naked save for with a washcloth over his crotch, devouring his Good Book.

He was skimming chapters that memory told him contained God’s word about how nudity was bad, evil, or—at the very least— generally frowned upon. But he wasn’t having much luck.

Unfortunately he had the
King James Version
of the Bible, so his search was taking some time. There were about 104 references to the word ’naked’, and its derivatives in approximately eighty-seven verses of that translation. If he had been reading the
New International Version
, a translation preferred by many conservative Christians, things would have gone faster. There were only forty-nine references to nudity, and its various forms in forty-seven verses of that version of God’s unalterable word.

The pastor had blown through the first eight verses of Genesis, looking for anything concrete to help him correct that blasphemous woman’s point of view, and it’s perverse, Biblical interpretation. Damn her. Or, rather, darn her.

Genesis 9 told of Noah drunk and naked. Noah passes out, one of his sons, Ham, tells his two brothers about it, and they cover their father’s genitals with a rag.

He glanced down at his crotch.

“All right, then,” he said to himself, and went back to reading.

Noah awakes, and curses Ham’s offspring—presumably because Ham ridiculed his father to his brothers. But Noah isn’t punished for getting drunk and lettin’ it all hang out. God doesn’t even give him a stern reprimand or a time-out.

Amazingly, in what should have been the perfect place to let it fly, there was not one word about an angry God who hates the exposed bodies of His most perfect creations and punishes those who flop around freely.

Pastor Winterly skipped up to Exodus and found Moses punishing the 3,000 men and women, some of who were dancing naked. But he seems to have punished them only for the false idol worship, and not for the dancing naked part. Maybe that verse had been accidentally edited out during the council of Nicaea. Well, then it wouldn’t be official, would it?

Still no help.

Didn’t God ever get righteously angry over the things that truly mattered?

1 Samuel 18. Jonathan gets naked in front of David. No cursing or damning there. The pastor skipped past that passage without a thorough read. It had always made him a little uncomfortable because it
could
be interpreted to mean that Jonathan leaned a little to the ‘melikey-men’ side.

1 Samuel 19. Saul prophesizes in the nude. Okay, we’re going backward here.

Isaiah 20. God makes Isaiah take
off
all his clothes, and walk around naked and barefoot for three years.

God
made
him? What was He thinking?

The pastor closed his book and set it on the sink. He looked into space and thought deeply for a moment. Why was nudity a sin? There had to be a specific reason. A pertinent passage. A footnote.

What was he forgetting?

He removed the washcloth from his lap and laid it carefully over the side of the tub. Then he stared at it for a moment, thinking of his mother. After a moment’s unpleasant reminiscing, he turned and looked at his penis, studying it for a long time.

It seemed…ugly. Withered. Like it didn’t even belong there between his legs and should be removed. A bit of dried flesh
,
like a leftover umbilical cord that hadn’t completely detached. Or a twig that had become lodged there.