Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (56 page)

Content that my food was in the capable hands of a fellow lech, I turned my attentions to the restaurant’s only other occupants, a pair of elderly men—one wearing a hat and both wearing penny loafers— as they played chess beside meals that had long ago gone cold. The hatless player kept reaching for pieces as the other would shake his head and say ‘Nh.’ ‘Nh.’ ‘Nh.’ Apparently warning him off various potential moves. This went on for a few minutes before the player in the hat doing the warning got annoyed and reached over to move some piece the first man had never even gone near. Then the hatted man would slowly and deliberately take his time selecting
his
move and repeat the process of being annoyed when it was the other guy’s turn.

Bored of this, I gazed out the window at the passersby in an effort to relax and adjust to the openness of it all. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get past such a sheer volume of humanity so comfortable with its own bare-assedness.

Men, women, children, black, white, yellow, brown, red, and one man who looked a little green. It just wouldn’t sit with me. My brain refused to wrap itself around the idea that public nudity was something you should ever feel comfortable with. And for Wisper’s sake, I desperately wanted to. Private nudity—okay. But I’d been raised in an environment where most of our contemporary morality plays end in the violent death and/or dismemberment of openly sexual teenagers at the hands of stinky men in hockey masks. Stay repressed or die. It was a guiding truth as old as the Puritans.

That’s when I noticed another of the dancing, burning Pilgrims. Was that the turning point in this world’s history? Had all the Puritans died in some fire that changed the course of history and led to a world of no clothes, no shame, and—perhaps even more surprising—no Thanksgiving?

As I continued staring through the glass, I noticed, in particular, the children. They seemed happy. Playful. Undamaged. In our world, one of those ‘Great Truths’ is how much ‘nudity’, and ‘sexual openness’ will destroy the minds of the innocent.

Not here.

Was the potential damage a lie? Or was there something about this world and how they raised their kids that helped them cope with whatever damage had been inflicted?

These were questions too weighty for me to answer. I needed someone smarter to help me sort it out.

I needed Wisper.

As I, again, lamented ruining my chance with her on the beach, I noticed Morgan skittering nervously down the street, leaning against each darkened pane of glass he came to and peering in. When he at last reached the window I was staring out of, I watched as he slapped himself against the casement, and—after a good, long, lingering look at the waitress’ exposed bits—spotted me sitting at my table drinking my tea. He waved vigorously for me to come out, obviously very agitated, so much so that I got up immediately. If it had been anyone but Morgan, I would have been afraid of what might have happened that had him so plainly agitated. But with him, the trauma could have been as simple as he’d read on some website that Marvel was planning on making Toad an X-Man.

As I approached the door, the chef held out a plate and called to me.

“Your order’s just ready, sir.”

“Thanks. I’ll just be a minute.”

I went outside into the carless street and found Morgan wearing a hotel towel around his waist, staring at some girl’s pubic area. I literally had to pull his face away from her and back to me.

“What?” he asked.

“What do you mean, ‘what’? You’re the one who waved me out here.”

“Oh, yeah. Your credit card’s been declined,” he said, and turned back to the girl and her pubes. She had moved on, but fortunately for him, another had come along to replace her.

“My what? My credit card’s been what?”

“Declined. Cancelled. Sophie told me.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to know why I was being kicked out of the room. So she told me.”

“No, I mean why has it been cancelled? What happened?”

“I don’t know.” He paused a moment as the new girl moved on. Eventually she—or at least the ogle-able part of her—was hidden by other, I assume, less attractive nudists, because he sighed heavily and began looking at me again. “She said the company had called and said it was a stolen number. They had notified the owner, and he confirmed that he wasn’t in Naked Bottoms.”

“Nikkid Bottoms.”

“Whatever.”

“But
I’m
the owner. And I never…”

Suddenly it dawned on me. I
wasn’t
the owner. Not in
this
dimension.

Here, I didn’t exist.

Here, my fortune belonged to someone else.

Here—dear God—I was
penniless
.

A sensation exploded through my brain that must have been a stroke. Or at least a severe ice-cream headache. I grabbed my head and had to steady myself against a wall.

“What’s the matter?” Morgan asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

“My credit cards…”

“Use another one. You got—like—a gajillion of ‘em.”

“None of them will work. We’re in a different dimension, remember?”

“They don’t use credit cards, here?”

“Of course they do! But they belong to some other Corky Wopplesdown!”

“They do?”

“It’s a different dimension!”

“With a different Corky Wopplesdown? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Morgan. Think of it as
Mirror Mirror
in Star Trek.”

He looked at me blankly.

“Earth Two,” I said, realizing my mistake. “On Earth One, there’s Superman. And on Earth Two, there’s…”

“Evil Superman.”

“Or a different Superman.”

“This Corky Wopplesdown is evil!”

“Or…just a guy who’s not happy someone else is using his credit cards.”

“That bastard!”

“Okay,” I said, trying not to hyperventilate. “What the hell am I going to do? I have no money.”

I looked through the window at the chef and waitress, both of whom were staring back and forth from me to the table where a plate of food I could no longer afford was patiently awaiting my return.

“I can’t pay for my meal,” I said, shocked.

“Wow,” Morgan said. “Really?”

“Really. What am I going to do?”

“What I do whenever I go to Denny’s,” he said, grinning. “Dine and Dash.”

Suddenly Morgan sprinted off, and I saw the chef through the window tense up, as if he’d been expecting this. He grabbed something behind the counter that looked like it could put rather large dents in my skull, and began moving around the counter in my direction.

I could explain this to him, I’m sure. He would understand. I was an honest man, who was wealthy in my world, because—you see— I’m from another dimension…

I raced off after Morgan. It was easy to track him because he was the only one in the crowd who wasn’t flesh-colored. As I got closer to him, I realized this might also be a drawback.

“Morgan!” I said, once I was within earshot. “How are we going to hide? We stand out like…well…
clothed people in a nudist camp!”

Morgan looked down at his shirt and towel, apparently for the first time understanding what I was getting at without having it spelled out with Richard Scarry drawings, single-syllable words, and large, block type.

“In there!” he said, and pointed to the clothing store we had seen earlier. ‘Clothes For The Naked’.

We both hurried that way, and as we got closer to the door, I saw that the sign actually read ‘Struts Clothes For The Naked’ and thought what an odd coincidence that was. That’s Pjuter’s and Aunt Helena’s name, and…

I jerked as though I’d been struck by lightning.

I looked at the designs in the windows. Most were, as you might imagine, various forms of sandals, shoes, or ornamental footwear, the kind that looked fabulous on trim, attractive, and mostly nude mannequins decorated tastefully with jewelry of the type Wisper had worn earlier on the beach. The rest were various forms of—I don’t know—here they might be considered outerwear, though where I come from they were primarily imagined as accessories for the boudoir, and usually given as gifts to unsuspecting ladies from the horny men in their life, gifts those women would likely never allow themselves to be seen dead in, no matter how stunning or chic the designs might be. And these
were
stunning designs. Designs I’d seen before, multiple times, on models at Wopplesdown Struts. Designs Pjuter had created, I had viewed, taken notes on, done sketches of.

Not that this was anything nefarious. Pjuter could sell his designs anywhere he wanted. The company was half his. But here? In an extra-dimensional nudist resort?

Wait. Maybe this alternate reality’s Pjuter created these, not mine. Something that mirror-mirrored his creations, while…

No. Helena had told me how to get here this morning. She had given Wisper a ride home last night, and so I had thought nothing of her knowing how to get me here. But perhaps I should have.

I’d given zero thought since arriving to how, and why, Helena had been so calm, so understanding, and so supportive of Ms. Nuckeby without really knowing anything about the woman other than that Wisper’s favorite pastime seemed to be running around after me without any clothes on. I imagine Helena could have learned a good deal more about my favorite model during the long trip to Nikkid Bottoms—and they would have arrived here early enough in the evening to get a clear idea of the place, its locals, and their prominently displayed founder. The nudist thing should have been a major choking point for anyone just learning it for the first time— anyone from a world where hiding your genitals was
de rigueur
that is—and probably worth mentioning to anyone you might send here, don’t you think?

Unless it was something you already knew about. Something you were already comfortable with. Something you wanted whomever you sent here to experience firsthand, without any warning, so as not to frighten him off before he’d been enticed by one or more of its sexy, and naked, inhabitants.

She knew! Of course, she knew!

Even more, it seemed likely that Helena had been here in the past. Possibly many, many times. And she was undoubtedly comfortable with it. Last night she’d run from the room immediately after trying to reassure me that there might be other, reasonable answers for Ms. Nuckeby’s comfort with being sky-clad. She might have been intending to propose Ms. Nuckeby as a nudist, and it was obviously ‘okay’ with her. But then suddenly something more profound had struck her. Was it the realization that Wisper might be from this place?

And Pjuter. He’d quietly slipped away from the events last night. I thought it was embarrassment, but he designed lingerie for God’s sake! How could a naked model
possibly
embarrass
him?

So wait. That meant…

My brain hitched at the thought that Helena might not only be tolerant of, but could actually enjoy public nudity
herself
—perhaps even
participate
in it—Dear God! Was that something I could handle? Strangers were one thing, but a woman who’d been your surrogate mother since early childhood—and more recent
mental
childhood— taking off her clothes and exposing her hidden things to you, and— well—everyone else? The nakedness of strangers was one thing, but
Helena
?

The ice-cream headache returned with a vengeance.

Maybe Grandfather’s cryptic comment last night had something to do with this! More pieces appeared to fit than not. I seemed to know nothing about my aunt. Or her husband. Suddenly Pjuter’s odd, regionless accent…

He was
from
here!

Helena must have sent me to this place, knowing it for more reasons than delivering Ms. Nuckeby! She was probably intimately acquainted with it because her husband—and maybe sometimes she, herself—had lived here!

Amid the dawning horror, as I reeled from the shock of Helena buying groceries in nothing but sandals, walking through town draped only in jewels and skin, dining, dancing, living a full and active life with her tits, bits, and ass showing
,
something else slowly rose through my mental fog.

She had given me money. To spend
here
. She must have known…

Of course!

“Morgan!” I yelled just before he entered the store. “This way!”

I turned and ran off in the direction of Nuckeby’s Bar and Grill, the Duesenberg, and, perhaps, salvation.

“What?” Morgan called after me. “Why? Where are you…?”

He turned, saw the restaurant chef along with a couple of naked cops running fast in our direction, yelped like a whipped puppy, and hurried after me.