The American Princess - Best Love Story Ever (3 page)

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Far away, on Olympus, the goddess of love
gave her nails a crimson touch-up as she viewed Mercury's
transmission, and listened to his report. She was pleased.
"Unfortunately, Princess Betty-Jo and Raiden are not dead, like
they were supposed to be—but soon. I'll wait until they get to know
each other better; then it will be my turn to have some fun."

Nineteen years earlier
, on an overcast
Saturday in March of '75, Mercury had arrived at Myrtle Beach. The
three-day commute from Olympus had been tedious, but it had to be
made; Dixie Lee Chance had to die before her baby was born.

The messenger god had staked out the Strand
Princess, and he was rewarded for his patience when Dixie Lee
waddled up to a cab.

She looks like a heffalump, he'd thought. A
beautiful green-eyed heffalump, granted, but a heffalump
nevertheless.

"Grand Strand General," Dixie Lee said, "and
hurry!"

Mercury had moved quickly. He'd possessed
Waldo Whittle, the obese cab driver who had responded to Dixie
Lee's call, and then he'd hurried, but not to the hospital. He'd
taken Dixie Lee to a secluded house he'd rented on Red Fox Road in
Surfside Beach. There, he'd handcuffed her to a bed, and unsheathed
his hunting knife.

"What are you doing?" a disbelieving Dixie
Lee cried.

"You have to die before your baby is born."
If I can do this.

"Please," Dixie Lee pleaded, "don't hurt my
baby."

My god she's beautiful. Damn it! I can't end
her this way. He'd locked her in the bedroom, her wrist still
handcuffed to the bed, and gone to buy a gun. Shoot her? That I
should be able to manage—if I close my eyes.

When he'd returned, Saturday-night-special in
hand, Dixie Lee was busily giving birth to Betty-Jo. Her head was
already out.

"Stop! Don't push!" he'd yelled. He tried to
shove baby Betty-Jo back in, but it wasn't happening because she
was slippery, and he couldn't risk harming her once she'd been
born. "This can't be how they get the caramel into the Caramilk
Bar," he said.

Dixie Lee had stifled a smirk and continued
to push. "You're not ready for prime time stupidity yet," she said.
"First you have to practice getting toothpaste back into a squeeze
tube."

He'd loosed a crooked smile, which quit
abruptly when he shoved even harder, and found that Dixie Lee was
still winning the baby-pushing event. But he couldn't give up—the
stakes were too high.

Betty-Jo's shoulders were almost out when
he'd had what he thought was a bright idea. He retrieved the toilet
bowel plunger from beside the toilet, and positioned it over the
baby's head. It fit perfectly. "A tiara for you, Princess," he
said. Then he pushed on the plunger as hard as he dared. But even
with the added leverage, Betty-Jo still wouldn't go back into Dixie
Lee where she had to be if he were to complete his mission.
Betty-Jo Chance made her worldly debut two weeks early.

Now what do I do? He'd reached up to tug on
his earring, but of course it wasn't there. Then he'd tried to page
Venus, but she wasn't picking up. "To Hades with you, Goritch! If I
could replace you in bed I'd have dumped you long ago."

The goddess was crackers. She made him brush
the roof of his mouth because that was where she said the odor
causing bacteria lived, and she wore red silk teddies with 'I Love
My Piranha' stenciled across the chest. No sane goddess loves
piranha! Unfortunately, she was the only goddess, sane or
otherwise, who'd sleep with a short guy. He knew that from painful
experience. Over the centuries he'd tried to bed them all. Maybe if
I got a pair of elevator shoes, he'd thought.

He'd given Betty-Jo's bottom a whack, and got
her howling. Then he'd boiled the blade of his knife and severed
the umbilical cord. Ironic, he thought, minutes ago I was trying to
kill The Princess—now I have to make sure she lives. That insight
had infuriated him. You schmuck! Look at you! Stuck on earth
suffering from a premature birth, and sexual gratification
underload. But at least you can do something about your
gratification problem. You can get yourself a mortal—have some fun
for a change.

As luck would have it, fat Waldo's wife was a
sexy, raven-haired beauty with an hourglass figure. Rebecca Whittle
had married Waldo after she got plastered one evening, ended up
pregnant, and decided that any father for her daughter was better
than no father. Once married, however, the fuzziness in her logic
had become nauseatingly apparent whenever Waldo's flab was anywhere
near. Her solution was to forbid him to touch her unless she had
nothing better to do to amuse herself. On those occasions, she'd do
a leisurely striptease to turn him on, and then taunt him about the
size of his weenie.

"I'd have more fun with a golf pencil," she
had enjoyed telling him....

Waldo's sex life with Rebecca took a turn for
the better when a Mercury possessed Waldo arrived at Waldo's place,
and found Rebecca napping.

"What should we do?" Mercury had asked Waldo.
"I'm horny as hell."

"I'm always horny—especially in the morning,
Waldo had replied."

"So what do you do?"

"'Well, sometimes I wake up [obnoxious]. But
most of the time I just let her sleep.'"

Mercury decided to wake Obnoxious and was
delighted to find that she was in the mood for fun and games. She
had encouraged him to tie her to a kitchen chair, to try to add
some spice to an otherwise tedious lovemaking routine. But Rebecca
wasn't the good time Mercury had been hoping for, because, as he'd
discovered, chairs aren't the best place to do it—too tippy and
awkward—and Waldo's thing, which had to compete for maneuvering
room with his stomach, had provided precious little sensation.

"Your weenie's so dinky it would frustrate a
sex starved Chihuahua," Rebecca had informed him.

"Does that mean we're not having fun yet?"
he'd countered, even though he'd been well aware that they
weren't.

Finally, hornier than ever, he'd given
control back to Waldo. Watching Rebecca savage Waldo—after he
untied her—had turned out to be the best part of the evening.

Oh well, he'd thought, perhaps the wench is
pregnant.
I may be able to use a mean-spirited mortal when
Princess Betty-Jo is old enough to die.

Later, on his commute back to Olympus,
Mercury had moved into worry mode. It wasn't my fault, he thought,
but that won't matter. He knew he'd be punished for his failure to
kill The Princess before she was borne. His anxiety had heightened
as the light years slipped away, and he drew ever closer to Venus
and her wrath.

A Love
Child for Felicity

Felicity Ready grew up near the Allegheny
River in Riverton Springs, a steel town to the northeast of
Pittsburgh. Her mother, Katherine, had lost her husband—the only
man she'd ever loved—when Felicity was five. After a stint as a
topless dancer, and then as a waitress, Katherine had worked as a
receptionist for Cons Steel. She never had enough money, but she
had plenty of boyfriends. As Felicity matured, some of Katherine's
boyfriends began to take an interest in her, but she refused to
play until late in '75 when an Adonis moved in downstairs.
Christian Paris was tall and gorgeous, and he had just earned a
philosophy degree. That impressed Felicity, but what set her heart
aflutter was his grin—his dimples did her in.

Christian was not easily seduced by an
eighteen-year-old girl; it took Felicity five months to accomplish
that. The accident happened the first, and only, time they slept
together, just before Christian was called up to fight in Vietnam.
By the time Felicity began to show, it was too late to have an
abortion, which, in any event, she did not want. She knew that her
love child would be special.

Katherine was supportive, but money was
tight. Thankfully, there was a cost-effective solution. Felicity
went to Toronto, and stayed with her aunt while she had her baby,
courtesy of Canadian Medicare. All that was required was a plastic
card with a name on it. She borrowed her cousins'.

Putting baby Jason up for adoption was more
difficult than Felicity anticipated. It was a heart-wrenching,
God-awful ordeal that left her teary eyed and depressed for months.
Even following her depression period, a day never went by when she
didn't wonder what kind of man her Jason had become, and hate
herself for abandoning him.

Sex is
Best with Someone You Love

It was early in '94 in the earth's 20th
century, and Venus's plan to eliminate Princess Betty-Jo and Brad
Raiden was finally coming to fruition. She parted her gold lamé
gown to reveal a well-toned leg and a captivating inner thigh. "If
you want me, you know what you have to do," she said.

Mercury's eyes roamed her curves. "Take a
number?" he suggested hopefully.

"Don't be an ass!"

"Please, goddess, I could really use a sneak
preview."

This planet is teaming with sex-starved gods,
Venus thought, and fortunately, I control the hallelujah trail.
"What about The American Princess and Raiden?"

"They're history."

"That's what you said nineteen years ago!
Just before you allowed Princess Betty-Jo to be born."

"Not my fault!"

"Lucky for you that you didn't kill her back
then. Zeus would have gone berserk."

"No luck involved. Zeus has decreed that if
we kill a mortal before their nineteenth birthday, the loss of our
immortality is automatic. I wasn't about to risk losing my
immortality—not even for a good time with you."

"Look, it's water sucked up by the seven
moons. But this time you'd better get it right!" Venus unsheathed
her nail file, and began to sharpen her nails. In her temple on
Olympus—tenth planet from the red-giant Antares—the goddess of love
and beauty eased back on her Corinthian leather throne, and watched
her pet piranha shred goldfish. Her laughter echoed throughout her
temple as, bite by ravenous bite, the goldfish were devoured.
"Don't you just love the fear in their little fishy eyes? You can
almost hear them begging for mercy."

"Whatever tugs at your garter," replied a
sulking Mercury.

She carefully applied her crimson nail
polish. "Good for you, Big Vicious," she said. "As usual, my
favorite red-bellied piranha is claiming the lion's share of my
offering."

The messenger god held out a goldfish, and
then jerked it away when Big Vicious made a lunge for it.
"Repulsive glutton," he said.

"This carnage reminds me of a day I spent on
earth, yucking it up with Julius Caesar and those Christians of
his. You should have been there, you'd have split a gut
laughing."

"Most Christians I know aren't all that
funny."

"Those neophyte lion tamers were. They were
trying to proselytize twenty of the hungriest lions you'll ever
meet. Julius had been starving the beasts for a week."

"My money's on the lions," Mercury said.

She ran her freshly painted fingernails up
the inside of the messenger god's pea-green corduroy pant-leg. He'd
almost be presentable if he wasn't stature deficient, and he
dropped that ridiculous gold earring.

"Please goddess," he pleaded.

She ignored his simpering, and tossed a
wriggling fish to Old Hairball. Her fat cat batted it with his paw
to start a game of cat and fish. "Stop playing with your dinner,
and listen to me!" she shrieked. Her gaudy diamond, ruby, and
emerald rings became effective brass knuckles when she clenched her
fist, and whacked Old Hairball on the side of his head.

"You could be nicer to Hairball, you
know."

Venus smiled an evil smile. I love cats," she
said. "They taste like chicken.... Now may I get on with my
story?"

Mercury took the hint. "I'm listening," he
said.

"Those Christians never had a prayer. It was
Christians eaten, seven—lions converted, zip."

The messenger god flashed his lopsided grin.
"Not every day you're given seven good reasons to become a
Buddhist."

"Those lions were noisy eaters, and their
feeding sounds became even more arousing when they neared the end
of their feast, and started to crunch the bones. Such soothing
music—in my soul I can hear it still."

"Sounds to me like sicksoulitis. But you're
lucky, sicksoulitis is only fatal in men."

"Dare I ask?"

"Samuel Butler says, it's because 'the souls
of women are so small, that [maybe they have] none at all.'"

"When I get my hands on Butler, I'm going to
shove a Roman candle up his butt, and light it. Then we'll see how
cute he is."

Mercury guffawed. "That may be taking
tough-love a tad far."

Old Hairball finished eating his goldfish,
and began to purr. Mercury started to pace.

"Sit down, Mercury! And for heaven's sake,
stop worrying! Nothing will go wrong. You missed out on the
Christians in lion country, but the real entertainment is about to
begin, and you'll have a front row seat for it. By the time you're
finished with Princess Betty-Jo, she'll be wishing those lions were
eating her."

"Lions have all the fun."

Venus shook her clenched fist at Mercury.
"Don't take her up too far. I want her to suffer before she
dies."

"Lighten up, goddess. If it's agony you want,
it's agony she'll get."

"Now what about Raiden?"

"I've talked Raiden into taking his spring
break at Myrtle Beach, and I've been teaching him how to fish. The
guy's keen."

"No shit!"

"After I've dispatched The Princess, Foul
Odder and I will take Raiden on a fishing excursion. And don't you
fret. By the end of the excursion he'll be 'sleeping with the
fishes.'"