The Three Sisters (7 page)

“It doesn’t work,
Ms. Gott.”

“What’d you steal a hearse without air-conditioning for? Doesn’t even have a cassette deck, either. Now, that’s some way to treat the dead. We’ll probably have to listen to a bunch of country and western crap or some E-Z-
100
Muzak station playing Reader’s Digest commercials until we get back to civilization. You sure know how to pick ’em, Tony. I can see we’ll be getting rid of this car soon,” promised Coito while rolling down
her window.

“What do you want to get rid of it for, K?” asked Regina who was watching Sister Carla walk around in the back of the hearse. “We can have lots of fun in it. I’ve always had this fantasy of having sex in a hearse while going through a car wash. The water beating against the windows, the brushes turning, all
the noise.”

“If we don’t dispose of the hearse soon, my dear, we’ll be visiting the sheriff once again, and not his kids,” insisted Coito. “Haven’t you noticed that this car sticks out like a whore in
the Vatican?”

“How long ago did you steal the car, Tony?” asked a
concerned Theodora.

“Just an hour or so ago, but they’ve probably found out about it by now,” he said. Had Tony Olisbos’s uncle not hired him in a blatant act of corporate nepotism to chauffeur the three around the country, Tony would probably have ended up on a construction site or in a factory using his manifold muscles to earn his living. Instead, the three sisters had learned to tolerate Tony’s mental inadequacies and enjoy his sexual prowess. Two weeks on the road with Tony, opening a new location for Victor’s corporation in San Francisco and investigating a future site in Los Angeles, had driven K to the limits of her patience. Stealing the hearse broke the camel’s back, and Coito was determined to have him discharged from their service as soon as the group returned to
Washington, D.C.

“Hopefully, we can get out of these backwoods before word gets out,”
said K.

“I hope we can get out,” corrected Theodora, a stickler for grammar. “Don’t drive too fast, Tony, or the cops will stop us for speeding, and then we’ll be back in jail. I think we should avoid the interstate too,” instructed
risk-averse Theodora.

“Any suggestions as to what we do now?”
asked K.

“Aaaann,” replied
Sister Carla.

“I think we should keep the hearse. Getting it was the best thing Tony’s ever done, even if he did steal it. I don’t know how it would handle in a car chase though,”
pondered Regina.

“Imagine us being in jail,” interjected Theodora. “My parents would die if they knew what’d happened. And we really didn’t do anything wrong either, at least until we broke out. I mean, we’re not crooks. Now we’ll probably be sent to prison for the rest of
our lives.”

“Don’t you ever stop, Thea? Let me remind you of the deadly dangers of dejection and depression. What happened to old flat-nose Albert Camus after he wrote his existential novels and got the Nobel Prize?” asked K, which did not stand
for Kafka.

“He died in a car accident, but not because he won the
Nobel Prize.”

“And what happened to Jackson Pollock when he started to bring realism back into
his paintings?”

“He also died in a
car accident.”

“And Sartre?”

“He
went blind.”

“Not to mention Milton, Joyce, and others. And what about
André Malraux?”

“He got a job working in de
Gaulle’s government.”

“Truly a fate worse than death, and look at Marilyn Monroe. After doing Mailer’s
The Misfits
, she
committed suicide.”

“Come on K, you can’t prove seriousness ruins everybody’s life—that’s absurd. T.S. Eliot wrote ‘The Waste Land,’ and nothing happened
to him.”

“Are you kidding? He ended up converting to the C. of E. Theodora, I could go on forever giving you examples. Being serious never gets you anywhere,” cautioned K. “You’ll thank me for all
this someday.”

“It wasn’t all bad, Thea. The jailer was kind of cute,”
smiled Regina.

“Even with his clothes on,” added Coito.

The sheriff had left Deputy Sauras alone to guard the three sisters for the afternoon. Regina succeeded in luring the deputy into their cell with her disarming Betty Boop imitation and talked the deputy into playing cards with them to pass the time, there being nothing better to do under the circumstances. Coito chose to play seven-card stud to provoke Deputy Sauras’s gambling propensities, but K, who had learned more than one card trick in her days, used her knowledge and sleight of hand to let Deputy Sauras win all the money he could. “The pride before the fall,” added Coito. Confident of his abilities, Deputy Sauras let Regina talk him into playing strip poker only to find himself completely naked twenty minutes later while the three had lost only a few token articles of clothing. “Beating the deputy in poker was as easy as stealing candy from a baby or a candle from a Catholic Church,” K commented. It was then that Coito pulled Deputy Sauras’s gun on him. The Daughters of Jezebel quickly made their escape, leaving the naked protector of the law locked
behind bars.

“So he was cute, but now look at the mess we’re in,” objected Theodora. “What’s going to
happen now?”

“Oh, what difference will it make two hundred years from now?” asked Coito, growing tired of
Theodora’s complaints.

“I’m not worried about two hundred years from now, K. I’m worried about two hours from now when the sheriff’s womanhunt catches up with us, and we’re thrown into prison for
fifty years.”

“Don’t worry about it, Thea. Victor will get us out of this jam just like he got us out of the others,” said
Regina reassuringly.

“He wouldn’t let his three best employees waste the best years of their lives in prison, would he? Besides, if you go to prison, you’ll finally have a chance to write that novel you’ve been bugging me about for the past four years. You won’t be the first Washingtonian to spend his or her time in prison writing a book,”
advised Coito.

“And probably not the last either,”
added Regina.

“So what’s on the agenda now that we’re hunted criminals?” asked Theodora. “We can’t keep on traveling around in
this hearse.”

“Big times ahead!” promised
cocksure K.

“Not back to the convent, I hope,”
fretted Regina.

“Ixnay I say,” said K. “We’ll never go back to the Church, much less a convent. Anyway, Tennessee is no place for the likes of us. We’re heading straight for Washington, D.C., as if nothing had
ever happened.”

“But we’ll never make it back to Washington, D.C., K.” interrupted a pessimistic Theodora. “The roads will be swarming with cops, and we’ve got to get rid of this hearse. Even if we made it back to D.C., they’d probably be waiting
for us.”

“So just what are we supposed to do, Thea? I wish you’d stop complaining and make some suggestions for
a change.”

“Well, I do have one idea. I know an elderly couple up in east Kentucky who ran a cemetery in Appalachia where I was helping people before we met. The Rams and I grew quite close, and I’m sure they’d be willing to help us. Maybe they’d let us leave the hearse there and loan us their car, or help us get another. It’s a long shot, K, but we don’t have much of
a choice.”

“That sounds good enough to me. I’m sorry I got you three into this mess,” apologized Tony, “but I guess there’s nothing we can do about that now, so just show me the way, and I’ll get us to the
cemetery, and—”

“Don’t worry, Thea, even if we don’t find the Rams, I’m sure we can find some men between here and D.C. who’ll be willing to help three damsels in distress. There’s lots of room where they put the coffins,” observed Regina who was still watching Sister Carla walk around in the back. “I bet we could have fun back there.”

“You mean, bet we will. And there’s no way of knowing until we test out the facilities,” suggested Coito who was climbing over the seat to get into
the back.

“Hey, Tony,” Ms. Suora
sensuously suggested.

“Not now, can’t you see
I’m driving?”

“Oh, come on Tony. Don’t be short, be a sport,”
advised Coito.

“I can’t drive and have sex at the
same time.”

“Well, you could at least give it
a try.”

“Not while
I’m driving.”

“Oh well, there’s always Cony Island to grant me my pleasures,”
concluded Coito.

“‘If iniquity be in thy hand, put it far away,’” added Theodora in a stentorian tone, finally pulling out of her depression to join in on
the fun.

“Let your fingers do
the walking….”

“Tony, did you bring our regular clothes?” asked K, which stood for Catholic.

“You mean
your habits?”

“Of course, what else do
we wear?”

“Nothing usually,” replied Tony.

“You wish.”

“They’re in the suitcase back there, but you’re lucky you decided to go in the church without your habits on, otherwise the police would have confiscated them.” Though the three sisters had long since quit the Church, they owned several specially-designed habits which they wore more out of blasphemy
than reverence.

“Listen Tony, we’re going to change into our Givenchy habits in the back here since there’s so much room, so please keep your eyes on the road ahead and not the roads behind for once,” said Coito, tugging at the pants, which still clung tightly to her legs. “Last time we changed clothes in the car, you almost had a
dozen accidents.”

“No one’s perfect,” admitted Tony, bespying topless Regina’s well-bestowed bosom. Tony’s drift into the left lane was stopped by a honk from a
passing car.

“And you’re no exception, Tony,” rejoined Regina who could always tell when she was being watched by Tony in the
rearview mirror.

“And another thing, Tony, you’d better get off the interstate. It’s too risky,”
advised Theodora.

“Yes,
Ms. Suora.”

“Don’t you think the habits will give us
away, K?”

“Be realistic, Thea” said K, now almost naked. “The police can’t check every nun in the country to see whether we’re the ones
they want.”

“Let me see that mirror,” demanded Regina who was a modern-day Jezebel when it came to wearing cosmetics. Not content to trust her luck in her shapely body, she spent countless hours every week ensuring that her face would dazzle any on-looker. “Jesus, I’d better put some makeup on before I meet anyone, clothes or
no clothes.”

“No you don’t, Regina,” cautioned Theodora who preferred the natural look. “You know what Cyprian said, ‘A woman who uses makeup will not be recognized by God when
He returns.’”

“Fine with me,” replied Regina, though more out of indifference to than a lack of reverence for
the Deity.

“Tony,” cried curvaceous K, who had removed all of her clothes. “Drive up along this guy so he can see the fun
he’s missing.”

“Quick, pull back the curtains,”
yelled Regina.

“Aaaann,” cried Sister Carla whom Coito had half-stepped on in the rush to pull back
the curtains.

“I’ll show him my coat of many colors,” Coito offered, preparing for a distracting bifurcation of her legs. “He’ll drive off the road
for sure.”

Our three merry maidens were unlike the chaste virgins of old who could hang their veils on a sunbeam. Instead they proudly displayed their black veils to all those whose eyes could see. The chosen victim could not resist Regina’s properly-proportioned pair, and the three sisters’ delightful distraction caused his pickup truck to swerve off the road and into the ditch below, fulfilling the prophecy of Coito so recently given. Immediately after that, Tony turned off the interstate and onto roads less traveled by officers of the law. He drove on for about a mile before the naked Coito
spoke out.

“Christ in a condom, I can’t take this any longer. Tony, pull over,” she demanded so he would give in to her pudendal pleadings. “Thea, you drive for now while Tony services
our accounts.”

“Why should I have to drive?”
objected Theodora.

“Well, you’re the only one who knows where
we’re going.”

The car rolled to a stop, and Theodora and Tony switched places in the hearse. Even before Tony got in the back, Coito started pulling Tony’s clothes off so she could begin providing stylic stimulation to Tony. With Theodora driving, the three lusters after the flesh, now both torqueless and topless, romped and played with Sister Carla, but mainly with each other, in the back of the hearse as they ended the two days of celibacy forced upon them by the sheriff.

None of them noticed the countryside passing by, for they had decided to enjoy themselves in their natural state (as K, which stands for
carpe diem
put it, “Like we were before sin came into the world.”) Theodora, watching every little turn in the road, and fearing that a policeman hid behind every building and sign that she passed, slowly but surely pressed forward. As she drove on, feet turned into yards, and yards turned into miles, but this mattered little to the Holy Ladies of the Hearse; they did not care for scientific precision, for theirs was not an exact science.