Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [105]
“What about the underwear?” Mindie asked.
“I prefer to be unconfined,” I said, feeling a small, returning sense of victory, like the smell of napalm in the morning. I may have to live in my world, but I could retain some of what I’d learned here.
“That’s just disgusting.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
I stood with my pants around my thighs, taking a last moment to feel the warm breeze and lack of constraint, when someone called from near the restaurant.
“Mister Wopplesdown! Decided to come over to our way of thinking, I see!”
I turned and saw Petal running toward me, her lovely young flesh bouncing and rippling in indescribably magnificent ways. Suddenly, still exposed to the world, little Corky leaped embarrassingly to life, which caused Petal, and everyone else, to stop dead in their tracks.
“Oh, my,” the waitress said, looking down at it, surprised.
“Corky!” Waboombas purred.
“CORKY!” Mindie howled. “I warned you about that!” And she slapped my Pechanga Indian Casino so hard I thought for a minute it had come off.
“Eeewww!” she shrieked. “I touched it!” Then she ran away to wipe her hand. “There’s something wet on my fingers!”
My penis—and everything it was attached to dropped like a rock. I lie there on the ground, and through hazy vision began counting pebbles in the parking lot. I hoped it might take my mind off the pain. Instead it just reminded me how bad I was at math. What comes after twelve?
As I lay there, Petal knelt beside me and gently touched my arm.
“Are you all right?” she asked, seeming genuinely concerned.
“Fine,” I gasped, smiling at her with my eyes closed. “Why do you ask?”
“That’s the woman you’re going to marry?”
“Isn’t she lovely?” I said, my voice partially returning to normal.
“You could do better,” Petal said and leaned closer, speaking low enough so no one but me could hear. “Like Wisper, for instance.”
I opened my eyes, and the pain seemed, miraculously, to fade. “What?” I asked.
In answer, she handed me an envelope. I could feel something jingle inside.
“You forgot your keys,” she whispered, and winked.
I looked down at my hand and realized all our luggage, and clothes, and comic books were now within immediate reach. Mindie was wiping her hands on the Duesenberg seat, and no one else was looking at me, or had seemed to notice Petal’s gift. Defiantly, I slipped the envelope into my pocket and said nothing.
Petal stood and helped me to my feet. After seeing that all my various exposed parts were okay—if startlingly red—she smiled again at me, then turned away intending to return to the restaurant. But before she did, she shot one, last, angry glance at Mindie, who had finished wiping her hand and returned Petal’s sneer with equal, or greater, contempt. Petal then turned and walked off, shoes clicking, apron flapping, ass bouncing.
I keep telling you—I am a man!
Mindie looked at me, then quickly down at little Corky—who was very angry about being punished—to make sure he remained lifeless.
“It better not,” she said.
“It couldn’t possibly,” I said furiously, and pulled my pants up to refasten them. Mindie smiled menacingly at me, and shook her head in disbelief.
“How you could find that woman in any way appealing is beyond me,” she sniffed derisively, and tucked a breast back inside her wrinkled shirt and shredded underwear-bra. She looked like a dried apricot that had burst open in the sun.
“She looks just ridiculous in that outfit.”
Possibly because I held out some distant hope of being able to see Wisper again, but more likely for reasons centered more around some form of passive-aggression, I said nothing about the keys.
Consequently, we only had the things from the back seat to bring with us: the pastor’s briefcase, the cooler full of snacks, and Mindie’s purse. Once in hand, we moved our way across the hot asphalt parking lot and toward the main entrance of the hotel.
Before long, I had to hop from tuft of grass, to brick, to anything even resembling shade, since I was still barefoot and because the ground couldn’t have been any hotter