Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [147]
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