Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [99]
All in all, kind of humiliating really.
“Let me through,” I squeaked.
“No.”
“I’ll get by you.”
“Not in your lifetime,” he laughed. “Which is looking pretty short.”
“Is that a threat?” It was hard to take threats seriously from a naked man. Even one who looked like several of the more formidable Greek gods bundled up into a handy value-pack.
Suddenly, a couple of other diners were on either side of me.
“Need some help there, River?” One of the surprisingly tall, surprisingly muscular, not-so-surprisingly naked people asked.
“This gentleman was looking for the door,” River said, pressing me flat between his stone-like shoulders and the drywall that was still several feet shy of Wisper.
My eyes flicked back and forth between both of my attackers— my head jammed into immobility—and I sneered, remembering their exposed ‘soft-targets’. “Listen,” I said, confidently. “I don’t want to hurt you, but—WISPER!”
“Drop him, Vincent!” a voice said. One of them popped me in the side of the head, and I went down like my ears were made of iron and there were magnets in the floor. Petal gasped and yelled at Tarzan, the Penis Man.
“River! Was that really necessary?” she demanded.
“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,” River said, smiling.
As I lay there contemplating unconsciousness as a concept, the nude-man assault squad dragged me out by my heels. I forced my eyes open, and through a haze saw pants-hater laughing, and he kicked me in the temple. As I jerked with the pain, I heard a jingling sound like the faraway ringing of tiny bells, and thought briefly of Paris. I love Paris. They have bells there. A door opened and there was more jingling. They had doors in Paris too. Pretty-pretty doors, and bells.
As I struggled with time, space, and reality, the nudist antidefamation league tossed me out into the parking lot, then returned inside to—I’m sure—laugh at my expense.
“Oy,” I said through the gravel of the parking lot. Are you allowed to say that if you’re not Jewish? “Oy,” I repeated.
It was a good word. I grokked its usefulness.
“Oooooyyyyyy.”
Humiliated, I sat on the curb holding my throbbing head in a towel.
Behind me, I could hear the sounds of Mindie and the others being shown their way out of the restaurant with only a tad more gentleness than I had been afforded. Apparently they had all been asked to leave as well after my brief, and misguided, foray into the wonderful land of courage.
“Let go of me!” Mindie yelled. “LET GO OF ME!”
As a naked man shoved her away from him and toward the street, the others exited behind them more-or-less under their own power. Mindie, covering herself as best she could manage, shrieked at them in a voice that could shatter glass.
“You have no right to lay hands on me! Do you know who my father is? MALLIKIN BUTTERWYCKE, that’s who!”
Her naked ejector turned and walked back into the restaurant, apparently not an avid Fortune 500 reader.
“He won’t appreciate that you’ve degraded his daughter in this way! DO YOU HEAR ME?”
Neighboring planets could hear her. I returned my head to the towel and counted throbs.
“I took my clothes off for FOOD, and I didn’t even GET ANY!”
Ms. Waboombas moved over to the Duesenberg, climbed into a back seat, and—still naked save for the shoes—dropped, sulking, onto the cushioned upholstery without a word, and without deploying a towel. She put her head back, closed her eyes, and set her feet upon the seat in front of her. Morgan was trying to talk to her, but she was mostly ignoring him, which he seemed to have gotten used to by now. He kept touching her leg as he spoke, and she continually swatted at him, like he was a bothersome insect that spends most of its day dining in landfills.
Pastor Winterly moved a discrete distance away from us all and began vigorously reading his Bible as though his life depended on it. Perhaps it did. At the very least he believed it had answers to the test for getting through the pearly gates afterwards. I imagined the man’s intense study was mostly to keep his eyes from wandering to and