What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [119]
“You will not—”
Liam tapped her on the shoulder. “Uh, hi,” he said.
She spun. “Oh my god! Liam!” she said, and then added, somewhat less enthusiastically, “And Festus.”
“What are you doing?” asked Liam. “What is this?”
“I– I don’t know,” said Lola. “They just surrounded us.” She waved her hand in the direction of some of her followers.
“Us?”
“Raju is here … somewhere.”
Raju poked his head out from the headlock of one of Lola’s followers. “Hi.” Raju gave a perfunctory, limited-motion wave through the half-removed sleeve of his shirt. “Help.” His captor renewed his grip with a shake, while another man tried to pull Raju’s shirt off.
“Are these men troubling you, Mistress?” asked one of the naked men. His eyes were fixed on Lola, but it almost looked as if he were staring through her.
“No, no,” she said. “They’re my friends.”
“Very good, Mistress. Please tell them to undress.”
“What?” asked Festus.
“They want you to get naked,” said Raju, flinching as one of the men waved some hairy, dangly, unpleasant things way too close to his face.
“Not happening,” said Liam. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“They won’t let us,” said Lola.
“Why not?”
One of the naked guys stood awkwardly, swaying back and forth. He had kind of a vague smile on his lips, and kept sighing long, satisfied sighs. Finally, he cleared his throat, held up one classically-trained, Shakespearean hand, and announced in a clear voice that rang out over the droning of the other men. “We have found her!”
Liam looked around to try to locate the man’s intended audience, but it didn’t look as if he’d directed his pronouncement to anyone in particular. In fact, the rest of the men seemed just to ignore the man. “I’m sorry? You’ve … found her?”
“Yes!” said the man with another manual flourish. A couple of the other men stopped and looked up. “She,” he said, “is the Whore of Babyon!”
The entire throng went bananas, whooping and hollering, high-fiving, and doling out triumphant fists pumps as if there weren’t a shortage of such things – which there isn’t, but still.
One of the men stood suddenly, his body rigid. He thrust his finger out in front of him, where it waggled crazily, as if it were a herring and he was trying to shake it to death. His lips moved as if he were mumbling something to himself. Finally, he seemed unable to hold back. “Whore of Babylon!” he screamed.
Festus spun to face Liam. “See? I told you!”
“What?” said Liam. “No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. I said I know who she is.”
“I didn’t hear you say anything about the Whore of Babylon.”
“You weren’t listening,” said Festus, stroking his beard.
“I heard everything you said, and you didn’t say that.”
“I thought it.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Well…”
“Not the same thing,” said Liam. “And you need to stop stroking your beard before I yank it out.”
Lola, meanwhile, had spun to face her accuser. “I’m not sure what that means,” she said, “but it sounds really bad, and I want you to take it back right now.”
“Mistress?” A surprised and worried look came over his face, as if she’d just pointed out that he’d killed her dog. “You want me to … take it back?”
“Yes, I want you to take it back. Right now.” She folded her arms across her chest, which had the dual effect of indicating her level of seriousness, and depriving the men of a view of the Promised Lands.
“Um, okay,” said the guy. But then, under his breath, he muttered, “Whore of Babylon.”
The Whore of Babylon hesitated, and then, apparently deciding on an altogether different tack, attempted to put her pointy-toed Jimmy Chu into the guy’s abdomen, by way of his crotch. Her well-motivated foot – being rather larger and rounder than, say, a knife or an ice pick – was hindered in its progress toward the man’s abdomen by a grouping of obstructive and rather sensitive anatomical components – to wit, his ‘nads. The man’s internal organs were therefore preserved intact, and continued to function normally. His external organ, on the other hand, suffered severe blunt trauma, and the