Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (26 page)

“Oh, of course.”

“And myself? I like the one-on-one of a live performance.”

“Oh, you perform at these as well?”

“I consider dancing a performance.”

“Ah! Of course. You treat it
all
as a performance then.”

“Even the sex sometimes, yeah.”

“Ha, ha! Of course! So you don’t mind that then?” Mindie said, obviously surprised. “The, em…
sex
…part of it, I mean?”

“Nah. That’s fun. I like sucking and fucking, and…”

“Soooo—Mister Wopplesdown,” Pastor Winterly interjected— loudly—to eradicate whatever else Ms. Waboombas enjoyed in the back rooms of strip clubs. Apparently he could no longer be satisfied with
pretending
not to hear. Now he had to
actually
not hear. “Haven’t seen you in church since you were a little boy. We’ve missed you.”

“You have?” I asked, genuinely stunned.

“Of course we have. Church is our communal family. God brings us each together because—combined—the parts of us form a whole that is greater than any individual. The family is the most important unit in civilization. When one of us isn’t there, it diminishes the rest.”

I had a hard time believing my absence diminished anyone, but I supposed anything was possible. “I’ve
meant
to come, really, but…”

“Mindie is there every week, and often during Wednesday evening sermons. Right in front. Singing loudly.” He paused, as if remembering a bunion. “So, I suppose you’ll be accompanying her regularly from now on.”

“I suppose,” I said, assuming he knew I was lying.

Ms. Waboombas voice cut in. “If I didn’t like to fuck so much, I’d never do the movies.”

“HAVE YOU HAD ANY THOUGHTS ON
CHILDREN
, MISTER WOPPLESDOWN?” the pastor said, entirely too loudly, as if he wanted to make certain God could hear that he was talking about something not sexual in this blasphemous car.

“Eventually,” I said, only half-listening and trying to hear the conversation he was talking over in the back seat as I feared it was beginning to unravel, and wanted sufficient warning so I could leap to safety.

“So there are nude scenes then, in these movies,” Mindie concluded, annoyed, but amazingly still apparently willing to make the sacrifice for stardom. “I suppose that’s to be expected for a newer actress.”

“Well, duh,” Ms. Waboombas sneered. “That’s kind of the point. You can’t
fuck
anybody if you’re not…” she held up her hands, and made quotation marks in the air with her fingers, “‘…
nude
.’”

“DO YOU
LIKE
CHILDREN, MISTER WOPPLESDOWN?” The pastor screamed, his voice cracking. He was making it more and more difficult for
anyone
to hear. We had to hear! Didn’t he realize the imminent danger we were all in?

“So it’s not just…nudity?” Mindie asked. “You also have to pretend to engage in, you know—
intercourse
—as well?”

“What do you mean,
pretend
? There’s no
pretend.
They roll the film. You fuck.”

“I THINK CHILDREN ARE
TRULY
A
GIFT
!”
Pastor Winterly said, apparently deciding he could no longer afford to allow the silence of waiting for me to answer. “A GIFT FROM GOD! GOD THE ALMIGHTY!”

“You mean to say,” Mindie said, her tone darkening, “they expect me to have
actual
sex—
on
camera?”

“ONE CAN SEE THE DIVINE IN THEIR INNOCENT FACES, WHEN THEY PLAY AND…EM…PLAY…AND…EM…WHEN THEY…YOU KNOW…
PLAY
…”

”That’s what they’re
paying
you for, lady, to have
actual
sex…”

“CHILDREN ARE GOOD! THE WAY THEY LOOK UP TO US FOR
COMFORT
AND
GUIDANCE
…”

“
They’re
PAYING YOU
to have
SEX
on
CAMERA
!” Mindie screamed.

“…GUIDANCE AND
PROTECTION
! PROTECTION IN A
FRIGHTENING WORLD!”

“YOU MAKE PORNOGRAPHY?”

Silence.

The car fell absolutely silent except for the sound of the wind rushing past, the thrum of the engine, and a dead squirrel I had trapped somewhere in the undercarriage that thumped the floor occasionally. I focused on the road with the pastor, and in the rearview mirror I could see Mindie, flushed and steaming, staring in fury and horror and revulsion at Ms. Waboombas, who stared right back at her with equal venom.

“Yes, I make ‘
por-nog-ra-phy’
,” Ms. Waboombas said. “What do you
think
I’ve been talking about here, bitch?”

“Bitch? You called me ‘
bitch’
?”

“It’s an expression.”

“You’re a…a stripper. The dancing,” Mindie squeaked. “The dancing is in
strip
clubs.”

Ms. Waboombas looked at Mindie as though there were ugly bugs crawling out of my darling fiancée’s ears carrying picket signs. “They don’t let you out much, do they?”

Mindie simply continued to stare at, what was now her greatest adversary—fuming, lips quivering. Then without looking at me, she said “Corky. Stop the car.”

“What? Why?” I asked.

“
Stop the car
.”

“But we’re only ten miles out of town. Can’t we…”

“STOP - THE -
CAR!”
she howled.

I pulled to the side of the road.

Mindie still hadn’t taken her evil-eye off Ms. Waboombas.

“Get out,” she said.

“What?” Waboombas asked, annoyed.

“Get. Out.”

“Fuck you, bitch, ‘get out’.”

“I am not riding any farther with a pornographer. Especially one that calls me the ‘b’ word.”

“So
you
get out,” Wendy told her.

“No,
you
get out.

“You.”

“
You
.”

“This is my car!”
Mindie said.

“Fuck if it is,” Wendy responded. “This is that hot old lady’s car. Corky’s aunt.”

Aunt Helena was hot? What a disturbing thought.

“And
I
am Corky’s
fiancée
. That makes this
my
car by
relation
.”

“Fuck if it does.”

“Would you
please
stop using foul language?”

“No. Fuck.”

“I asked you to…”

“Fuck.”

“Please stop…”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“This is
entirely
…”

“Fuck, fuck, ass, cock, shit, fuck, fuck.”

“Get out of the car!”

“Make me, bitch! Fuck!”

“Corky, make her get out!”

“Corky’s not gonna make me do
shit
. Corky’s afraid of me.”

How did she know? I thought I’d hidden it remarkably well.

“Corky!”
Mindie demanded. Now—of course—the question was: whom did I fear more?

“Mindie,” I tried. “We’re miles from anywhere.”

“I don’t care!
Make her get out
!”

I hesitated.

Mindie became incensed. “It’s
her,
or
me
, Corky!”

For some reason, not seeing the out, I still hesitated.

“Keep in mind, Corky,” Ms. Waboombas said, her voice filled with giddy confidence. “I fuck. She doesn’t.”

Mindie gasped, then turned on me.

To
me. Turned
TO
me.

“
Corky! Did you have relations with this woman!”

Okay, maybe ‘on’ was the better word.

“Relations?” Ms. Waboombas asked. “Hell, no. We
fuuuuucked!”

“CORKY!”

“Mindie…”

“Wendy!” Morgan threw in. I think he was just tired of feeling left out.

“Get out of this car!”
Mindie snarled.
“
Both
of you!”

“Yeah,” Ms. Waboombas said, not even
trying
to be helpful, “Let’s get out, Corky. You, and me. We can do it in the road till someone else comes along and picks us up. Then we’ll do it in
their
car with
them
.” She grinned at Mindie. “
’It’
means ‘
fuck’
, by the way.”

Mindie leaned over Ms. Waboombas, and opened her car door. “Out,” she said flatly.

“Make me,” the stripper/pornographer/sadist said, grinning.

“Out!”

“Make me!”

Mindie did. She surprised us all by shoving Ms. Waboombas so hard they both tumbled out of the Duesenberg, and onto the side of the road.

The car was parked on a long stretch of two-lane country highway with ocean on one side and trees on the other. Both sides sloped downward slightly, one toward the sea, the other into a drainage ditch between us and the rising tree line beyond. Mindie and Ms. Waboombas now struggled on the edge of that ditch, and as they did, Morgan, the pastor, and I sat up and leaned out to watch. Morgan snacked on popcorn and offered me some. I declined, realizing it would be highly inappropriate to eat while the girls fought. Ogling, however, was somehow entirely acceptable.

Mindie and Wendy tussled angrily for a moment—slap-fighting like the girls they were—when Ms. Waboombas shoved Mindie’s breasts away rather viciously with Mindie still attached to them. “Hey!” Ms. Waboombas said. “Those
are
real.”

“Told you,” Mindie said, smiling smugly, then growled and dove right back at the other woman.

The two went over together and rolled, screaming, down into the drainage ditch, plunging into the little rivulet that flowed there with a muddy splash. They tussled and struggled, ripping at one another’s hair, clothes, and appendages. It all seemed to move in ultra-slowmotion from my perspective, and I’d guess Morgan’s as well—maybe even the pastors—and before long they were both muddy, soaked, and their shredded clothes had begun to stick to them like wet paint. It was like one of those three a.m., Showtime, Women-In-Prison movies that men—and possibly lesbians—watch through Tivo the next day so they can fast-forward past any pointless attempts at actual story and get to the naked bits.

Morgan chewed popcorn, wide-eyed. I gave up all semblance of decorum, took a handful and joined him, as did the pastor.

Mindie shoved Ms. Waboombas savagely backward; again exhibiting the surprising strength she had displayed the previous night on the closet door. Proving herself up to the task, though, Ms. Waboombas grabbed Mindie as she fell, the two tumbled back, rolled completely over and back onto their feet like some perverse Cirque du Soleil moment, only muddier and less professional. Stunned into immobility, they looked down at themselves in shock at what they’d just done and laughed. But when they each noticed the other laughing, they stopped instantly, the hate welled again and, snarling, they tackled one another, fiercely and wetly.

Pastor Winterly reached into the cooler for a soda and handed me one. Clearly, this was all part of God’s plan to draw us closer together as a family.

We popped our cans and slurped as Mindie and Ms. Waboombas snagged handfuls of one another’s chests, then yanked for all they were worth. The front of Mindie’s austere garment became instantly sexy as it came away in strips, revealing more of Mindie’s bra and pale cleavage to the raw, naked power of the sun than any epidemiologist would recommend as safe.

“Whooooaaa,” Morgan and I admitted simultaneously, shielding our eyes from the glare. Then: “Jinx, you owe me a coke.”

Mindie retaliated by ripping away Ms. Waboombas top, which, thankfully—I mean unfortunately—wasn’t all that difficult. Ms. Waboombas just stood there smiling, then motioned to her dark breasts—a topless ‘Vanna White’—nodding as if to say ‘look what you’ve won by pulling on curtain number three!’

“Pflemmels,” she said brightly.

Her lack of humiliation clearly enraged Mindie, who stabbed out her hands and brutally nipple-twisted the taller woman. Ms. Waboombas screamed, batted away Mindie’s pinching claws and covered herself defensively. Then—cradling her surgically enhanced massiveness—Waboombas surged forward to head-butt Mindie in the stomach, and both women fell out of sight with a splash behind an irritatingly large bush.

We three men groaned together in disappointment then scrambled around the car, jockeying for better positions as the roadside brawl continued. For some minutes—our view entirely obscured by jiggling leaves, and dancing branches—the battle raged, accompanied by howls, shrieks, and bits of occasional free-flying clothing.

“Goodness,” the pastor said, wolfing down the last of the popcorn. “I hope no one gets seriously hurt.” Not seriously. But a
little
might be okay.

Suddenly the bush shuddered violently, and a pasty white breast, still half-covered in dirty bra, shoved forth through a hole between the leaves and a woman shrieked.

“Uncle!” cried Mindie’s voice.
“
UUUNCLLLLE!”

After a moment, the breast slowly sagged, receded into the shrubbery, and all became quiet. Ms. Waboombas—wearing only high-heels and a g-string—strode around from behind the bush with all the confidence of a real winner. She was followed by a somewhat cowed, though still defiant Mindie—now bereft of shirt and skirt— tucking one loose white breast back into its mud-smeared container. Wearing only the one shoe, panties and a bra, she stumbled her way up the slope toward the car, glowering at me with every lurch and fall.

“Wow,” I said, not sure what else to say. “Holy, wow.”

“You should go down and help her,” the pastor offered sympathetically.

“Yes,” I said. “I really should.” I took another sip of Coke, and stayed right where I was.

Ms. Waboombas retrieved a half shirt—one of mine, from the looks of it—out of the trunk of the Duesy and began drying herself off. As with everything she did, she made a show of it, and Morgan— who had popped another soda, and was drinking deep on all counts—watched her attentively. When she’d finished, she took a pair of filmy shorts and a half-shirt from her suitcase and—much to Morgan’s disappointment—put them on. The bottoms of her breasts still peeked out from under the insufficient fabric, and Morgan moaned a bit with approval.