Tuesday, April 28, 2009

A Racy Fictional Tale at Water's Edge


A View To A Killing

(A make-believe story with lots of dirty words in it. I'm serious. If you are easily offended by scatology, read no further. Pick one of my real-life posts over down there on the side.)


Phil Stark stared past his sand-caked toes at the curling foam on the horizon. Propped on the deck, his vision rhythmically occluded by the Heineken label as it rose to greet him, Stark lounged laboriously on an ancient Adirondack, taxing his elbows, doing his best to hover in space. Discovering momentary comfort, he scanned the coast, checking first his left flank, and the strip of silica commandeered by gay sun worshipers.

"Like I need this shit.”

Next, a survey to the right, and the promising expanse that tended to yield the more favorable view.

"More like it." He always saved this vista for last.

Stark occupied a beach house in the buffer zone between the fabulously flamboyant and the bravely blasé. You wouldn't spot suburban families here. Not for long. Not once the kids had asked mommy what kind of bathing suits the funny men were wearing.

Neither would a serious angler be caught rigging his rod in the vicinity. Happily, mused the detective, the only wildlife frequenting this stretch was of the self-confident female variety, seeking a solicitous spot for personal reflection, and the occasional all-over tan.

Detective? Ex-detective was more like it, since he'd taken those thirteen slugs during a bust that had gone terribly wrong in the city. And it’d gone particularly badly for Stark. How long ago had it been now? He searched his body for evidence, and his ass gave up a confession with little prodding. Not long enough ago, man, it squealed.

His backside had taken the brunt of the assault, in a tight pattern that seemed the intentional insult of a gifted triggerman. Let's make it clear here at the outset that the wounds were not the result of our agent having turned tail and run. Not this decorated veteran of the force. The first of the fusillade had caught him as he’d turned to look for his absent back-up, and was followed rapidly by a pinpoint peppering of his posterior. Miraculously, he'd been saved by a rump with a well-traveled rep among beach strollers of the distaff persuasion.

What had gone down that fateful day? Had he been set up? If so, by whom? And if by whom, how come? And if how come, why did it have to be in the ass, and thirteen times already? It had to make a guy wonder all the way to the 7-Eleven for a case of over-the-counter painkiller.

Here then squirmed one of NYPD's finest, on possibly permanent R&R, soaking up the sights, smells, and UV of the Atlantic coastline, courtesy of John Q. Public. Could've been worse. If he hadn't spun around…

The hot cross buns were on the mend now. The doc, a strange bird with an admittedly odd assignment, seemed competent enough with the needle, or whatever he'd used to rebuild the area. A putty knife and some live spackle, one might reasonably surmise. Once repaired, the patient had been assured his trophy glutes would be reeling them in as usual. A thumbs-up from the attending nurse provided a compelling second opinion. Stark’s professional attention to detail flagged a hottie breathing beneath the surgical mask.

Speaking of reeling them in, just beginning to surface over the line of dune grass to starboard was a keeper, for sure. Stark's body stiffened reflexively. Bad idea. Ouch. But then it hadn't really been an idea in the first place, had it? No, it was more a primal reaction, triggered from some remote recess in his brain, a reaction honed through years of experience on the force. His ass forgave his neo-cortex, or whatever the hell part of the brain it was that made him flinch. What does an ass know from brains, anyhow?

She came gliding over the dunes like a vessel under sail, each control line taut under its assigned load. Triangles of fabric stretched in graceful arcs about her. Her hips seemed designed to ply the sand that yielded to the contours of her feet, and as she approached, her course was corrected away from the shoreline, in the direction of the deck where Stark sat, nursing his inflamed butt.

Brushing away bits of broken shell from his dogs, Stark sucked away whatever spinach dip might still be clinging to his gum line and gave his trunks a hitch to redistribute the newly alerted troops, first impressions being what they are and all.

She paused at the base of the stairway, assuming a stance that was casual yet provocative, with a breath of coy, a waft of demure …and what else was his sniffer picking up? A whiff of dominatrix?

The detective could've imagined the last scent. He wasn't sure. While it’d been his job to read people instantly through their mannerisms, he'd been fooled in the past, on occasion with catastrophic results. Like that one time… and the other time, too. Shit, there’d been a bunch of times, actually.

He shook the memories from the filing cabinet as a stallion might shake biting insects off its hindquarters with finely tuned muscle control. Maybe not that effectively. Stark focussed on her rack for a second, and that seemed to work.

Maybe it was just a wisp of ennui he'd misread. He made a mental note to look the word up. Anyway, she was put together like an exotic racecar. No, a classic roadster. Definitely not an SUV, which, call him old fashioned, handled too many passengers at one time. He'd figure the make and model after a test drive. At any rate, she looked ready to take on a wet, winding road in any gear you happened to slip into.

"Permission to come aboard, captain?"

"Well I'm no captain, but you certainly have my permission, sweetheart."

"I'm no sweetheart, but I'll accept the offer."

As her legs left the beach for the stairs, her gait accommodated, the way a thoroughbred leaves behind the rigors of the racecourse for the pomp of the winner's circle. Only this one you wouldn't want to blanket with roses. No sir. This one you'd keep saddled, and you wouldn't let go of the crop.

She wore a white two-piece, bathing being the last thing on its mind, and a sheer wrap of shimmering white drawn up and tied at the hip. A translucent white sunhat provided soft illumination for the view below.

Her hair was not white. That would have been going overboard. No, the coif was a startling shade of red, yet to be duplicated by the Crayola folks, cinched back in a tightly tethered, yet untamed ponytail. It seemed in the process of spontaneously combusting under heaven's broiler, while her skin had acquiesced to a burnished caramel hue. She looked like a sack of skewered marshmallows on the toasting altar. Okay, never expect an apt simile from a guy preoccupied with a misbehaving woody.

The whole ensemble left little for Stark's imagination, but he let it run wild anyway, like a bolting mustang (the horse, not the car) for the hell of it. What kind of knot was just barely holding that wrap on? It looked awfully, professional. The kind of knot you’d want to remove and inspect, maybe draw a series of sketches of, and not bother to put back the way you found it.

Stark rose to greet her, in the process burying a splinter from the Adirondack deeply into what had recently been a convalescing cheek. He choked back a yelp of pain, staring at the sun for an excuse to tear up.

"It's one I came up with on my own."

"Whaa?" he gurgled, wondering if the staples had held.

"I saw you admiring my pareo."

"Pa-wha?"

"Pa-rrrey'ho. It's Spanish. It helps if you roll the tongue. Like this"

She parted her lips languidly, introduced her tongue to the gap, and gave an inspired impression of Eartha Kit taking Batman to the cleaners.

"Yes, I'm…sure it does." Stark bit his tongue, not hard enough to convince himself his backside wasn’t hemorrhaging like a loyal employee’s 401k.

"You're struggling too much. It's no biggie."

"I, took French, in school."

"I can do French, if you want."

Sometimes it’s all in the timing. Stark garbled to the dunes, "This shit stinks, for sure.”

"Pardonne?"

Pull it together, Phil. "To what, do I owe this distinct, pleasure?"

She looked him up and down, and up again. He felt like a runway waif who'd yet to master the art of bulimia, with a package. Was she looking for anything in particular?

"I'm looking for a good detective."

Inspector Tush might just need another visit to the emergency room.

"Detective? Last I checked, I wasn’t listed in the yellow pages…"

"Word travels fast on the water. So how's that fine derriere of yours coming along?" She was playing with her R's again.

Stark took a gulp of humid air, but it was still too dry for his taste.

"Actually, I think I've suffered a relapse."

"Oh? If you'd like, I'll take a look for you. I have some training in that area."

Something in Stark's cerebellum crackled, like tin foil between the molars, but back where the cerebellum is. Where the hell is the cerebellum, anyway? And what's it supposed to do? Maybe the sensation came from someplace else. Again, his ass was of no use to him, hence the name. What was it about this woman? She seemed awfully, familiar.

"Listen, what do you know about me, and how do you figure I can help you?"

"Well, if you're going to get all formal on me, I know quite a bit about you, but I can't tell you why right now, or it would spoil all the fun. But you can help me, Phil."

Phil? That was his name. He made a mental note to check his mailbox shingle.

"How, do you suppose?" Phil, dear close friend of your devoted hiney, do you have any butterfly closures in the medicine cabinet? Don't desert the squad, Phil.

"I need the private aid of an investigator," she stated as flatly as she could manage, under the circumstances.

"Yes, well, as you might know, since you got the scoop on me, I'm not one."

"That's technically true, but you're no longer on the force, at least not actively. And if I know you, you could use a little adventure."

"A little adventure?" Like I need another hole to keep my rectum company?

"Sure you do. Something to get you up off that sorry ass of yours and get a little exercise, as it were."

Ouch, that stung. Not the assessment from the siren, but the area he'd just probed with a free finger.

"Got an itch, detective? I say scratch it."

"Listen, this is kind of a bad time…

"I'm certain I can make it worth your while, detective."

With that, and barely a distinguishable shiver from her shoulders (one last equine sense memory, and we'll put the pony away now), her top fell to the deck like the forsaken feathers of a wayward gull. Detective Phil Stark now found himself staring at a pair of breasts the size and shape of, uh… a great pair of breasts.

She floated to him on a cushion of desire, reeling on the balls of her feet like the posted guard attempting not to awaken the Unknown Soldier. She reached back over a shoulder to draw him to the crook of her neck. He pulled his finger out of his festering new wound, which had sufficiently coagulated so as to mitigate the need for immediate medical attention, and proceeded to heed other voices.

Stark managed to pin her hat brim between his nose and her ear for an improved view of the work ahead. She purred in a way that was just, just, intoxicating the way that, well, the way any sound coming from a woman is intoxicating when she's letting you feel her boobs. Hell, she could've been calling a square dance for all he cared. Grab your partner, don't let go! Kneed her tits … and a… well, you know the drill. Yee-haw.

Always the gentleman when in the vicinity of a potential lay, Stark made sure his calluses didn’t do any soft tissue damage to her, let’s call them milky orbs, while his medulla oblongata or whatever battled the scorching demons tormenting his backside. Some days the demarcation between pain and pleasure makes the Berlin Wall look like a simple demolition job.

She reeled suddenly to face him. Her lids fluttered, her eyes seeking some ecstasy or something far off in the distance. Her head jack-knifed back a bit too abruptly, sending the hat frisbeeing to the beach, and even though she was now kind of eerie looking, Phil Stark prepared to plant his tongue as deeply as possible into whatever orifice she might make available to him.

She fell in a limp heap to the deck.

"Like I need this shit," he moaned.

What was going on here? He'd tried to catch her on the way down, but she'd slipped right through his hands. How could that be? He'd been a starting tight end in college, considered by many a real pro prospect before the damn knee injury. Along with his famed fanny, women had all raved about the hands. Something didn't add up here. Whether he liked it or not, the detective was back on the job.

Searching for clues, he now noticed a moist, lotion-like substance on his palms. Odd. Very odd. Why would a man's hands suddenly be laden with ointment when all he'd done was fondle a woman he'd just met at the beach?

Wait a minute. Hadn't he heard of a diabolical plot that involved the introduction of a sophisticated poison through epithelial contact? Could this be just such a poison?

If it were so, then he'd be the murderer! Yet he was fairly certain he wasn't the murderer. But what if he were the unwitting accomplice? What if he'd been chosen to kill this poor woman without his own knowledge?

But how would the killer know the woman was going to let him … mess with her mangos? Okay, okay. What if… this woman were in on the plot herself! But that would mean she was… Was this some kind of bizarre suicide pact?

Pact? With whom? It seemed so improbable. And yet the detective had found that sometimes the least likely story ended up being the one that got published. I mean, I mean he meant… oh, you know what we mean, damn you.

How about this scenario? What if the woman was there to kill him, and… But then he'd be dead on the deck and she'd be….

Then it hit him like a tsunami sporting ankle weights. A homicide/suicide combo! She’d planned to kill him with the poison, and then die herself! But she hadn't planned on his having such heavily callused hands, made so by strenuous and repeated guy activities, thus delaying the effects of the poison seeping into his own bloodstream.

The poison, having effortlessly worked its way into her blood first, through those sumptuous, jugs just doesn't sound like the right word to use at a sensitive time like this. Look at the poor, half-nude girl, there on the deck. Just take a look. Stare for as long as you like. She deserves a more dignified word for her hooters than jugs. What's left? Think, Stark!

"I definitely do not need this shit," he told the sandpipers, or terns, or whatever the fuck they were, screeching like harpies overhead. Sometimes the beach isn't all it's cracked up to be,

Stark was getting woozy at the implications. How much time did he have to come up with an antidote and another word for female mammary glands? Where was it he'd heard about that poison? Think, Stark! Think!

"Damn!!!" It hit him like a double semi packed with bowling balls on route to a bricklayer convention. It was that stupid, fucking show, "24". That sophomoric pile of paranoia-laced pap that had an entire nation of imbecile xenophobes in a collective fit of hysteria over terrorist conspiracies popping out of every suburban garbage can. Even Mom was a terrorist. Your mom, I'm talking about. You, reader. Your mom. Kill the bitch, now, before it's too late. We'll wait…

There was that spook moron, Keiffer Sutherland, poster-boy for super-secret-special spy-cops everywhere, barking, rasping, waterboarding his way through season after season of gratuitous mayhem, wringing every method-mangled moment he could out of a singular look that stretched like the birth canal of a mother of triplets. That incessant, tortured gaze of extreme urgency.

"Drop to the floor! Do it! NOW! I can't tell you why right now! There's no time! Just do it! I can't tell you anything until a few hours from now, which is to say next month, at which point my cell phone battery will be dead. Do what I say now! What?! Yes, I'm talking to you from my cell phone… Cingular! What? Three bars, okay? But I can't tell you where I am. It's secret, don’t you get it!? Listen to me, if I bothered to stop for a moment to explain everything, the crisis would be over and the show would be called 2 !!!”

Jesus! Jacko was going through his minutes faster than a coked-up debutante plotting her coming-out party. Were there an Emmy for Best Supporting Electronic Device in a Mind-Numbing Neocon Series, the phone would have been a shoe-in. But you can bet our fictitious Agent Bauer wouldn’t have survived one episode on the LIRR. Forget terrorists. Commuters would've ripped him limb from limb for all his inane yammering.

Anyway, that was the show with the fancy poison, so in all probability Stark was going to be just fine. Still, there was the issue of the dead chick on his deck. How was he going to explain that to his ex-compadres? Would they ever believe a story from the guy who'd broken every rule in the book to solve every complicated crime the department had ever been saddled with?

"Damn it, Stark!" his ex-superior would say, "I'm sick and tired of you running around half-cocked (full-cocked, Stark would silently correct), skirting procedure, not filing forms in the right place, and solving everything for everybody! I did not endure mandatory "Being an Insufferable Prick " training to have my career ruined by a department scandal. I want your shield and piece on my desk right now! (Stark note to Stark: boss’s desk too small for my piece, ack ack). A dead woman on your deck, for chrissakes!"

"Help me up, would you?"

It was the dead woman, struggling to get to her feet.

"Whoa, still a little light-headed. I should have mentioned that I tend to pass out when I'm getting my melons manhandled in a standing position."

Melons! How could the word have escaped him? He felt his head begin to swim. He looked into those inscrutable eyes, and then at those inscrutable, uhh… and now it was Stark's turn to go limp and hit the deck.

When he came to, he was comfortably prone, his face buried in a Laura Ashley hypo-allergenic pillow. Comfortable yes, more or less, except for the… restraints pinning him spread-eagled to the most formidable poster bed Ethan Allen had ever devised for the boudoir. What the hell had he been thinking when he'd made that purchase, with no money down and seven years of interest-free payments? Oh, I think we all know what he'd been thinking.

The knots holding him in place looked diabolically…. familiar. At least he was lying on his front side, a nice break for his…

"HOLY MOTHER OF GOD MY FREAKING ASS!

A plink of metal into a ceramic container.

"That's one."

"What the…jesusmaryandjoseph is going on back there!

"I see you've come to, Phil"

"Thanks for noticing…YOOOOO BITCH FROM THE BLEEDING BOWELS OF HELL, OW FUCKING OW!!!

"That's not a nice way of addressing a girl who's just let you feel her boobies. Two." Another kerplink.

Phil Stark tried to compose himself so that he might assemble the pieces of the puzzle, which were now being extracted one JUMPING GODFORSAKEN COCK SNAZZLE by one from his BUTCHER THE NUNS AND FEED THEM TO THE PIGS!!! … tortured buttocks.

"Three and four. You better talk nice to me, or I might lose my dainty touch."

"Dainty, my WHORE OF THE FIFTH FLEET KILL MY LANDLORD KILL MY LANDLORD!!!

"Five and six. You’re a real trooper, Phil. My little soldier boy.”

"And you’re my EAT ME LICK ME HOWLING BUCKETS OF SCUM FIEND FROM HADES YOUHOOOOHOOOooooo!"

"That one's deep."

"For God's sake, take a breather, would you? Please, pretty lady, please. Tell me why you're doing this to me."

"You mean you haven't figured it out yet, detective? You, the relentless bulldog of the NYPD? The Jolly Inquisitor? The one who never tires of coming up with new names for my knockers?"

That one was a gimme.

"Okay, okay. I'm just a dumb ex-cop with a bug up his ass, or something. Educate me OH, SATAN'S SPAWN AND BLOW ME WITH A BACKHOE MOMMYYYY!!!"

"Got it. And that's number seven. And since you've lost your professional concentration I'll help you out, seeing as number thirteen I leave for you to enjoy."

"Me to enjoy BASTARD CHILD OF A MONKEY'S RED RUMP AND DONKEY DONUTS LORD ALMIGHTY oh let me die in peace. A stick of dynamite up my ass should do the trick."

The cup was rapidly filling with, what were they? The slugs had been removed by that doctor guy, right?

"Close, detective. What you haven't deduced, if I may pause from my work for a moment, is that you have been a very active, though unwitting, participant in a diabolically grand scheme."

"Really? Well experiment on this you GODFORSAKEN DARKEST HOLE OF HELL FIRE WITCH-WEASEL OHHH STOP stop stop please, and talk to me like you love me for a minute!"

"Okay, my little stud-puppy. Phillip, did you ever once pause to ponder how you managed to get pumped with thirteen well-placed rounds of non-lethal small caliber fire, right after all your back-up disappeared? That no arrests were made, no official reports filed, the only written words surfacing on the case being those registered as bathroom graffiti at your precinct?

No one had ever called him Phillip before. No one he'd ever wanted to fuck, anyway.

"Some of that might have occurred to me."

"Well, since you're going to buy it shortly, courtesy of an explosion through your freight exit, I’ll fill you in."

"You're too kind. I WASN'T BEING FACETIOUS!!!"

"Don't worry, Snookums. It'll all be over soon. See, your sweet cakes have been housing some of the most valuable intellectual booty since the discovery of Lascaux."

This had been the longest chunk of time Stark had had to consider his predicament without the accompaniment of searing ass pain. He searched for the perfect rejoinder, to keep his streak alive.

“Go on."

"Sooo…"

"Hey hey HEY!!!"

"Just teasing. The painful sling you've found your ass in is just one cog in an astoundingly complex, multi-phased, monstro-funded endeavor that may be the most massive para-symbiotic politico-corporate escapade ever conceived. I'm through now, with the hyphenated jabber anyway."

"What the fuck are you saying? And trust me, I'm not stalling right this minute."

"How could you be? What I'm saying is this: you've become an unwitting warehouse for the most valuable collection of data ever accumulated and stored in the history of mankind."

"Alright, I give. Shoot. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!"

"Well, for instance, one info-capsule is a collection of all the audio tapes Nixon thought he'd erased.

"Oooh!"

"I didn't touch you."

"No, I'm just impressed."

"Exactly, Think 'Books on Tape', as read to the masses by Tommy Lee Jones. The profits would be astronomical. Shall I continue?"

"Please. WITH THE EXPLANATION!"

"One capsule has the dirt on Rooseveldt and Pearl Harbor, one is a “Where in the World is Jimmy Hoffa” map, one has the sordid dope on that little baton twirler, one…

"Let me guess. Did we really go to the moon? PFFFFFOOOOOOCCCCCCCCK!"

"Stop interrupting."

"Sorry, but where did you come up with this stuff?" Stark was starting to forget what was more important, stalling this international mercenary terrorist till he could formulate an escape plan, or putting to bed every conspiracy plot he'd ever entertained in the part of his brain that… Where do we store all that crap? In the gray matter? Is it really gray? Stark hated when his head started doing shit like this.

"I didn't come up with it. Other people came up with it, micro-packaged it, solicited the secret bids, worked the deals…"

"And the bidders were…? M-M-M-MYYYYY SHARONAAAAA GO YANKS THEY HATE OUR FREEDOM HATE IT HATE IT!!!"

"That's for interrupting again."

"Listen, geez! I'm sorry! It's a reflex thing with me. You should know that. But, but, why me?

“Why you, detective?! You want to spoil the circus act with a spot of logic? You want to make sense of this collective carnival ride? You want a rational explanation? Google it, Columbo. Wikipedia to your heart’s content. Ask fucking Kieffer how it all “goes down”, if he isn’t busy driving his Maserati on a suburban sidewalk with a bottle of Jack in his lap.”

“Okay, okay, but since you've implied that one of these things is going to do me in anyway, the least you could do is humor me while you go spelunking around back there with no novocaine."

"You're right. What could it hurt? I might as well tell you everything, since, this kind of info, when it gets out, will probably, ruin mankind."

Did Detective Stark's schnoz detect the ever so subtle aroma of regret? Time for him to dig.

"Now you're getting me down. I mean it's one thing to come to an untimely end this way… How, does it work, anyway?"

"Well, remember Mission Impossible? When the tape gets through describing the mission and personally wishes Phelps, or Briggs, if you’re even older, all the best? And he backs off to watch the machine start to smoke and everything? Something like that."

"Don't tell me you hang around to make sure I'm erased."

She cocked an eyebrow and stiffened her lips.

"Like I need this kind of shit." Stark gave a tug on the lines that held him fast.

"Try all you like, Phil. The knots just keep getting tighter. And screaming, well it's nothing your neighbors down the beach don't hear on a regular basis. If anything, they're envious. Yes, it's pretty much all… hopeless."

Definitely a note of regret. He’d found an opening.

"Oh, what does it matter? A bang or a whimper. It's all the same in the end. There's good and evil in all of us. Some of us just practice with more… panache. I'm through with the force anyway. Washed up. Never did fit in. Thought I was doing something good for my fellow man, but all I was doing was wasting my time till this moment arrived, I guess. All I ever really wanted to do was find my own little spot, you know? Settle down, away from all the madness, maybe find the right girl, get a boat, practice my knots…"

"Really? You, mean that? Because, I've started to wonder, you know? About my role in all of this. I mean, who cares what's on Abraham Zapruder's other roll of film?"

"What?"

"Yeah, one of these capsules has the footage from his second roll, after he reloaded. Supposed to, you know, blow the lid off that little story. Anyway, all this information, who really did what to whom, what the definition of "is" is, how many hookers did George Bush garrote before he found Christ…"

"I hear you. I hear you!"

"Then there's the alternative ending to "The Matrix" trilogy."

"You have got to be joking."

"I'm so serious. Where Keanu Reeves wakes up and realizes he's a Mister Softy vender and it was all just a hokey, ridiculous dream."

"My God, the havoc that would wreak on the streets."

"Yes, and it would all be…my…fault."

"Not just you!!! I'm in this just as deeply as you are now! We're in this together! I mean, here I've been, half-assedly guarding all this horrible truth until it was one fine day unleashed on an unsuspecting populace. The collective national psyche could never rebound from the horror. And that would be my legacy. Those would be my last thoughts, right before I… went… Pffft.

"Oh Phil! We can't let this happen! We can't let Paul McCartney get his hands on these capsules!"

"McCartney! I knew it! Who else could it have been? Who had the wealth? The connections? The time on his hands? Bill Gates? That goofball is giving it all away now."

"Philip, stop it! None of that matters any more. What do we do now? Just tell me what to do!"

Detective Stark was at the moment a man without a plan, or skivvies. Something was getting in the way of the firing of his, what the hell are those brain thingies that look like a leafless deciduous tree on its side?

Could I be falling for this femme fatale, he wondered? Could it be that he actually believed what he'd just said? That Mrs. Right had just now shown up at his doorstep, lashing him to their bridal bower at this pivotal moment in mankind's history?

Then the solution hit him like a bucket of chilled Gatorade at the Big Countdown.

"Listen, you've got to trust me. You've got to dig the rest of those suckers out of me, NOW, and then throw them all into the ocean like so much flotsam. No! Jetsam. That's it, jetsam. The worst that could happen would be that, I don't know, the answer to whether Don Larson's pitch was outside or not ends up in a jar of shells on somebody's mantle, looking for all the world like a bit of polished beach glass.

"Oh Phil! Are you sure? Are you really sure? It's going to hurt just horribly!"

"Do it NOW! There isn't any more time! What's a little pain in the ass when there's a planet to saAAAAAYYYY YA COULDA WARNED ME DARLEEEENG OOOOOOOOKLAHOMA WHERE THE WIND COMES SWEEPING DOWN THE SHIP SET SAIL ON THE SHORE OF THIS UNCHARTED DESERT IIII’D LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING! BY BALOGNA HAS A FIRST NAAAAAAAME, IT'S O-S-C-A-RRRRRR WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY KENNETH! GIMME THE FUCKING FREQUENCY IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIIIIIIIIIN A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY ICH BIN EIN PATSYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

"That's all of them!"

"Now go, go, GO!!!"

He listened intently to her bare feet scamper out onto the deck, down the stairs, into the sand. There was a distant, dainty but determined huff, as capsules encoded with the planet’s dirtiest shared secrets were flung into the sea, there to mingle with its other myriad mysteries. As Mr. Sutherland Jr’s big-screen commanding officer had once observed from the witness stand, we can't handle the truth.

There was a loud pop, followed by squeals of male surprise from down the beach, and then exuberant applause. That had been the capsule meant for Stark.

Moments later she was at his side, the sweet scent of her bosom wafting over him like overripe fruit from an equatorial country the name of which you’d get wrong on Jeopardy even if you watched regularly... Damn! It’d been Coppertone all along.

She effortlessly flicked loose the knots that had held him in place. She's gotta teach me that shit, he thought, as she delicately rolled him over. She stood next to him now, staring down sweetly as a Johnycake baked shortly after the civil war, when sugar had become affordable to ex-slaveholders. His eyes met with those of this stranger, who had so recently held captive his every sense, now reading his mind.

"You try it," she instructed.

He brought his hand to her waist. Recalling his early days on the playground as a marble ace, he wedged his “fuck you, jagg-off” finger near the first joint of the thumb, loading up muscular tension between the two. Aiming slightly off-center, he increased pressure on the middle digit, while simultaneously relaxing the collective muscles of the thumb just enough for a spring-loaded release, allowing the finger a glancing blow to the pareo's knot. What had remained of her original ensemble, wrap and all, wafted to the floor like a granted wish.

She deftly picked her way over his now mostly inert frame, alighting with the pressure a butterfly makes against her chosen stamen. That’s where a butterfly lands, right? The stamen. Or is it the other thing? Damn! I got a B-minus in biology. That bitch, Mrs. Rosenberg. In any event, he felt no pain from the area that had recently been the focal point of his existence. There was a new kid in town.

Stark smiled lovingly, forgivingly, presently at a loss for an apt simile, but not for a boner the size of Mount Rushmore, without the faces, which would be way weird.

Now this is the shit I'm talking about."

As she tweaked her landing, grinning back at him in complicity, it struck him. "Wait," he whispered.

"What, my sweet love-bone?"

"I never caught your name."

"Monica, my precious. Call me Monica."

"Then, Monica, heart of my heart, as a new kind of experiment, be gentle with me."