Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (37 page)

Then it struck me that they must have all been heading here. Of course Wisper’s business
was
their business. I was standing in
Nuckeby’s
.

Duh.

“I know why you’re here,” Tarzan said.

“You do?” I asked, surprised. Because
I
didn’t.

“You extremist out-of-towners are always coming into Green Valley—horny and pushy—thinking the local girls are an easy mark just because they’re not repressed like you and wearing clothes.”

Wait.
I
was the extremist?

“Prudes like you think nudity means we’re all free and loose, and will just do it in a storage closet with anybody who comes along.”

“No. You misunderstand. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to…”

What
was
I here for?

I looked around and considered things. This answered some questions really. If this was her home—how she had grown up—it explained a lot about her behavior, and her comfort with being naked. But it also meant any relationship between us was utterly impossible. This was not
my
lifestyle, and I couldn’t imagine learning to be comfortable with someone for whom it was. I manufactured
clothes
for God’s sake. How could we reconcile such a chasm of difference? How would we raise the children? Where would we spend Christmas? Who would provide the towels?

Was
I just looking for some quick sex in a storage closet with his sister? If he thought I was, I guess I could understand his hostility— although I still resented him for it.

“I’m just here to…“ I said, still trying to figure it out, “…
apologize
to her.”

“In a storage closet.”

“It was her idea. I thought you listened to our conversation.”

“Why do you need to apologize? What did you do to her?”

“So many things. But mostly…” I hesitated, fearing their reaction, “…it’s my fault she lost her job.”

There were a couple of gasps around the room, and—oddly— pants-hater smiled.

Smiled?

I turned back to Tarzan. Whatever pleasantness may have been lingering around in him fell out of his face, and he glared at me more intently.

“You Wopplesdown?”

His anger carried, and two more men sitting at a nearby table stopped talking and listened in.

“I’m
a
Wopplesdown.”

“What does that mean?”

“There are several of us. I’m Corky.”

He considered that for another moment. The two men listened more intently, the older one turning our way a bit and leaning out of his chair. Pants-hater
really
began to seethe.

“You the one called her agency?” the older man with the doorstop asked.

“No.”

“Then how did
you
make her lose her job?” wondered Tarzan. I looked him up and down, drawing out all my reserves of manhood. It was a quick draw.

“By not defending her when she angered my grandfather,” I answered, hating his penis, “who
did
call her agency.”

He thought about that a second, then nodded, seeming to understand, and tilted his head as if waiting for more of an explanation. Everyone else waited too.

“You’re the one she liked,” Petal, the waitress, said, coming up from behind.

Liked. I had hoped this, of course, but it still sent a thrill through me to hear it confirmed. And a chill to hear it in the past tense.

“My grandfather thought she was a gold-digger,” I said.

Suddenly the room erupted in sneering laughter from everyone except pants-hater, who turned bright red. I looked around at them all, confused—which seemed to be my natural state of mind since arriving in Nikkid Bottoms.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You obviously don’t know Wisper!” Tarzan said.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“If you don’t know, then you don’t belong in that closet with her.”

After a moment, I lowered my head, ashamed and distressed. Everyone sat silent, watching me. Waiting.

“I’d like to talk to her,” I said.

“Then why can’t you talk to her out here?” Doorstop asked.

“Because he’s got a fiancée who might see them together,” Tarzan said.

The room Ooooh’d and Aaaahh’d, and I felt about four inches tall—and shrinking fast.

The room fell quiet again, and I wasn’t sure anyone was going to say anything for the longest time.

“I think it’s best you just eat your food and leave,” Tarzan said finally.

“That’s not for you to decide, River,” Petal said, finally finding a great place to put a period.

“This is none of your concern, Petal.”

“It
is
my concern, River. You planning on running block on any guy wants to talk to me, too, because I think I got a say in that, and I’m pretty sure Wisper feels she’s got a say, as well, and she wouldn’t like it if she knew you were out here stepping on her love-life like a bug, which is what you always do no matter
who’s
showing interest, and anyway, on top of that, who do you think you are, selling my car like you own it, like you’re the boss of me…?”

He held up a hand to silence her, and it worked. Apparently he
was
the boss of her.

“I can get her modeling job back,” I threw in.

The very wide ‘River’ hesitated. “How?”

I had no idea. “I’ve got some ideas. My name is on the company too.”

“Can you really do that, or are you just trying to get past me so you can upset her more?”

Upset her
more?

I sighed. I hadn’t considered she might have been upset. Being, primarily, a wealthy layabout, I had never had to think through how potentially devastating it might be for regular people to lose their jobs. For me, there was always the assumption that I’d have money to do— well—whatever I wanted. For others, I imagined, it was a lot like Grandfather making good on his threats to throw me in the gutter. I shuddered. Ms. Nuckeby must have been deeply hurt.

Whether I could or not—whether I could be
with
her or not—I had to at least get her job back for her.

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, no. I’m not intending to upset her any more. I can get her a job, or at least I can offer her another option.”

“What kind of option?”

“I think I should discuss that with her.” Right after I figured it out for myself.

Petal urged him. “Let him talk to her, River. She’s a grown woman.”

But Tarzan wasn’t swinging with it. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Shouldn’t she decide that for herself?” I demanded.

“Probably. But she won’t.”

“You’re just going to let her think I never came to see her in that closet.”

“Bingo.”

“Screw you, Tarzan,” I said, my voice deepening and growing louder. This was apparently more important to me than even
I
realized.

He just stood there, refolded his arms, and smiled sternly. Large penises must give you confidence or something.

I moved forward and shoved him aside. Or, rather, pushed against him and wound up shoving myself aside. He was sturdier than he looked, and he looked pretty damn sturdy. I tried to get around him, but he just leaned to one side and pinned me against a wall, where I squirmed and flopped like a fish waiting to be gaffed.

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 fro, and accidentally seeing naked people—of whom there were now many more wandering up and down the street—likely having arrived for the festival. I supposed ardent Bible reading beat plucking out thine eyes, no matter how much they offend thee.

Mindie walked past me, still trying to hide her naked self while savagely scratching her stomach. It had become red and raw from all her endless itching. On the plus side, she had color at last.

“
What did you do in there?
” she screamed at me as she moved to the Duesenberg. “
Why did they throw us out?
”

Still holding herself, she began searching through the car, possibly for clothes. More probably a weapon.