“Everybody gets a prize,” Wilma breathed into the crook’s hairy ear.
Clay burrowed into Wilma’s mind, trying to find a corner without widescreen live action coverage of Wilma’s divine benediction, but he was no Randy. I gotta get me some skills, he thought, as her worshipper moaned happily. Or else a mystical paper bag to put over my head.
He would die before he ever admitted that it was, well, kinda fun.
Five minutes later, Wilma’s worshipper was out cold, apparently from an overload of divine blessings, and Wilma walked to the bathroom, placed her hands against the mirror, and planted a kiss on it.
Clay found himself slipping into control of his own body like a man putting on his favorite jeans. “Ahhhhh.”
He resisted the urge to find clothes. Instead, he went through the wallet lying on the dresser. With the handy ballpoint and the back of an unpaid phone bill, he made notes of Zachariah’s full name, driver’s licence, social security number, credit card numbers, and Chicago Department of Inspectional Services badge number. Then he found Zachariah’s cell phone in his pocket and went through it methodically, writing down phone numbers stored in its memory, with an X by recently called numbers. Then he went through the wallet again. Yup, here was a password list. Phone, email access, and — jackpot — bank passwords.
Really, this could be quite a racket.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jewel counted off the blocks until she found Lena-slash-Velvita’s place. It was a basement apartment in a four-flat off Lake Street, a few blocks from the Artistic. Its front stoop glittered with broken glass. The “L” screamed past every few minutes. She checked her watch. Only two-thirty. Looking up at the building, she decided to try the back door.
Probably only half the tenants were home right now, feeding their pit bulls. Maybe Velvita had one. If I was in porn, I’d have a pit bull. Of course, Velvita now had Randy.
Who was stuck in bed. Not much protection for a girl living alone.
Jewel located the door, hidden in the gangway between this building and the next. Randy? He wouldn’t hear her, inside. Panic welled up in her.
She pulled out the key that had come enclosed with his letter.
o0o
“So what was with the poppets and the hinky pastry?” Clay said as he tried on a pair of Zachariah’s cargo pants.
They’re invitations to be my new avatar. A poppet-sized Wilma sat on the edge of Zachariah’s bed, kicking her legs, her blonde curls falling into her eyes.
“Invitations?” Clay pictured an engraved envelope with a little RSVP card inside. “You are cordially invited to let a sex goddess hijack your body?”
More like a message in a bottle. I need an avatar to help express my goddessness. I wanted Steven, Wilma pouted, but he’s been avoiding me.
“Jewel says he’s a jerk.”
Oh, he’s highly qualified. If you could look at a person without their body, you could see the sex. It looks like — like lightning. Steven’s just packed with it.
“Apparently, he can’t keep it packed,” Clay said drily.
I’ve been very lonely, Wilma mourned. The printers knew what I needed, but none of them would say yes. They cut way back on the offerings, too. She sounded hurt. She smiled at Clay with trembly lips. I’m sorry you don’t like me.
“You know darned well I like you. Who wouldn’t? The thing is,” Clay said, sitting beside her on the bed and nudging Zachariah’s sleeping hand out of the way of his feet, “you can’t just send out aphrodisiacs wholesale. Bad things can happen if they get used inappropriately. Like, your precious Steven and old Zach here used your porn-poppets to cheat old ladies out of the value of their homes.”
Her tiny face crumpled. You’re angry with me. He felt her unhappiness like an invisible whimpering puppy in his middle.
“I’m not against cheating. Broadly speaking, it’s my job. Was,” he remembered belatedly. “I just think it’s a shame you can’t call back all those messages in bottles. Now that you’re, uh, visiting me.”
Her face cleared. Of course I can call them back! She leaped to her tiny tippy-toes. Watch this!
Her eyes closed. She spread her arms and wiggled her fingers. Her teensy hot-pink lips moved, and he read the words they shaped:
Come on home! Come back! Come back!
Clay felt a rumbling through the mattress, through the floor. The room seemed to judder around him. He slipped off the bed and tumbled over Zachariah’s sleeping form. “Hey!” He struggled to his feet on the shifting floor.
You want me to recall them! Wilma yelled, her miniature curls whipping around her face in a wind that somehow did not ripple the posters on the walls. She stretched her arms farther. Rats! I can’t do this if I’m outside your body!
“Well, don’t take mine over again,” Clay began to say.
But in that moment she turned and leaped at him, and he put up his hands instinctively, uselessly. She sank into his chest, and he felt the rumbling a thousand times stronger.
“No! I want my body!”
Whatever you say, came the silent voice inside. But here they come.
And here they came. Dozens of little translucent Wilmas ran through the apartment walls from all directions, some naked, some dressed in thongs and pasties, some dressed in black leather, some like nuns, some like cheerleaders, some like slutty schoolgirls in plaid skirts that didn’t cover their perky pink buns, and every one of them was charging straight at him.
Breathless, Clay felt them splat into him: two, five, ten at a time. He reeled and fell onto the bed. With each impact, he felt a fizzing in his nerves, a ringing in his ears. He began to believe what Wilma had said about lightning. For two bits he could reach out and zap something.
He was also horny enough to boink a sheep.
After a busy ten minutes, the flood of Wilmas subsided. I knew you would like that, Wilma said complacently in his head.
He remembered hazily what he had to do. “Jewel. I have to call her. She must be wondering where the heck I went.” Dazed, he used Zach’s cell to call his suite at The Drake.
No answer.
“Uh-oh.”
Jewel must have read the letter already.
This could only mean she was on her way to find Randy.
He sat down carefully on Zachariah’s bed, feeling like a train wreck with a ten-foot erection. “I knew this would happen.”
You didn’t have to give her the letter.
“Yes, I did.”
He tried Jewel’s cell. It rang five times. He pictured a hundred horrible things happening, beginning with her deciding to hate his guts for swiping that letter.
Or she might hate him for letting her leave Randy in Velvita’s bed.
Or there was always his gutless faux pas, letting her think she was hinky in bed.
“What if she — oh there you are.”
“Clay?” Jewel didn’t sound mad.
“I’m here. I mean, I’m not here. I’m, uh, at a suspect’s residence.” He clenched his teeth and crossed his fingers. What had she thought when she found his clothes, shoes, wallet, keys, and phone in a heap on the suite’s bathroom floor? He could only imagine, and none of it could be good.
She said, “What in the world are you doing there? I came back to your suite and I got that letter and, well, I started to read it, but you didn’t seem to be around, so I—”
Clay let out a whoosh of relief. “Listen, Jewel, I don’t have time to talk. Can you come get me in a cab?”
There was a pause.
“Um, actually, I’m breaking into Velvita’s apartment.”
That stopped him.
Right. Everything goes on hold when Randy’s stuck in a bed.
“Good letter, was it?” he said, aiming for Buddha-hood.
She sniffled. “The best.”
“I guess so,” he said mildly, but his voice cracked. “Jewel, I haven’t mentioned this before, but I love you.”
“I know.”
I
think I should warn you, said the unwelcome voice of the goddess in his head, and he almost blurted out, Shut up!
Jewel said, “Clay, this is so hard for me. The way I feel about you—” She paused.
His breath caught in his chest. She was finally going to tell him.
“Yes?”
Look out, I’m being summoned — Wilma said.
“I should have been more honest,” she said, breaking his heart all over again. “You make me feel—”
Whoops! Wilma squealed.
Clay heard no more.
With an unnerving sense that his dick was being squeezed, stretched, and boinged like a rubber band, he felt the familiar wild rush as Wilma took possession of his body again.
Then everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Hey, sugar,” Wilma said in babytalk. “Who calls me?”
Clay was woozy with Wilma-thrill, so it took him a moment to see where they were. An office somewhere. He stood — well, Wilma stood — on top of a desk, the keyboard of a computer tickling the soles of her bare feet. Summer sunlight slanted in the windows.
They had quite an audience.
A sharp-looking executive was staring at him — well, at naked Wilma — with amazement and horror.
So was the girl Onika Tannyhill called “Honey.” Her suit jacket hung open, its button dangling by a thread, and her virginal white blouse was ripped.
Where is this? Artistic Publishing?
Wilma smiled down on them.
“Greetings, Velvita Fromage,” she said with affection, using Clay’s mouth, or what used to be his mouth.
Clay stared. It was the same girl! But we’re not at the Artistic!
We are in the lair of my destined avatar, Wilma thought, and Clay heard her thought.
An older executive turned around slowly. A chorus of office girls stood watching with open mouths and goggling eyes. One of them shrieked, “My God, she’s naked!”
Wilma’s beamed. “Glad you noticed. Did you call me?”
Velvita’s mouth fell open. “Uh, I did.”
Clay realized that a brilliant glow surrounded Wilma. Light streamed out of her, a light so bright that it felt to him like a high-pitched electrical hum.
Slowly, Velvita got down on one knee.
Wilma reached out a hand. “Steven Tannyhill,” she intoned. Clay felt the hum in his chest.
Steven nearly fell over his own feet.
Wilma spoke sternly. “Steven, you’ve dodged me for two years. Are you ready to fulfill your destiny?”
He faced Wilma, one fist clenched, the other on the crotch of his trousers. “You’re that slut from the porn factory.”
She smiled. “That’s me. And you’re the heir to the Tannyhill mojo.” It felt weird to Clay, feeling those words coming from his own mouth, feeling Wilma’s power hum in his body. “Come forward, Steven Tannyhill, and join the ranks of the mighty.”
Steven was panting. He backed up a step.
“You knew I was looking for you. I sent so many messages.”
He shuddered all over, like a frightened horse. “That porn shit made me crazy. In my closet. Tapping. Calling me.” His face convulsed. “Get away from me!”
“You didn’t eat my pastries?” she said, her face falling.
His head shook. “No way!” He gave a nervous cackle. “Hah! It worked great on Mike’s rollout, though!”
The office girls murmured.
“I’m going on a diet,” one said.
“I’m not,” said another.
Wilma pouted. “You misused my gifts!”
“Get away from me.”
“C’mooon,” she coaxed. “It’ll be fun.”
He backed farther away, putting his hands behind him. “Nnnuh-uh. No way. Nope.”
She stamped her foot. The computer keyboard shattered under her bare feet, individual keys popping everywhere. “Come here!” The lights dimmed with the force of her command.
“No!” White slobber flew off him.
The hum rose in Clay’s chest.
Wilma leaped off the desk, sailed ten feet, and landed practically on Steven’s toes. He thrust his hands out as if to push her away. She grabbed his hands in hers.
Steven struggled. He was a good foot taller than Wilma. He should easily have been able to throw her down.
Instead, he froze, gasping for air.
This time Clay was a spectator to a Wilma invasion. Through their joined hands, he felt everything Steven felt. He felt Steven’s heart hammering so hard it was skipping beats. Steven had both a terrible hard-on and a terrible pain in the balls.
Clay hadn’t known you could do that.
Thanks for noticing, Wilma said, and suddenly the pain disappeared, and Steven’s body filled with the rush of ecstasy that was becoming familiar to Clay.
Steven writhed. Bad things were happening inside his head. Clay took one look at the colored spears of agony, terror, and rage banging around in Steven’s darkness and decided not to go there.
“Submit, Steven Tannyhill. You will be the perfect avatar, and we will spread my benediction throughout Chicago.”
Wilma amped up her power. Clay felt it move effortlessly out of his and Wilma’s body, into Steven. The glow pulsed around her, the office lights dimmed, a couple of computer monitors popped, and a fluorescent tube overhead shattered inside its plastic housing. The office girls screamed.
“Let me in, Steven,” Wilma commanded.
“No!” Steven screamed aloud. “Get out! Leave me — augh! Get — no! No!”
Wilma leaned forward, standing on tippy-toes, to kiss him. “We belong together.”
And then she slid into Steven’s body, taking Clay with her.
Or not.
It was like running full tilt at a mirror and bouncing off.
Dimly Clay heard the office girls gasp and shriek.
Suddenly he was watching from a comfy five feet away.
Wilma’s brilliant light surrounded Steven now. Steven crumpled to his knees. He clutched at his head, tearing out clumps of hair, making horrible animal noises.
Then he began to flicker. Streaks of light whirled in a circle around him. In the lightning-spiked haze, Clay could make out Steven throwing punches, Wilma’s goddess-sized tits swinging, the sound of clothes tearing.
Suddenly the Wilma-light snapped out.
The office seemed to go dark. Sunlight from the windows cut dusty yellow slits in the blackness.
Kneeling naked and alone on the carpet, Steven raised his fists, and a long scream broke from his lips. “aaaaaaaaugh!” Then he collapsed.
Clay realized he was naked, standing over Steven’s body.
Snot and tears dripped off Steven’s chin. There was no visible sign of Wilma. She must have stayed behind.
“What is going on here?” demanded a woman’s voice, and all the office girls turned and gasped at the same time.
Clay didn’t waste another moment. He turned, shoved through the crowd of rubberneckers, and ran for it.
In his birthday suit, of course. Nothing’s ever perfect.
The big thing was, he was free.
He made it all the way to the elevator, blundering past office workers, the receptionist, a pizza delivery boy, and the UPS guy, tripping on the carpet in bare feet, panting and sweating, before he heard a familiar voice, felt a familiar cloud of ecstasy burst inside him, felt Wilma’s poppet boing into his back like a hinky rubber band on a sign saying Kick Me, and he tottered, faint with pleasure, against the closed elevator doors.
I’m sorry. He simply wasn’t going to work out, Wilma said in Clay’s head.
Clay groaned.
You’re much nicer.
“I’m so glad,” Clay said dully.
People were coming into the elevator lobby. Snatching a frond off a potted fern, he figleafed himself and edged past the pizza deliverer, the UPS guy, and the gaping receptionist, back into the office he’d fled.
Office girls gabble
d everywhere. They paused as he passed, checking out his bare behind, and made remarks.
Clay tried to shuffle past them with his back to the walls and his fern clamped over his family jewels.
Where are we going?
“Somewhere in here, there’s got to be clothes,” he muttered.
Steven wasn’t wearing his when I departed.
“You mean you left that poor schmuck naked, too?” Clay didn’t bother to say it in his head. As Flash Titty would have said, they weren’t watching his lips move.
A gorgeous blonde with a kind face came up to him. “I’m Sharisse.” She led him into a private office. “Lena said you might want something to wear.”
“Sharisse, you’re a woman in a million.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“What is going on here?”
Lena froze at the sound of her mother’s voice raised in anger. Considering what she’d just been through, it surprised her that the scariest part was Mom showing up mad.
Steven lay folded up on the shreds of his own clothing, passed out, naked, and drooling.
A movement beside Lena made her turn. Precious was holding her cell phone out at arm’s length, pointed at Steven. So were Geri and Tonia. The sound of virtual camera shutters snapping filled the air.
Lena’s mother snapped, “Don’t you have work to do?”
The girls scattered in all directions.
“Hugh! Get over here this instant!”
Hugh Boncil was at the telephone. He, too, jumped at her voice.
She brandished a fistful of papers. “You have some explaining to do,” she said in her most sinister voice.
The senior surviving partner peered at the top sheet in her hand. “Oh. Yes. I was meaning to tell you, your share of the profits is being deposited in the trust fund John set up for you. It’s all there,” he twittered. “We’ve been doing very well.”
“The trust should have been revealed to me at John’s death.”
“I meant well, Maida,” Hugh said in his nice-old-guy voice.
“You meant to hold onto all the power. Illegally.”
Lena cringed at her mother’s tone. “Uh, Mom?”
“Come into my office,” she said to Lena. To Hugh she said, “And you bring the trust fund statements to me in half an hour, if you want to keep your job.”
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