by Chuck Austen
“He’s getting married!” Morgan repeated.
“I just wanted to see how well the paint holds up,” she said defensively. “It’s gonna get a lot of contact at the convention, so it’s important to know.”
“Contact? The convention?” I asked, getting worried. “You’re going to…to the comic book convention?”
“Yeah,” Morgan said enthusiastically. “She’ll be riding down with us.”
“She will? With us? Oh, really?” I said, feeling as if I had been strapped into an electric chair and was currently having electrodes and damp sponges applied to my bare skin.
“Well. How marvelous. That should make for a much more…em…pleasant drive,” I lied.
“Probably,” she said, still disappointed at being untouched by human hands. “Sooo . . . you wanna see my book?”
“Book? What book?”
“My comic book.”
“You have a comic book?”
“You think I’m dressing this way for fun?”
I did, yes. But shook my head ‘no’ because her tone made me fear doing otherwise.
“It’s just to help me sell my books,” she said.
‘Books’ is shortened slang for ‘comic books’ within the superhero comic book community. It didn’t mean actual books with words in them. In Ms. Waboombas case, I imagined very few words would have been necessary. Or helpful. And from my past knowledge of comics conventions and the men who attend them, I determined that—dressed as she was—she could likely make vast wads of dough selling blank pages. Or even just the promise of them.
“So, you wanna see it?”
“See what?” I said, confused due to having become lost again in Ms. Waboombas costume. It was hard to imagine there was something I wasn’t seeing.
“My book!” she said, getting annoyed.
“Oh! Right! Sure! Absolutely!” I said, genuinely interested, but not for the reasons she supposed. Her smile brightened and for the first time seemed sincere. She sat down again, smearing body paint deeper into the woodwork of my Louis the 14th chair, and reached under the table to pull a copy of her comic from one of several in a canvas bag at her feet. She handed it to me gingerly, as if it were spun from the finest gold.
“I printed it myself,” she said proudly. “Place in Hong Kong. They speak English there, sometimes. I think it looks nice.” She smiled again, and—handoff complete—returned to shoveling food in her mouth. The woman had an appetite. But then she had two hungry breasts to feed.
I set her comic on the table, and she immediately began to spasm at her end. Food, and milk spluttered out of her mouth, spilling across lips, chin, and breasts. It took a moment to realize she wasn’t having a seizure—she was just concerned about where I was placing her comic.
“There’s milk!” she finally managed to shout, spewing more food—pretty much everywhere.
I jerked her masterpiece off the table as if it were a small child reaching for a hot stove and saw that there were, indeed, a few small drops of milk on the surface before me, likely having been spat there by Ms. Waboombas herself.
Seeing that her baby was now safe, she calmed and returned to eating, and talking through her food. “You want it to stay mint. Could be worth money someday.”
As opposed to not being worth money today? I thought, and thankfully had the sense not to say out loud. Instead, I smiled insincerely and turned my attention down to the thing in my hands.
It was a typical ‘independent comic’ with superhero contents that were pretty much the same as the two major companies—Marvel or DC—but with more violence, less talent, and no inside color—all at a higher price. The art was vintage, bad, imitation Image—a company renowned during its inception for their large-breasted female characters, and seemingly willful absence of any actual writing ability. The drawings were each meticulously created with excessive amounts of line and detail that seemed almost to indicate actual form and substance—but not quite.
Beneath the logo on the cover, the main character, War Woman, who looked only vaguely like the actual Ms. Waboombas, was drawn in all her semi-naked glory, using her sword to behead a fat, doughy looking gentleman wearing a velour jogging suit. As if to prove he was somehow a ‘bad guy’ his severed head wore sunglasses, and the rest of him was bedecked with a staggering amount of cheap looking jewelry, all rendered with lots of shiny ‘glint’ marks.
Oh, and he carried a gun.
In the background of the cover there were two or three (the art was unclear) semi-naked women tied to some kind of torture device that—apparently in order to operate—must first remove the victim’s clothing in a rending fashion that leaves just enough shredded bits of material to obscure nipples and pubic hair from the view of any stray parents who might be wandering, lost, through the comic book store displaying it. In the foreground, the ‘villain’ (please, God, don’t let him be a rich, innocent fashion executive) clenched wads of money in his soon-to-be-dead, non-gun-toting hand. There was an amazing amount of blood everywhere, and—though you’d think it physically impossible—War Woman’s breasts were actually larger than the real Ms. Waboombas’. In her secret identity she must be a flotation device.
“In her secret identity, she’s a stripper. Like me,” said Ms. Waboombas, correcting my internal monologue and making me fear she could read minds. “The guy she’s killing is a club owner who takes advantage of the girls in the back room, then steals their money,” she continued, then apparently reading my distaste. “He deserved it.”
“Oh, I’m sure he did,” I said smiling, and double-checking the proximity of—and direction to—all nearest exits.
“Inside,” she said, “we learn he’s got a little dick. At the end, War Woman cuts it off and feeds it to him.”
I crossed my legs.
“Would that be before or after she beheads him?” I asked, not really wanting to know.
“After,” she told me, as if it happened every day before lunch. Twice during.
“How very Sin City,” I said.
She pointed at me and winked in a ‘gotcha’ kind of way. “Frank Miller. Love him. He’s got the right idea. People love seeing dicks cut off.”
Not really.
She picked something out of her teeth with an impossibly long fingernail. Whatever she was reaching for was so far back in her mouth, it was practically in her stomach. As she dug, she continued sucking at stray bits of blackened sausage flesh. The combination of sight and sound was simply enchanting.
I briefly thought to ask if her War Woman ‘story’ had any basis in fact, and if she had any wants or warrants, then quickly realized I couldn’t face it if any of the answers were ‘yes’. I strip-mined my brain in an effort to remember if I’d heard anything about headless strip club owners who’d been fed their own penises, miniscule or otherwise, and didn’t recall anything of substance. Not that it would have been in the sports or comics sections. I really should read more of the ‘news’ parts of the newspaper. It was now scaldingly apparent—as my fifth grade teacher had always said about math— that it really did have applicable uses in real life.
“I got a customer of mine to draw it,” Ms. Waboombas explained, still tooth-picking. I began to wonder if there might be a whole pig stuck in there. “He’s in love with me, so he did it cheap. His dad’s somebody.”
I waited. Then asked: “Somebody…?”
“…Famous in comics. I’m pretty sure.” She turned and looked off into the distance scowling. “Or maybe he’s the one whose dad was the dude they based ‘Natural Born Killers’ on.” She turned back to me and shrugged, then went back to roto-rootering her teeth. “Can’t remember.”
“Sooooo… ” I said, suddenly even more nervous, if that was physically possible, “he’s not joining us, is he? On the trip down? This Natural Born Killer artist?”
“No. He’ll meet us there. And he’ll have his own room. He won’t be sharing ours.”
My eyes widened. “Ours? Sharing…sharing ours…sh
aring…”
“Yeah. Morgan invited me to stay with you. Fun, huh?” I would have to re-check the definition of the word ‘fun’. But I was already fairly certain this wasn’t it.
“Your hotel sounded nicer than mine,” Waboombas continued, examining a piece of flesh she had removed from her mouth and now hung off the end of an impossibly long fingernail. “So I cancelled my reservation. I hope the beds are more comfortable than this place, though.” She rubbed her back, smearing paint. “No offense. You should change the mattresses once every hundred years.”
“Change the what? The mattresses? You…” I turned to Morgan. “You stayed here?”
“It was late, and she lives on the other side of town,” Morgan said, laughing heartily and hoping that would encourage me to see the ‘lighter’ side of it and not murder him with any nearby kitchen implements. “We wanted to get an early start on the drive, right? And she already had her costume with her at the club, so…”
“Don’t worry,” she said, seeming a bit annoyed with my apparent distress. “I didn’t leave stains, or nothin’. Your roommate made me be careful.”
“Careful?” I jerked my head toward Morgan, who had developed a sudden, intense interest in the floor tiles. I couldn’t seem to speak. “My roo…my roo…my rooooommuh-muh-muh…”
“Yeah, well, like I told you,” he mumbled, speaking more to her than his future death-dealer, “he pays most of the rent, so I try to keep things clean.”
I looked back and forth from one to the other, my mouth working rapidly with very little actual sound being emitted. “You…you…I…you…”
“This a problem?” Ms. Waboombas asked, still sounding irritated, and potentially homicidal.
“No! No, no, no,” I said, trying to do damage control before she could—well—do damage. “I was just thinking, had I known you were here last night, I would have made you more comfortable.” I paused. “Last night.”
She stared.
“In my…” I caught myself and corrected, mid-sentence, “…in our…spare bed.”
“Yeah?” she asked, grinning, and taking a break from the endless tooth-picking. “Like maybe you would have tucked me in?”
“Orrrrrrr—gotten you drinks!”
“We had drinks. I needed to be tucked in.”
“You had drinks,” I said, becoming less surprised by the second. Clearly, what was mine was Morgan’s, and hers.
“I would have tucked you in,” Morgan offered, with a whine. She ignored him.
“Oh!” I said, partially relieved. Partially. “Oh—you slept separately then?”
She looked positively revolted. “I wasn’t gonna sleep with him. Guy wouldn’t even buy a pity dance from me on a slow night. I don’t spread ‘em for a guy won’t even pay for a pity dance.” She leaned back a bit and waved absently at her body. “Come on! This is worth something.”
“Of course it is. Absolutely it is. No question,” I agreed, to Morgan’s obvious annoyance. “Without a doubt. A good deal, I should imagine, on the…em…open market.”
“There are different kinds of payment, though,” she said, leaning in, again on her bumper cushions, and returning to the offensive. “Sometimes a pretty face on top...that’s enough. Especially if it’s rich.”
“Ah. Good to know. Good to know. Lock that away in the old ‘reference file’ for later, if I see…if I come across…if there’s…so you slept well?”
She shrugged blankly.
“Oh. Right. The mattress. And now you’ll be sharing our hotel room which will—I’m certain—have a better mattress.” I laughed like a giddy piece of electrified Jell-O. “Of course there, they’ll turn down our beds at night. And speaking of ‘our’ beds, and who’s sleeping where…”
“Woodruff turned my bed down,” she said.
“What?” I said, shocked. That comment so completely derailed my train of thought that even Harvey the Happy Crane Engine would have had a hard time getting it back on the tracks. Woodruff did something? For a guest? This guest? With no monetary requirement or threats of violence necessary?
I furrowed my brow as it slowly sunk in. Could he have expected something more than just verbal appreciation from Ms. Waboombas?
“Left a little chocolate on the pillow and everything.”
Sex! That randy bastard! Clearly Woodruff hoped for a little Waboombas nooky! He never put chocolates on my pillow. I would have to speak to him about the appropriateness of doing things for people. I looked around, wondering why he wasn’t here—now— waiting on her every whim, spoon-feeding her cereal, wiping her chin—please, GOD, someone wipe her chin!
Through the pocket door I saw the foyer closet open—just a crack, Stephen King Boogie-Man-like—and wondered if Woodruff might be in there right this minute, watching Ms. Waboombas and choking his anaconda.
“I’m…” I fumbled like a man who’s been water-boarded one time too many, “…delighted—I suppose would be the word—that he…made you feel…welcome? He made you feel welcome?” I asked, an injection-molded smile embedding itself into my face.
She shrugged. “Most guys do.”
“Yes. Well. I imagine so,” I said, grinning, Joker-like, and clinging to sanity with my fingernails. “Now, as to our sharing a hotel, and who’s sleeping where…”
“We were all going,” Morgan interjected. “So I figured we could just split the cost, you know. Save us all a little money.”
I turned my smiling death mask toward Morgan, showing him I knew ‘cost’ to be the last thing on his mind when he offered her our room to our resident sex machine. My unspoken message hit him directly between the eyes, and he actually flinched.
Ms. Waboombas glanced around at the opulence of my home. Mine and Morgan’s to her understanding. “’Course, it’s not like you need to save or anything. You could afford to pay for the whole thing. You were going to anyway, even if I didn’t come.” She paused. Waiting. Then getting nothing, she looked around again—very slowly—at the posh surroundings to emphasize her point. Finally, she fixed her attentions on me again.
“Me?” she told me. “I’m on a variable income.”
“Well… ” I said, not sure what to say, which shows how dense I am. I glanced down at the comic book cover, pictured my own severed head flying from the bad man’s body and shuddered deeply. “Well…” I repeated uselessly.
Finally I managed to find the necessary words, which had to be forced out one word at a time, staccato-like. “I’d-consider-it-an— insult—if-you-didn’t-let-us-take-care-of-the—entire—trip-Ms. Waboombas. Your part—as—well—as—ours.”
She barely reacted, apparently never uncertain of this particular outcome. “Meals and everything?”
After a brief pause, and a menacing look at Morgan, I nodded slowly in agreement.
“Hot,” she said. “Thanks.”
“It’s the least I can do,” I said. “As a wealthy man who is not on a variable income.”
“And it really is the least he can do,” Morgan agreed.
I evil-eyed him again, but he was becoming immune. I slowly turned back to Ms. Waboombas. “Now. As to the sleeping arrangements…”
Abruptly, her smile collapsed. Her eyes squinched, and moved slowly back and forth between us, studying us carefully. Anger seemed to rise quickly within her. Her skin visibly bristling.
“You pay, so you expect me to fuck you? Is that it?” she asked. “Just because I take my clothes off for a living, you think I’m an easy lay?”
I was stunned. Of course I thought she was an easy lay. Especially when she appeared to be repeatedly offering to be an easy lay smothered in butter right there on the sausage plate. But that didn’t mean I wanted to be the layee. The thought had never exposed itself. Hadn’t even opened its raincoat and flashed a brain cell or two; well, maybe it had done that in my subconscious, but my subconscious is a pervert with no sense of personal consequences, and never even uses contraception.
I shook my head ‘no’ almost as r
apidly as Morgan nodded his ‘yes’.
She began to pick her teeth again—slowly—looking at Morgan with grave intent. There seemed to be blood in her eyes, and I shifted nervously, trying to think of an out, nudging Morgan under the table and fearing an incident. Finally Morgan stopped nodding and shifted direction to indicate ‘no, not at all, never in a million years, even if you offered.’
After a long beat, Ms. Waboombas laughed once, sharply (or burped), then smiled broadly, again vastly amused.
“Just kidding. I’ll fuck you.”
She returned to leering at me. “From you, I might even take it up the ass.” She turned the toothpick around in her mouth, apparently thinking I was enticed. “You got a big dick?”
I laughed like a dying man. “I don’t know, I suppose it’s…”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re fun to look at, and you’re payin’. I’ll fuck ya even if it’s dinky.”
I laughed again, tried to look appreciative, and then wet myself.
It took us some time, and a change of pants, but we finally convinced Ms. Waboombas to remove the body paint—at least for the drive down. To achieve this goal, I first had to convince Morgan. He was rather petulant about her washing away all his hard work. But when I reminded him that he’d have to do the hand application again once we’d arrived, he brightened rather enthusiastically. It was, truly, the only answer. The oily colors couldn’t be removed from my dining room chair, and the thought of Ms. Waboombas bare behind imprinting the back seat of my Beemer in some permanent kind of way left me weak in the knees. At least I think it was the thought of the paint that made me weak and not her bare behind. Best not to dwell too long on that subject.
Soooo—Morgan and I loaded while Wendy showered. She, of course, invited me to join her and bring my loofa, dinky, or otherwise. But I declined, citing the time crunch to reach the convention center and hotel—of which there really was none. But I knew it would give her pause to think she’d be missing valuable comic-selling time, or valuable ‘parading around a crowded convention floor in colored skin’, time, depending on your point of view.