“Yes, please…help yourself to my beat up and bruised body—just don’t hit my schlonger with anything.”
“Your what?” she asked, truly perplexed.
“My family jewels—and the appendage that accompanies—think plants and reproduction, Zelda…”
“Oh, Cable!” she said as she put the bathroom light on. “Now you’re embarrassing me. I was hoping you’d undress around me someday, but not exactly under these conditions.”
I tried to laugh but it hurt. “So, go ahead, peel off my pajamas, my tee shirt, my shorts, kiss my tummy, slap my buttocks and throw me in the bath!” I chortled.
Zelda looked very strangely at me. “Gees, I think you’re a little crazy, Cable. Or maybe all that physical abuse you took loosened up some screws in your head or something.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Well, at least help me get these flannel pajamas off.” She helped me out of my nightwear and with my shorts and tee shirt still on my sore and bruised body, we ambled our way into the bathroom. “I can probably get into the tub okay, but I might need you to help me out.”
“Shall I look at your naked body when I help you out?”
“Do you want to look at my naked body? It’s pretty beat up, but I’m still in pretty good shape for a thirty-two year old.”
She blushed. “I’ve never seen a guy’s—what is it you call it? —”
“—schlonger, prick, penis, cock, pee-pee or hi-diddle-diddle—take your pick, lady.”
She laughed heartily, finally getting it that I was ribbing her all the while. “Oh, Cable…I never know if you’re joking or not.”
“Didn’t you ever have a brother?”
“No, I’m an only child.”
“What about your Dad—ever see him naked?”
“Nope. I’ve never even so much as looked at girls in the locker room in high school. I’m really a prude, I guess.”
“Well, you didn’t look like a prude last Friday night.” She helped me ease into the tub. “Are you looking?”
“No, my eyes are closed.”
I wanted to make her feel good about herself. Of all the people I knew, I think Zelda needed it most. “Tell you the truth, if I didn’t have designs on Misty Sheridan, I might even give you a romantic spin around the block—check out your pistons, fenders, engine and all…”
She snickered. “Oh, Cable Denning. I don’t believe you. You’ve convinced me I’m not your type. And that’s all right. I’m strong. I told you I’d be a good friend. After all, a girl can’t spend the rest of her life living a fantasy about some guy who’s hopping into bed with beautiful young singers—”
“—uh—uh—not yet…” I teased her.
“What do you mean not yet?”
“Well, Misty and I were on our way home to—to have a late evening of romantic titillation when we got waylaid by those bums.”
“Really? You mean you haven’t slept together yet?”
“Nope. Not exactly as I had hoped, but it’s true. Now I think she’s got cold feet. Have you noticed so many people around me die?”
Zelda opened her eyes and looked at me, forgetting her reserved nature for the moment. “I never thought of it…but you’re right. I mean tons of people. Your friend Mario Angelo, Honey, the Moreno woman, I saw the Rusty Wilson case, and the young woman you met in Cambria—gadzooks! The list goes on and on, Cable!”
“I warned off Misty. I guess I should do the same for you. Except, for whatever reasons, they never seem to bother my secretaries.”
“I wonder why that is?” she inquired to herself.
“Maybe a secretary is like the mail—it just has to get through.”
“I never thought of that. Gees, what if that were true?”
“It is. Certain things are protected for posterity. Ever notice that?”
Zelda thought it over. “I really learn so much from you, Cable. Well, I’d better let you soak.”
“Can I call you when I need my back washed?”
She hesitated. “Wow…I’ve never washed a man’s back.”
“What if you have kids someday—shouldn’t you know how to scrub and rub and use the soap sparingly…or in case the brats misbehave and you have to wash out their mouths with it?”
She giggled. “I always thought those things came naturally once you were a mother. My mother never taught me any domestic anything. She was into books, books—mathematics, church—and books. I think she liked me, but it was my Dad who I loved to be with. He was the adventurer, the plant trailblazer—yep, the Blodgett giant strawberry.”
“That’s nice, Zelda. So can I call on you to wash my back?”
“I guess…if I don’t get too embarrassed. If I do, I’ll just have to throw the sponge in and leave. Is that okay? You won’t be offended?”
“Nope, now that you explain it that way. I’m okay with it.” Eventually my little plant friend did a good job scrubbing my back. My sore and pain-ridden body truly enjoyed that bath!
Nightmares and Bathtubs
After I got settled in and I sent Zelda home with her promise she’d return by nine in the morning, I began to doze off. But this time my dream was startling and vivid. I was in India in some kind of dark hut. There was a lovely Indian woman rubbing me all over with some kind of salve that made my body shine. Then a crazy doctor entered the hut and pushed the young lady away from me. He sounded like one of those mad scientists in a couple of talking movies I’d seen lately. Whatever it was that the young woman had rubbed me with had completely weakened me and I was helpless while the doctor shackled and led me out of the hut to another building at the edge of a clearing. There were torches on the walls and a stairway descending. The doc grabbed a torch and we went down about fifteen feet until we were in a passageway. It led to a huge wooden door leading to a room that had been dug out of the earth. Everything smelled musty and like damp dirt. But there was another smell that caught my primal instinct response and raised hackles on the back of my neck. A shiver went through me. The doc opened the door and pushed me inside, then quickly slammed the door behind me. It was pitch black. I spoke, but there was no response. Then I heard a deep, unearthly “hiss” that seemed to be accompanied by a growl of some kind. How could some primeval creature hiss and growl at the same time? I backed up to the door. My fingernails were digging into it out of trepidation. Then I heard a movement. In the blackness, something even blacker moved slowly toward me. I was perspiring and shaking. Nothing unseats the nervous system with fear like the unknown in the dark. I took a deep breath and spoke again to the unknown something in the darkness. I heard the growl-hiss again, only this time it was much closer. I could sense something looming above my head now and I picked up an odor I had never smelled before. It was the one I had detected earlier, musty but animal in origin. I was still shackled and helpless to defend myself, so I closed my eyes and wished myself somewhere else.
Suddenly I was in a coffin. I lay there inanimate when something woke me, pounding on the top of the wooden box. Then I saw a glint of light above my head. I shouted, but no one responded. I shouted again and this time I was rattled out of my sleep by the ringing of the phone and Zelda’s voice calling to me. “Cable! Cable! You’re having a nightmare! It’s me, Zelda—can you hear me?”
I was dripping wet with sweat and shaking uncontrollably. It was like I had a palsy and I couldn’t stop shivering. Instantly Zelda ran to the bathroom and started the bathwater. She ran back to me, pulled me up out of bed, and began to remove my sopping wet clothes. Then she pulled me up and we staggered together into the bathroom where she helped me into the tub, the hot running water and steam waking my body somewhat. Then Zelda Blodgett quickly took all of her clothes off and got into the tub with me, holding me close to her with her naked body clinging to mine. She held me and rubbed me and the combination of that wonderful care and affection and the hot water started to bring me around and my trembling began to subside. In fifteen minutes or so, my nervous spasms subsided to a minimum. “Zelda�
�I had a terrible nightmare…I’m okay now…thanks, babe…”
“I’m here, Cable, I’m here,” she comforted me. My eyes cleared up sufficiently to see this lovely creature attending me was completely nude!
“Is this your way…of…of seducing me?” I asked, still a shiver in my voice.
“Not today, Cable…I was really worried. Your nightclothes, your bed—they’re all soaked with perspiration. I don’t know what you dreamed, but I’m sure it has to do with your body going through some kind of shock from the way those people beat you up!”
“Yeah…you’re probably right. I guess I took more of a licking than I thought. You ripped off your clothes…and jumped in with me—do you realize, young lady…you…you’re completely naked—but then again…so am I….”
She laughed as she hugged me tight, her cheek up against my one good cheek. “Gees, and somehow I’m not afraid or embarrassed anymore—at all. It’s almost like I wanted you to see me naked anyway—someday—I just didn’t know it would be this way!”
“Life is full of surprises, Zelda…now…isn’t it?”
“Gees…who could have known? Oh, by the way, your girlfriend Misty called. And a very nice man with a deep voice phoned. He said his name was Jedediah Penn, a friend of yours. He wants you to call him as soon as you can.”
“Okay…if you can eventually get us out of this here bathtub.”
Zelda helped me out of the tub and she dried me off, from head to toe. I was a bit embarrassed when she skirted around my shrunken balls and penis, but I was too sick and in pain to let it bother me. But I was looking over her fine curves, those large breasts dangling in front of me when she bent over, wonderful dark-pink nipples standing to attention and a dark patch of pubic hair dripping with water. “I don’t think you should sleep in your wet bed tonight, Cable. I think you should come over and sleep in my bed—and I’ll take the little love seat or something. I’m going to have to wash those sheets and air the mattress.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling all of this was something Zelda might have imagined in her wildest dreams had I not looked like a prizefighter who got beaten to mush in twelve rounds. But taking me in this way proved to me what a good sport and caring person she really was.
“Of course. Gees, Cable, I’m all you’ve got right now.” I thought for a second. Yeah, she was right. With Honey and Adora gone, Misty a big question mark—who else was there? Cass was never a real romance candidate since she’d be returning to her home planet one day soon.
“I guess you’re right, Zelda. You are all I’ve got—I mean, someone to really be there when the chips are down.”
“What happened to your pretty singer girlfriend?”
“I told you, it never quite got off the ground. She got frightened when I told her the truth about the babes in my life ending up as stiffs at the local morgue. And this latest attack, where they grabbed her too, might have sealed it. Besides, I don’t think Misty’s the domestic type. She’s a showbiz pro and that’s her life.”
“Well, I’m no domestic either…I just care about you.” She looked up at me as she helped me with my last sock. “Gees, Cable, think about it. A year ago I wouldn’t have dreamed I’d be taking care of you, let alone jumping naked into a bathtub with you.”
I needed to change the subject. “Okay…as best I can today, I’ll teach you some of the ropes around the office. You saved Jedediah’s phone number—I think I’ve got Misty’s somewhere.”
“Yes—and yes you do. You’ve scribbled her name all over your desk pad,” she said a bit indignantly.
I started Zelda on the fundamentals of being a good Girl Friday for a gumshoe and left her with the files. I got to the phone and called Jedediah Penn’s number. A gruff voice answered at the other end of the phone. It was a familiar one, a sound I liked to hear when the world lost its sense of direction. “Jed Penn, old boy, it’s me, Cable Denning here.”
“Am I glad to hear your voice, Cable. I’ve got some important things to tell you. When can we meet?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, Dr. Penn, I’m kind of laid up at the moment. You see, I ran into some pretty rough thugs and they worked me over pretty good.”
“Oh no…Cable…I’m sorry…but it’s the nature of your work. Tell me who you go with and I’ll tell you who you are, I say.”
“It’s better than selling lead pencils on street corners these days. I gotta catch as catch can, Jed.”
“So when can you see me? It’s pretty important that I see you, Cable. You know me, I wouldn’t call unless—”
“—but I wish you would call, doc. It’s been a little lonely on the male end of things without your patter. After all, we share some pretty unique history, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, Cable, oh, yes…which is part of what we need to talk about.”
“Being this banged up and all, I can’t hobble around alone.” I glanced over at Zelda, who I knew was listening. “I need my nurse-secretary to be my third leg.” Zelda smiled and turned back to her business. The more I was around this gal, the more I liked her.
“Why don’t you commission that wonderful little Latin number who obviously adored you?” It hit me then that Jedediah Penn didn’t know that Adora had died. “She’s…she’s…no longer with us, Jed. She contracted leukemia and went out like a flickering light bulb.”
There was a silence at the other end. “I—I don’t know…what to say, Cable. My condolences. When did she—she—”
“—some while ago now. I’ve been doing okay, Jed. Whatta ya do, except trudge on? You don’t stop breathing, but try to find some reason to keep going, even if some days you don’t want to.” I didn’t even want to tell him about Honey. “So, when can you come see me, my friend? Why can’t you crank up Polly Parker to bring you over to see me, old boy? You are in Los Angeles?”
“Yes, but I am immobile these days, I’m afraid, Cable. So I’ll need you to come my way.”
“Truth? I’d say three or four weeks.”
“Is that the best you can do?”
“I’m afraid so, doc. I’m sorry, but I’m in a lot of discomfort and moving up and down stairs more than I have to right now is a painful experience. I hope you understand.”
“Please, Cable, don’t forget me. We have important things to discuss. If you can make it earlier, give me a ring. Polly will set up a little lunch or something.”
“How is Polly Parker?” I asked, remembering his assistant.
“Eh, she’s ornery as ever—and twice as nice. I could never have made it without her. Make it sooner than later, Cable…good-bye for now.”
We hung up and I looked out across my desk at Zelda who was busy bending down putting away some files. She straightened herself and turned to me. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Talking about your ladies who died. Gees, Cable, when you think of it, what a strange life you have lived so far. If I didn’t know these things to be true, I would never have believed them if someone told me.”
I smiled. “Yeah, like someone I know stripping her clothes off to jump into the bath with some weird private detective.”
“Are you going to keep carrying on about that?” she queried.
“You bet. Once a day and twice on Sundays.”
She laughed. “I bet you would, too.”
I went back to the task at hand and called Misty. She seemed a bit aloof but concerned about my state of health. When she learned that Zelda was still caretaking me, she seemed even a bit more frosty. I don’t know what it is about dames, but at the slightest hint that someone might be in their territory, they back off and cool down. But I guess guys are the same way. Why bother if someone else is taking a place you couldn’t fill anyhow? And my truth was Zelda was here and Misty wasn’t.
I tired early that day and Zelda suggested we go to her place and she’d fix us a little to eat and that I should go to bed early. We staggered down the stairs and I limped to the streetcar stop with the aid of Zelda’s arm. I must have looked like a stree
t fighter as people glanced at us riding along. But what the hell, sometimes you get smacked for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not having any premonition of it. I knew I had to work on that.
Zelda made us a couple of olive sandwiches with a pickle on the side and a gin tonic for desert. We were happy together and laughed a lot. She brought a down-to-earth plainness with a slight hint of smoldering sensuality. A hell of a combination, I thought. As she spoke to me, I was still picturing her lovely naked body leaning over me, wiping me down after the bath that morning. Yeah, the little babe had a lot going for her.
About eight o’clock she helped me into her bed. I owned only one pair of pajamas, so I crawled in naked. Zelda turned the radio on for me and sat at the edge of the bed. There was a nice sentimental version of A Ghost of a Chance playing and suddenly my little plant lady looked sad.
“What is it, babe? A memory?”
“No, it’s just the way I feel about you, Cable. I know I don’t stand a ghost of a chance with you, just like the song says. You know, it’s funny…a girl gets stuck in a place…somewhere inside of her, a long time ago, when she idealized a man she was attracted to. Then, if she’s not careful, she gets frozen in time. She watches her life go by. She doesn’t go out with other guys because in her heart she doesn’t want to. And in my case, no one would even look at me twice to care, anyhow.”
“I wouldn’t say that, kid. After all, didn’t you have a serious guy hanging around for a while?”
“He turned out to be queer, Cable—remember? That’s how bad my judgment in men is.” The tune ended and a bouncy little song came on the radio entitled “Let’s Do it, Let’s Fall in Love.”
“Damn, Zelda, we can’t always fly the minute we jump out of the nest—be patient with yourself!”
“I’m going to be twenty-six in December! Do you know what that means for a girl? No husband, no house, no children?”
“Hell, if it’s children you want, doll, just hop into your bed with me—I’ll pump as many kids as you want into you,” I crackled, probably for the shock value of jolting her out of her lethargy.
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