“Paint you up when you’re done?” I said. Standing there with everything hanging out wasn’t as embarrassing or weird as I thought it would be back in September. In fact, it was sort of fun. I thought I was starting to understand Jeri better—and Holiday.
“Nope,” she said. “I’m goin’ like this. Totally in the buff.”
“Well, I’m not, so you might want to hurry up with that brush,” I said, looking around.
She pursed her lips and checked out her canvas, then looked up at me. “You sure? Lots of women out there with cameras would kill to get a shot of this. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a few hundred women within sixty feet of us and at least half of them are checking you out. You look really good after all that work you did in Borroloola—very Thunder Down Under.”
“Guys’re checking you out, too, sugar plum, now paint me.”
“I would, if you’d hold it still instead of swinging it around.”
“I’m not swinging it around.”
“So you say.”
She started in back at my waist. My idea was for her to produce something like a body-paint jockstrap, a cache-sexe, something for me to hide behind, more or less. She painted the back strap and the sides, working her way toward the front. She stopped before she got to what I considered the most vital region. Crouched at my feet, she looked up at me again. “Sure you want the rest of this painted?”
“Yep.”
“Well, let’s see.” Gently, she moved things around.
“What the hellare you doing down there, woman?”
“Trying to figure out the best way to do this.”
“What’s to figure? Just slap it on.”
“Did anyone rush Michelangelo? I don’t think so.”
I looked around. “Will you please hurry the hell up?”
“Mort?”
“Yeah?”
“When this ride is over and we’re back at the hotel, things might get a little . . . interesting. At least I hope so. So I’d like to, well, fix you. It doesn’t seem right to leave you all worked up. And, me, too. Not sex sex, but . . . we need to figure something out. Is that okay with you?”
“Uh . . .”
She looked up at me. “Was that a yes?”
“Having that in my head isn’t helping anything right now. In fact, it could get me arrested.”
“Just thought you oughta know. You okay with it?”
“It’s not gonna happen if I’m in jail for indecent exposure.”
“Is that a yes? What I’m looking for here is a yes before I slap on this paint.”
I looked down at my blackmailer. “Yes. Now if you’ll get on with it before I end up in the back of a police car.”
Not three feet away, a girl in her twenties giggled and gave me a wink.
Well, shit. We were packed in there like sardines.
“Sounds like we have a deal,” Holiday said. “I’ll hold you to it.” She dipped the brush in the pot and slapped on body paint, producing something that might have been mistaken for a jockstrap at a hundred feet.
She stood up. “There. How’s that?”
I took a deep breath. “Better. Sort of. How about you? Sure you don’t want your tits painted red?”
“Wow, Mort. The things you say. And, no, the sun feels really nice. My tits are just fine the way they are.”
“Fine, or magnificent?”
She laughed. “I’ll fix you for that.” Her eyes went below my waist for a moment. “Like I said.”
Minutes later, the ride began. That morning I’d learned that the thing was going to last nearly four hours. We were going to tour the hell out of the city, flash fifty thousand people. We got on our bikes and joined the laughing, colorful crowd as it started rolling along the Embarcadero, headed toward Pier Thirty-Nine. At first the pack was dense and I concentrated on not running into other riders. We went past good-sized crowds lining the street, watching, and it occurred to me that this was not only a celebration of freedom and life—which it was—it was also exhibitionism and voyeurism in the cloak of a First Amendment protest. If a thousand fully dressed people had gone by on bicycles, there wouldn’t have been a dozen onlookers. But thousands were out watching, and they were there to check out not just riders, but naked riders. And for every one of us riding, five hundred or a thousand of them were wishing they had the courage to ride along with us.
Half a mile into it, there was Ma Clary with her cell phone, about where we’d told her to watch for us. Holiday and I got off our bikes and posed while she got a few pictures.
“I ain’t seen so many shlongs in my life,” she said, watching a few riders go by.
“Shlongs, Ma, really?” Holiday said.
“I calls ’em like I sees ’em, and I’ve seen a lot of ’em today. Okay, Mort, I want one of you alone. Something for my wall.” She moved in for a close-up.
“Aw, c’mon, Ma.”
“C’mon yourself. Relax and smile. Give an old broad a thrill.”
So I struck a pose, tried to smile.
“Got it,” she said. “I’ll have it made into a poster.” She gave me a critical look. “Wish you hadn’t painted it red though.”
Sonofabitch.
Holiday and I got back on our bikes and took off again. The day was terrific, warm, almost no breeze. I tried to relax, tried to settle into the ride, then, in a matter of seconds, everything changed and it was as if I’d ridden out of a dimly-lit tunnel into an ethereal light. I sat up straighter, taller, and steered with one hand as I looked up at the bright blue sky. Tears filled my eyes as I felt Jeri up there, looking down at Sarah and me, smiling.
“This one’s for you, kiddo,” I whispered to her.
She was watching, happy for us. I knew it and she knew I knew it because . . . she was the glow around my heart.
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