Sometimes life is hard. But being the only pimp in the village also has its benefits. My mother thinks I work nights at Giobaldi's Cheese Barn. I'll bring home a wheel, or the occasional log and she won't ask questions. For my mother, this works. But my wife on the other hand would never buy it. And even if she did, the first time she got together with her knitting friends, my cover would be blown. So I tell her everything. At first she threatened for divorce, but when she started wearing the new scarves and booshka's I brought home, I knew her complaints were merely noise. And soon enough the noise stopped. The only thing I keep confidential are my clients. I tell her it's a matter of ethics, but the real reason is that if she knew her brothers were some of my top johns the noise would start again, and I might lose money.
When Mavis returned from the Bascomb Iowa Senior Citizens Tour of Switzerland, a trip for
which she'd horded her social security checks for years (often denying herself replacement
support stockings or psoriasis medicine), heads turned when the town folks - at least the ones
who hadn't gone on the tour - saw that she had a brand new husband in tow. Mavis had
surprised everyone, including herself, when she fell head over heels for Sven the instant she
heard him yodel at the Edelweiss Inn where the tour had stopped for a late morning snack
when Elmer Fiddlebaum, town curmudgeon griped about how if he didn't get a cup of coffee
soon, he was going to be in a worse mood than usual. No one else - including Mavis, who
really wanted to see the next point of interest before she forgot what it was going to be - had
really wanted to stop, but now Mavis was glad that they did. Normally, Mavis didnšt speak to
strangers--or even establish eye contact, so strictly had she been raised by her three maiden
aunts--but when Sven appeared, her strait-laced upbringing slipped away like as easily as
had the top scoop of her ice cream cone on that hot day she left Bascomb. When Sven leaned
over her table, she heard bells ring, saw lights flash, and felt the heat of passion burning deep
within her. Even later, when she realized that Sven, as a yodeling waiter, had inadvertently
tipped over a candle, thereby igniting the tablecloth and drapes when he leaned over to take
her order for for French toast, oatmeal, and hot tea with a slice of lemon and two teaspoons of
sugar, it didnšt matter for her heart belonged to him. Of course, what with Sven's sudden loss
of a job and his mutual (she thought) feelings for her, there was nothing to do but marry him,
which Mavis did, it being the first impulsive thing she'd ever done in her life unless you count
the long ago incident with Farmer Bradley's pig, the stolen corset, and the preacheršs bed, but
she had been much younger then, and a certain amount of impulsiveness is to be expected in
the young, though not necessarily in a dull, homely girl like Mavis was before she became a
dull, homely woman.
Anyhow, as Mavis stood on the platform waiting for her luggage and looking at Sven with smoldering passion, little did she realize what was to come--the little deceits, the alibis, the mysterious phone calls, the illegal gerbil breeding business, the forged Millard Fillmore dairy, the plot to take over the second-highest grain elevator in the county, the McDonald's franchise obtained through bribes and treachery, and a whole bunch of other stuff too complicated to mention until later chapters.
When Darla saw the "Welcome to Wichita" sign for the last time in her rear
view mirror, she was too busy trying to decipher "atihciW ot emocleW" to
realize how much she was going to miss the other traffic control officers
she'd come to know and respect, or to notice the sinister purple Pinto
rattling out from behind the welcome sign and turning onto the turnpike
toward her, ominous in the smoky flatulence of its exhaust.
She puzzled about the sign as she drove along, until it disappeared from view when she pulled into the toll booth. Darla felt the usual sense of shared pride swell her bosom at the sight of the uniformed toll-taker. Being in uniform in the service of the United States of America had been the realization of a life-long dream for Darla. She'd sacrificed almost everything, turning down several dates with the eligible bachelors of Wichita, to focus on the grueling exams in order to win one of the coveted University of Wichita Traffic Control positions. Her father, a career Animal Control Officer, had been misty-eyed at her induction ceremony.
But Darla smiled wryly to herself as she remembered she was just a civilian now, attractively dressed in a fashionable pink Dillards sundress, but not in uniform. She nodded in a sentimental way instead of her usual salute as she handed over the $1 toll.
Behind the smoked glass of the mysterious Pinto, a masculine hand callused from hard labor and regular friction riffled the glove compartment for loose change. The small amount of state money he received on his way out of Folsom was just about used up. His savings had all gone to pay for the traffic tickets that had been his undoing, and now he glared at the female cop who had put him away. He'd lost everything because of her.
He intended to kill her, but the sight of her curves nearly bursting the seams of the pink sundress and spilling out of the top gave him another idea. Underneath the black leather belt she usually wore, with the dangling mace can, handcuffs and billy club, was the waist of a woman...and he didn't believe in the waste of a woman.
"Oh, Tira!" he exclaimed. "After all this time, you still would take the time to pick the blenfars from my scalp. But my darling! Since you have been gone, I have had handmaids do the thankless task. Please, could we not skip over that ritual, and move into the Diaghlo? I would much rather spend my first hour with you after such a long long time..." (here his voice nearly cracked with emotion, but he was Emperor Zog, and soon overcame) "I would rather face you, and speak of the history of our absence in the ritualized Diaghlo, than wallow face down in the blanzak and have you minister to my scalp in ways only you could"
But Tira only smiled, and, as he had always been a captive to her half-smile, he lay down, enveloped in the smell of sweet blanzak, and waited for the first pesky blenfar to fall prey to her crushing fingernails.
Little did he know that...
...while Tira's skilled fingernails worked their magic across the
blenfar infested expanses of Zog's scalp, Pongo, who by now, through the
psionic transponder-regulator his evil alien government had implanted
into her intercarpal spaces, was preparing to work his own version of
magic.
Zog felt himself falling into the warmth and peace that always accompanied the blenfar picking. Had it really been six bi-lunar cycles since Tira had vanished one night, leaving her unfinished qualfim on his bedside table? That night, on the eve of the Flyfam, when the Cleric of Floog was to give her the Mantle of Wert, making her the Emperor's First Rethobom. When he had returned from his smeleg ablutions, and had found her gone, he had jumped from mirth, thinking her a cunning olkret, to astonishment, wondering why she would leave without her qualfim, and later, to desolation at the thought of carrying out his reign without his First Rethobom.
But now she was back, and the blenfars were being squelched with a vengeance. It was as if those cycles had all blurred into one. And, he thought, it was barely a quarter cycle before the next Flyfam. Plenty of time to recticate the Mantle of Wert in preparation for the Rethobom ceremony.
He took a moment to turn away from the blanzak pillow and sneak a glance at her face, so stunningly beautiful as she concentrated on a particularly insubordinate blenfar. Ah, those golden eyes: so deep, so liquid in their unlidded glory. How he could hardly wait for them to be narrowed to slits again in the ecstasy of thirention as he draped her finished qualfim across the ridge of her neck. And that hair! So thick, so luxurious, and so silky as it flowed like molten rock across her forehead, and down past her beard.
He was brought back to the present suddenly, when, as a crispy blenfar squealed it's death song near his ear, a pressure behind his eye swelled up, blotting out all conscious thought. And as he slipped into unconsciousness, his final vision was of Tira's beautiful face smiling a full smile, and, instead of her neatly rounded brown teeth, this smile seemed to showcase several hundred gleaming blue alien teeth.
The Fyfferin consort, Konkkubina, clutched the soft folds of her hoptos close to her boobirendum inflations. "Oh, my liege..." she said quietly. "Do not shout so. Remember what the Commperny Shaman told you...."
"Zog!" growled Emperor Shirley Zyzygyk, savouring every syllable of the one-syllable name. "He is a pup! A whelp! How dare he think that his tiny empire can challenge mine over Cynnamun?"
Konkkubina's back arched and thrilled in unwilling ecstasy at the name of the drug that kept in bondage her body and mind . . . and soul. Three times a day, the Emperor dosed her with the precious Cynnamun elixir, keeping her body eternally young and supple. Three times a day, and no less. Were her supply of Cynnamun to cease, at this point . . . . Again, the Fyfferin's body trembled at the thought of what would happened to her were her Cynnamunese symbiont not nourished. A swift, painful decline, followed by. . . . Her mind could not even form words to describe the horror.
A swift moan must have escaped her mouth, for Emperor Zyzygyk narrowed his eyes as he regarded her. "You!" he demanded. "You have been trained by the Cyhmerhic Society?"
"Fourth level Semiglub," she murmured obediently, refusing to let the pride of her high achievement flash in her autodeps.
"Fourth level, eh?" said the Emperor, regarding his consort with sudden interest. "High enough to infiltrate the Zogian empire and establish yourself within the stronghold of Castyll Zograt?"
"But my dosages of Cynnamun!" cried Konkkubina half-unwillingly.
The Emperor laughed . . . a low, evil laugh, full of malice. "There will be Cynnamun enough for many lifetimes," he said, fondling the Orb of Kloe. "If you are successful."
