-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tuck Season, Wabbit Season, Tuck Season! Part 17 -*- Copyright 1999, 2011 by either Joel Lawrence or Ellen Hayes Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when used for satirical purposes. This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and possibly sex. If you are legally not allowed to read materials containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading this. I am not responsible. Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish, state, and country. All rights reserved. See the bottom for distribution rights. *** Tucker had just hung up the phone when the break room door opened and Evelyn came in. She stopped and frowned at Tucker. "What're you doing in here?" "I... There was a medical emergency, that I CAN'T TALK ABOUT," he emphasized in the hopes that she'd listen to him, "and I had to make some calls." She looked kind of curious and kind of fierce at him as she asked, "You?" "No. Diana or Darla. Um, if you-" She nodded to indicate she did indeed know them. "So, what are you doing in- I mean, you were just here Friday," Evelyn asked. "I asked myself that same question, as it turns out," Tucker said. "Remember the choir thing I got signed up for?" She nodded. "Turns out that, hey, like anyone SANE would've guessed, stuff like THIS," he held out his arms to demonstrate, "is not really suitable for practicing at a junior girls' choir." Evelyn made a face at that, then asked, "But, then, why-" "I asked that too," Tucker assured her. "And they said something about some more bras, maybe bra boosters? And another corset? But I don't- Hey, you live sort of around here, right? And you dress really nice from what I've seen," he said, because she did, if you liked Gothic, which he sort of did. Today her makeup was much starkwe than it had been Friday, with almost Egyptian eyes and bloody lipstick. She was wearing a black dress with a black lace neckline and lace around the sleeves, which were big and went past her elbow, possibly the same black corset she'd worn Friday, and black boots of the Doc Marten sort. She laughed, but Tucker went on, "So where would YOU go for casual clothes around here?" "She was at Brenda Franson's," Jane explained hurriedly, "and said she'd get a ride home with her-" was all she could get out before the coughing fit. "Okay," Kenneth said, and held out his hand. "I'm driving. You two are-" "Fine!" Jane snapped as she handed Kenneth her car keys. They needed to go, and Brenda could handle the two students for a few hours. "But you can't drive," Evelyn said. "Well, actually, yes I can," Valerie replied, shocking Evelyn. "How old ARE you?" "I'm sixteen, actually, b-" "No you aren't," Evelyn disputed. "Stuff it up your fucking ass you retarded bitch!" came out way too fast and easy to be a twelve year old. "I'm just... small," she said as she folded her arms under her nearly nonexistent bust. "That doesn't actually make them look bigger," Evelyn grinned. "What EVER," she sighed. And she unfolded her arms. "And I KNOW you don't have a car." Valerie replied, "I was gonna call someone in town I know." "Ah, well, good luck," Evelyn said, and turned to look for her paycheck. They didn't really keep any security on them, which sort of bugged her, but no one had stolen her check yet. She looked inside and sighed again. *Damn, this just isn't enough... I need more hours... but it-* "How about dinner, gas, and maybe a little extra, if you cart me and Charlene around for a few hours?" Valerie asked. Evelyn turned to look at her, and she must've had her thoughts on her face because Valerie immediately said, "Your face and that's gotta be a pay check; I didn't look." She shrugged and said, "Besides, you're going to college to get a degree because all the jobs you can get withOUT a degree suck, right?" "Well, n-" "As far as pay goes," Valerie amended. "Well... yeah," she admitted. She wasn't working here, for instance, because she enjoyed selling overpriced pastel clothing. Nor did it pay that well. "Okay, so, where are you gonna get all this money?" "Darla left me her credit cards, when she had to leave. And her ATM cards, and two hundred in cash." "What?! Are you serious?!" "Yeah... Look, it's important that I get some more casual clothes today, 'cause I guess mine aren't suitable," she grumbled, "the ones I actually OWN already. And they really had a medical problem they had to deal with. Classified, I can't talk about it," she said before Evelyn could ask. "And Charlene doesn't know so don't bother." Tucker watched Evelyn think about it. *Oh please, oh please...* "Would begging do any good?" he asked. She looked at him skeptically. He got down on his knees and put his hands together, then decided that wasn't enough and kowtowed. "Oh please, oh PLEASEohpleaseoh- please," he tried, momentarily out of inspiration. Looking grim, she snapped her fingers and pointed downwards. "Kiss the boot," she ordered. "Have you been talking to my girlfriend?" popped out of his mouth, because she really reminded him of Debbie, except Debbie's boots would've been high heeled. Evelyn totally lost the dominatrix attitude and demanded, "What?" "She makes me beg if I want something," he lied. Looking and sounding skeptical, she asked, "Your GIRL friend?" Tucker gave her his most sex-kitten-ish smile, put his eyes down, and said, "She says I have a WONderful tongue." As Evelyn threw her head back and laughed, Tucker realized, *Debbie will kill me if she finds out I said that.* Darryl opened Caro's back door and pulled Diana inside. *Thank god we've both got keys,* he thought; he'd left his purse someplace, hopefully at the Style Shoppe, and he didn't relish Art having to try and get out of a corset or the rest of it in a car someplace. Neither had Jane, which is why she'd arranged to 'borrow' Caro's house in emergencies. Like this one. "Come ON!" When Diana didn't argue this time, he got even more worried; but when he looked back, she was scrubbing makeup off with a towel. "Do you," the voice wavering between Diana's and Art's, "have the clothes from the car?" "Be right back," Darryl promised before he dashed out. When Evelyn stopped laughing, Valerie had gotten back to her knees again and was looking very hopeful, with her hands folded in prayer. "Look, I need to do some stuff today," Evelyn said, but she couldn't stop thinking of A, a nice dinner she couldn't afford this week, and B, a pair of boots she had on layaway and would like to wear for Arthur her boyfriend as soon as possible. "Well, I mean, we could get some stuff here," Valerie said. "Could you come back when you're done and pick us up?" "Well..." It'd beat going back to her apartment and cooking, that was for sure. And DEFINITELY beat hanging around her roommate's boyfriend. "Yeah, why not?" she decided. "I need some actual pay, though... if you're thinking about doing this until suppertime." "Ummmm- Damnit," she cursed. "I'm not supposed to say 'um'; there's this huge lecture that goes with it," she explained quickly. "Ten an hour?" "Hah! I get more than that here, and I don't have to drive! Twenty!" "Twelve! It's not THAT hard, and you get food and gas out of it!" The bargaining had made Tucker homesick for Debbie, and so he probably let Evelyn get away with too much, ending up at fifteen dollars an hour - and he'd made it clear HE wasn't paying any employer-type taxes on it - plus meals and gas. "Okay..." Eveyln offered Tucker a hand up, which he took, and they got him back on his feet. "Just think about where to go, okay?" Tucker asked. "Oh, and do you need a down payment?" He did, but not everyone was sane like his family was. "Ah, twe- Forty okay?" Tucker had of course checked Darla's wallet when he'd realized he was going to have to go clothes shopping today without Darla or Diana OR Jane or even Marie. "Sure, hold on a sec..." Then decided to give her HIS money, and take it out of Darla's wallet when Evelyn wasn't watching. Charlie had been sitting in the showing room after Valerie threw him out of the break room, though he'd gotten a Coke to make the wait bearable. Actually, he didn't mind sitting there; this was probably the least stressful trip here he'd ever had. "Charlene!" Valerie exclaimed from behind him, and he FELT his body tense up. "Yeah, those- Oh, jeez, they have GRAY?" They did. "One red, one blue, one gray," Tucker said, making sure as he pulled the cheongsams off the rack that the red was a little larger than he needed so Debbie could wear it. Coincidentally, that was about Charlene's size too, although Charlene didn't have the super hips Debbie did. "And this one, that I'm wearing. Charlene, did you want anything?" She shook her head. "Okay, then, new bras, and some bra boosters, and maybe a tighter corset?" he told Shana. "Like a waist nipper?" she asked. "What the hell- No, I mean like steel-" "Valerie!" Charlene complained belatedly. "Bite my-" "Aaaht! Not that either!" But she was grinning. "Kiss," Tucker hissed at her, then enunciated, "my satin covered BUTTOCKS!" Charlene snickered and Shana laughed out loud. "Thirty-one double-A," Shana assured the girl. "Twenty-six inch waist, thirty-four inch hips. That's about a seven or eight, if you go someplace like Wal-Mart. But don't. Here, it's about a six if you'd prefer a closer fit; or you can wear an eight and grow into it." Which she would; she was only twelve. "Shana, listen," Valerie said quietly, like she was about to relate a confidence. Being a bra-fitter for the high-strung teens that came in, and being able to relate to both the girls and their mothers, Shana was used to getting confidences. "Can I ask you a question?" came out even more quietly. "Sure, hon, what is it?" Valerie asked, still in that hushed voice, "Does clothes sizing make ANY sense? I mean at ALL?" Art hurt too much to talk, now. "Art Philips," Darla said urgently. "Chest and left arm pains." That did get the receptionist's attention, which was good; it meant he wouldn't have to scream. "Sit down," the nurse ordered him - she was looking right at him - "and someone will be with you in about a minute." He sat, gratefully if not gracefully, in the chair next to the desk. "Please hurry," Darla whispered as the nurse picked up a phone. "She has an account here," Charlie said. "I think?" But Shana was nodding, and then asked Valerie, "Do you just want to put it on her account?" "Yeah. We'll settle it when we get home, if she doesn't like it." Valerie rolled her eyes to indicate what she thought of anyone who didn't like what she'd gotten. And, really, it WAS nice stuff; it was just that some of it was too daring for someone her age, like Darla had said. On the other hand, Darla HAD mentioned getting Valerie some bigger boobs, and Valerie had gotten them, and she was wearing them now, and they did... something to her, which really did make her look OLDER, not just bigger in the chest. Or maybe that was the new corset. Or both. "Hey," someone said behind them, and Charlie turned to look; it was the other clerk, the black-haired one that had helped Valerie on Friday. "You remember Evelyn, right?" Valerie asked. "Well, sort of," Charlie said. "I'm Charlene," he said to the woman, and she smiled and nodded. "Oh hey, you done?" Valerie asked Evelyn. "We're almost done." "So did you have lunch already?" Evelyn asked Valerie, as Shana bagged Valerie's stuff. Charlie wasn't sure, but he thought it was a bad sign that he was beginning to remember their names. "Ah, we did, but we didn't have dessert," Valerie smiled, and in response Evelyn took out her keys and shook them. "Hey, what is that? Lemme see." Valerie held out her hand, and eventually Evelyn put her keys in it. "Oh, a roadrunner!" she said, and showed Charlene the medallion that featured the Warner Brothers Roadrunner. "Did they have Daffy Duck?" she asked Evelyn. "He's kinda a hero of mine," she told Charlie, which made him choke. "You don't have any idea what this is for, do you?" Evelyn said, raising one eyebrow and smirking at Valerie. "What? Car keys?" Darryl had spent too many times waiting in an emergency room to believe that they would ever move fast for one patient. Now, they were; and he didn't like it. More correctly, he didn't like them moving fast like they were for someone he cared deeply about. Art had been wheeled in a wheelchair into a room in the ER proper, stripped of his shirt - the marks of the lingerie on his skin seemed shockingly obvious, but no one had said a word about them - blood taken, an IV stuck in his arm, little pads stuck all over his chest and connected to a machine that peeped every heartbeat and spewed paper on command, an oxygen tube stuck under his nose, and he'd already been given two different pills to swallow. And a doctor - not just a nurse or an orderly - had shown up within five minutes. And he'd said to Darryl, "Miss, you need to wait out there," pointing towards the waiting room. "But-" "Holy shit on fire," Tucker breathed in awe as it became clear which car Evelyn was walking towards. He ignored Charlene's protest as beneath his notice. The car had that sort of in-between look of some of the 1970s cars, where they weren't quite sure what to do with the styling yet. It was huge, had two doors, and the tires looked kind of butch. But mostly it was the paint job... At the nose, it started as being Fresh Blood Red, and then slowly darkened along the side of the car to utter glossy black just behind the door and all the way back to the tail of the car. The thing looked like it had been dipped in the people it ran over. And, by god, there was a stripe along the side fender and door, showing a dust trail that led up to (right behind the headlights) a racing Roadrunner. "Pwip-pwip!" it chirped in recognition of its mistress. "It's a 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner," Evelyn said proudly, "with the four-forty six-barrel engine, and a few other goodies. She may not look like much," which was a complete lie, "but she's got it where it counts. I made a lot of special modifications myself." Tucker couldn't believe he'd heard that right. "So, you're saying this thing can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve standard timeparts?" "Parsecs." "Lucas fucked it up," Tucker said with confidence. "A parsec is a distance, 3.26 light years. That'd be like, oh, boasting you ran a quarter-mile in three hundred yards." Evelyn looked at him. "What? I had to learn all this in grade school," he lied. "Ask Charlene, she- Oh, never mind, she's blonde." "You're blonde," Evelyn pointed out. "Now." "Wh- No I'm- Oh. No I'm not," he said finally. "It's-" "Valerie!" Charlene complained. "-a wig," he finished. "Whaaaaaat?!" "Valerieeee!" "What?!" he complained at Charlene. "You're not supposed to go just TELLING people!" "Well, sh- Darla put THREE DIFFERENT ONES on me yesterday! How're people not supposed to notice the changes?" Then he realized one horrible possibility. "Wait, was I supposed to wear THIS one all SUMMER?" "_I_ don't know!" Charlene shrieked back at him. "You have hair, though, right?" Evelyn asked. "Your own?" "Oh, yeah," he assured her, and reached up. "See, it's-" "VALERIE!" Charlene screamed, then whimpered, "Not in the PARKING LOT!" "Jeez, okay," Tucker finally agreed, wondering why she was so spazzed. Evelyn was giving Charlene a weird look too. "It's red here," Tucker indicated, which pulled Evelyn's eyes back to him, "and black over the rest. I- I colored it over the weekend," he simplified. "Oh man," she smiled. "Goes with my car..." And then she laughed. "Oh, that'd look REALLY good at one of those cotillion dances!" "Okay, explain this cotillion stuff to me, please? Nobody else has, they just said 'you're doing it' and nothing about what it IS." "Where are you taking him?" Darryl demanded, as Art dwindled down the corridor. "Miss..." the doctor said. "Thompson-Philips," Darryl said impatiently. "He's my stepfather." "We're taking him to the cardiac catheterization lab..." The room got fuzzy. "Yeah," Tucker said as he carefully put his backpack in the trunk, "this can stay in here, but the laptop needs to go with me." She had a survival kit or something similar in HER trunk, Tucker noticed with approval. She also had a set of spikes or fingers or whatever on the underside of the trunk lid, around which was wound a set of thick jumper cables, one end of which had an Anderson Power hermaphroditic power connector, just like cops, tow trucks, some cabbies, and his family had. "You're gonna have fun getting in and out of the back seat with those two bags," Evelyn predicted. "Yeah, I know," he sighed. "How come you didn't get four doors?" "They didn't make it in four doors." "And you let a little thing like that stop you?" Charlie sat gingerly in the car, but the red and black cloth seat wasn't as hot as he'd feared, and he wasn't wearing shorts or a short enough skirt to have to worry about it either. The Barbie doll, in a pink ball gown, hanging from a noose off the rear view mirror with her head lolling to the side, made him laugh. Evelyn broke off her explanation of cotillions to ask Charlie, "Do you know how to do up a five-point harness?" "A wh- No," he said honestly. "Get off all those straps you're sitting on," she ordered as she went around her car. He lifted himself with the handle that was between the door and the windshield and began pulling things out from under himself. They were gray, with pink padding bundles around them. "Dude!" Valerie exclaimed happily. "You've got a roll cage in here?" "Goes with the five-points," Evelyn said as she came around Charlie's door. "Mom wouldn't let me drive it unless I added some safety stuff. Okay," she said to Charlie, "here're the two lap belts, and the big buckle." It was almost as big as her hand. "This is the tongue part..." Tucker was watching over the seats; the male tongue of the center- side lap belt went through holes in the plates at the end of one shoulder belt, the crotch belt, and the other shoulder belt, and then into the buckle that was on the other, door-side lap belt. And then the sternum strap to move the shoulder belts together and in between Charlene's breasts rather than on top of them. "Okay, I think I got-" "You need the center seat," Evelyn told him. "Do what?" He looked at the center front of the car, and then something pink caught his eye. "Wha- BAAahahahahaha!" Evelyn said sorrowfully, "Everyone laughs at my Barbie..." Charlie could lean forward some, like in a regular car, but the seat belt mechanism was really sensitive and would lock up if he didn't move slowly. He could also turn his head, and so he watched as Evelyn instructed Valerie how to set up the third seat - Charlie had never seen anything like it - in the middle of the rear bench. Apparently there was a latch, which Valerie found and pulled, and then the middle of the bench slid forward, giving just enough room for her legs behind the front seats. She had to sit with her legs on either side of the middle 'hump', but of course that didn't bother her, and it seemed like both her new slip and her new dress could accomodate the leg spread. As Evelyn threw on her own 5-point harness with practiced speed, Charlie said, "Where did you get that seat back there?" "It's custom," she assured him. "Like a lot of this car. This was- Well, my parents divorced, and I lived with my dad for a few years, and he got this dumb idea to do a car project together, as sort of a father-daughter bonding thing." "Whaaat?" Valerie AND Charlie both protested. "Yeah, no shit," Evelyn grinned. "But it was kind of cool! I mean, we found this in a junkyard..." "Did he put in the Barbie doll too?" Tucker asked with a grin. If you looked closely, you could see a tiny trickle of blood out of the right corner of her mouth. And he didn't think Barbies' heads tilted that far to the side, normally, either. "No," she grinned back, "that was all my idea." "That is a sweet piece of work..." He watched as Evelyn flipped a dashboard cover up, that he hadn't even suspected was hinged, and revealed four 12 volt DC power outlets, a dual 110 AC outlet, several knobs, and 1/4" and 1/8" plugs. Then she reached into her own backpack and pulled out a CD player. And the CD player had 12 volt and audio input cords that went right into the dash sockets. Then she pulled a big PDA looking thing out, plugged it into the dash, put the unit into a bracket near the steering wheel, and turned it on. "GPS too?" "Yep!" She squished the now-empty compartment of her backpack down, then stuck the pack sideways, between the two seats and right in front of him. Then she connected two snaplinks, one from each seat, to the top webbing loop, then a third from the front to the bottom side of the pack. *I think I am in love...* Then she turned the key, and the engine coughed a little as the starter cranked, then roared once and began rumbling in a very awesome way, shaking the car. "Oh my-" "Holy-" "Like it?" Evelyn asked, but before either of them could answer, she stepped on the 'go pedal'. Which was really a 'loud pedal', at least while it was in neutral, and Tucker thought the car torqued when she did it. "Oh, this is always good," Evelyn assured the two girls as she came to a stop. "Check this out." This particular intersection was one of the ways she blew off steam when she left work; it was almost always uncrowded, and people almost never ran the light from the cross street, and she had just about two-tenths of a mile before she had to worry about someone merging or whatever. If she could go slowly enough so that she was first at the red light, which today she had, then- The light turned green. Evelyn, Tucker decided, had some clue as to how to drive her car, including speed-shifting the manual, but he was VERY glad he had a good seat, a headrest, a five point harness, and a roll cage. He was also glad the Barbie had a well-tied noose on thick line, or he'd have gotten the Barbie in his eye. "Like it?" Evelyn yelled over the noise once she stopped accelerating. The unfamiliar music was not very audible, at least not compared to the wind noise from the open windows, and the engine noise. She hadn't squealed the tires yet, which Tucker was thankful for. "I think the G's pulled my face off!" Tucker said, nearly into her ear. *This middle seat thing is fucking brilliant,* he decided. He glanced at Charlene, and her face was flushed as she grinned, kind of like Jill, he thought. "You know, this isn't a very girly car." "HAH!" Evelyn shouted before grabbing Charlene's sun visor and pulling it down. "LIGHTED makeup mirrors!" Tucker laughed until Evelyn hit the afterburners again. Jane didn't really need Kenneth to support her, but he was right behind her and Marie as they stormed into the emergency room waiting area. Darla was sitting on a chair, makeup dripping down her face, with a wad of tissues; and her own heart almost stopped. "Momma!" Darla wailed as she stood up. "I dunno what's happening! They won't tell me!" "I'll find out," Kenneth promised grimly. Tucker had had a suspicion that Darla was an idiot, and proved it when the same PIN worked on both ATM cards. *I didn't even know you could get a bank to do that...* The second card didn't allow him more than three hundred dollars, whereas the first let him get five hundred, but he thought that might be enough. *And I don't think most places want a PIN for a CREDIT card purchase.* "They inject stuff that shows up on X-ray, then video it," Kenneth repeated what he'd just learned; he'd figured that if the nurse explained it to HIM, he'd be more likely to remember it than Jane or Darla at this point. Though he realized he'd probably have to explain it to them repeatedly. "... As it goes through the heart. Takes about half an hour to do, and then maybe an hour to recover from it, if there's nothing else wrong. I told them you were married," he told Jane, "And you were their daughter," he said to Darla, who nodded absently. "So they'll talk to you when they have anything. She DID say," he emphasized, "that all this is just what they do in case of chest pains, and that they do NOT know if anything's wrong yet. They're just working to fix the worst case, WHILE they investigate what's wrong and why it hurts." "So all we can do is wait," Jane said absently, looking at the door the doctor would come through, when he came out. "She said that a doctor would talk to you as soon as they found out anything," Kenneth told her again. "Hardware store," Tucker said, and both girls gave him dirty looks. "Don't gimme that! That house is a f- DEATH trap!" "What?" Charlene complained. "Have you EVER seen a smoke detector in there? Ground fault interrupter sockets in the bathrooms? Fire extinguishers? And how do you get out of your bedroom if there's a fire in the hallway?" "So," Evelyn asked, "someplace to get all that?" "And a few other things, yeah," Tucker agreed. Evelyn turned the car off, then stepped on the park brake pedal before she took her right foot off the normal brakes. "Okay, just hold on a minute..." It took her quite a while to 'stop and get out', compared to most people or most cars, because she first had to get out of the five point, then she had to remove the electronic stealables from her car - she didn't worry about the vintage AM-only tube radio, though it still worked. But it was worth the hassle; her car had never been broken into. And she had LoJack in case someone stole the entire car... which wasn't too likely anyway, since she had a kill switch hidden under the dashboard. As Charlene got out, Evelyn removed all the D-rings that held her pack down and put it into her lap, then started removing the GPS from the dashboard. "Charlene?" Valerie called from the back seat. "Could you take this?" She wriggled her laptop bag in between the front seats and put it on Charlene's seat. "You might want to try sliding the seat back," Evelyn warned. "Most people who sit in that seat are wearing shorts or pants, too." "Oh, this is NOT going to be dignified," Valerie sighed. Charlie had been assigned to push the cart, as Valerie almost tackled a clerk and made him walk fast to keep up with her trotting back and forth. She even had a LIST of stuff she 'needed' for Jane's house. And, she was buying in bulk. *Wait, what is she... They could not have LUNCHBOXES here-* "Yes!" she shrieked as she held up a large metal thermos. "WHY are you getting THAT?" She looked at Charlie like he was stupid. "I've got choir, right? So I need something to soothe my throat. Soooo, she- Miz Bishop, the director, turned me on to something called a smoothie? That's-" "I know what that is," Charlie could say. "Sort of fruit in a blender." "Right," she smiled as she nodded a little. "So," she waggled the thermos a little, "she gave me recipes, so I can make 'em at Jane's place." *So nice of Darla to put her most-used keys on one ring,* Tucker smiled. He could identify two house keys, and Darla had been using one of the original car keys for daily use. The other five, he didn't know, except two were house keys and the other three were cars, but he figured they all might come in handy. A clerk finally arrived and went behind the key duplicating counter, thus relieving Tucker of the ability to do it himself. *Ah, well...* "Yes, I need two duplicates of each of these?" he said as he held the keyring out. "I lost MY set, and Mom said I should make another set of spares for the house while I was out." "Oh, Mom, I think I left my purse at Brenda's," Darla told Jane, still sounding anxious. "I had to use Diana's keys." "Valerie called," Jane replied, "and she said she has it." Darla gasped, "VALERIE has it?" That sounded ominous. "Just what did you have in that purse?" "Well- NOT my other ID," she said. "But, like, all my credit cards, the rest of the cash I got..." The more she said, the more it looked and sounded like she wanted to cry. Tucker mentally crossed his fingers and swiped one of Darla's gold cards through the reader. And he slowed his breathing so he wouldn't look anxious, which he could do since he'd been deliberately prebreathing, breathing faster, while he was waiting in line. *It's as if I practiced how to do this,* he grinned. The register began spewing receipt and signature slip, and the cashier handed him the latter. Tucker carefully inscribed his ideogram on the signature line and handed her the store copy, and filed his copy in Darla's wallet. Kenneth was willing to bet- "In fact," he said when he realized what he was thinking, "I'll bet she does come back. I'll be willing to cover the expen- Wait, how many cards did you have in there?" "Three credit cards, two ATM cards," Darla half-moaned. "Limits on those should be fifty dollars each," he said, fairly sure of himself. "If she's not back... oh, sometime tomorrow, you report the cards stolen and I'll pay the fifty each." "Kenneth, no," Jane growled. "She'll be back, I'm sure of it." All three of the women looked at him half-skeptically and half- horrified. "Besides," he said, "didn't you say she needed some more casual clothing for choir? Maybe she's gone out after that. It should be no surprise to her by now, Jane, that you're going to require VERY FEMININE casual clothes," he said carefully. Charlie hadn't thought it was going to work, which is why he'd asked to go out to the car to wait; he didn't want to go to jail when they grabbed Valerie for credit card theft. Though he wasn't entirely surprised to see her pushing her full cart, now full of bags instead of boxes and other things. *Well, now I know what she was at Jane's for doing... And she's doing it again. But...* He couldn't reconcile 'stealing' with things like smoke detectors (she'd bought eleven, two different kinds) or escape ladders that hooked over a windowsill (also eleven, and most of the bulk), or a cordless drill with charger and an extra battery pack. Stealing, he'd thought, was for things you wanted or could resell, like a car, or nice clothes, or electronics, or... *Not smoke detectors!* Tucker asked hopefully, "Can I drive for a-" "No," Evelyn said firmly. "Aw, come on," he wheedled. "Absolutely not!" she glared at him. "I don't care what you used to do back on the farm you came from-" "Hey!" he protested. That was George, not him. "-Not driving my car!" Charlene advised, "Give it up, Valerie." "Shut up," Tucker replied. "Or I'll take my wig off!" She snorted and rolled her eyes, like she didn't actually care if Tucker did or not, which was kind of what Tucker had figured. Tucker saw Evelyn reach under the dashboard and do something. "Izzat a kill switch?" he asked, fairly certain. "What?" "Extra switch, so people can't start the car unless they know where the switch is," Tucker 'explained'. She mumbled something which sounded guilty to Tucker. "Yeah. You know if you only have one, it's not that secure; everybody knows to look for one. You know what-" He waited as she cranked the engine to life. *Man, that is a nice sound...* "What you ought to do," he restarted, "is get like six switches, and then turn some of them upside down, so you need to know the pattern or combination." "But they could just cut the box out, I mean if I had them all in the same place," she said as she wrenched the transmission into reverse and started carefully backing out. "You could have the switches, each one, control relays in the engine compartment," he thought. "And depending on whether the switch went to NC or NO, it would-" "Do what?" Charlene interrupted. "Normally closed or normally open," Evelyn explained before Tucker could. "How do you know all this?" Tucker sniffed like Jane might, and said, "Doesn't everyone learn this stuff in grade school?" Tucker had, sort of; he'd been playing with transistors and relays and combinations in 3rd grade, and some of that had been during school hours. "Miz Franson," Shana said as she held the receiver out, "it's Jane Thompson?" *What is she calling for?* Brenda wondered. "Hello, this is Brenda." "Oooh!" Tucker thought, *No wonder she wanted gas money. And premium, too...* She'd sent him and Charlene in to pick up caffeine, supplementary rations - he wasn't going to settle for potato chips, not after unclogging his intestines - and ice for a cooler she carried, as well as pay for the premium-grade gasoline. Which was ungodly expensive, and a lot of gallons. *Does she have a reserve tank in that thing?* Evelyn saw the two girls get buffeted a bit by the wind as they got the ice for Evelyn's car cooler, and Valerie's dress wrapped around her body, showing just how narrow she really was. *Bitch,* she thought idly; Evelyn wasn't 'thin', and somewhat resented the women who were, though she wasn't willing to go through the dieting cycles, compulsive exercise, laxatives, vomiting, drug addiction, and/or other mental illness that seemed to cause weight loss and thinness. When she thought about it, she could remember that it was the designers and photographers and retailers and advertisers that were responsible; but instinctively she blamed the thin ones. However, seeing Valerie's body like that, and remembering what she'd said, about Evelyn's clothes before, and how she looked now, and other things, gave Evelyn an idea. "Hey, Val," she asked as Valerie came closer. "Did you ever consider getting into vintage clothing?" "Do what?" "I was thinking, you'd look really good in some vintage stuff, like Forties and Fifties fashions." She gave Evelyn a sideways look as she put the six-packs into the cooler upside down. "Gimme ice." Valerie handed the ice over, and while Evelyn was trying to figure out how to open the bag, Valerie pulled a knife out and slit it open, dumping the ice on top of the sodas she'd bought. "Thanks. Besides, it ought to satisfy Miz Thompson; they are really feminine, but don't make you look like a prom queen running around loose in daylight." "Heh." "Plus, they'd cover up your bruises," she mentioned. Valerie seemed to have gained some more over the weekend, but still claimed that she wasn't being beaten. "Hmmm." Then she grinned. "Ya know, I bet- Charlene, what do you think Miz Thompson would do if I showed up with one of those little hats and the gloves?" she asked as she pried a Diet Pepsi loose and handed it to Charlene. "Oh, Valerie, no," Charlene whined. "I mean, it's feminine right? And she complimented me on the gloves when I brought 'em to tea yesterday, right?" "Gl- Tea?" Evelyn questioned. "Formal low tea," Charlene said. "Valerie was wearing a tea gown. That Darla picked out for her." Valerie added, "I thought it needed gloves- It had one of those big poufy skirts, with like a petticoat underneath? Skirt went out about forty-five degrees? Past the knees but not much?" "A-line skirt, calf length," Evelyn nodded; she was overly familiar with those sorts of dresses by now. "Yeah; and see, if she's making you wear that kind of thing, you could really do the vintage clothing too. And it's actually cheaper than the stuff at work," she said. "And you're thin enough to wear it." "Sorry!" Valerie complained like she'd been insulted. "It's not my fault! I just burn a lot of calories." She flashed a maniacal grin and added, "Comes from being nervous all the time." "It is NOT going to be that bad!" Kim insisted, but Mike didn't quite believe her. "Aren't you going to eat?" He wasn't sure eating was a good idea. "You could have my fries," he offered; that would only leave him with the rest of the burger to get down his throat. "Oh," Tucker said as Evelyn held the vintage dress out. "Wear it with a matching hat, and white gloves, about mid-forearm," Evelyn lectured as she peered down at the dress she was displaying draped over one arm. "Not much makeup, just eyeliner and mascara and RED-red lipstick..." "Oh wow," Charlene commented. Tucker could almost see it himself. Then Debbie grabbed him and threw him backwards and ravished him, in his mind. "I think," Tucker said slowly, "I need to try it on." "Yes," Evelyn agreed, and they smiled at each other. Miss Valentina Rathbone - her real name, but she only used the full formal version at the shop because it sounded antique; normally she went by Tina - of Valentina's Vintage Vestments sometimes thought she'd been born for vintage clothing; other times, she thought she was somehow being punished by God though she didn't know for what. She'd originally gotten clothes from several estates, various expiring friends of her two grandmothers, which had fit her thin frame amazingly well, and even made her look attractive, as opposed to looking like a long-haired boy. So she'd scoured the shops as far as she could roam, finding more and more, until she'd needed a storage room (climate-controlled of course) to hold them all; then two... She'd learned to hit estate sales and auctions, and had left her number at most of the funeral homes within three states in case someone didn't want to deal with removing their dead loved one's personal effects. When her second storage room was packed to the ceiling with finds she couldn't pass up, opening a retail shop had SEEMED like a good idea. But now, it barely paid its own way - and not always including a living wage for its proprietor - and she'd had days when literally NO ONE bought anything. So when a Goth chick she'd seen before came in with two teen girls, she didn't get excited. Not even when they'd selected a dozen dresses and started trying them on; that did not actually mean they would BUY them. She started to wonder, though, when they looked at the hats. And, maybe, to hope just a little bit. "I think this hair is all wrong," Tucker complained as he looked at the hair and the hat at the same time. The felt hat was black, which was good because black went with a lot, and had a brim, and some black feathers and a plastic floral arrangement on the left side, and... really did not look good with the foofy blonde hair underneath it. "Yeah," Evelyn agreed, "with that hair- Oh, hey," she grinned, and Tucker grinned back. She didn't have to say that the hair Tucker was sporting was easily switched to something else. "Try a pillbox," she suggested. "A what?" She handed him a short cylinder of black satin, closed on one side, with netting attached. "On second thought," she said, and took the previous hat off and put the 'pillbox' on him. They both looked at Tucker's head in the mirror. "Much better," they agreed, even though the hat wasn't centered. *Maybe it's supposed to be that way... 'Jaunty' comes to mind.* "You should learn to do your hair like hers," Evelyn suggested, pointing at the clerk. "Hmmm." She looked rather old-movie, with sort-of-long dark hair that was rolled around the edges into something that didn't seem to have a lot of flexibility, or bounce, or flow, or a lot of things he was used to with hair. But it didn't look bad, just really different than modern styles. *Ya know, DEBBIE would look really good with her hair like that...* Charlie had been surprised to see the old magazines; there weren't many, and of course they were mostly titles he'd never heard of, but they were there, some of them as old as his grandparents. It wasn't all that great looking at them, but it was better to sit down in the little lounge area and sip some free coffee than to stand around while Valerie tried on old clothes and Evelyn encouraged her. "Hey," Valerie said, and he looked up from the magazine in his lap. "Like it?" she asked as she put a hand to the hat on her head and twirled around, making the skirt flare. "I just..." Charlie put that magazine down and picked up the one he'd been looking at previously, and thumbed through it until he found the picture. "C'mere, see this one?" It wasn't quite Valerie, and it wasn't the same dress, but they looked similar enough that you could say that she was imitating the picture. "I could photocopy that, if you'd like," the clerk said, and they both looked up. "In color?" "That'd be cool," Valerie agreed, and Charlie handed the magazine to the clerk. "Oh, yeah, this does sort of look like you," the clerk agreed. "You have a great figure," the clerk told Tucker. She had a similar figure herself, though she was thinner in the hips than he was. "Better living through metallurgy," Tucker grinned as he tapped one of the corset structural members. "What?" "Three hundred thirty-one dollars and nineteen cents," Tina said, smiling so she didn't start jumping around and yelling 'YES!' "Oh, and we don't take credit cards," she said as one of the two younger blonde girls - not the oldest Goth one - started to pull a card out of her wallet. "Oooh," the first blonde, in the cream-and-olive dress, complained as she winced. "It's not that bad," the Goth told her. "For what you got, I mean, come on-" "I know, it just hurts," the first one replied. "Seriously, though," the second blonde said to the first, "remember how much we spent on Friday?" "Oy!" The Goth turned to Tina and asked, "Oh, and where can we get vintage, or vintage looking, shoes?" "And gloves," the first blonde added. "Well, we have gloves," Tina smiled as she bent down to get the display out. "And I know where you can find shoes that'll look period..." "And stockings, the seamed kind," the Goth said, and Tina almost squealed because she had those too and the markup was high... "I think I need new shoes to go with this," Tucker decided, looking at his black flats. He'd changed into a fairly simple dress, of white cotton with thin black pinstripes and colored embroidery around the collar and pockets, mainly because it had buttons all the way down the front. The clerk had called it a 'day dress'. Easy to get in and out of, he'd thought. He was wearing white matte fabric - non-satin, and he thought they were either cotton or cotton/poly blend - gloves that went halfway up his forearm, but had managed to talk both Evelyn and the clerk out of wearing the matching hat; it would be too hard to get in and out of the car without dislodging the hat and possibly his wig, and he might have to try on a pullover or T-shirt later. "Oh, definitely," Evelyn agreed. "Definitely," the clerk agreed. "And a different handbag." "What's wrong- Oh, never mind," Tucker sighed. His mom didn't switch purses depending on the clothes she was wearing, and neither did any adult woman he knew; but apparently every adult woman he knew was deficient in the Prissy Arts. Or tired of the bullshit. HE was tired of the bullshit, but as his dad had told him orders of magnitude too many times, you practice the bullshit now so you learn it well, JUST in case you need the bullshit later. Which was obviously what he was doing in Rhode Island. "I suppose you have something in white handbags you could show me?" Not surprisingly, the clerk - who had gotten a lot happier after Tucker started waving money around - had a few choice selections. She had everything else... including reproductions of garment blueprints and instructions. Tucker had a feeling that the copying was illegal, but he certainly wasn't going to say anything. "Die," Valerie said calmly as they left, all carrying bags except Charlie who was carring a stack of hat boxes. "Excuse me?" Charlie asked. "Die. And a big pot." "WHAT?!" She gave Charlie a what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you look. "I like my bag- the green one, but green doesn't go with anything. So, it's canvas, so I can dye it black." *Oh, that's what she meant.* "But I need a pot," she continued, "so I don't fuck up-" "Valerie," he sighed. She stuck her tongue out at him violently. "So I don't MESS up something we cook in." "You could do the dye in a washing machine," Evelyn remarked. "Hah!" Valerie snorted. "Yeah, and dye EVERYTHING black for about three loads after that!" Evelyn retorted, "You say that like it's a BAD thing." "...And there are no signs of a infarct currently," the doctor said. Jane felt so much tension fall off her that she could barely remain standing. "However, there are some narrowings of the coronary arteries," he continued gravely. "And we'd like to perform a balloon angioplasty to open them up." "Oh, these'll work," Tucker decided. For some reason that Evelyn likely could explain, probably dealing with how women weren't supposed to dress (or undress) themselves, any shoe with a buckle had it mounted on the outside, where it was a bitch to operate. These shoes had buckles, and heels, but the heels on the shoes he was trying on were visibly thicker in circumference than he was used to seeing (and wearing), though they tapered down towards the rubber contact pad; almost cowboy boot heels. Which was fine with him; stilettos were sexier, right up until he fell down. Shoes made for serious dancing ought to be more stable, and that's where the vintage store clerk had sent them - to a dance store that sold shoes. He didn't know what 'swing' was, but that's what the sign said, and Evelyn had pronounced them suitable for vintage wear. "Yeah, stilettos didn't hit the scene until about 1955," Evelyn said. "Heels were just as tall but a lot thicker before then. At least at the top," she added. "They usually narrowed to smaller tips at the bottom, though, but usually not as much as stilettos." "How do you KNOW all this stuff?" Tucker complained. "And explain 'swing' to me." "I think the car's full," Charlie mentioned, as Valerie headed off to another part of the dance clothing store. He wanted to go home, but he knew he wasn't going to be that lucky. "It's not full YET," Valerie assured her. "Besides, leotards are severely girly." Charlie knew that; he'd had to wear one several- "Oh." He'd just remembered- "What?" "Jane's gonna make you take dancing lessons," he predicted. "What kind?" "What KIND?" Charlie repeated. "Like, beginner's ballet, or something like that." He'd hated it, he still hated it, and the only reason he hadn't done it or something similar or worse in the last couple of weeks was Valerie. "Blech." Tucker had to admit, if the car wasn't 'full' yet, it was getting there, what with six new pairs of shoes. Luckily, he and Charlene both wore a women's size 8, so it was almost like half cost. He'd managed to talk Charlene into a couple pairs as well. She needed to wear that red cheongsam, and so needed red heels, and he doubted Jane would have those in stock. Pink of course, lipstick red no. Plus three leotards, two sets of leggings, and they'd had really tight black lycra shorts, like bicycle shorts, which Tucker had figured would work to conceal his panties and et cetera if he wore a non-tight skirt and got a little enthusiastic. And Evelyn hadn't gotten out unscathed either. "I think that's about it," Evelyn said. "Unless you want to start putting stuff on the roof rack, or the trunk rack." "Well, no," Tucker said, since everything was expensive and feminine and therefore fragile. And he still hadn't gotten casual stuff. Though it was getting difficult to get into and out of the back seat. The trailer hitch on the back of Evelyn's car finally connected in Tucker's mind. "Maybe we could rent a trailer?" "Oh come ON!" Charlene shrieked. "Jeez, get off it," he told Charlene. "You know what they said-" "I SAID," Evelyn said, loud enough this time to be heard over the two of them, "I HAVE a trailer. Back at my apartment." Then she grinned. "For a slight fee." "You HAVE been taking lessons from Debbie!" burst out of him. "Who's Debbie?" they both asked. "Um." *Well, fuck.* Then again, the chances that Debbie would meet with any of these people was zero. "My girlfriend? Back home?" "Oh please," Charlene scoffed. "Hey, like I give a shit if YOU believe me," Tucker told her. "She does sales," he told Evelyn. "Or hypnosis, or mind control, or something." He was about to mention how she'd gotten him to wear a corset all day at school, but he remembered Charlene just in time. "Anyway... I still need to get a few things, and..." Evelyn was pointedly looking at the car, which had boxes stacked in the back seat, visible through the rear window. "Yeah, I know," he sighed. "But this is partially your fault, you know." "MY fault?" "Vintage clothing?" "You liked it!" "But YOU took us there!" Tucker crowed. "AND told me what to get!" Admittedly, the store had had about another dozen items he wanted, because he thought Debbie would look magnificent in them. "So, let's go get the trailer." "Twenty bucks." "Dude! I already gave you-" "It's twenty dollars!" she overrode him. "I get that whenever I help someone move! JUST for the trailer!" "How big IS this trailer?" "Not that big," she said, calmer. "It's just, it's better and CLEANER than U-Haul or whatever. And I don't lie about reservations and all that." "Okay, okay, twenty dollars," Tucker agreed with a sigh. He had a feeling that once he got 'home' with all this stuff, Darla was going to demand to have her purse back, and all the cards, and the cash he hadn't spent - he couldn't really blame her - and so he had to get all the non- Jane-approved stuff he needed NOW. Which is why he didn't want to go 'home' until he was set for the summer. *I want to go home,* Art thought. *Very much. Right now.* It didn't happen. His chest had mostly stopped hurting, which was wonderful; now, the gnawing was almost all psychological. While he was glad that he wasn't apparently having a heart attack right now, he couldn't help thinking that the severe chest pain he'd developed while Darla's rather... *Enthusiastic driving to the ER,* he decided, and smiled a little. *But you can't hurt like that without SOMETHING being wrong.* And they'd told him several things it WASN'T - like a heart attack - but not yet what it WAS. Or how to prevent it happening again, or how to continue living with the wonderful woman with whom he'd finally joined his life. "So you can't go as fast with the trailer hooked up, right?" Charlie hoped. Cars were macho - he'd thought - and so he had a sort of attraction to speed; but being IN a fast car, that was being driven fast and hard, was more frightening than he'd thought. Evelyn just grinned at him, looking exactly like he didn't want a vampire to look at him. Especially not one who was driving Evelyn's bloody-mobile. "A bookstore?" Evelyn asked. "Yeah... I think it'd be nice to get someone some books," Valerie said as she transferred the last of her hardware purchases into the trailer. "Someone?" "The sick person who I cannot name," she said. Evelyn looked over at Charlene, who shrugged and shook her head; apparently she didn't know either. "Preferably used," Valerie added. "I'm not that nice." Tucker had found a half-dozen books for Diana, most of which he already had back home, so Darla was effectively going to be paying for them. And a few for his own amusement, of course. "Oh, wait," Evelyn said before he got to the cashier. "Get this." She handed him a huge book. "'St. James Fashion Encyclopedia'? WHY?" "Didn't you say you had to learn all this stuff?" Evelyn challenged him. "And you were wondering how _I_ knew all this stuff?" "Oh, lord," he sighed. She was right. "The dance studio is over there, on the left," Charlene mentioned to Evelyn, thankfully early. Most of Evelyn's friends had a tendency, when giving her directions, to say things like, "Oh, the turn was back there, you missed it..." as if she was supposed to read their minds. *As if they had minds to read...* She shifted lanes and made the turn easily, even with the trailer behind her, and then there was the small parking lot which looked like it had access to an alley. That was good, because backing up with a trailer out of a small parking lot and INTO traffic was something she'd done once, with half a dozen idiot friends to block traffic for her, and she was NEVER doing it again. She turned in, and managed to point AT the alley without being IN it, and without blocking any other cars. *Truly a miracle...* "So, like who do we talk to?" Tucker asked Charlene as they trudged up the stairs. Tucker was carefully holding on to the hand rail just in case the stairs were conspiring against him. "Just, I mean, Miz Jarvis is the one who runs the place, I think; she was my teacher." "Alright... I guess she might be busy, though," Tucker said as the sounds of music became apparent. There were two doors, both with frosted glass panels; one said 'OFFICE' and the other said 'STUDIO'. Tucker knocked on the office door, figuring that if she wasn't teaching, she'd either be here or unavailable. He wasn't expecting a high-school-age male to open the door. "Yes, may I help you?" he said. "Er." *No 'um's ...* Tucker said, in his best Debbie manner, "I'm looking for Miz Jarvis?" he confirmed by looking at Charlene, who nodded. "I need to sign up for a dance class." "Ah, well," he said, and looked through the walls at the studio. "She's busy at the moment. Could you come back later?" "I'd rather not," Tucker said. *'Rather not' at least twice over.* "What kind of classes does she teach here?" "Well, she teaches a variety of basic dance up to intermediate ballet classes for younger kids," the guy said, "and beginner's instruction in tap, jazz dance, modern interpretive dance, and swing." "Swing dancing? Like Forties kind of swing and jive?" *Like the shoes I just bought?* Evelyn had explained it to him, though she didn't have music samples for some reason. "Yeah," the guy agreed, with an uncertain smile. "Um-" "Excuse me," a woman said, and Tucker looked to find some mom type dragging her male child along. Unusually, both of them were redheads. "Is this Jarvis Dance Studio?" Tucker looked at the door glass, and now he could make out the ornate lettering that he'd ignored before. "Yes, it is, but my mom Miz Jarvis is teaching a class at the moment," the teen guy in the door said to her, or them, politely and professionally enough that Tucker was mildly impressed. "As I was telling these two young ladies, Miz Jarvis teaches basic dance, ballet up to intermediate, and basic tap dance, jazz, modern interpretive, and swing; and she's going to be offering a ballroom dance class later this summer." *Well, shit. Debbie'd like ballroom, I bet.* 'Ballroom' implied big gowns, and Debbie liked anything that involved costuming up, he figured. *Well, maybe later-* "What about basic ballet?" the woman asked. "Mommm!" the guy whined as Tucker winced. *Not ballet! What is she thinking?* "Don't whine, Doug!" *Kinda looks like a Doug, too...* "The basic ballet classes are usually for those ten and under," the younger Jarvis explained diplomatically. "I was thinking about the swing dance class," Tucker threw in, to save both himself and the redhaired kid from grade schooler ballet lessons. "Swing?" the woman asked. "What is that?" "Swing was the kind of popular dancing that went with swing jazz, starting in the 1920's," the younger Jarvis recited. "You may have heard of the Lindy Hop, the Charleston, jitterbugging, or West or East Coast Swing." Tucker had possibly heard of one of those. "It began to fade in popularity beginning in the 1950s, when rock'n'roll took over the country. However, it's coming back in popularity recently, especially among the college-aged." "That'd be perfect," Tucker realized; he knew where to get the clothes, accessories, and shoes. *Heck, I've already GOT some.* The younger Jarvis admitted, "I like it," smiling at Tucker and Charlene. "So you're in the class?" Tucker confirmed. "Yeah. I'm- I mean, I'm better at it than most of the beginners, but I still have a lot to learn about it, and it's good practice," he said. "So I sort of help out with the teaching." Doug had almost died when his mom had said 'ballet' in front of the two extremely well-dressed girls and the guy in the dance office. But swing sounded a lot more grown up, and possibly more importantly, it looked like at least one of the girls was interested in it. "Uh, Mom? The swing sounds kind of interesting." "What? Since when have you been interested in anything like that?" she challenged. *Bitch.* Tucker said to Doug's mom, "Since he saw my mostly- historically-accurate outfit," and smiled at her. Then smiled at Doug. "I'm just getting into it, the vintage stuff," he admitted, "but it sounds really interesting, and, you know, I think it looks really good on me." *At least that's what everyone said... No, it does.* Doug thought it looked extremely good on her; she didn't look like the almost metallic girls he was used to, who were loud and shrill and vicious and seemed to try to look like they lived on the streets when they weren't in school. This girl looked like she had class. Also, he hadn't missed that she'd kind of slapped his mom, verbally. Which was fine by him; he wanted to do the same thing, but couldn't have done it as well. "Well," Mom said, and then stopped and looked at Doug. "Oh, come on," the gloved girl enticed, smiling. "It'd be fun!" Then her smile changed a little bit. "If you don't mind being a little different than everyone else." Doug had been a freak since he could remember; different wasn't something he chose, it was something he was punished with. Except, that girl made it sound like she would LIKE different. And, those clothes she was wearing were certainly different. "Please, Mom... Since you WANTED me to take a class..." She'd made him come, which had seemed only slightly better than if she'd just signed him up for something without even telling him before it happened. "And it does sound like fun..." His mom gave him a look that said she knew what he was really interested in, but even as she opened her mouth, the girl with the gloves on asked the guy, "So you can sign us all up, right?" "Oh, you're with Miz Thompson?" Brad asked. *That's where I've seen the other one before.* The two girls looked at each other, and the semi-familiar one answered him, "Yes?" "I... I think she has an account with us," Brad said. He'd have to check with his mom- Who, judging by the way the studio door slammed open, was going to be here in a minute and hopefully get him off the hook. "Well, got that taken care of," Valerie told Charlie as they left the building and walked towards Evelyn's bloody-mobile. "You hope," Charlie sighed. "I don't think this is quite what Miz Thompson had in mind." "Ehhh," Valerie said, waving her hand to indicate that Ms. Thompson and what was in her mind was not something she was worried about. "It'll work. And it'll work better with the vintage stuff." And then she grinned, like she was thinking of something else entirely. "Anyway," she said moments later, "what we need next is a bike shop." "A bi- BICYCLE shop?" Charlie was quite sure he'd heard wrong. "Yeah," Valerie agreed. "They usually do repairs, and I need some inner tubes. DEAD OR ALIVE!" she shouted. "But dead'uns would be cheaper. Bike shop," she said to Evelyn as they got closer. "There's one in Wakefield," Evelyn said, though she looked doubtful too. "No, seriously; a little contact cement and a piece of inner tube, and I can get some TRACTION with the shoes." "Then maybe you won't fall down the stairs so much?" Charlie guessed. And hoped. "That's the idea." Evelyn asked, "Wait, what, you're really FALLING down STAIRS?" "Well, yah!" Valerie answered Evelyn. "Wha'd'ya think, I was getting abused? If I was, I would NOT be here now." And she looked at Charlie. "Would I?" "Well... probably not," he had to admit. "No, Brad," Allison Jarvis assured her son, "you did well. You said, all three?" "Yeah... It wasn't like they were together, though; the two girls came up first, and then the mother and guy a bit later. Not like they were together." "Well, Miz Thompson usually puts her girls into that older-beginner ballet," Allison mused. "But..." "She seemed really sure, Mom," Brad informed her. "Maybe she actually had some training before she got here," Allison shrugged. "And Charlene could move up to something else if she wanted. She signed up too, right?" "I think the other girl talked her into it," Brad said. "Well, that's okay. Darla had to talk a lot of girls into classes over the last few years," Allison remembered. Oddly, most of Miz Thompson's girls were reluctant to take classes, and she never had figured out why. Or, if they were reluctant, why they kept bringing them. But, it was money, and Allison was always grateful for income. "Oh, and can I borrow your phone for a minute?" Tucker asked the bike shop manager, who was - he hadn't known there was such a thing - a bike geek. But all you had to do was look at him, and you knew instantly he was a bike geek. "I need to call home, 'n let 'em know the bears haven't eaten me yet." He laughed, and said, "Sure! Just dial- This is local, right?" "I think so... Kingston, right?" He nodded. "So, yeah." "Sure, just dial nine to get out." "Okay, thanks!" He thought for a few seconds, to remember the number and figure what he was going to say, then picked up and dialed. Not too surprisingly, an answering machine eventually picked up. "Hey," he said casually, "it's Valerie, I've got Charlene, it's about four thirty, we're still running around buying stuff. We just signed up for a dance class, they said you have an account. Hope Diana's okay. We'll call later. Should be home this evening. Kisskiss!" and he hung up. *Chaff-flare-chaff-flare,* he thought with a grin. Evelyn wasn't sure that Valerie's idea was good, but sure enough, she came out of Pedal Power waving four inner tubes like they were flags or streamers. "Pop me another Diet Pepsi, would you?" Evelyn asked Charlene. "Hey Val, you said you wanted casual, right?" "Yeah? Oh, hey, get me a Dew please?" she asked Charlene when she stuck her hand in the cooler. Charlene sighed but handed the Diet Pepsi to Evelyn and started fishing in the ice again. Evelyn said, "I had another idea..." Since Valerie had money to burn, and was burning it... "The Cotton Spott?" Tucker read off the sign. Evelyn said, "They also do other natural fabrics, like linen and silk. And rayon, which isn't really natural but it's about as hard to care for." 'Hard to care for' sounded exactly like what Jane wanted. "Well, let's look, at least." "You'll like it," she assured him. "See, isn't it nice?" Valerie asked Charlie as he stood in front of the mirror trying on one of the ankle-length loose crinkled cotton gauze dresses. It was tie-dyed, mostly blue and green, and made his eyes look more blue. He liked the way he looked in it. If he was a girl, which he wasn't, but... And it felt nicer than most of Jane's stuff, which was usually stiff and/or heavy and/or itchy and/or too tight. "Yeah, it's nice," he admitted. "It'll soften up when you wash it, too," Evelyn said. "That black one was already soft, though," he mentioned. "The rayon one?" "Hey, get both!" Valerie enthused. Evelyn locked the trailer, thinking, *She must've gotten at least a thousand dollars worth of stuff today... I can't believe-* "Oooh, pawnshop!" Valerie crowed. "An' I need to get something out of my pack." "If it has the power cord," Tucker told the clerk, who rummaged and then pulled one out. Tucker grinned, then popped his CD case and got out the speaker test CD. "You actually know what that stuff means?" Evelyn asked Valerie. "Well, yah!" she said with that casual contempt she had, and announced, "Track 3, thirty to thirty-nine hertz," not explaining what that meant for the second time, and pressed the Play button on the boombox she was testing. This time, they got a faint buzz at 0:30 which got louder until at 1:20 it was quite distinct. "Thirty-eight hertz," Valerie said, sounding satisfied as she removed the CD. "Aren't you going to test the high range?" Charlene asked. "Nah. Need BASS!" "Need FOOD," Evelyn suggested strongly. She hadn't eaten lunch, or much breakfast. "Yeah, Valerie," Charlene agreed. She pleaded, "I'm kind of used to eating tea about four." "Alright alright..." *Friendly's,* Tucker smirked as he slid into the booth. *Not being optimistic or anything...* "I think I need to take some notes on what clothes I got," he remembered as he started removing the laptop. "I don't want to get duplicates." "Paper notes would work better, since you wouldn't have to pull the laptop out in the next store," Charlene told him. "Ohhhhh..." He wanted to whack her one, but she was right. "Damnit." He sure as hell wasn't writing them down twice. "And don't forget to take your gloves off," Evelyn reminded him. "When eating or drinking," Charlene echoed, and the two of them smirked at each other. "Wh- Oh, right." *So many rules...* Charlie was enjoying this meal - though they hadn't eaten yet, they'd only ordered - more than he had the expensive and ritzy lunch with Diana and Darla. For one thing, Darla wasn't picking on Valerie. Neither was Evelyn. But for another... He guessed he just wasn't too comfortable in really high-class spaces, because the atmosphere in the diner Evelyn had taken them to seemed a lot more friendly and welcoming. He was wearing one of the tie-dye gauze dresses, and the almost-ballet shoes he'd gotten at the dance-clothing place; all of which was a lot easier and more relaxed than the semiformal outfit he'd started with. The food seemed more familiar - at least he knew what all of it was - and the prices didn't scare him. And, being with Valerie and Evelyn was VERY different from being with Jane or Diana. They didn't seem to be watching him every second so they could 'correct' him; if anything, he was doing more of that to Valerie. And she didn't mind too much. Plus, if he messed up, he didn't think anyone would notice; Valerie was 'messing up' (according to Jane) all the time, and even Charlie could see some of it, and Evelyn didn't seem to really notice. Or maybe she noticed but didn't care. Nobody else seemed to care either. "Here ya go, ladies," the waitress said as she deposited one salad (Valerie), one sundae (him), and one actual banana split (Evelyn). "I can't believe you actually are gonna eat THAT," Evelyn commented to Valerie. "What? Don't give me shit ab-" "Valerie," Charlie sighed, and she glared at him. "I mean, this is tolerably good ice cream," Evelyn said, using a spoon to toy enticingly with her banana split. "Who said I wasn't going to eat some?" Valerie shot back. "I already ordered a sundae! I just need this first. It's not like I'm on some kind of f- diet," she said, and tapped Charlie's leg with her foot. "It's... digestive." "Digestive?" "You really don't want to know, and YOU," Charlie told Valerie, "don't want to talk about it. Not now, and ESPECIALLY not while we're eating." "This is true," Valerie agreed. "It's the corset," Evelyn told Tucker, as he looked mournfully at the two-thirds of his death-by-chocolate sundae he wasn't going to be able to finish. "Or your stomach shrank, after last week," Charlene offered. "But can I take it with me?" Tucker asked- *No, that was whining.* Though looking at the sundae again made him want to whine and maybe cry. "Don't see why not," Evelyn said, giving him hope. "It had brownies in it, right?" He thought it did. "They shouldn't get soggy. We just need to keep it cold." "And we have ice in that cooler," Charlene reminded him. "Yep." He sighed, "Okay..." Evelyn secured a container from the waitress, and got the bill, which Tucker threw money and a twenty percent tip at, then snagged the separate receipt and filed that, then scooped his sundae into the container. "You two go redo your makeup; I'll put this in the car," Evelyn offered. "C'mon," Charlene said gently, and pulled at his arm. "Okay..." He managed to slide himself out of the booth and stand up. "You look like you got tired all of a sudden," she mentioned as she led him to the bathroom. "Yeah, I guess... I dunno." What he knew was, he needed some more Dew. And he wasn't sure he had room. "C'mon... We can go home, if you want." "I might want," Tucker told her. "No... Shit!" She opened her mouth, and he explained, "Once we go back- This is sort of a one-time- only opportunity; I don't think they'll let us do this again." "They didn't really LET us do it this time," she reminded him. "Yeah, but... It's shopping, like they said they were going to do. And dance class." "And a new portable stereo," Charlene mentioned. "I pai- That was MY money!" he reminded her. "Not theirs!" "And inner tubes." "Tha- Shut up," he groaned. "Go fix your makeup, wouldya?" "You need to fix yours," she said, and stuck her tongue out at him. That reminded him of something that was in his bag- except he didn't HAVE his bag, he had that white purse he'd gotten at the vintage place. But he'd dumped everything into the purse, so... Rummaging proved that he did indeed have the extra makeup he'd bought while 'on furlough' over the weekend. But it wouldn't go with the simple white dress he had. "Back in a minute, okay?" Charlie had NOT appreciated being left alone in a women's bathroom, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. Well, he could've left with Valerie, but he knew she would've looked at him weird. And he did sort of have to pee, so instead he went into a stall and started about his business. Which also wasn't quite as much of a pain in the ass as it would've been if he hadn't been wearing the dress from the Cotton Spott. All he had to do was make sure he didn't dip his skirt into the toilet while he was sitting; that wasn't hard, he just had to remember it. When he'd wiped - girls used toilet paper every time, apparently - and flushed and pulled everything back up and down to where it was supposed to be and unlocked the door and came out, Evelyn was at the mirror fixing her own makeup. "Val said," she said, "that she was going to change, 'cause she didn't have her light makeup with her." And, of course, Charlie didn't have much makeup with HIM, just a powder compact and today's lipstick and gloss; and it was no use asking Evelyn, because she was redoing her gothic look, starting with liquid black eyeliner. "MUCH better," Tucker said as he stepped back and looked at his face in the mirror. *Also I like my bag better than that white purse,* which is why he'd switched everything back into it. "Much darker, anyway," Charlene said. Charlene was still sporting the sort of soft and light makeup she'd started with. "You're just jealous," Evelyn smirked at her. "J- I am not!" "Charlene goes really light, most of the time," he explained to Evelyn. "Doesn't really go in for the gothic look." "Like Miz Thompson'd let me!" she bitched. "Well," Evelyn said as she leaned back against the wall and looked at Charlene. "We can fix that," Tucker smiled in agreement. *I swear, I am never going to complain again,* Charlie vowed. They'd gotten one pair of black shoes and one black rayon dress, from Valerie's loot, and then done him up with eyeliner and lipstick, and now he looked nearly as vintage as the two of them. Not quite as gothic, but rather older - in both personal age and the style decade - than he had. Luckily, there was a handicapped stall in the bathroom, which offered just enough room to change, without having to do it where everyone would see him if they came in. He COULD have changed in one of the smaller stalls, but it would've been a lot harder. Plus Valerie had used that one before him to change HER clothes. As they were leaving, a bundle of teenage - as in junior high, about Charlie's age - girls swirled into the bathroom but giving all of them a wide berth. And when the door swung shut, Charlie could just hear them bursting into contemptuous laughter. He could feel his face starting to burn. "Wonder if I can get live grenades at the surplus shop," Valerie mused. "Eh, those little whores aren't worth the effort," Evelyn sneered. "Yeah," Valerie smiled, "but it'd be SO worth it to hear them collectively shit themselves when they realized they were going to get mutilated." "Bit touchy, are you?" Evelyn asked as she pushed the outside door open. "Not ME," Valerie claimed, and Charlie snickered at the lie. "It's rush hour, isn't it?" Tucker commented. The excessive traffic had clued him in. "Yeah... Are you sure you need... Never mind," Evelyn shook her head. *Sheesh... What can I do to waste an hour, without wasting an hour...* Evelyn was tapping her nails - bloody of course, and kind of long - on the steering wheel, and that gave Tucker an idea. "Hey, Evelyn, I bet Miz Thompson's gonna make me get my nails done, like Charlene's. Or something," he added as Charlene nodded and starfished hers in display, because he was NOT getting his nails that long. "Where do you get yours done, and do you need to get them done anytime soon? Like maybe you could get them today instead of later?" She didn't say anything, and Tucker wasn't sure she'd heard him, until he caught the rearview mirror and realized she was giving him the Evil Eye. "It was just an idea." "Are you SURE you're not, like, some..." Evelyn thought. "Paid shill for like the female image industry?" "Do WHAT?!" "_I_ have spent more today than I usually do in a fortnight," she claimed. "And I wouldn't have, except I'm carting YOU around." Tucker opened his mouth to protest that it wasn't his fault, she'd bought everything on her own, without him pushing. But then shut it, because that wasn't quite what she was saying. "Maybe Miz Thompson is?" Charlene suggested. Evelyn laughed, but to Tucker that almost made sense. "I'm not sure," Charlie admitted. "They're just STINKY." "Acrylics," Evelyn claimed. "If you use acetone to take 'em off, they aren't bad at all. It's all the sanding and stuff they do to put 'em on, or if they try to sand 'em off, that you get damage." "Huh," Valerie said. "'Cause I type a lot, and... other stuff, and I can't get something really wimpy, you know?" "Definitely acrylics," Evelyn said. Valerie asked, "Do they make steel reinforcements?" Charlie looked over at Evelyn, who was looking over at Charlie. Evelyn looked about as tired of Valerie as Charlie felt. "I would kinda suggest wraps and tips?" the nail tech told Tucker. She was quite blonde, and had a high voice that was kind of breathy and had a LOT of pitch changes, and spoke relatively slowly, at least compared to the locals. She was probably described as 'sweet' by people meeting her for the first time, Tucker thought, and 'simple' by those who had to deal with her more than once. If they were being nice. "Yeah, they're more fragile, but you don't want to bend a nail back, or lift it and get a fungal infection, right?" Tucker had had enough of fungal infections for one life. "And you said you weren't used to longer nails, right? Like this was your first time to have long nails?" "And I type a lot," Tucker nodded. "Yeah, so, short and sweet, right?" the tech smiled. "So, how long did you want yours?" "Ah." 'Exactly like I have right now' was fine with him, but he knew that wasn't going to work with Jane. "Well, yours are too- I mean-" "Too long right?" she smiled. *Trillian, Zaphod's chick, in the BBC vids,* he remembered. The book one had been an astrophysicist or something. *Except slower.* "Yeah," he said, apologetically because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. "No, that's okay; I've had long nails for a long time and I'm used to it, but you're not, right? So shorter would be good for you! How... abouuuuuut..." THEN she reached into a drawer at her station and pulled out a ruler, and took his hand in one of hers. "Just- Wow, you have really warm hands!" *Or yours are cold,* but he didn't say that. "I bet you have a fast metabolism," she said, which made him blink. "And you said you type a lot right? So your hands have more blood flow to them, from all the exercise. What I was thinking, was about six milli- meters, which is about a quarter of an inch," she demonstrated this with the ruler on his index finger, "does that look okay?" "Um... Yeah, I think so," he agreed. *Maybe NOT as stupid as she seems.* "And we'll make the index fingers and thumb a little thicker and stronger, and shorter, so you can still use them like you're used to doing. 'Cause you won't remember you have 'em on, right?" she smiled. Tucker found himself smiling back. "Right." "Having fun?" Evelyn asked as she sat down next to Charlene. Apparently her pedicure didn't take nearly as long as whatever Valerie was having done. "Oh yeah," he lied, and then couldn't stop a yawn. When he finished, he said truthfully, "At least you're getting paid for this." "But am I getting paid ENOUGH?" she asked. "No," Charlie stated. Tucker was annoyed to find that they'd both hit HIS bag of books, which wasn't even his entirely but was going to Diana, and they were sitting and reading while he'd wondered about Trillian - actually, her name was Samantha, but he was probably going to remember her as a declocked Trillian - and whether she was really smart, really not, or really really good at hypnosis. But, his nails were six - or five - millimeters longer than they had been, and a nice I-just-ripped-out-someone's-throat red. "Love the color," Evelyn said. "Does everything HAVE to be blood?" Charlene asked. "Well, yah!" Charlie wasn't that pleased to find that Evelyn could wear something besides bloody; he didn't think lavender lipstick was an improvement. Especially not with the rest of her black makeup. Valerie thought it was a good color, though. Predictably. "Have some caffeine," Valerie suggested, and opened one of her Dews and handed it back up front. Which explained why she'd grabbed two out of the cooler before getting into the back seat. "Where next, O Goddess?" she asked as Charlie took the can and sipped at it. "Well, if you like this?" Evelyn asked, pointing at her lips. Charlie didn't know why Valerie twitched and shivered. "Oh no, wait," she said as she turned the car towards another store. Tucker almost screamed when he saw the brown leather jacket, then he almost screamed again when he saw the SIXTY DOLLAR price tag; then he wanted to pull a knife and fight his way to the register, because obviously everyone in the thrift store would be willing to kill him for this jacket, especially at this price. Except, they weren't; the other people in the store seemed, unbelievably, to be looking at the other merchandise. The only ones looking at his jacket were Evelyn and Charlene. "Mine," he told them. "It's too small for me," Evelyn complained. "Try it on." He did. "It's a little long, isn't it?" Charlene suggested. "Nah!" It was perfect. Well, technically it WAS a little long, but that was all to the good as far as he was concerned. The nearest mirror showed that it looked like a men's jacket, and definitely looked oversized on him. *Actually, looks like I borrowed it, or liberated it, from my hypothetical boyfriend,* he decided. It had buckle cuffs around the wrists, and the zipper went all the way up and formed almost a gorget over his throat. *So no FAKE lapels, these are real.* The outside pockets had a separate section for hand warmers, and when he unzipped it again and checked there was an inside pocket on the left side breast. And it was lined in cream satin. "Come OUT," Evelyn incanted as she made a gesture like a fountain, and Charlene smirked, "of the shopping trance. Re-TURN to your body, an-" "I'm getting this," he told her. "Oh, it's WAY too large," Charlie said as he started to put the dress back on the rack. "GIVE it to me!" Evelyn hissed as she lunged. He let go before she could attack him, and she whisked off to the changing room. "You think she wants that one?" Valerie asked. "And, see, since it's so cheap," Evelyn explained, "you don't feel bad about cutting it up." She'd had coffee that cost more than the nightgown she was holding. Though coffee wasn't nearly as tarty as this was. "Oh, yeah, you have a point," Valerie agreed. "Miz Thompson would NEVER let you out of the house like that," Charlene reminded them. "Oh." She was right; no matter how vintage 80s it looked to have torn - or cut - lingerie under that leather jacket Valerie was getting, it was not what anyone could call LADYlike. "Yeah," Valerie agreed as she grabbed the red satin nightgown - it was too ornate and lacy to be a slip - and threw it into the cart, "but who says she has to see it? I could wear something OVER it." "Valerie!" Charlene complained. Tucker sighed, but had to admit that Evelyn had had a point; they'd bought a LOT of stuff here, and each thing cost about a third or less what he'd paid retail. *On the other hand, that was a LOT of stuff...* *On the gripping hand, that jacket...* he grinned. Evelyn sighed, as she looked at the remains of her money. *But, man, if I don't get those boots today, I think I'm gonna die...* As seemed to happen, the more VALERIE had spent, the more Evelyn seemed to spend right alongside her, and the more she WANTED to spend. She'd been avoiding her credit card all day, even though it hurt, but after the thrift store finds, she couldn't stand the thought of going one more day without those gorgeous sexy boots. *Plus I still have enough cash for HALF the balance, and I can get another fill-up from Valerie... I got the phone bill covered earlier...* The boots she had drooled over slowly materialized in front of her; then the lascivious grin of her boyfriend when she'd tried them on. *That's the problem with being Gothic,* she thought. *You keep getting tempted into damnation by carnal desires.* *Damnation, here I come,* she decided. *It's only interest.* "Oh my," Tucker said as he got closer to the shop, which had a black front and ankhs and similar things painted on it. "Am I old enough to go in here?" Evelyn said, "Just don't go in the other side, the one that's marked 'eighteen and up only', 'kay?" Tucker was about to whine about how that had to be where they kept the good stuff, when she added, "That's where they keep the sex toys and stuff." Tucker eventually said, "Ah," because his mouth had to say something and his brain had suddenly run dry. Evelyn chuckled at him as she pushed the door open. He followed her in, and the place just reeked of incense, leather, and - somehow - sin, though without actually smelling like bodily fluids. The first clerk he saw was taller than he was, thinner than he was, had bigger boobs than he had (naturally; they were about as big as his boosters), and had no hair at all that he could see, but more metal stuck through the skin on her head than Tucker would ever allow until they started retailing cybernetic enhancements. "Hey Ev," she smiled at Evelyn. "Hey Chris," Evelyn said back, and the two hugged. "I think I can get the boots today!" "The ones you've had on layaway?" Chris smiled back, and Tucker began to think he'd been had. *Well, kind of...* "Oh, sure, Val," Charlie complained, looking at the insane colors of makeup Valerie was looking at. "Why not look like a clown? Jane'd really appreciate that." Valerie said in a very high, sweet, and earnest voice, "I might be able to make Darla shit herself," and Charlie couldn't help laughing. Tucker stared at the extremely elaborate maid's outfit, or costume, or set thereof. The written card said it came with the petticoats - far FAR shorter than Jane-issue - fishnets, pettipants - which he hadn't known what that was, but now he could guess - the apron with the flared ruffle at the shoulder, the collar, the hairpiece, and two garters. It was on a sleek black mannequin that had a blonde wig attached, but Tucker could imagine- "Oh, yeah, get that," Charlene suggested. "Ah, no. It'd give Jane ideas." It was giving him ideas, but of an entirely different sort. "And Debbie'd probably make ME wear it anyway," he realized. Charlene asked, "Your girlfriend?" "What? Fuck, did I say that out loud?!" She laughed at him. "Jeez," Charlie said, as he started to stand up in the two inch platform, six inch heeled pumps. He wasn't sure this was a good idea. "Be careful," the short Asian salesgirl - who'd enticed him into wearing them - said as she helped balance him. "You walk around in these things?" he complained, though it was fairly obvious that she did; she was wearing the sandal version. "It's not that bad, you just have to be careful. And go really slow until you get used to 'em. And take small steps." "Whoa," Valerie commented. "Can you walk?" "I think so," he said, and started taking careful small steps. "It's not too bad..." And he was certainly much taller; he seemed to be the tallest person in the shop, at the moment. "SHIT!" the Asian girl in the mirror choked, and Debbie and Kim cracked up. "Debbie," Mike snarled as he turned to face the girls, "you are fucking UNNATURAL. Did you trade your soul for this power?" "AHAHAhahaha!" Mike turned back to look, and it was still really disturbing to see himself looking entirely like a chick out of one of the Hong Kong action movies. All he really needed was boobs, a slinky dress, some shoes, and someone to kick and punch... *Those two,* he decided as Kim actually fell over, and both of them laughed harder. Tucker thought he might be developing a partial immunity to retail. Finally. Or maybe he wasn't as goth as he'd thought. He'd only bought forty dollars worth of Jane-choking makeup, three pairs of fishnet stockings, three pairs of other stockings, four pairs of gloves - this place had longer gloves than the vintage shop or the thrift store had had - two skimpy tops, one leather miniskirt, and two pairs of shoes. All of it was black, of course. Though he wanted one or two pairs of their boots (and, for an entirely different look though the same reason, the maid's set), he just couldn't quite justify them... Not for summer, at least. *Actually, I can't justify them at all... Except, I have lust in my heart, and I want more lust to be in Debbie's heart, and those boots'd do it.* Also he was still a little hinky about anything that made him look like a prostitute. The Doc Martens wouldn't look like a prostitute - *Or it's the kind of prostitute that- Yeah, don't even go there,* he told himself - but he could get steel-toed street combat boots for a lot cheaper elsewhere. And the platform boots that didn't have heels were just stupid, as well as insanely overpriced for such stupidity. Charlene had been talked into two pairs of shoes, both of them higher than Tucker thought she could manage, a few pairs of unusual stockings, and a makeover. Evelyn had bought some makeup and the boots she'd had on layaway, and had changed into the boots. Tucker wasn't sure she could drive while wearing them, but she claimed she could, and she certainly looked immensely sexy with them on. "Are we done yet?" Charlene asked, pulling on his arm and distracting him from Evelyn's backside and the rear view of her new boots. It was a sexy sexy view. He sighed. "Still have to go to the mall, 'cause I need some jeans and stuff, and then we go to dinner. Then, we go home." "They're not home," Kenneth said - he'd been the one to search the house, since he was the least debilitated. All the others looked wrecked, and Art was still at the hospital. He'd heard about Valerie's deli trip, when she came home with Darla, and he'd managed to get them to do the same thing. He really didn't want Marie or Jane cooking, not with them being ill and possibly suffering a relapse from stress; and Darla was so frazzled he didn't think she could make toast. And, frankly, he was on vacation, sort of, and didn't want to do it himself; and it wasn't like it would be a financial hardship. "There's two messages on the machine," Marie announced dully. Nobody seemed to want to listen to them. *** Distribution: No part of this work may be distributed as an original work by another person or group. Permission is given to redistribute this by electronic means, as long as the entirety of the work (from the BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE header to the END PGP SIGNATURE footer) is distributed, and credit is given to the original author, me. And no fee may be charged. Archiving is permitted provided no fee is charged for access. All rights reserved. + @>--,--'----- Ellen Hayes o===[-------- __ vicki .sig + -=[1990]=- \/ virus 12.2 + http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes PGP key: EFC9 5D55 (1996) + -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBThJ9dXYDebnvyV1VAQH0nwP/aPDpxqYdma8mnesFUiNYmHrZuAQrmwNf EowgZHH8d2uRmMBBm0f/jdBFbU4JrMkZixRhPqJMK/CvvaAqo8hCsLupzabwByGE mqzpXcv7SHH2iSCCFJBrzwEDJKVzcFCLGwrJ6mvh05jnhQLJIn1p45QDCJSelq3M dDpNR+GXv0g= =RqW+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----