Operation Dimwit

by Inman Majors

  “Breaker one nine. I am currently in Dimwit’s trailer and hell’s bells does it stink.”

  “You’re in already?”

  “My head is. And my upper half. Still working my ass through. That cheeseburger at Sonic was a bad idea. Oh shit.”

  “What?”

  “I dropped the stupid flashlight and it rolled off. I can’t see a thing.”

  “Just get in there.”

  “My big-girl panties are holding me back. I should have gone cowgirl.”

  “You’re stuck in the doggie door?”

  “Currently.”

  “I’m coming up.”

  “Negatory, negatory. Do you read? Need your scent away from the scene.”

  Headlights now appeared on the highway and Penelope whispered as quietly as she could: “Don’t panic, but there’s a car heading this way.”

  “Distract them. Do you read? Distract them.”

  Penelope held her breath as the car neared the Rolling Acres entrance and then drove past. “Thank God,” she said. “False alarm.”

  “Affirmative. But maintain current location. I just have to suck in my right cheek. It’s always been the chunky one.”

  Penelope wondered what she was talking about. Missy was as buttless as they came.

  “My God,” Missy said. “It smells like an absolute whack factory in here. Like every pimply boy’s room I knew at boarding school. Times one million.”

  “Are you through the door yet? If nothing else, you have to get that flashlight.”

  “Working on that cheek now. I should have hydrated. I’m retaining water after that dosage from Tammy.”

  “I’m coming up.”

  “Negatory, negatory.”

  But Penelope had already turned off the walkie-talkie and was running up the hill.

  At the top of the drive she took a moment to check behind her. Rolling Acres remained quiet and dark, with only a few flickers here and there from a bedroom television. The highway was empty as well and their car in the Tractor Plus lot unmolested. If they had to make a quick getaway, the woods separating Dimwit’s lot from the road would be the best option. The undergrowth was thick but not unmanageable. It would probably be safer to just fireman-carry Missy out, as the HHR had done with the bear cub. Otherwise, she was sure to get caught in barbed wire or something else improbable and get them busted. Decision made, Penelope booked to the back of the trailer.

  Where she found two tan legs wiggling mightily outside a doggie door, tights and Converse kicked off in the grass, and a pile of bunched-up panties on skinny tan flanks stuck halfway in and halfway out of Dimwit’s trailer.

  “You tan naked?” Penelope said.

  “I’m not Canadian. Of course I do. But I told you to stay down there. If we get caught, it’s your fault.”

  “I could leave right now.”

  “Fair point. But listen, I think you’re going to have to take off my undies for me.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking wearing these granny panties in the first place. They’re like pantaloons. I was afraid my hiney would get cold.”

  Penelope took a closer look. They were indeed voluminous.

  “Go ahead,” Missy said. “Be a good girl and take off Granny’s bloomers for her.”

  A harsh, cackling laugh came from inside the trailer and then half of a tiny butt began to wiggle in a dog door. Wondering how she came to be at this precise moment in time, Penelope went forward and smacked the tiny target one firm time. “Be still. We’ve got to get going.”

  The hindquarters came to a halt and Penelope put her hands on the panties and yanked. One side came down but not the other.

  “It’s the right cheek,” Missy said. “I told you. Little Miss Chunky.”

  “They’re really wedged in there.”

  “Well, I’m wedged all over the place. Anyway, just rip these bad boys right off.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely. Happens most weekends by request. Just give it the old heave-ho.”

  Penelope placed one foot against the side of the trailer for leverage, took a wide stance, and pulled for all she was worth. Missy’s left leg flipped over the right one, and she let out a soft moan. Her left shank was free and clear of panties but the other side was stubborn. Penelope yanked harder. Matchstick brown legs were swishing this way and that but the right cheek would not budge. Penelope dropped to the ground and put both feet against the trailer, grunting with exertion.

  “Pull!” Missy called. “Pull, you scurvy dog!”

  Grunting fiercely one last time, like a European tennis player on match point, Penelope tugged. A ripping noise ensued and then the sound of half a body plopping onto a trailer floor. Penelope stood up, shredded panties in hand, to find Missy peeking through the curtains at her. Half naked and triumphant, she unlocked the door and said, “Come in, my dear, to Dimwit’s House of Horrors.”

  28

  Penelope entered, fearing the worst. There was no telling what macabre scene would greet her, or what an inspection of the premises might reveal about the depth of Dewitt’s depravity. Daily office whacking might be small potatoes compared to what went on up here. It was pitch black and she couldn’t see a thing. Any second now she’d trip over a Japanese sex doll dressed like Scarlet O’Hara.

  The overhead light came on.

  “Turn that thing off!” Penelope shouted.

  The room went black again.

  “I’ve got to find the flashlight,” Missy said.

  Penelope turned her phone light on. Recalling her boss’s state of undress, she shone it purposely on Missy’s face. “I brought your clothes from outside. Why don’t you get dressed?”

  “No can do. I’m going to torment Dimwit with my pheromones for a while. His little Confederate pecker will give him no peace once I’m done marking my territory.”

  Missy now manipulated her hand in a way that suggested the wafting of fumes from a waist-high fire. Finding this more demonstrative than necessary, Penelope turned off the light. “All he’s going to smell is my skunky funk. Put your clothes on or I’m leaving.”

  Mumbling about fragile southern belles, Missy pulled on her tights and shoes.

  The nudist colony expunged, Penelope again turned on her flashlight and did a slow, panning reveal.

  “What in the hell?” Missy said. “It looks like my grandmother’s living room. The sofa covered in plastic, the wooden bowl of fake fruit. My God, he’s got glass paperweights on every side table.”

  “And it’s spotless.”

  A quick survey of the adjoining kitchen revealed much the same order of decor. Another bowl of wax fruit sat on the dining table and a magnet on the refrigerator asked visitors to Kiss the Cook. The wallpaper was brown and burnt orange and showed three repeating scenes of early colonial life.

  “What’s that behind you?” Missy asked.

  Penelope aimed the light where Missy pointed. On the wall was a framed cross-stitch of twining vines and purple flowers around a daintily lettered aphorism:

  The Hurrier I Go

  The Behinder I Get

  “There’s not jack in here,” Missy said, “unless he’s stashed your dildo in that cabinet with the silver and china. But I’ll bet you one thousand dollars that through that door right there we find the mummified corpse of Mother Dimwit.”

  “Don’t even joke about that.”

  “It’s that or the skunk kennel, guaranteed. Ooh, I bet he’s got little bunk beds for his children of the night and everything.”

  “Yeah, let’s check that one, but we’ve got to hurry. Dimwit could be back any minute.”

  Missy waved off this concern and placed her hand on the doorknob of the mystery room, smiling devilishly. “I like to call this the mausoleum.”

  Side by side they entered. Once inside, Penelope commenced a slow reveal of the room, which, it turned out, was not a repository for human remains. Nor was it a bunkhouse for trained crepuscular crea
tures.

  “Dear Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Missy said. “Am I hallucinating?”

  “No.”

  “A craft room? Seriously? Who is this freak? Look at all that yarn. It’s like a Michael’s catalog in here. He’s making a scarf? He’s worn the same clothes every day since I’ve known him. What in God’s name would he do with a scarf?”

  “I have no idea. But I do know what he does with those binoculars sitting by the window.”

  “Do you know what this means?” Missy asked. “Dimwit is crocheting while he spies on us and tickles his little Stonewall.”

  Penelope didn’t know about the scenario Missy envisioned, but Dimwit was, indeed, a crocheter. And a knitter. And likely a seamster, too, unless that sewing machine was just for show. This was just the sort of room Sandy and Rachel would love to stick her in for the next decade to keep her from dating. Now that she smelled permanently of skunk, perhaps she should consider it.

  “Okay,” Missy said. “This room is officially freaking me out. I had a bad experience in art class one time after I made a papier-mâché ding-dong and the teacher made me sit in the supply closet for like two hours. Art teachers do not fuck around. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  They crossed the hall and entered the bathroom. Here they found a sink upon which sat an antique perfume bottle with a variety of dried flowers sticking out of it; a toilet with a wicker basket atop holding extra rolls of paper; a trilevel rack with matching towels of various sizes, all in baby blue, affixed to the door.

  The lone objet d’art was an embroidered poem above the toilet.

  IF YOU SPRINKLE

  WHEN YOU TINKLE

  BE A SWEETIE

  AND WIPE THE SEATIE

  * * *

  “Does he even use this bathroom?” Missy said. “It’s an old lady museum in here. Where’s all the weird stuff?”

  So saying, she ripped open the medicine cabinet. Here, lined up in three neat rows were an assortment of lotions, oils, and butters in shea, coconut, almond, and lemon sage. Also a toothbrush.

  “Ah-ha!” Missy shouted. “A full-service Jiffy Lube! Now this, my friend, is par for the Dimwit course. I’m not nearly as freaked out as I was. But there’s nothing in here of ours. You ready for the bedroom?”

  Penelope nodded and followed her employer a few feet down the hall to the last unexamined space in the trailer. They opened the door to find a bedroom with blue-green walls. It wasn’t quite turquoise, but very close. The trim was assuredly Daisy White. This gave Penelope pause, her paint combination dovetailing so closely with Dimwit’s. This moment of consternation soon passed. The room smelled nervous and sweaty. It reeked of epic solitary battle.

  Trying to breathe only through her mouth, Penelope took in the ambience of Dimwit’s private quarters. The single bed had been made starchy-tight, military style. The Spartan effect was mitigated by the homemade quilt folded neatly at the foot. The colors matched the walls. A bedside table held a lamp and a fancy, long-stemmed candy dish, the sort found filled with peppermints in every single old lady’s house in the world. Something in the dish caught her eye. There it was—the shiny, unopened pack of Starbursts. She nabbed it and was about to open a long delayed treat when Missy seized her hand.

  “He’ll know we were here.”

  “These are my Starbursts.”

  Missy pried the candy from her closed fist and placed it back in the dish.

  “I know you’re upset now,” Missy said, “so I’m a little hesitant to point out the slippers under the bed.”

  Penelope looked down. Tucked halfway under the bed and facing out—ready to be slipped into on a chilly morning—was a small pair of furry, fluffy mules, quite similar to the type that she herself wore on a winter’s day. Two tee-tiny yellow socks, cute as can be, were tucked into the slippers as if they’d been recently worn and would be again, first thing in the morn.

  “Those are the socks that were in my desk!”

  Missy shook her head sadly, as if the eternal Innocence versus Knowledge conundrum was being played out before her eyes.

  Missy took a photo of them and said, “I know they are. Your toes and Dimwit’s toes are basically married now. Sad but true. And I peeked in the closet too. There’s all kinds of candy and gum in there. Like individual pieces of Dentyne. And half a pack of Tic Tacs.”

  “Orange?”

  Missy replied again with forlorn nodding. “And those watermelon Jolly Ranchers you like. There’s a pair of my hose. And about forty Chapsticks and lip glosses. I think he’s got Doris’s retainer case too. Poor lisping retainer Doris. I don’t think she fully embraced the Rolling Acres experience. Anyway, I took photos of all that junk even though there’s no way to prove it’s ours. We need to find your pleasure pole PDQ, or this is all a big waste of time.”

  Without knowing she was doing it, Penelope had avoided looking at the floor-to-ceiling shelves on the far side of the room. She’d always been good about trusting her intuition in tense moments like this, most of which involved minor transgressions of the legal code as a youth. Her intuition would say “Time to run,” and she did. Or “That tree is a good place to hide.” She and her intuition had a good thing going—

  they both seemed to care a lot about sparing a certain someone from lengthy interactions with the local constable and unpleasantness of every hue. But she could delay looking no longer.

  “Get a load of Dimwit’s collection over there,” Missy said, wide-eyed and grinning. “What kind of freak collects back scratchers?”

  Penelope took in the collection, which was vast and varied. There were wooden ones and plastic ones and ones that looked like the long metal fork George used when grilling tenderloin. Some were antique and more rounded. One was an octopus, another stamped “Louisville Slugger.” Dimwit was not a strict archivist, for he’d included a metal head tickler, a feather duster, and a little car with rounded spikes for wheels, which she assumed was meant to be rolled like a Hot Wheel on body parts needing relief.

  There was one item, however, that stretched the integrity of the collection to its breaking point. It had been placed in the corner of the top shelf. This scratcher was plastic, with a green cylindrical shape. It bore the name of one of the women in the room.

  Missy’s mouth dropped wide. “It’s your Steely Dan!”

  “Yep.”

  “Quick, take a photo and let’s get out of here.”

  “That won’t help us. We’re going to have to act like we just chanced to see it. We were up here on some pretext and happened to glance in the window. If I take a picture of it here, we’d have to admit breaking in. No way the cops would get a warrant for that.”

  “You’re like Cagney and Lacey all wrapped into one!”

  “I think I can get a clear shot from outside that window if you pull the curtain back. Just crack it enough where it would look reasonable that we saw it from outside. I’ll give you a thumbs-up when I get the shot, then you pull the curtain back where it was. Got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah. But listen, really zoom in. If we can’t see the John Hancock on your substitute penis, we’ve wasted our time.”

  “I’ll get the shot. Afterwards, you lock up like we found it and squeeze back through the doggie door again. And be quick. You think you can manage?”

  “I’ll strip down and be out in jiff. My butt feels smaller already.”

  Penelope nodded then sprinted back through the Museum of Maiden Aunts, feeling the mad rush of borrowed time.

  Outside, she peeked around the back of the trailer to make sure no Dimwits were about, then raced to the bedroom window. She lined up the shot and zoomed in until the implement took up almost the entire frame. Then she backed it up a bit, so that more of the back scratchers could be seen and it would be clear where exactly in Hillsboro her dildo now resided. She double-checked that the PENELOPE LEMON inscription was visible. It was, and she snapped.

  She was ready to give the thumbs-up to Missy when she saw lights from the highw
ay flash through the trees. She banged on the window and said, “Get out now!”

  Heart pounding, she beat around back to find the upper torso of a woman squirming through a pet flap. And then the lower half emerged, skinny flanks flashing in the moon. Missy popped up smiling with her bag of useless instruments in one hand and a purloined ball of yarn in the other. Headlights flashed on Rolling Acres Way and then those same lights pivoted slowly, as if the driver was making a careful survey of the hill before ascending.

  “Dimwit’s back,” Missy said.

  “Shh!”

  Missy smiled and wiggled her eyebrows. She tossed the yarn in the air, nearly fumbled it, but held on. She seemed pleased with herself and sat down to put on her tights and shoes.

  “No time,” Penelope whispered as the headlights crept up the drive. They couldn’t be seen from where they stood, so as long as they stayed still, they’d be okay.

  Penelope whispered: “When we hear Dimwit open the front door, follow me. Don’t move before that.”

  Missy gave two thumbs up then wound the tights around her head like a bandanna. “Bret Michaels from Poison. I’d scratch his back.”

  She was truly the worst whisperer of all time and Penelope put a stern finger to lips and bugged her eyes. Missy made the motion of locking her lips, zipping them, and throwing away the key. She was truly an idiot.

  They waited in silence for a car door to open, but there was only the chirr of crickets and wind through leaves. Suddenly Missy perked up her nose. Then her eyes grew wide. A skunk was in the vicinity. Whether half a mile away or a hundred yards was impossible to tell.

  Missy pointed at Penelope and finally whispered properly: “They smell their leader up here. Dimwit’s sent the signal. I told you to wait down there.”

  “Be quiet.”

  “I’m not letting them surround me again. They know I captured their queen and won’t let me out alive. I’m booking.”

  “No. You’ll get caught.”

  But it was too late. Missy had begun a tenderfooted run down the hill. From the looks of things, she rarely went shoeless, other than in tanning booths, for every other step her leg shot up as if she were treading on hot coals. Penelope waited still to hear the car door open. It was every woman for herself now. She sincerely hoped that Missy didn’t run directly to either the office or the car, which would get them caught for sure. Briefly, her boss passed through the illuminated section of the hill, a naked, tanner-than-normal backside, the legs on her tights swishing around her head, and then Penelope could see her no more.