by Chuck Austen
I noted there was a couple of shoe stores though.
“Clothes For The Naked,” Morgan said.
We all looked that way, and I saw that I was apparently wrong. There was one clothing store, although their ‘clothes’ looked more like our lingerie.
Each of us stared goggle-eyed at the sea of nudity surrounding us, disturbed and amazed.
Everyone except Ms. Waboombas.
“What a great place,” she said.
Before long, I’d passed through town and reached ‘Nuckeby’s Bar and Grill’, a quaint little English pub kind of place, the type you rarely see, even in England. I pulled into a small parking lot that was fairly well filled with cars, and stopped beside a Harley Davidson, wondering about the rider. Would he be wearing just a helmet? Chaps? Boots? Would he be naked on the bike, but have to wear clothes inside a place of business? Or vice versa?
What the hell were the rules in a place where wandering around in public with nothing on was rule number one?
I got out of the car, as did the others. A few people were coming down the street and heading toward the entrance of the restaurant— all sans garment. I was still shirtless, but now felt overdressed. Mindie came and stood near me, apparently uncomfortable enough to need the reassurance of closeness, if not actual physical contact. The pastor looked around nervously, as if expecting at any moment for Saint Peter to show up and toss him into Hell just for looking around. Morgan was smiling like a horny schoolboy—which, come to think of it, is pretty much Morgan in a nutshell—and Ms. Waboombas was naked.
Ms. Waboombas was naked?
Why should that surprise me?
The pastor gasped. Mindie gasped. Morgan smiled appreciatively and popped another coke.
“When in Rome,” Waboombas said, smiling and dropping her panties into the back of the Duesenberg.
“But we don’t know if it’s clothing optional, inside,” I said. “Are you kidding?” Mindie asked. “Look through the window! Everyone in there is stark, raving, naked!”
I’d just noticed that myself. You really couldn’t avoid it.
Nuckeby’s Bar and Grill was—well—I guess the gentle way to put it would be—a slightly common diner-style restaurant with basic fare, simple décor, and large, clear windows on all sides to show off all the naked people. It was the kind of place old folks visit to have their arteries hardened—the kind of ‘family’ restaurant parents with a minimum of two-dozen feral children frequent so someone else will have to clean up after them.
Through the glass, partially obscured by brightly painted specials and lunch deals of various organ meats, we could plainly see roomfuls of happy, naked folk joyously ordering, receiving, or dining upon extravagant portions of food that would never have been approved by the surgeon general except under the Bush 2 administration, and only then for purposes of torture. Lunchtime among the common, and the bare.
Despite this, I was eager to go in. Somewhere inside, someone had to know where to find Ms. Nuckeby. Or rather, Wisper, to be more specific in a place potentially filled with both Mister and Ms. Nuckebys. I felt tingly again, though quite nervous. My direction in life was becoming clearer, but in a hazy, foggy, uncertain kind of way.
“I don’t know,” I said, and turned to the others. “You want to wait out here while I go in?” I hoped they’d say ‘yes’. I wanted privacy to track down my nude model.
“Not me. I’m hungry,” said Ms. Waboombas, apparently this time actually meaning ‘for food’.
She strutted away from us toward the door wearing nothing but high heels, ragingly comfortable in her own skin. I looked at the others—who, thankfully, all rapidly shook their heads ‘no’—and I hurried to follow her lead.
The stripper and I arrived at the door together, and with some aplomb, she threw open the entrance and framed herself
conspicuously in its opening. She put one hand on her hip, leaned the other against the doorjamb and slowly looked around. Or, rather, slowly waited for everyone else to look around and see her.
No one did more than casually glance. They all went about their naked business. Ms. Waboombas became a bit agitated, strode forward, and—coughing loudly—did a slow pirouette near the cheesecake display.
No one even turned her way. It surprised us both.
Becoming annoyed, Waboombas cleared her throat, threw out her chest, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a brass band began to play. Now all eyes turned our way.
Still standing in the doorway, I turned to look back at the street and saw a local marching band of some kind, complete with nude, fuzzy hatted drum major and clothes-less baton twirlers, parading down the street and playing to…uh…beat the band. I supposed they were rehearsing for some nude-centric festival event later in the weekend, though it was possible they did this all the time just for fun.
I mean, again, who knew the rules?
The overall effect on Mindie, Morgan, and the pastor would have been the same if a sniper had opened fire on them: they all scampered about like cockroaches escaping Raid. Skittering here and there, desperately trying to find cover, they eventually gave up and ran over to where Ms. Waboombas and I stood in the open door of the restaurant. Frantic, they pushed past the stately stripper and I, into the diner, holding their ears as if—somehow—just hearing the music would seduce them, Pied Piper-like, into racing off a cliff so they’d fall to their deaths atop a pile of naked people.
Ms. Waboombas and I followed them up to the hostess station, and I moved to the front as everyone else stood to one side trembling—paralyzed with fear. A carved wooden sign nailed to the podium read: ‘No Shirt, No Pants, or No Service.’ I waited patiently for a moment, then noticed a bell on the hostess station podium and dinged it gently.
A pretty young girl (naked) talking to a cook (naked) near the counter began backing our way (naked) as she finished her conversation. He laughed at something she said that I couldn’t hear, most likely a joke about a minister, a stripper, a comic book fan, and a clothing executive lost in a nudist colony. As the hostess backed toward me, I managed to drag my eyes, as though wrestling with alligators, away from her shapely rear-end, and somehow note that she wore a cute little choker-bowtie, wrist cuffs, and an apron. Aaaand—that was pretty much it.
“How many?” she asked, turning to smile at me brightly.
Both our smiles fell like snow off a roof in springtime as we each realized whom the other was.
I was myself, and she was my Ms. Nuckeby.
“Mister Wopplesdown!” Ms. Nuckeby said.
“Ms. Nuckeby!” said I.
I could feel Mindie’s body temperature rise to dangerous levels behind me.
“You know this woman?” she asked.
My mouth flapped uselessly.
Ms. Nuckeby glanced over at the others. She wore the sort of expression you’d find on someone staring at an oncoming train while trapped inside a gasoline tanker and tied atop high explosives, as someone carelessly attempts to light a cigar with a blowtorch.
“You don’t remember me?” Ms. Nuckeby asked Mindie, clearly stunned.
“I do not associate with nudists!” Mindie sneered, dismissively. “Why would I remember you?”
Ms. Nuckeby’s fear was bussed away, then quickly replaced by a heaping helping of anger, and a side order of disdain.
“No reason,” she said and turned to me. “Lovely woman,” she said, not meaning it. “Your fiancée?”
“I am,” Mindie announced.
“Excellent,” Ms. Nuckeby said, her eyes never leaving mine. “How wonderful for you both. How many?” she asked, clapping menus, her voice filling with courteous distance, as if she had never, ever rubbed her breasts against my back or squeezed my whatchamajigger, and I shouldn’t try to convince anyone otherwise, or else.
“Five,” I said. “But some of us are still dressed.” I nodded toward the sign.
“And we are not eating here,” Mindie snarled.
Our hostess turned and looked at her carefull
y, sizing her up. After a moment’s assessment, she scanned slowly over the rest of my little troupe, and eventually returned her furious attentions to me. She looked at me for so long that I furtively brushed my face to make sure there wasn’t something stuck there, sucking blood.
Abruptly, a smile popped back onto Ms. Nuckeby’s face, and she said, overly cheerily in some kind of bizarre, hick accent: “Yew folks’ve never bin to Nikkid Baw-dums buh-fore, have yew?”
“Yew kin tell?” I asked, smiling. I’d lost the war; I may as well enjoy the final battle.
“Well, I can see some of you are trying to fit in,” she said in her normal speaking voice, looking at Waboombas and Mindie. “But the rest…”
“I am not trying to fit in,” Mindie snarled, interrupting. “This is the last place I’d try to fit in.” She folded her arms and half-lidded her eyes in an attempt at superiority. “We had a clothing accident. I fell in a ditch.”
“I pushed you in a ditch,” Waboombas corrected.
“I tripped.”
“Because I kicked your pasty white ass, you tripped.”
“Really?” Ms. Nuckeby cut in, glaring at Mindie. “I can’t imagine anyone would ever want to kick your pasty white ass.” I’m not sure why she said she couldn’t imagine it. Her voice told us all, distinctly, that she was doing so—repeatedly—right this second.
“So, if you’re not here to eat, then why did you come to our lovely establishment?” Ms. Nuckeby asked me, rather pointedly. And was that a hopeful note in her voice?
Probably not.
“Um…well…” I began. “It’s difficult to explain. The simple answer is: we’re looking for a repair place. A Duesenberg specialty shop.”
“Duesenberg? Is that a car?”
“It is.”
“Foreign?”
“No, it’s American. Old, though. Built in 1934.”
“That is old.”
“Older than me.”
“Older than most people. What was that name again?” “Duesenberg. Sound familiar?”
“No. It’s just a funny word. I wanted to hear it again.” “Duesenberg.”
“That’s enough.”
“I’m done anyway,” I said. “My tongue isn’t what it was this morning.”
“Maybe because you were chewing on fire ants?”
“That’s a distinct possibility.”
“Distinct is a funny word,too,” she said. “It’s sorta got ‘stinked’ in it.”
“Sorta,” I replied. “Hadn’t realized that before. Any reason that’s occurred to you at this particular moment?”
“No. It just did. Sounds German.”
“Distinct?”
“No, the name of the car. I’m back on that.”
“Oh, right. The brothers who made them were German, but they lived in America.”
“They don’t anymore?”
“I believe they’re dead now.”
“How sad,” she said with seeming sincerity. “Got lost somewhere and couldn’t find a repair place?”
“I think I saw their skeletons just outside of town.”
“Were they heading this way? Because we don’t have any Duesenberg repair shops. Or cemeteries.”
“If I see them, I’ll let them know they can’t be buried here. Do you have any car repair places?”
“No,” she said and paused, fighting a grin. “We have a bike shop.”
She smiled slightly, in spite of herself. She was warming to me again, and I had to keep the thaw going. But that required charm, and I wasn’t sure I had any.
“A bike shop? Do they repair cars?” I asked, returning her grin. Her personality was just so damned infectious.
“Just the kind you pedal. For kids.”
“If I buy a Flintstone-mobile, I’ll keep that in mind. How about cars that run on gasoline?”
“Not for kids. What are you thinking?”
“Who said I was thinking? How about gasoline cars for grownups?”
“Do you know any grownups?” she asked, twinkling.
“Only the Duesenberg brothers.”
“And I hear they’re dead.”
“So there’s no Duesenberg repair shop at this address?”
“This address?” She was genuinely surprised. “No. What crazy person told you that?”
“As a matter of fact, my crazy Aunt…”
“Your Aunt Helena told you there was a Duesenberg repair place here? At this address?”
“Wrote it down and everything.”
“Why would she do that?”
“She really wanted me to come here.”
For a moment, Ms. Nuckeby seemed touched. Deeply. “Why?” she asked.
“Only one reason I can think of.”
She fixed me with a stare. I could feel her thaw spreading, and I sensed, for a moment, that we were back in the closet. But only for a moment.
“Well, I can’t think of any,” Ms. Nuckeby said, recovering quickly and closing that emotional door in my emotional face with an emotional slam. “This is not now—nor has it ever been—a Duesenberg repair shop. We’ve been here since the town began. Nothing but food.” She stopped and looked at a menu, then grinned again. Clearly, she couldn’t deny her own nature. “We do sell sauerkraut though.”
“That’s not a food?”
“Not in my opinion.”
“Is it a foreign car?”
“No. It’s rotten cabbage. But it is German. We put it on hot dogs.”
“But not on Duesenbergs.”
She giggled, then caught herself. She shook her head. The closet door beckoned, and it was becoming harder for her to fight coming back inside with me. Apparently I did have charm.
“No,” she said. “We don’t put it on Duesenbergs. A guy asked for it ‘to go’, once though. Maybe he put it on a Duesenberg.”
This time I laughed. I felt lighter and happier than I’d felt in a very long time. I could have continued this pointless conversation for hours. But Sheriff Mindie of the double D ranch cleared her throat and reminded me that my life could not be fun. Ever.
“Are you two planning on getting to any kind of a point, anytime soon?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said, as Ms. Nuckeby giggled and tried to stifle it. Mindie glared at me. “Why are you talking to this woman?” “Because…”
“How about car rental places?” Mindie cut me off, asking Ms. Nuckeby directly. “Anything like that around here?”
“No rental cars anywhere in town,” said Ms. Nuckeby, not looking at Mindie, her grin slowly expanding. “But the pedal cars are cheap.”
Mindie sniffed. Ms. Waboombas snorted a laugh. Or possibly a burp. Ms. Nuckeby continued smiling and shuffling menus.
“Well,” I said, turning to the others. “It seems we’re stuck here until Aunt Helena arrives.”
There were moans and groans from everyone except Ms. Waboombas. Ms. Nuckeby looked intrigued, so I wasn’t at all sorry for that particular news.
“I’m sorry,” I said to them. “I don’t see that we have any options.”
Everyone looked at one another, hoping someone had an answer to this horrifying dilemma. Thankfully, no one did.
“And if Helena doesn’t come for some reason?” Mindie asked, seeming genuinely frightened.
“There’s a nice hotel just down the street,” Ms. Nuckeby offered. “You could even stay for the Festival.” She glanced up at me—was that hope I saw in her expression?
Mindie sneered at her and sniffed derisively, then turned to the pastor to ask him if he knew anyone at the chapel who could come get us; as they discussed the idea, Ms. Nuckeby leaned closer to me and spoke softly—so Mindie couldn’t hear.
“Your aunt is coming?” Her low tones forced me to get very close to her. Close enough to smell her alluring scent, which excited me and made me, once again, glad I was wearing pants.
“Part of her plan,” I said, turning away from the others and lowering my own voice.
“What plan?�
�
“To bring us together.”
Her breathing deepened. We were back in the closet, door closed, lights dimming.
“Because she knows you’re not a fan of…” She paused, stifling a laugh, “…overabundant milk?”
“Nor the containers it comes in,” I said.
“By ‘bring us together’ you mean you and me, right? Getting you and me together? As opposed to you and your aunt? Or you and ‘Mindie’.” She said ‘Mindie’ like the word was something hairy trying to crawl up her nose.
“You and me. Yes. Not Mindie. Not anyone else. That’s what I meant.”
A smile slowly spread across her entire face. The look had returned. The one that said, ‘You threw yourself down a hill, and onto a pile of stinging ants—for me?’
“Then why does Mindie think she’s getting married to you?”
“Long, weird story. But trust me. You’re the one I’m here for.”
“Is it possible?” she asked, profound hope in her voice. “I mean, us? Now that you know?” She glanced around at the restaurant and all the naked people contained therein.
“Corky!” Mindie interrupted. “Why do you keep talking to her?”
I became angry. Surprise, surprise. “Because…”
“We were just discussing whether you would like something to eat while you wait,” Ms. Nuckeby said, diving in to defuse my irritation, gathering menus and becoming Super-Cordial Woman. “Would you?”
Everyone hesitated, clearly hungry but not wanting to dine in the midst of so many nudists. What if they accidentally touched one? And stuck?
“We need to eat,” I pointed out.
And I needed more time with Wisper. I longed for her in a way that surprised me. Oh, Orsino, thou wise and knowing fictional character.
Trust your feelings, Aunt Helena had said, Obi Wan Kenobi-like. Well, Wisper knew I came here for her, yet had dropped me onto an anthill out of jealousy. A gold-digger would have lifted me up and fought Mindie for the money. Here—in spite of herself—Wisper had been as warm and funny to me as she had been in my closet. Perhaps she was genuine. Just a charming, small-town girl who liked being naked. And really, I thought, staring at her breasts, what was wrong with that?
