Blood Samples

by Bonansinga, Jay

  "Let's go somewhere different tonight," Bertha-Lou Bizzel demurred from the passenger side of the convertible's bench, pulling away from Arlie's clinch.

  They were parked at the cusp of Grand View Hill, the local lovers leap, and Arlie was just beginning to make progress around the horn of first base toward second. He had told himself tonight was the night; it was bare titty or death.

  "C'mon, Bertha-Lou," Arlie protested, fidgeting, the steering wheel digging into his wiry frame. "Stop teasing me; you said just yesterday in the cafeteria that you thought you might like me a little."

  "I do like you, Arlie," Bertha-Lou said, twirling her hair around a finger. "I just thought we might try a change of scenery, that's all."

  Arlie sighed and stared through the windshield for a moment, thinking. Barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, topped with an unruly shock of carrot colored hair, Arlie was no box of chocolates in the looks department. He could have easily gotten work posing for the before-pictures in Charles Atlas ads. But tonight, he had pulled out all the stops to impress Bertha-Lou. He wore his best tab collar shirt, his pressed chinos and his new saddle shoes; he had even slicked his hair back with some of his dad's butch wax. The sad truth was, Arlie Staggs had become obsessed.

  For some boys, true obsession was found in the trading of baseball cards, sitting for hours in airless basements, ruminating over whether or not they should part with a Stan Musial for three Joe Garagiola's. For others, it was the lure of the gridiron, the mindless weight training off-season, the starving, the endless stats, and the glory of Friday night's big game. A few ne'er-do-wells at Herbert Hoover had even discovered this new-fangled music called rock and roll, led by hillbilly cats like Elvis the Pelvis, and some colored boy they called Little Richard. All that stuff was fine; but Arlie had found his own métier, his own special purpose in life.

  A typical head shrinker might have blamed it on the diminishing succor of his mother's nipple; the desire to return to the womb, and all that noise. But Arlie knew better. Arlie knew it had started with a little deck of playing cards he had stumbled upon in Maynard Staggs' golf bag back in the summer of '53. Bust Queens of the Amazon, fifty-two in all, posed on bear skins, satin backdrops and chrome gilded hotrods. Arlie had only been eleven at the time, but the little devil in his pants had awakened with a vengeance; and from then on, Arlie had been hooked.

  It wasn't merely the worship of bosoms; it was everything that accompanied the existence of the mammary gland in 1958 America. Arlie had a better knowledge of brassieres than a floor manager at Lane Bryant. He had studied the various kinds, the French lace cutaways, the Italian ribbon weaves, the British seamless jobs, and the American under-wires. He knew a Chantelle from a Warner Wonder, a Maidenform from a Lilly of France. He was also similarly versed in the zaftig starlets of the day; he idolized Maimie Van Doren, Jane Mansfield and Virginia Bell. He collected eight-pagers of Paula Page and Jackie Miller. He even kept a scrapbook of the more voluptuous mainstream celebrities of the day. Julie London was the cat's pajamas. Janet Leigh was a scream. Even Margaret Dumont, the portly matron of Marx Brothers flicks, would often make Arlie's pulse quicken; Arlie was certain, under all that bodice and bustle, there had to be a fabulous bust.

  As the years passed, Arlie's pastime became a preoccupation. He would lie awake at night, mentally tracing the contours of his English teacher's décolletage. He would concoct elaborate doodles of various breast shapes on the back of his spiral-bound, labeling them with taxonomical fervor; the gargantuan pears, the firm conicals, the ample rounds, and the inimitable heavenly ballasts. He would even revel in the wonderful poetry of the Sears catalogue: Full figured sizes available, 38 D to 46 EEE, reinforced Lycra cups to lift, firm and separate. For Arlie, the mammary gland was more than a mere body part, more than simple adolescent fetish; it was religion.

  And Bertha-Lou Bizzel was the promised land.

  Arlie had first seen Bertha-Lou during a freshman year assembly, sitting alone in the back of the gymnasium. She was a new girl from Phoenix, dark complexioned, sturdy, and full of secrets from the big city. She wore pedal-pushers, which was scandalous at Herbert Hoover, and a baggy knit sweater. And when she rose to her feet to applaud the winners of the Western Arizona Barbershop Quartet Competition, Arlie suddenly beheld the heft of her bosoms. They strained the front of her sweater, massive and proud. They were genuine works of art. And Arlie had dropped to his knees right there in front of Christ and the Blue Ribbon Barbershop Boys, silently thanking the Lord for all His wisdom and generosity.

  And now, after three solid months of maneuvering, including a dozen celibate visits to Grand View Hill, Arlie wasn't about to let a little thing like a change in scenery stop him from experiencing Bertha-Lou's bounty.

  "Wait a minute!" Arlie finally reached down and fired up the Bellaire. "I got it!"

  "What?" Bertha-Lou was gazing in the rearview, applying another coat of lipstick.

  "Place where my dad works," Arlie said. "Over by Mount Fenniman."

  "That's clear across the desert!"

  Arlie looked at her, grinning and putting the car in gear. "It'll be an adventure."

  She thought about it for a moment, then started twirling her hair and grinning back at him. "Okay."

  They drove for nearly an hour.

  The twilight turned the highway purple. Long shadows of distant buttes and yuccas scissored across the pavement, then vanished, as the air got cool and clean. Arlie turned the radio on. They listened to Jack Scott and The Texas Playboys and Tennessee Ernie Ford. And the sky freckled with stars, glittering magically.

  By the time they reached the outer fences of the Fenniman facility, they were both in the mood for love.

  "My dad works up at the main laboratory," Arlie said, pulling around behind a row of ramshackle Quonsets. The gravel lot was whiskered in sage and weeds, and a row of spindly Joshua trees loomed on the beam of the Bellaire's headlights. Arlie cut the lights.

  "What does he do?" Bertha-Lou was getting a little queasy all of a sudden.

  "Does something for the Atomic Energy Commission, I dunno, something with particles and beams and stuff."

  "Oh."

  Arlie found a place to ditch the car behind a cluster of garbage bins. He killed the engine, grabbed a blanket out of the back and escorted Bertha-Lou across the lot. They climbed a gentle hill fringed with creosote bushes and scabrous weeds. The summit was a flat, bald stretch of earth that overlooked the rest of the compound. Arlie spread the blanket out, and the twosome sat. The air smelled of pine and something astringent, like very strong disinfectant.

  Bertha-Lou gazed out across the desolate landscape of low-rise buildings and saguaro. "This isn't exactly what I had in mind," she murmured.

  Arlie already had his arm around her, his fingertips brushing the reinforced hooks of her bra. "I think I love you, Bertha-Lou," he said.

  "Oh, Arlie, you're so full of bull pucky," she said, pulling away for a moment, unbuttoning her blouse. "You're just in love with my boobies; which is okay, 'long as you treat me kind and take me out for a steak dinner and a movie of my choice every month or so."

  She reached around, unclasped her bra, and freed her breasts.

  "Ohmygah —" Arlie gasped, the words catching in his throat. He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. The blood was rushing to both of his heads, the big one and the little one, and his ears droned noisily. In the light of the desert moon, Bertha-Lou's breasts looked positively luminous. Like two great heavenly bodies made of cream. Arlie gaped at them reverently and uttered, "Thank you."

  "You're welcome," she said and kissed him.

  Arlie kissed her back.

  They fell to the blanket, and Arlie cupped her bosoms with the care and tenderness of a monk tasting the blessed host. Even Bertha-Lou was taken aback; Arlie was so cautious, so methodical. He seemed to be inhaling her, clinging to her breasts like some kind of marsupial. He alternated from left to the right, touching every square inch of pale flesh with his fac
e and his fingers. He had found his Valhalla.

  "Wait a minute, time out," Bertha-Lou said suddenly, gently pushing Arlie away. "You hear that?"

  "What?" Arlie was oblivious, drunk on her smell and her warmth.

  "That sound, like a buzzing, like the ground is vibrating."

  "It's nothing," Arlie said and went back to her sweet soft miracles.

  In every person's life, there's a pivotal moment, where the wave of fate is just beginning to break. It's the grand slam home run. The biggest fish. The most important case. Shakespeare spoke of it often; called it the "tide in the affairs of men". And the sad truth was, most poor slobs wouldn't know it if it bit them in the ass. Not Arlie. Face buried in buttery flesh, senses engulfed in the talc of Ivory soap and dime store perfume, he knew he was experiencing that indefinable moment toward which everything has been leading, and after which everything will pale in comparison. And in that silent instant of revelation, Arlie found himself wishing, wishing furiously, wishing upon a magical, starry Arizona night that he could —

  "My God, the ground is moving!" Bertha-Lou tensed suddenly, trying to pull away.

  "Mmmmmylllphlymmm—!" Arlie was glued to her nipple.

  "Arlie, we're— we're— we're—!"

  They were moving. The grassy plateau beneath them was shifting like a glacier, rotating. A vast earthen turntable. Noxious puffs of gas seeped out the edges of the plateau, smelling like airplane glue. Arlie clung to Bertha-Lou, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis. Bertha-Lou shrieked. Arlie closed his eyes.

  A moment later, they were plummeting through the darkness of an enormous air vent.

  They landed on the floor of a particle accelerator, which was about to bombard another target with 750,000 megavolts of atomic energy. Bertha-Lou hit her head on impact and was knocked out cold, but Arlie wavered in and out of consciousness long enough to see the gargantuan chrome apparatus rising over them, and feel the surge of vibrations under their bodies, and hear his dad's voice echoing in his midbrain— those darn Cockcroft-Walton gennies pack a punch, son— get your little atoms moving up to 84 percent the speed of light, and that's a lot faster than any four-barrel Chevy, son, heh-heh-heh-heh!

  In Arlie's final moments of consciousness, he saw the walls around them beginning to glow, a bright phosphorous green, and felt the vibrations resonating up through his body as he clung to Bertha-Lou. And in that final wave of emotion, Arlie realized that these may very well be his last moments on this earth. And he found himself completing the wish — the secret, magical wish — that he could stay this way, united with Bertha-Lou's cleavage, throughout eternity.

  Then the atoms crashed.

  "Ohmygod—!"

  Back in the here and now, Arlie's bad dream continued.

  "Where the hell did — how did —?!!" Bertha-Lou was getting hysterical.

  The morning sun hammered down through the vent shaft of the accelerator, and Arlie could hear Bertha-Lou's frantic voice only inches away, muffled by the fabric of the massive brassiere pressing down on Arlie's mutant face. Arlie tried to answer, but found that he had no mouth. Only a large, dark, puckered papilla through which he could nominally make out shapes and odors. He tried to move again and found the majority of his girth to be a ball of jiggly, sweaty flesh attached to Bertha-Lou's torso.

  "GET AWAY FROM ME —!!"

  Now there was real terror in Bertha-Lou's voice, and Arlie felt himself bounding across the airless lab, barely contained within the fabric of the Playtex. Arlie felt like a blind papoose, bouncing around the cotton carrier, clinging barnacle-like to his host body. Suddenly Bertha-Lou was scaling the inner wall of the accelerator room, and Arlie could feel the thrum of her heartbeat in his vessels, he could sense her terror in the perfumed sweat breaking out across the soft curve of his face. What a screwy dream he was having!

  "GET AWAAAAAAAY!!"

  There was a figure behind Bertha-Lou, pursuing her through the lab. Through the prison of fabric, Arlie could hear the pitiful, slobbering moans, the shuffling zombie-walk as it lumbered after her. What the hell was it? Some kind of radiated, mutant being? Arlie could hear its muffled, tormented cries. And the relentless shuffling, as the monster, or whatever it was, tried to climb the ladder.

  Bertha-Lou finally reached daylight, staggered across the gravel lot, and vaulted behind the steering wheel of the Bellaire. She fired it up and laid a patch out of there.

  High-balling down the highway, Arlie could feel the buffet of the wind against his faceless areola, the gusts flapping the fabric of the blouse, drying the sweat on his bulbous body. Bertha-Lou was mumbling to herself, things like "where are you, Arlie" and "what in God's name happened in there" and other phrases inaudible under the roar of the Bellaire. Arlie's entire rubbery form began to rash with goose bumps. Was it possible? Could it be? He felt the resilience of his flesh, the tremors passing through him every time the car hit a pothole; he was jiggling, dear God in Heaven, he was jiggling in such a familiar way.

  I'm here, Bertha-Lou! I don't know how it happened, but I'm down here, mute and sweaty, in your off-white 39D Playtex Cross-Your-Heart Underwire!

  The revelation shivered through him. This was not a dream; this was as real as his father's new brick barbecue, as real as Sputnik, as real as one of Mister Gibbons pop quizzes. Arlie was a boob. Period. And for some horrible, intuitive reason, Arlie got the feeling there was no turning back. He would have to adapt, just like in Missus Cockenlacher's biology class when they studied Darwin and natural selection. Arlie would have to make the best of it.

  A barrage of uninvited images assaulted his mammalian brain. People gathered inside a filthy canvas tent in the bowels of some carnival sideshow. Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, meet Boob Boy, the Human Breast, he'll lactate on command! Arlie tried to scream, tried to wriggle free of the elastic bondage, but the D-cup held firm. He was damned, damned to ride the rest of his life, a flabby passenger on a very attractive chest.

  It took Bertha-Lou twenty minutes to get back to town. Arlie wasn't sure, but from the sounds of traffic and the smell of pine needles, he guessed she was heading home. Bertha-Lou Bizzel lived in a ritzy neighborhood on the north side of Kingman, a new development called a suburb, complete with manicured lawns, immaculate hedges and borders of young western pines. Arlie strained to see through the tunnel of his puckered eye. Every time Bertha-Lou twisted in her seat, or reached down to shift, Arlie felt the fabric itching his face, prickling hotly, maddeningly. The underwire had gotten bent in all the excitement, and now it was digging into Arlie's side. It was torture. And the weight! Arlie felt like a balloon filled with sand, like Fatty Arbuckle after a six-course meal. His lower regions were still sweating profusely, sticking to flesh of Bertha-Lou's ribs.

  If only she had been a flat-chested girl.

  Moments later, Bertha-Lou arrived home. She pulled quickly into the circular drive and slammed on the brakes. Arlie plunged forward, nearly spilling out of his cup. He wanted to cry now, as Bertha-Lou got out of the car and rushed up the picket-lined walk, he wanted to die.

  Now slow down, Bucko, cool your pits and think this over.

  The Russ Tamblyn voice was back.

  Maybe this ain't such a godawful mess after all, you dig? Like, maybe this is whatcha call one of your blessings in disguise, if you catch my meaning, Bucko. Just think of the fun, the kind of life you could lead down here in this dark, warm, groovy place. Bouncing around, smelling great, carefree. Like dig: You wouldn't even have to worry about coppin' a feel anymore, know what I mean? You could just feel yourself up —

  "Mom? Dad? Anybody home?!" Bertha-Lou's anguished voice was splashing the empty silence of the living room of her house on Maple Drive.

  The Bizzel house was one of those new deals they call tract homes. Single level ranch, with a bunch of spacious rooms and all the modern conveniences. Electric oven. Eight inch black and white tv. Boomerang tables everywhere. And the color scheme was pure contemporary, aqua blue and mustard. Arlie boun
ced along from room to room, as Bertha-Lou looked for Mom or Dad or Brother Johnny or anybody who might listen.

  The house was deserted.

  "Probably all at church," Bertha-Lou muttered to herself, going into her room, and peeling off her clothes.

  Then it happened.

  The Playtex came off and freed Arlie. The cool air and light of the bedroom engulfed him, and it felt wonderful. It was almost as though Arlie could breathe again, although he had no breathing passages anymore. His pores tingled. Maybe Russ Tamblyn was right, maybe this wasn't so bad after all. He blinked, and gradually grew accustomed to the light and the strange portal through which his vision coalesced.

  There was a full-length mirror across the room. Covered with clippings of Ricky Nelson and Tab Hunter, the mirror reflected a narrow slice of Bertha-Lou. Through his constricted field of vision, Arlie saw his face in the upper left corner. The face of a frightened young man, shrunken, embossed onto Bertha-Lou like molded white chocolate. Arlie's eyes, nose and mouth created a strange little cameo around her nipple, as though some demon god had literally sculpted Arlie into her flesh.

  But why hadn't Bertha-Lou noticed him? Couldn't she tell that one of her breasts had mutated?

  She was moving again, over carpet, then tile. The light got sharper, and her footfalls took on a sibilant quality. Wait until she looks in a mirror, Arlie thought. She'll surely notice her new friend then. Arlie blinked and blinked and blinked. He could detect the faint odors of dampness, soap and shampoo. She was in the bathroom. God help him, she was going to take a shower! The squeak of a faucet, then the rush of water as she adjusted the temperature.