3rd World Products, Inc. Book 7

by Ed Howdershelt

  Shrugging, I said, “She's fixed. You're fixed—or getting that way. The bad guys are in jail. There's only some paperwork left to do."

  A time of silence passed as we all sipped beer and—I suppose—waited to see if anyone had anything else to say about recent events.

  Jenny began asking questions about the flitter as she peered over the side at the lights below us. There was an odd edge to her voice that I'd heard before fairly often, usually in the aftermath of some traumatic event, but Jenny's edge lacked that peculiar post-combat intensity.

  After a while, Jenny's questions stopped and she said in a flat, quiet tone, “That woman damned sure changed my mind about something. I used to think ... I used to think people like her ... crazy people ... should be treated as if they had a disease."

  Looking up at Donna, then me, she shook her head. “Not now. Nothing's ever gonna make someone like her right in the head again, and we can't trust the government to make sure they keep people like her away from the rest of us. I heard a doctor say she might be released on medication someday."

  She sipped her beer and said, “Wish you'd'a killed her."

  Shaking my head, I replied, “Prison. No, thanks."

  "You could have taken her up in this thing and dumped her in the ocean."

  "Uh, huh. Somebody knows where this flitter is and what it's doing every moment, and if I were to toss you over the side, it would just bring you back aboard. You know how the Amarans feel about killing. They program that into their toys, too."

  Jenny sipped again and said flatly, “That's too damned bad. They oughta take sickos like her out back and shoot ‘em."

  As Jenny's gaze returned to the scene below, Donna sat up and glanced at me tensely, as if wondering how to lighten the conversation and Jenny's feelings.

  Jenny lightly backhanded Donna's knee and muttered, “Stop that. You'd feel the same damned way and you know it. You'd have killed that asshole you married if you could've gotten away with it. At least you had the luxury of doing something about him yourself."

  "Flitter,” I said, “Take us up to twenty miles, please."

  The flitter instantly began rising at barely subsonic speed as both women turned quickly to stare at me.

  "Twenty miles?!” yelped Jenny, “Are you kidding?!"

  Swilling the last of my beer, I replied, “Nope."

  Donna sat grinning at Jenny's shock as I tossed my empty bottle away. The flitter's field turned it to plasma in a brilliant burst of light and Donna's indignant “Hey!” when I tossed the bottle turned into a short, high-pitched shriek.

  Staring rather starkly at the receding ground, Jenny asked in a rather faint voice, “Where ... Where are you taking us?"

  "Up.” Standing up, I reached to pet Tiger and said, “Just up. At times like these, it's good to have something happen that seems to trump whatever's already happened to us. Preferably something good, of course. Feel free to heave your bottles over the side, too. How about a movie?"

  Calling up a six-foot field screen ten feet behind the last row of seats, I walked over to it and poked the ‘entertainment’ icon, then chose ‘movies’ from the list of offerings.

  Donna came to stand beside me and wonderingly study the screen itself, reaching through it and then walking through it, then she walked back through it and turned around.

  Pointing at the list of movies, she said, “That one,” and put her finger on ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow'. Looking up at me, she shrugged and said, “It seems to fit,” then she stepped back a couple of paces and muttered, “My God...” as the movie's splash frames appeared.

  I froze the display and said, “Wait one,” as I turned to Jenny. “They tossed you out of the hospital before dinnertime, didn't they?"

  Her gaze switched from the screen to me.

  "Ah ... Yes. I left before supper."

  "There's some snack stuff in the back. Or we could order a pizza. Or something. Chinese, if you want."

  Jenny's somewhat dazed gaze turned to Donna, who said, “Chinese would be faster; they just fill the order from a buffet. Jen? Could ... Um ... should you eat Chinese food?"

  Focusing a bit, Jenny said, “I can eat anything you can. Chinese is fine."

  Calling up a small window on the big screen, I tapped the icon for telephone listings, then restaurants, and a few minutes later, we'd placed our orders.

  Donna somewhat hesitantly tossed her empty bottle at the sky and flinched mightily when the bottle flashed. Jenny snickered at Donna's expression and threw her bottle, too, but I noted that her expression was no different when the bottle became a bright ball of plasma.

  I put up a list of music videos and let the ladies pick a few to kill time until our dinners would be ready. The woman had said ‘five minutes', but I received that estimate with a grain of salt.

  As the fourth video—a Shania Twain number—ended, I told the flitter where to take us and we soon settled into the restaurant's parking lot. Jenny reclined her seat and rested as Donna and I went to get the food.

  Once we were back up at twenty miles, I had the flitter create a small bathroom facility to one side of the screen and we turned our seats around and dug into our dinners as the movie started.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Between action scenes, the movie failed to fully hold my attention. Angelina Jolie's attempt to produce a British accent was as unconvincing as it had been in ‘Tomb Raider’ and Gwyneth Paltrow was altogether unimpressive.

  The Brit playing ‘Joe’ could have had better lines, too, but the movie had been built around a late-thirties P-40 fighter aircraft, action scenes, and computer-generated props, and the writers apparently hadn't put forth much effort with dialogue.

  I gave some thought to Donna. She hadn't been content to simply let me walk away. It seemed likely to me that she might engineer a bedroom rematch just to sort of restore some kind of balance to the cosmos.

  Studying that line of thought for a while to see if it was just my ego or my libido putting ideas in my head, I came up with a general lack of evidence for both sides of the argument.

  So why did I have the feeling she'd want another shot at me? For that matter, did I want her to? She'd managed to tick me off enough to make me walk away from the first opportunity. Was there any reason to think she wouldn't do so again?

  Nope. There wasn't. She might be a whiz at designing an op or running a military office, but something in her assumptive manner tended to bug me. I knew we'd argue as often as not and the arguments would be over trivial matters, so the undercurrent of angst would be there at all times.

  Minor revelation, there; in other words, Donna seemed just like Linda in many ways, but we didn't have thirty-plus years of working together and learning each other's ways to provide a buffer zone between our personalities.

  Donna would always be looking for hidden meanings in things I said or did. She probably wasn't the kind of woman who'd trot out in some dress and ask, “Do these make my hips look big?” but she was the kind of woman who'd second-guess and question me on general principles.

  With a small, quiet sigh, I realized that Toni was much more my type of woman. She'd turn off her brain and play hard, soak up every moment of a good time, and give as good as she got throughout the experience.

  Except perhaps for some small thing that caused laughter, Toni didn't encourage discussions during sex. She allowed nothing short of an emergency to interfere with her pleasures.

  I thought about my sexual bout with Donna. Everything had been going well until ... what? Until she'd somehow come to the conclusion that I hadn't been enjoying matters fully enough, a conclusion she'd reached despite knowing nothing about what pleases me in bed.

  Then she'd latched onto the idea that rubbers turn me off, even though she'd been firmly impaled on evidence to the contrary. How the hell had she managed that?

  And if I'd written her off, why did I give a damn? I glanced at Donna and realized that I was kidding myself. I hadn't written
her off; I'd just been trying to establish some distance so that we could either engineer that rematch or walk away without hard feelings later.

  But was it necessary? She didn't seem to be the clingy type. Why did I feel a need to preserve some distance?

  Turning my seat around, I opened the cooler and pulled out a beer as I asked who else wanted one, then passed a beer to each of the ladies and opened one for myself.

  Hm. Running low on cold ones. I got up and went to the rear of the flitter for a six-pack to replenish the cooler, then sat back down and nibbled on the rest of my pepper steak dinner.

  Would Donna suggest staying at my place again tonight? It seemed unlikely. Better that I bring up the idea, and only after letting her catch me eyeing her with interest.

  Could be she'd decide against it anyway, but at least she'd leave knowing...

  As Gwyneth Paltrow fretted for the fourth or fifth time over the number of shots left in her camera, Jenny interrupted my thoughts by asking softly, “Ed, do you want to talk about something after the movie?"

  Shaking my head, I replied quietly, “No."

  "You sure?"

  "Yup."

  She eyed me for a moment, then nodded slightly and turned to watch the movie. Donna glanced at us, then returned her attention to the show. I put my thoughts about Donna on a shelf, reclined my seat, and sipped my beer as ‘Joe’ and ‘Polly’ tried to find a way to stop the evil doctor's plans.

  A couple of beers—and the healings going on within her, I expect—made Jenny yawn as the movie's credits appeared. She apologized for yawning and suggested that while the evening was still early for some people, she was not one of them, then asked me to take her home.

  We landed in her driveway and I could hear her dogs going nuts inside the house.

  "Flitter,” I asked, “Should those dogs be able to know we're here?"

  "No, Ed, they shouldn't."

  "Thanks, flitter."

  As I handed Jenny down, Donna asked, “That's it? You aren't going to try to figure out why the dogs are barking?"

  She grabbed her backpack and hopped to the ground as I said, “Later. I'm just curious. Flitter, return to your parking place, please."

  Jenny asked, “Why are you sending your flitter away?"

  Donna answered for me, “We won't need it to get home. We have those boards I told you about. Board on."

  Her board appeared and she stepped onto it, then did a quick circuit of the yard and street. When she returned and said, “Board off,” she dropped a few inches to the sidewalk.

  Jenny eyed her, then me, in a skeptical manner and muttered, “Huh. They don't look all that safe to me."

  "They're safe,” said Donna, “We can't fall off them."

  Her skepticism unabated, Jenny again said, “Huh, right,” and turned to unlock her door.

  We stuck around for a few minutes, but it was evident that Jenny had reached her limit for the day. Donna rather unnecessarily promised to check in with her tomorrow and we made our goodbyes with words and hugs, then Donna and I stepped outside and got on our boards, waving as we rose into the night sky.

  Giving some thought to where I might want to go on a Saturday night, I kept my speed down to around twenty at a hundred feet or so.

  My board and I were suddenly spotlighted brightly from behind; Donna had turned her lights on. Since I wasn't at street level and the board wouldn't let me collide with anything, I saw no need to bother with lights.

  Across the twenty-foot gap between us, Donna yelled, “Why are you going so slow? Why aren't your lights on?"

  I edged closer to her and told her why my lights were off. She seemed to give the matter some thought, then turned her lights off, as well.

  "Where are we going?” she asked, “This isn't the way to your house."

  "Let's try Crabbit's Pub. Do you shoot pool?"

  Grinning, she replied, “Oh, I can hold a stick and look pretty, I guess."

  Uh, huh. The words of a modest shark? Or was she just reasonably competent? Only one way to find out.

  "Good enough, ma'am. I'll hold you to that."

  A strong gust of wind slammed us from the south. It couldn't affect our boards, which relied on field support rather than air and speed to stay aloft, but Donna and I were both caught off-guard.

  I quickly shoved my board a bit to the right and leaned into the wind, but Donna handled the hard push by going with it and swooping back to resume her position beside me.

  "Showoff,” I said, “But neatly done, milady. You were the picture of grace and poise."

  She eyed me as if trying to decide whether I was teasing her, then she asked, “Was that a real compliment or a dig? You didn't seem to move at all."

  "It was a compliment. That blast probably would have left Wallace hanging upside-down. You've picked up riding a board pretty quickly."

  "I used to surf when I was a kid. Where's that bar?"

  Pointing ahead along Spring Hill Drive, I said, “Right there,” and we settled into the rear parking area just as the bar's back door opened. The guy wandered out with a cell phone at his ear, looked around, found his pickup, and ambled over to it without noticing us in the shadows by a van.

  It didn't escape my attention that Donna had moved to the shadows about the same time I did after turning off my board; I looked back at her and grinned.

  "What?” she asked.

  "We both automatically ducked into the shadows,” I said, “We don't really have any reason to conceal ourselves."

  Stepping past me toward the pub's door, she jauntily replied, “Sure we do. We don't want to get rusty."

  If Donna hadn't forged ahead into the pub, Susie might have greeted me differently. Donna saw the ladies room sign and veered toward it, saying she'd be right out. I continued down the short hallway to the bar, where Susie saw me and waved as she pulled the taps to fill a couple of pitchers with beer.

  As usual, Susie was dressed to slay male drunks; her little cheerleader skirt was topped by a half-tee, she wore no bra beneath it, and everything about her seemed to be in motion at all times.

  When she managed a break a few minutes later, she came skipping—skipping, mind you—over to me with a big grin and threw her arms around me for a bear hug.

  Leaning back without letting go, she yelled over the music, “Where the hell have you been?"

  "On a secret mission,” I yelled back, “You look delicious!"

  She grinned and yelled, “That's the idea!” then her grin faded to a smile as her eyes focused above my left shoulder and she asked, “Is she with you?"

  I glanced sideways at the bar mirror and saw Donna standing behind me, making a point of appearing very curious about Susie's grip on me.

  Nodding, I said, “Yeah, ‘fraid so,” and moved aside to introduce the ladies. Susie and Donna eyed each other as they shook hands, then Susie said, “Well, back to work.” To Donna she said, “What'll you have?"

  To my surprise, Donna ordered an Ice House. I'd figured her for a mixed drink girl. Susie skipped over to the cooler and back with our beers, ending the trip with a little rump-shaking 1-2-3 hop dance that made Donna eye her oddly.

  I paid for the beers and we headed for the pool tables. A few paces along, Donna asked, “What was that little production all about?"

  When I looked at her, she stopped and reproduced Susie's hop dance in a rather quick, conservative manner.

  "Tips,” I said, “Didn't you notice every male eyeball at the bar was aimed at her butt?"

  Looking enlightened, she sipped her beer and glanced back at the bar, where Susie dramatically wrenched the cap off a beer in a manner that set her top in violent motion.

  "Lord,” said Donna, “What a helluva way to make a living. Are you two ... uhm ... old friends, or what?"

  Feeding the change machine a buck for quarters, I said, “Yeah. Old friends."

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Donna eyed Susie again as Susie ran some drinks to a table and said, “She s
eemed pretty fond of you. Did you two ever..?"

  I grinned and asked, “Ever what, ma'am?"

  Giving me a narrow look, she said, “Don't be dense."

  "Why not? You're being nosy."

  From the raised stage between the pool tables and the bar, the blonde lady DJ grinningly sent a beer coaster flying at me as I stood up. I moved sideways and snatched the coaster out of the air as it flew by, then sent it back at her.

  She squeaked and ducked, then held up an index finger as she fiddled with the sound system. A few moments later, she stepped down from the fenced stage and came to the pool table to share a hug, then I introduced her.

  "Julie, meet Donna. Vice, meet versa."

  They shook hands, then Julie turned to me and said with emphasis, “You haven't been in for a while."

  "I've been off saving the world and stuff. It kinda cuts into my free time."

  "'Saving the world', huh? Is that the best you can do?"

  Shrugging, I said, “Well, sorry, ma'am. I'll try to do better. How's the DJ biz?"

  She thumbed at the stage and said, “Four nights a week. Up from two. I must be doing something right."

  Standing back to eyeball her high-thigh electric blue miniskirt, then letting my gaze roll up her matching blue satin top to her face, I shook my head. “Nah. It's your looks, lady. They just want a gorgeous blonde like you on stage all night. It wouldn't matter what you played."

  Grinning at my inspection of her, Julie made a wry face and sighed exasperatedly, “Oh, you are so full of shit! Besides, your girlfriend's standing right beside you, you idiot."

  Some guy came over and whispered something to her as he thumbed toward the stage. Julie glanced at the CD player, sighed again and said, “Gotta go,” before hurrying over there.

  I could feel Donna watching me as I fed quarters to the table and racked the balls. When I held out the remaining quarter, perched on my thumbnail, she said, “Heads,” and that's how the quarter landed on the table.

  She made a solid ball when she broke the rack and sank three more before she found herself pinned behind two of my stripes and the eight. Her attempt to bank the cue ball failed and I stepped up to shoot.