It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 01

"And I couldn't give a shit," said Galatea, leaping out of the tub. "I can't wait any longer." She knelt beside the apparition, eyes closed, mouth open, and tongue peeking out over her bottom lip like a shameless Catholic schoolgirl awaiting a communion wafer from a really cute priest.

The apparition pressed her spectral sex around Galatea's tongue. Galatea ate her out and then ate her way in. "Why does this always make me so freaky-hot?" Dee asked.

"Because you’re a freak," Galatea said, sucking on the apparition's left breast from the inside-out. The apparition soon disappeared down Galatea's gullet. "C'mon, c'mon," she muttered. "Fuck, I'm too excited to concentrate. Wait. Oh. Oh my." She unraveled in long, coiling curlicues, the daggers of her hair leading the way.

"Galatea?" Dee said.

The green curlicues sewed themselves back up and Galatea was lying face down on the floor, her disheveled hair curtaining her head. "I think I'm just going to lie here for a while, Dee, if that's okay," she said, hushed and muffled.

Dee listened to her giggle and sigh for a while before sneaking out of the tub and into the bedroom. It looked like a paintball war zone. Galatea had moved Dee's computers and equipment into the living room before really letting herself loose. The bedroom was entirely her territory now. It reeked of citrus-and-sex and a hint of Nyquil, her essence permeating the plaster behind peeling wallpaper and the stucco ceiling and eating through the varnish of the hardwood floor. The bedroom closet door had come off its hinges. He moved it aside and inspected the closet's contents. Much of his clothes, kept in cheap plastic closet organizers, had been spared, although Galatea had taken to wearing his underclothes and all of his ties had been lost to her bondage/tickle experiment earlier in the day. Dee still could not remember how he managed to snap the bed frame in half. He picked out undamaged pairs of briefs, socks, blue jeans, an undershirt and a melon-colored polo. Dee was threading a black leather belt through the loops on his jeans when he heard Galatea crow, "Tah-dah!"

She struck a classic "tah-dah!" pose in the bedroom doorway, emptied food coloring vials born aloft in an upturned hand. She wore a tight, white, tube-top jumpsuit that clung to every accentuated curve and starkly announced her utter lack of bra and panties. Her skin was the color of peach ice-cream, her hair orange as flame, her lips red as blood. "Check this out!"

Dee said, "Um."

"What," Galatea said, her ivory-white smile blinding. "Can't even manage a 'wow'?"

"Wow," said Dee. "Definitely 'wow.' But, um, I don't think it's going to help us in the lets-be-seen-together department."

"What?" Galatea said again. "Why not?"

"Um…"

Galatea's eyes narrowed. "What? And you better not make me say 'what' again, motherfucker."

"…Have you looked in the mirror?" Dee said, and shut his eyes.

He heard dead silence for a moment, then the slap-slap-slap of open-toed sandals, and finally a mortified scream from the bathroom. "Oh my God," Galatea wailed, "I look like a fucking 'toon!"

Dee hustled after her. "Actually," he said, his brain kicking into automatic pilot and launching a routine lecture, "the signature stylization of anime is very different from American cartooning in several key—"

"Shut up, dumb ass! Okay, okay. Let me think. What if I try imitating somebody?" Her gel morphed and color-cycled with a soft, metallic sigh. "Nooo! I wanted Betty Paige and I got Betty Rubble!"

Dee stood, frozen and staring, from the hallway. Complement, complement, he thought desperately, think of a complement. "Betty Paige as Betty Rubble," he heard himself say. Okay, which brain cell came up with that one? Because when I find out, you're fired.

Galatea squeezed her fists over her eyes and morph-cycled again. "I can't look," she said. "Tell me: is it Angelina Jolie, or…"

Honesty works, right? Try honesty. "No," he gulped, "it's Lara Croft, but the rendering is quite impress—"

She pounded against the mirror, morph-cycling on each punch. "No! —Punch! Carmen San Diego— This is so fucking —Punch! GI Joe's Baroness— humiliating! I could never —Punch! Jessica Rabbit— be seen like this! I could die, Dee, I could just —Punch! Princess Jasmine— die! Dee, don't look at me! Dee? Dee, why are you so quiet—Oh." She cycled back to her jade self. "Oh," she said again, the sound drawing out as realization dawned.

"Don't worry about going out," Dee said sotto voce. He stepped into the bathroom and gently closed the door behind him. "Now isn't the time."

Galatea giggled, "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm."

* * * *

"Dee," Galatea called out, "how long will you be gone?"

Dee was back in the closet foraging for a second set of clothes. His first attempt at getting dressed in three days had wound up in the laundry hamper soaked through with pastel rainbows of honey. "It's an hour round-trip to the SRU place," he said, scraping flecks of green icing off another pair of jeans with a fingernail, "so I'll get there right around six. In all honesty, I'd like to stay until I've gotten all my questions answered, but they will be closing up by then, I don't think they'll be very forthcoming, and I really don't want to force anybody to tell me anything—I'm not even sure if I can—but I'm going to try." He buttoned down a yellow shirt. "That makes it two hours, tops. Is that okay?"

"No," Galatea sighed, "but you gotta do what you gotta do. I'll miss you."

He wrestled into his black leather jacket. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'll make it up to you."

"Ooh, I like the sound of that."

"Did you ever find my wallet?" Dee asked.

"Yeah, it's on the kitchen table."

Dee rummaged around the kitchen, filling his pockets. "Honey," he asked, "what's up with the Auberjon-eoises?"

"The what?"

"The Odo cut-outs," Dee said, staring.

"What about 'em?"

"Why are they all standing in the recycle bin?"

"Forget 'em," Galatea said. "That was just a school girl crush. Baby-girl, really. I'm onto solids now."

Dee found the tin of thickener next to his wallet on the kitchen table. "Hey, this thing feels lighter than I remember. You sure you didn't take any more nanomek?"

"I told you, I don't need it. It wouldn't do me any good. I've got the three Ds, remember?"

Dee joined Galatea in the bathroom to give her a quick squeeze. "I remember."

She kissed him before turning back to the mirror. She restyled the swooping X above her left breast, giving it a slight slant and staggering the curves a bit, its shape evocative of a dancer with arms upraised. "What do you think?"

"It's very sweet," Dee said, "but you don't have to wear it at all. I trust you."

"I know," she said, turning this way and that, looking at the mark from all angles, "but I want to. I like it."

"All right," he said, hugging her. "It's just…wait. Are you going to stick with that design?" She nodded. He squeezed tight, making her sigh. "Can I add another hour?"

"What? Why?"

"I've got an idea. You'll see. You'll like it."

"Okay," she pouted, "but you gotta make it up to me twice as hard, you got that?"

"I got it." He goosed her. "And you're going to get it."

"Good," she said, slapping his hands away. "Now get the fuck outta here. I've got Internet porn to catch up on."

"Actually," he said, handing her a thin box, "I found an old DVD for you. It's a comedy."

"'John Carpenter's The Thing?'" she read aloud. "Is it funny?"

"Trust me; you'll love it."

* * * *

Dee's banged-up Volkswagen drove past fields of wild grass, land zoned for commercial use decades ago but left fallow thanks to its invisibility from the elevated highway. No signs were posted to name the local roads and the MapQuest print-out proved just as wrong now as it did four days ago. Dee half expected never to find the place, or if he did, to find it boarded up and seemingly deserted for years. After all, his previous excursion to SRU Medical Technology had taken him across the Twilight Zone and beyond the Outer Limits to that little curtained-off cubby in the far corner of the video store of cosmic reality that the likes of Rod Serling, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and Clive Barker visited in their imaginations but knew better not to write about it.

A much-relieved Dee pulled into the oversized SRU Medical Technology parking lot just a few minutes before six o'clock. The pickup truck was nowhere to be seen, but the old Mini still sat exactly where Dee remembered it at the very edge of the lot. A dusty blue van rumbled past, its driver apparently lost, the only other traffic Dee had seen since turning onto the local off-ramp.

Dee parked one space away from rose-colored Mini Cooper out of some ancient herding instinct. He listened to the click and clack of the cooling engine, trying to screw up his courage. He might have to shout, he realized, or even threaten violence, to get what he wanted. But could he? He glared at the Mini Cooper. The owner had taped a "For Sale" sign in the passenger-side rear window. Instead of a price, someone had written "What are YOU looking at?" in an elegant longhand calligraphy. Below that was a phone number: (555) GET-LOST. "I know the feeling," Dee said, but got out of his car and made a bee-line for the store anyway.

A "Help Wanted – Inquire Within" sign hung amid the clutter of collapsible crutches, orthopedic pillows, home blood pressure kits, and posters for various medical manufacturers crowding the glass storefront. The bell hanging on the front door clattered even louder than Dee remembered. The elevated counter ran down along the wall to the left; the cash register perched on the countertop just a few feet away from the front door, providing the occupier of the stool behind it a clear view of the remaining three corners of the store. The stool's occupant, however, was currently frowning over a book of Sudoku puzzles as thick as a phone directory, rubbing down the open page with an eraser worn away to the nub. Dee stepped over to the counter directly in front of her, but she did not look up until the puzzle box on the open page was clean. When her eyes eventually met Dee's, however, she startled with a lightning-quick double-take, as if surprised at being surprised at who she saw, but her poker faced mask of happy inscrutability flicked back in an instant.

"Oh, hey!" the young woman said, sounding delighted. "Thick Jell-O boy. How'd it go?" Her dark eyes twinkled. "Let me guess: chocolate, right?"

"Who are you?" Dee asked.

She brushed pink eraser shavings off her white blouse. "You can call me Tomoe Exposition."

"What kind of name is 'Tomoe Exposition'? Other than the obviously fake kind, I mean," Dee said.

Tomoe made that all-inclusive, one-shouldered shrug again. "What's your name?"

"Deiter Detwiler. Who are you, Tomoe, really?"

"Oh, hey!" she said, exactly as before. "Deiter Detwiler. How'd it go? And what kind of name is 'Deiter Detwiler'?"

Dee sighed. "Call me Dee. Who are—"

"Oh hey!" she said, a pitch perfect repeat. "Dee. Now are you going to tell me how it went or am I going to have to call in the big guns?"

Dee reached into a jacket pocket. The SRU Thickening Agent tin clicked onto the countertop. Anticipating a samurai staring contest, he did his best to match her inscrutable smile, trying to act cool but certain he looked like a terrified dweeb. "Call in whoever you want," he said, hoping it did not sound as stupid to her as it did to him, "I don't kiss and tell." They matched stares. Dee's stomach knotted as the moment stretched. "Do you?" he said, thinking: I'm not going to get anywhere with her. This is her Mysterious Foreign Shopkeeper schtick, she is a master at it, and she knows that I know and vice versa. I'm never going crack it, and I'm never going to hurt her, or even bluff about it, because I like her too much. How can I not like her? She set me up, all right, but she set me up with the best thing that's ever happened in my entire life—

Tomoe blinked and swiveled her gaze down to the floor. "No, I don't," she said.

Dee, bewildered over winning the standoff, said, "Huh?"

"I don't kiss and tell," Tomoe said, her grin wide and very real. "But for you…" She held out a small hand. Dee clasped it, expecting a handshake, but instead Tomoe used his arm as leverage to stand on the stool. Dee wondered at her strength and grace. "For you, Dee," Tomoe said, "I will show and tell."

She pumped her fist three times at the window. "Wait a minute," Dee said as the Mini Cooper started forward. "What's going on?" he asked, as the little rose-colored car picked up speed. "Look out!" he shouted as the Mini Cooper showed no sign of slowing down, but Tomoe just stood there.

Dee guessed the little car had accelerated to at least thirty miles per hour before hitting the curb of the sidewalk and his mind shut down while his hindbrain kicked in. He stepped up onto the countertop in a single, glass-crunching stride, Tomoe turning to face him just as the front tires cleared the curb.

"What—" Dee plucked her up into the air by the armpits as the front tires bit down on the sidewalk "—the—" Dee spun about, carrying her in both arms as the car's rear tires cleared the curb "—fuck—" Dee leapt and ran into one of the aisles across from the counter, laying her flat on the floor and shielding her body with his "—do you think you're doing!" Tomoe shrieked at him as the car careened into the front door.

The doorbell clattered and for one vertiginous moment Dee thought that a strawberry jam factory must have exploded nearby. "What the Hell is going on?" he cried as great bows of rose colored jelly zipped and ricocheted throughout the store.

Tomoe, still pinned beneath him, batted her fists against his shoulders as the springy bows of gel bounced one by one behind the counter. "I'm trying to introduce you to my girlfriend you idiot! But, uh…" Her battering slowed, her fists unclenched and Dee had the sneaking suspicion he was being felt up. "Thanks for trying to save my life, I guess. No, no, don't get up," she added, grabbing his collar. "You, ah, really knocked the wind out of me. You wouldn't mind picking me up…again…would you?"

"Hey," someone said, voice soft but warm and sparkling, "you totally ruined my entrance!"

Dee glanced up and Tomoe's hands returned to their surreptitious roving. An aquiline, angelic face chiseled from the pure pink of flawless rose quartz watched them from behind the counter. "What are you two doing?"

"Dee thought you were trying to run me over," Tomoe said. "Dee? Meet SB. SB, this is Dee."

SB stood, shaking out a long, thick mane of narrow dreadlocks spun from cotton candy. Where Galatea had the overripe, fit-to-bursting figure of a Hollywood bombshell from the Fifties, SB took on the lithe power and athleticism of an Olympian. Her coppery spandex one-piece, however, made damn sure everyone knew she had all the curves and swells anyone could possibly want. Her eyes narrowed. "So this is the latest Jell-O aficionado, huh? How's about you standing up and getting the Hell off my merchandise?"

Dee stood and helped Tomoe to her feet. SB did that same quick double-take Tomoe had given him earlier but resumed her "what-are-you-looking-at" glare just as fast. "You can turn into a car?" Dee asked, not even believing the words were coming out of his mouth.

"It's a dick thing," SB said, but Dee did not understand what she meant until she stepped out from behind the counter and, suddenly, he did.

"He's gone pretty pale, T," said SB.

"Probably feeling a little inadequate, SB," Tomoe said.

Dee had read too much hardcore manga not to know where this was headed. "It's not that," he said, but, looking down at the gargantuan bulge in the overstressed crotch of SB's one piece, confessed, "Well, I guess it kind of is. No, it just is. But that's not important."

"That was refreshingly honest," said SB, binding up her dreadlocks into a thick ponytail. "If that's not the important part, though, what is? Go on. You can see you have my full attention."

Dee took a step back. "Actually, I bet I don't. I suspect your attention can get a lot, er, fuller."

"You'd win that bet," Tomoe said, her inscrutable smile back in place.

Honesty seems to be working, Dee thought. It had better, or else I am truly fucked. "I jerk off to comics about dickgirls as much as the next man," Dee said. "But when I do, I don't fantasize about being with a dickgirl, you see, I fantasize about being the dickgirl. I hope you don't take offense."

"Interesting," said SB, cupping her chin. "I think I'll let this one live, T."

"You want to be a dickgirl, Dee?" said Tomoe. "Why didn't you say so before? I've got just what you need, SRU-label hormone supplements. Right in there." She pointed to the supply closet behind the counter. "You want some? For you? Five dollar."

Dee opened his mouth, waiting for his conscience to voice an objection, but then he remembered he did not possess a conscience any more, at least when it came to sex, so he just turned to the supply closet with a thoughtful, "Hm."

"Go on in and take a look around," Tomoe said. "Don't worry, nothing in there will bite you, at least not until you get it home."

Dee wandered into the supply closet and SB pulled Tomoe aside behind the counter. "You said he was cute!" she whispered.

"He was!" whispered Tomoe.

"You didn't say he was so panty-soaking fucking fine!" SB hissed, teeth gritting.

"He wasn't!"

Dee clambered up the short ladder at the far end of the closet to get a better look at something and SB yanked at the collar of Tomoe's blouse. "Oh, lover-girl, would you look at that ass!"

"I am! I am!"

"I don't see any more thickener in here," Dee said.

"You wouldn't," Tomoe called back, trying to keep the anxious quaver out of her voice, "not when you don't need it. One of the rules."

"I see you have some SRU-label herbal-enzyme male enhancement supplements. I bet I know what those might do."

"You want some?" asked Tomoe as SB chewed on a fist and whispered, "God, no, what if he took some right here in the store I don't think my mind could take it," but Tomoe steamrolled ahead out of habit and arcane ritual. "For you? Five dollar." She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, "No, no, please say no."

"No thanks," said Dee.

The two girls relaxed.

"Maybe later."

The two girls clutched each other in fear.

"We've got to get a grip!" SB said.

That seemed to snap Tomoe out of her panic. "Like this?" she whispered and grabbed SB's dick. Her slight hand barely wrapped half-way around its girth but her grip was long-practiced and ironclad.

"You guys okay?" said Dee, coming out of the closet. "I thought I heard someone shout. What's so funny?"

"Nothing, nothing," said SB, coughing to smother her case of the giggles, walking away from the counter,

Dee shrugged and turned to Tomoe. "'Rules,' you said? What 'rules'?"

"I can tell you rule number one," Tomoe said "We get to ask the first questions around here."

"Very well."

"So," said the well-endowed rose girl, "What flavor did you start with?" SB wriggled out of her one-piece, rolled it into a jelly donut, and ate it. She pirouetted, with the elegance and dignity of a Bolshoi ballerina apart from the monster cock flapping like a windsock glued on her groin. She rode the momentum of the revolution to spin and reweave her gelled body into the form of a slinky, doe-eyed bimbo lying supine on the store's checker-tiled floor. She bent her legs at the knees and spread them, obscenely wide, dick replaced with a pink and puffy pussy. She turned her head away bashfully and bit down hard on a curled knuckle. "Vanilla?" she asked through clenching teeth, her voice shuddery with anticipation.