Throughout the race, I"d been shifting Barb and Tammy around, trying to find a comfortable position. There wasn"t one. As we approached the finish line, Barb was on my back, with her arms around my neck and her legs wrapped tightly around my waist, and Tammy was on her back, with her legs under my armpits, her feet in my hands. I wasbent over nearly horizontal, and pumping my legs like the devil himself was after me with two pitchforks, and we won!
We crossed the finish line to four hundred cheers and a second booming of the bra.s.s cannon. I promptly stumbled and spilled Barb and Tammy sweating on the sand.
We were up in time to cheer Jennifer into second place and Ian into third. They had a six-quart solid gold loving cup, already engraved with my name that said "First Place"
and "San Sebastian National Invitational Mini-Marathon."
Jennifer got a similar "Second Place" prize, a two-quart solid silver cup. Ian got a tiny, chrome-plated plastic thing that read "Last Place-Male Division."
"I"ll get you, Red Baron!", he shouted, because whereas our cups were filled with champagne, his held cold Lipton tea.
After taking a long pull, I pa.s.sed the cup to Barb. It went from her to Tammy and then into the crowd. Three dozen dozen champagne bottles were popped besides, and musical instruments were starting to appear.
"Inadequate!" Ian shouted above the crowd. "I may be a loser, but I"m a rotten loser!
Let"s break up the party!"
The girls all booed.
"So we can have a bigger one!" he shouted.
They all cheered.
"You"re all going to have to get dressed!"
"Boo!"
"In gra.s.s skirts and flowers!"
"HURRAH!".
"Me and Tom can"t handle all of you!"
"BOO!".
"So you"ll have to invite in the guys!"
"HURRAH!".
"Hey, they can only invite three hundred!" I shouted.
"BOO!".
"Well, we gotta have enough left for ourselves!"
"HURRAH!".
"McAndrews from the docks has to be here!" Ian yelled.
"HURRAH!".
"Yeah, and Fitzsimmon of the Navy!"
"HURRAH!".
It was like party time back in college, with one big exception. Ian was getting involved and taking the lead like he never had before. I was starting to get pretty worried about it. Had they worked over his head as much as they had enlarged his body? But I had had the same treatment, and I wasn"t acting any different, except for maybe being more physical, and that could be explained by the way it felt so good to move this new body. Then again, would I know it if I was thinking differently? I"d have to get Ian aloneand talk to him about it, next time I got a chance.
Which wasn"t now.
Gra.s.s skirts and flowered leis were being pa.s.sed out. Bonfires and torches were already being lit down on the beach where we"d raced not ten minutes before. On a raised area, a platform with seats was set up for the island"s "royalty," namely us.
Female royalty seemed to consist of only those girls we"d actually laid-four of mine plus Ming Po on Ian"s side.
A tourist-style luau was in full swing by the time we got there. Booze was flowing free, served in coconut sh.e.l.ls, hollowed out pineapples and, in a few cases, the entire rinds of watermelons.
A fair sized "native" band was going and a few dozen girls were doing a hula.
The hula was followed by some sort of all male Polynesian dance which featured a wide range of grunts and a lot of body slapping-almost drumming. It was the first time I"d taken much notice of the men on the island, female distractions being what they were.
The men were the same racial mix as the women. More than half of them were blond, with a sprinkling of everything else from bushman to Eskimo. They averaged around six feet tall. They were well muscled, well coordinated and quick to laugh-usually a sign of intelligence. Yet somehow there was something lacking in them. Character?-No, not quite. I had the feeling that these men were all decent and just.
Over-polished? Perhaps the word I was looking for was over-civilized. . . .
The male dancers were followed by even more violent drumming and twelve ladies came into the open area before us doing what Barb said was a Tahitian dance, which involved unbelievably fast hip motions.
On the other side of the platform, Ian was drinking from a small watermelon. This was another new thing for him. I"d never seen him drinking before beyond a single gla.s.s of wine with dinner. He was pointing at the women dancing.
"Tom, I"ll have that one, and that one, and . . ."
I hoped that whatever he was drinking wasn"t too alcoholic. Stamina and perseverance in drinking requires diligence and long training, benefits that Ian was perforce bereft of.
Still, there was only one way of obtaining such graces. One learns by doing. It was good to see the boy loosening up, if only it was really the old Ian doing the loosening.
As the "Tahitians" left, huge leaves from some kind of tropical tree were laid out at the periphery of the cleared area, and dinner was served.
Seven whole roast pigs-each slung on a pole between two men-were carried out over the leaves. With a single jerk of the pole, all of the steaming hot flesh fell to the leaves, leaving the skeleton still hanging from the pole. The trick worked all seven times, and the cooks got more applause than the dancers.
A few hundred other dishes were brought out-there was no apparent distinction made between servers and guests. Everyone except the "royalty" seemed to have a well- ch.o.r.eographed part to play. Or maybe it was that these people were just naturally G.o.d- awful cooperative.
Whatever the cause, seven hundred people were served in ten minutes flat.
Ian and I didn"t get a wicker platter like everyone else. Anytime we opened ourmouths, some attractive lady wearing flowers, a gra.s.s skirt, and a smile rammed food down our throats. A strange custom, I came close to biting off more than one dainty finger by mistake.
As the meal progressed, another group of male dancers entered the arena. I recognized Leftenant Fitzsimmon among them, wearing a flowery cloth around his hips and a lei around his neck, but still wearing his bashed-up skipper"s hat. He had two dozen men with him. I guessed them to be his crew from the Hotspur, which ship, with them aboard, was presently still circling the island. They did a sort of juggling dance, throwing around four dozen razor sharp machetes in a manner that looked likely to kill somebody, but didn"t.
Seeing that crew together and largely undressed, it was obvious that they were of a different breed of cat than the other men on the island. They were more varied in size and build, often wiry rather than beefy. They had a much wider range of facial features, and a few of them were down-right ugly. More than a few were shifty-eyed, and nothing about them was polished or over-civilized.
Survivors, that"s what they were, and my kind of people.
When the dance finished with not a drop of blood spilled, I started breathing again.
"Hey!" I shouted, then gagged and spit out the peeled grape that Tammy had stuffed into my mouth.
"Hey!" I tried again. "Leftenant Fitzsimmon! Come on up and join the royalty!"
"Right, sir!" He waved goodbye to his men, jumped up to the stage and sat down on a chair that someone had placed next to me.
"Quite a show, Leftenant. But I couldn"t help noticing that your men are a bit different from the rest of the people on this island."
"I suppose the people hereabouts have their limitations, sir, but they certainly know how to throw a party!"
He gestured towards some gra.s.s-skirted ladies who must have been selected because of their overly large b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Their dance might have been authentic somewhere, but for me it seemed mostly involved a lot of jumping and stomping, the sole purpose of which was to get those huge b.r.e.a.s.t.s bouncing. It looked painful.
"Yeah, but why are you different? Where are you from?"
"Oh, elsewhere, sir. I say, look at that one on the end giving me the eye! That likely means that I"ll be well entertained tonight!"
"Huh. I take it you"re a bachelor."
"Oh, no sir. I"m married. Several times, in fact."
"I see. The traditional seaman"s girl in every port?"
"Hardly that, sir. I"m really quite the family man. Four wives and thirteen children to date. If I had my pants and wallet, I"d show you their photos."
"Well, I"d like to meet them during my stay here."
"Oh, they"re not here, sir. Wouldn"t work, don"t you know. For one thing, these local people are monogamous. No, I have found it wise to restrict my home life to my vacations.""Say, that must be rough on your family."
"Most of the time, they don"t realize I"ve been gone, sir. Children need a continuous male adult around if they"re going to grow up properly, so I always arrange my departures and arrivals to happen on the same day."
"Huh. How often do you get a vacation?"
"Why, whenever I feel like it, sir. Whenever I get bored with work, I go home or elsewhere until I get bored with that. After all, as long as the Hotspur makes her two patrols a day, my contract"s satisfied. What I do with the rest of my life is my own business. The same, of course, applies to my family." He flirted again with the dancer.
"Well then, you seem to have a perfect life, with fringe benefits." I gestured to his dancer.
"These aren"t bad, sir. I"ve jolly well had worse. But really, they"re a bit butch and thin flanked for my taste. Back home the girls are s.e.xy!"
Since I couldn"t imagine any possibility of any women from any place or any time being better looking than the ones around us, I let the matter drop.
"Uh, yeah. Where did you say your home was?"
"I didn"t. Really, sir, you must understand that I have certain contractual obligations, and that that majorDomo of yours, well, she might be all sweetness and joy to you, but she is also a h.e.l.lion who is dquite capable of making my life difficult."
The b.o.o.b-bouncing dancers finished their set and were replaced by another male group. One of the large-breasted women came up, sat by Leftenant Fitzsimmon"s feet, and laid her head on his knee. When he stroked her cheek, she smiled. There was no question but that the good leftenant would indeed be well taken care of.
Five others arranged themselves around Ian, crowding in among seven "Tahitians"
and a half dozen "hula" girls. Ian had finished his first watermelon filled with some sort of punch, and was calling for another.
Poor kid. He was about to learn the hard way that strong drink increases the desire while it lessens the ability. Still, education is a wondrous thing, even if it is occasionally painful.
"Oh, sir, since I was a guest of honor so to speak, I took the liberty of inviting a friend, Captain Stepanski. He heads up the fighter wing on base. That"s him below with his pilots."
There were sixteen short men of the "Survivor" type doing something that involved throwing lighted torches at each other, catching them and throwing them back.
"Well, more guys from your home town, I see. How many of your sort are here? . . .
Come on, I can find out the hard way if I have to."
"Very well, sir. There are just under a hundred fifty in the Navy, about three hundred in the ground forces and perhaps thirty-five in the Air Force."
"Hey, that"s a pretty tiny air force."
"Not really, sir. They"re all pilots and gunners. The Smoothies handle all the maintenance and so on."
"The "smoothies." What do they call you?""They call us the "killers." "
The air force was the last formal act of the evening, and after they quenched their torches, the party slowly broke up into about forty smaller parties up and down the beach.
The "royal" party took a walking tour among them, with Ian and me hugging all of the girls and shaking hands with all the men. Our ladies, of course, had opposite tastes.
About halfway through, Ian discarded another empty watermelon rind and led his collected girls-there must have been forty of them-back to the Taj Mahal.
It was after midnight when I finally got home. Barb said that she"d join me later, so I went to my bedroom alone. Mich.e.l.le and Carolyn were there, just as they had been when I"d arrived, two days before.
Only this time I didn"t disappoint them. Actually, I darned near wore them out. They soon got to calling in reinforcements, and I found myself at the center of a one-man orgy.
This new body of mine had just amazing stamina, and before I called it quits and Barb came back, shooing the others out, I figured that I must have done proper justice to eighteen of them, and some of them several times.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Third Wager
I woke up at dawn feeling just great. Maybe it was my new automatic vitamin generator, but if so, they must have given Ian one, too, since I found him in my breakfast room when I got there.
"Good morning, Tom. You slept well?"
"Well, they laid me soundly down. Yourself?"
"Remarkably so."