Book 3: 3rd World Products, Inc (20 page)

Putting Toni's towel back on the rack, I said, “
Everybody
take a minute and relax. I'll get the beers. Gimme your empties."

Toni settled back down on the step inside the tub and Selena held up the two empty bottles just as the phone on the coffee table rang. I took the empties and fielded the phone to Selena, releasing it when she plucked it out of the air to answer it.

As I trashed the empties and opened the fridge, I heard her say, “Yeah, I know there was a man with a briefcase on my porch, Steve. It was Ed. He got a call from his boss and took it outside. Yeah, everything's fine.
Yes,
Steve. I'm sure. Okay. Bye."

She set the phone down harder than I thought necessary as I opened and handed out the beers. Selena muttered a ‘thanks’ and took a long sip from hers while I handed one to Toni. Toni took it rather mechanically as she watched Selena drink, then she looked at me. I said, “Prosit,” and took a sip from my own beer.

When Toni still hadn't taken a drink of the fresh, cold beer by the time I lowered my bottle, I sighed and asked, “Toni, are you bi or gay?"

Her expression was one of vast startlement. “What?"

"Same question. I just want to know if you have any interest in men."

"Well, yeah. Sure. I'm just..."

"Okay,” I interrupted. “So hot tubs, beer, naked men, and naked women are nothing new to you, right?"

After a moment, she shrugged and said, “No. They aren't new. I just..."

"Then it really is just me that's holding you back from a good time, right?"

"Well, I ... Well, yes. I mean
no
. It isn't you, Ed, it's all that stuff you do."

"That stuff that I do is part of me, Toni. It's a package deal. Would you rather that I just go away and leave you two alone tonight?"

Selena said, “No. You live here, too, Ed. Maybe only part-time, but you live here. The whole idea was that we'd check each other out and party a little. Since she'd never met you, there were no guarantees, but..."

I said, “Thanks, Selena, but give me a minute, here. I need to know something. Toni, if I didn't do stuff with fields, would we all be naked in the tub right now? I mean, are you sure it isn't my age as much as the field stuff that's turning you off?"

Toni actually seemed startled by my question. She reached to touch my arm as she said, “No! Really! When you were getting the tires fixed, I asked Sel if she'd been kidding me about your age. I asked her what you did to keep in shape. Didn't I, Sel?"

Selena nodded and said, “Yeah. She did,” then took another pull on her beer. I gave them both my best ‘dubious’ look and sat on the steps leading up to the tub.

"Well,” I said, “I can't do anything about that, anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. I can't do anything about the implant, either."

I took a long drink of beer and sat contemplating the label for a few moments, then stood up and said, “You two have fun. Who wants the rest of my beer?"

Selena stood up and sharply asked, “You're leaving?"

I nodded and set my beer down on the deck. “Yeah. We'll get together later, Sel. You two have fun."

Toni said, “But...” and didn't seem to have more to say until I headed toward the bedroom, then she asked, “Where are you going? That's the bedroom."

I grinned at her and said, “The beer wants out, ma'am. That's also where the bathroom is,” then I continued walking.

Someone behind me set a bottle down hard on the tub deck and I heard Selena whisper harshly. Toni's response was an equally harsh whisper as I closed the bathroom door and went about my business. The whispers became murmurs that were drowned out by the splashing rush of used beer.

'Appropriate,'
I thought.
'Piss on the whole Toni-Ed-Selena idea. Time to fly.'

I heard movement in the bedroom as I zipped up. When I opened the bathroom door, Selena was putting on a pair of blue jean cutoffs, her breasts bobbling wildly as she yanked at them to pull them up.

"Going somewhere?” I asked.

"With you,” she said, standing straight and fastening her belt buckle.

I went into the living room and saw Toni climbing out of the hot tub in tears. I got there in time to hand her towel to her.

"This whole mess isn't worth crying over,” I said. “There were never any guarantees for any of us that a three-way would happen. Stay here while I talk to Selena."

I went back to the bedroom without waiting for Toni's response. Selena had added a blouse and one sneaker and was looking for the other sneaker around the bed.

"Sel, it didn't work out. No biggie. We'll have other times, so don't toss Toni away because she had some reservations. Everybody has a few, you know. Who knows? She may change her mind later."

Selena was in one of her
'don't argue with me'
moods.

"If she can't accept you, she can't have me, either, Ed."

"You didn't feel that way before this evening. What brought you two together? Are you saying that's changed, just because she didn't play along in the tub with a guy she'd only known for a few hours?"

Sel stood straight and glared at me for a moment. “Well, how very reasonable of you! What is it, Ed? Can't you stand the thought of letting Toni get away? I saw you looking her over every chance you got. Ever hopeful; is that it?"

I shrugged and sat on the corner of the bed with a grin. “Well, hell, yes, that's part of it, just like it is for you. We both like beautiful, athletic women, and she's the finest looking woman I've seen since I met you. What the hell's your point, there, ma'am? Are you sure you aren't just pissed ‘cause you aren't getting your way tonight?"

She almost said something, and I'll probably never know what kind of caustic, rending statement or question it would have been. Her mouth opened and stayed that way for a moment as her index finger prepared to punctuate whatever she'd been about to say. Then her mouth closed and she sat down on the other corner of the bed.

"Well, shit,” she muttered. “You're right."

"I always said you were a controlling bitch at heart. That's one of the things I like best about you, you know. If you want it, you go for it. You take no shit and you take no prisoners, and all that other go-gettum stuff. Trouble is, that kind of attitude doesn't prepare you well for when someone else has other ideas, and as of a few minutes ago, I think it was still a free country. As much as we may lust to wet her down, oil her up, and have our way with her, Toni still has a right to say no to me."

Selena stood up and snapped, “
That's
what pissed me off! She turned you down, Ed! Under the circumstances, that's like rejecting both of us."

"Ahh ... Well, no, not really. She said no. Whether to me, to sex, to stripping in the tub, to the field stuff, or
whatever
, she said no.
That's
what pissed you off, Sel; the fact that she said
no
when you were expecting a
yes
."

I checked my watch. Seven o'clock plus a few.

"It's still early,” I said. “Why don't you two stay here and see if you can get past all this. Tell Toni about some of the things I like to do to you and for you and see if she isn't tempted, after all. Have a couple more drinks, mess around, and see how you feel about things tomorrow. You don't have to give up either one of us, Sel. We both want you, so maybe it'll work out to Toni and me taking alternate days or weekends with you or something like that. We aren't able to be together much more often than that as things are, so it wouldn't be that big a stretch, would it?"

Getting to my feet, I walked over to her and pulled her into a kiss that was broken a few seconds along by a light tapping on the bedroom door. We turned to see Toni, holding up a bottle of gin and giving us a kind of
'don't kill me, please'
smile.

"I found this under the sink and I'm really not a beer drinker. Can we all sit down somewhere and talk?"

Some minutes later, Toni—still in her bikini, but with the towel around her like a sarong—had mixed us some lightweight drinks and we were all seated around the kitchen table. A couple of sips later, Toni managed to begin to put into words what was on her mind, but she tried to tread very lightly at first.

"You two were in the bedroom talking. I couldn't get to my clothes, or ... Well, look, I couldn't help hearing everything. Sorry if that bothers anyone, but you weren't really quiet, you know."

She took another nervous sip of her drink and continued, “I heard what Ed said and before anything else, I want to say that I think you're a hell of a nice guy, Ed, and it wasn't you that turned me off. Not your age, anyway. It was the spooky field stuff you were doing and the idea that you'd actually let someone put something in your head. I just couldn't ...
can't
get past that for some reason. I have this mental image of you with invisible tentacles reaching everywhere around you."

Selena asked, “How the hell can you have mental images of invisible stuff? That doesn't make any sense, Toni."

"Uh, well, they aren't exactly invisible to me when I imagine them."

Selena grinned and shook her head.

"Well,” said Toni emphatically, “They
aren't,
okay?"

With a snicker, Selena shook her head again and sipped her gin. I put my left hand next to Toni's on the table, palm-up. She glanced at it, then looked questioningly at me.

"Put your hand in mine,” I said. “Tell me what you feel while you're touching me."

When she didn't move immediately, Sel said, “Oh, go ahead. He touches me all the time, and you've touched me. You think you're gonna catch some kind of fucking
field disease
or something?” She snickered again, then rather seriously added, “I probably shouldn't be drinking this stuff. Not after two beers."

Toni chuckled and finally laid her hand in mine, then looked up at me again.

"Now close your eyes,” I said.

"Why?"

"To see if you can."

"What? Why?"

"To see if you can. That's all. Do you feel safe and secure enough around us to close your eyes? Or are you worried that we might do something to you? Um, well, rephrase that to read;
'do something to you that you wouldn't enjoy'?
"

Toni looked slightly confused as she said, “Uh, no, probably not, I guess."

"Wow. Such conviction. Okay, different questions; would you go to bed with Sel again?"

Sel looked up and grinned. Toni looked like a deer in the headlights for a moment before she said, “Uh, yes.” Her voice firmed up as she added, “I'd do it again. Yes."

"Okay,” I said. “Now, what about me? If I didn't have an implant, would you share me with Selena?"

"I, uh ... Well, yeah, I suppose so. Under the same circumstances. With Selena."

Toni's nervousness made Selena giggle and nearly inhale her gin. The giggle turned to a laugh, then died to an
'I can't believe I did that'
look with a hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” said Selena. “That one just got away from me, I guess. Anybody got a napkin?"

I used my field to pull a couple of paper towels off the roll by the sink and bring them over to Selena. Letting her take one of the towels and flicking the other just out of her reach, I then let it hang in front of Toni. After a slight hesitation, she reached for it with her free hand. I didn't let it go right away, so she had to pull it free of the field.

"My field is exactly the same as Stephanie's, only much weaker,” I said. “Every time you got on or off the flitter today, you passed through her field. Did you feel anything when you did it? Anything at all?"

"No, but with radiation, you don't feel anything, anyway."

"Fields aren't radiation like you're thinking of radiation. They're just energy, focused and used to manipulate matter. Or even to repel radiation, come to think of it. I can't tell you how many times Steph and I have gone right up to the edge of space on a sunny day. Up to where there isn't any atmosphere and you can see the whole world turning below. No sunburns from it yet."

"Oh,
God
,” breathed Toni. “I'd love to be able to do that. Just once.” She shook her head and sipped her gin, then softly repeated, “Just
once.
"

Selena said, “So do it. You flew today, didn't you?

"That's different, Sel. That's
real
different from what he's talking about."

Sel stood up and grabbed the gin bottle, then headed for the sink, saying, “No it isn't. You get in and you go. If you get all freaky on the way, Steph can zap you again with the theta waves. Is anybody else ready for another one?"

Toni said, “You'd better slow down, girl. That's not lemonade."

Leaning a hip on the counter, Sel said, “I passed up a party today to party here, so I'm gonna party. You guys can push, pull, or get out of the way."

When Toni looked at me, I said, “When the time comes, you grab her arms and I'll grab her legs and we'll haul her into the bathtub."

Sel lifted her right leg and laid it on the table in front of me as she said, “There he goes, grabbing the legs again. He always goes for the legs. He's a sucker for legs."

I ran my fingers from her ankle to her thigh and leaned to kiss that thigh, then nipped her lightly. Sel squeaked and tried to pull her leg back, but I got a grip on her calf and the underside of her upper thigh and let my fingers tickle her intimately. She squeaked again and had to hop in place to keep her balance.

In a conversational tone, I asked Toni, “You want a lick before I let her go?"

Toni had grabbed our drinks to keep them from winding up in our laps. She laughed and leaned to plant a kiss on Sel's thigh, then laughed some more. I worked in one last tickle before I let go of Sel's leg. She responded with a whoop, a slap at my hand, and hysterical laughter, then regained her equilibrium enough to let go of the countertop.

I took as a good sign that both women were laughing breathlessly by that time. As Sel threatened me with dire retributions, she made another round of drinks and rather deliberately left mine on the counter as she handed one to Toni and sat down with her own. I fielded the glass to my hand and smiled at the ladies, then took a sip. Sel had been very liberal with the gin.