Page 25 of Making His Bones

Galileo took Knoxie’s words at face value. He soberly said, “Schools for rez kids with no family,” while wringing the gunk as if it were Play-Doh, passing it from hand to hand. Blotches dropped atop the bench seat that separated us, leaving Galileo’s hands clean. He picked the blobs up and they came together as one. “See? It’s a sort of polymer. This potentially has great use to replace plastic.”

Knoxie still panted, but his pupils were contracting back to normal, and he looked at the stuff with interest. “An elastomer?” it sounded as if he said. I figured this was something a tattoo artist like Knoxie would know. He took some out of Galileo’s hands.

I opened my door cautiously, not venturing outside, and a giant blob of goo dripped from the frame of the door. It landed with an actual plop on the gravel, mingling with its brothers in the estuary of the lake. “Shit.”

I had just lost Elektra justice for her daughter. By getting creamed by a truckload of eels.

I had no choice but to step into the lake, comforted to know it didn’t stick to you, as long as you scooped it off. I walked around the back of the car, creating great Herman Munster boots as I went. Knoxie ventured out, but he didn’t allow the waterfall to plunge down first, and it hit directly on his head. He closed his eyes with patience as he stood tall, like someone taken by surprise by an ice bucket challenge. Using his palm like a shovel, he scraped great handfuls off his face and flicked them on the gravel, finally daring to say “phoo.”

“What’s it taste like?” I chided him.

“Fisherman’s Wharf.” He opened his eyes and looked around. “Man, we cratered.”

“On the bright side,” I said, “who’d expect this to happen?” I was around the tail of the Dart, and it was absolutely encased in the shit, as if God wanted to make a mold out of the car. It was a mechanical embryo wrapped with a cobweb, waiting its moment to be born. The back window, the trunk, the tires, even the tailpipe were shrouded in the milky, muscled substance. We had to get this shit off before a ranger came along.

Galileo was smart enough to wait for his own waterfall to flood into the lake below before getting out. Still, he got some on his shoulders, pearly epaulets. “This kind of insidious is what I meant.”

“We can see,” I said. I went over and removed one of his epaulets. Like Silly Putty, it glommed onto my hand.

“What about the undercarriage?” asked Knoxie, gloomy.

Galileo said, “Someone with an extremely skeletal figure could get on his back and slide under there like mechanics do.”

I looked at Knoxie and wiggled my eyebrows. An eel squirmed over my boot.

W

I wanted nothing more than a shower by the time I parked my Harley in the driveway. It wasn’t true, you couldn’t get that stuff completely off you. My ass kept sliding off the seat, my boot off the gear shift. With gloves, I could work my throttle. At least I didn’t look like an alien from a Steve Guttenberg movie.

I had to embrace the suck, as my brother often said. In this case, sort of literally. But in the Missing Ink, I’d collected enough slime to fill a jar, and I was eager to show it to Elektra. She was a scientist, although maybe not this sort. I wondered if anyone had harnessed the power of the hagfish yet.

But first, I wanted a fucking shower. It had been easy to remove the slime, but it still left a slightly tacky film.

I headed for the hall where the four bedrooms were. I glanced into Elektra’s bedroom. Empty, although her rental car was out front. Before I could reach the master, I heard water rushing from the shower the three other bedrooms shared. Elektra.

Suddenly I knew what I had to do.

The door was slightly open, so I pushed it. Damn, she ran hot showers. The room was so clogged with steam I could just make out her fine, savage form behind the glass doors. She’d kicked her panties on the floor, and her bra was hung over a towel rack. Well, what did I expect? She’d get into the shower fully . . . Hey.

Placing my jar of goo onto the vanity, I bent to touch my boots. She made no sound of shock as I unlaced them, but I still tried to slide boots and socks off quietly. The last thing to go, in slo-mo, was my cut, my PROSPECT patch shining ever brightly.

And then I was in.

She showed way less surprise than I would’ve liked. What if I were a rapist? Then again, maybe she had no time to react. I was lucky she didn’t brain me with a grab bar.

Her mouth was a sultry little O, and her soapy hand was caught in the act of sliding down her belly to her pussy. She froze, the boiling water dashing against the tiled wall. It looked like she’d already washed her hair, as it laid across her uplifted tits in shiny black squiggles.

I was confident. Or, I tried to project that. I could do it. I was an actor.

I grinned with one side of my mouth. Without looking, I reached up and adjusted the spray, so it spattered against my chest. Ouch. Fucking hot. But I didn’t want to bend down to make it cooler.

“Want me to finish up for you?”

I hadn’t expected my voice to echo so loudly in the enclosure. But it worked. She grinned too, lopsided, like she expected a fully dressed man in her shower every day of the month.

Touching my nose to hers, I laid her back against the warm wall. I placed my hand over hers on her abdomen and slid both down over her pubic bone. It was her hand touching that silken skin, but I was so distracted by her lovely face, I didn’t much mind. She smiled, so close to my smile, and our eyes danced around each other’s. Her eyes were alive, fluid, amused.

She welcomed me.