Chapter 27

It was June and the Christians and the Kramers were driving back to Orange County after a party in Los Angeles. The occasion was the formal church wedding and subsequent reception for Ali and Bill Clifford.

Bill Christian was driving Carol’s car with Brad sitting beside him. The two were taking advantage of the opportunity to discuss some financing elements important to marketing. In the meantime, the two wives were in the back seat giggling like schoolgirls. As the volume of their giggling rose, it got Brad’s attention.

Turning in his seat he grumbled, “What’s so damned funny?”

“It was Kathy,” Kim responded with a giggle. “She’s so damned cute ... And so funny, too.”

At the reception, Ken Carlson had used Kathy as a demonstration vehicle in a Show & Tell. The guests were howling with laughter as Ken told of their early married days. How Kathy had breasts like marshmallows “but not that firm”. How on Saturday night she would have her hair up in curlers and would pull her beat-up nightgown up towards her crotch while she watched “Saturday Night Live”.

But what was causing the girls to giggle was what came afterward. When Kathy had returned to her seat and the other men present had made their speeches, Ginger Conrad came up to her and reminded her of a bet the two had made nearly a year earlier.

The bet was $10 of Kathy’s against $500 of Ginger’s. Ginger had bet that within a year Kathy would be standing proudly naked in a public gathering of at least 20 people. There were far more than 20 guests at the reception, and indeed, Kathy had been standing before them proudly naked. In fact, she had paced back and forth in front of them to give them all a better look.

That was when the fun began. Kathy hadn’t brought any money with her. When she looked to Ken and told him about her wager, he was notably unsympathetic. “Kath,” he said sternly, “wagering like that is against the law. And as an officer of the court, I could be subject to disbarment!”

“Sure ... you could,” Kathy retorted, stretching out the first word while remembering the myriad forms of wagering prevalent whenever lawyers gathered.

Nevertheless, no money from Ken.

So poor Kathy was reduced to selling her clothing. Kim proudly reached into a grocery bag she was carrying and revealed the green strapless gown Kathy had been wearing along with the matching shoes.

“Guess what?” she asked Brad.

“What?”

“I think I got a really good deal!” she exclaimed. “The dress and shoes only cost me $8.50 ... And the dress is a designer original from Bergdorf Goodman. And since our coloring is the same, it should look really good on me, too. And you know what else?” she asked rhetorically. “Even though it’s strapless, I can honest-to-God hold it up by myself!”

“Kimberly! Of course you can,” Carol remarked. “What the hell do you think you have tits for? I mean ... They’re not good for anything else, are they?”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Brad said. “Where did the last buck and a half come from?”

“I guess Sandy Harris bought her bikini for a buck,” Kim replied, “even though it’s a very expensive lace number. Sandy almost took a pass when she realized that its crotch was pretty wet. She was giving poor Kathy forty kinds of hell for not even being housebroken at her age.”

“And the last fifty cents?” Brad persisted.

“That was me,” Carol asserted. “I did it because she’s going to be my partner, so I wanted to be nice to her. And I only charged her 10 percent interest, too.”

“Ten percent?” Bill asked skeptically. “Slut, I don’t think you could calculate 10 percent interest for two days.”

“I can too,” Carol insisted. “I gave her fifty cents and she pays me five dollars on Monday. That’s 10 percent, isn’t it?”

Bill did some fast mental mathematics and asserted, “Whore, that’s not 10 percent, it’s closer to 40,000 percent! Ten percent for two days would be more like one-thousandth of a cent.”

“Oh, phooey, Bill Christian,” she retorted. “There you go showing off again. You know damned well I have problems with numbers. You’re just saying that to make me feel badly. I can tell.”

Kim started to change the subject, but Brad interrupted her. “Wait a minute. If I heard the story correctly, we’ve just left Kathy stripped bare without a penny to her name. How was she supposed to get home?”

Kim giggled and replied, “That’s where Kathy sort of got her revenge. Ali offered her a raincoat to wear home.” She giggled again and continued, “But it was one of those clear plastic ones ... absolutely see-through.”

“So what did she do then?” Brad asked, his interest now really piqued.

“Sweetie, haven’t you ever heard the adage that you can almost literally get away with murder if you act like you’re supposed to be doing whatever it is you’re doing? Well, that’s exactly what Kathy did. And she even walked on the balls of her feet the way I do as she just walked calmly right through the hotel lobby and then out to the street to wait for Ken. And would you believe it? Dozens of people just walked right past her, and the few that looked didn’t believe their own eyes!” Kim giggled again and added, “You know what? I really think Kath got the last laugh on that one.”

When they returned to the Christian’s, they decided they would take a few minutes to look around their new house that was still under construction. Since it was a Saturday, there were no workers at the site — or there shouldn’t have been any. But when they went around the corner to the garage side of the house, they saw a worker.

But then Kim did a double-take. She recognized the worker as Jenny Clark, but she was naked to the waist wearing a hardhat, work boots and Levi’s cut-offs with a tool belt around her hips.

“What are you doing?” Kim asked. “And why are you dressed like that?”

“Oh, hi!” Jenny replied. Then she looked down at herself and said, “Well, I know that you and Carol spend all of your time naked, so I’m just practicing. I tried being fully bare, but this damned tool belt is too rough and it chafes.”

“But what are you doing?”

“Oh ... Just practicing,” she replied vaguely.

Only then did the four newcomers look around. What appeared to be a two-car garage at the side of the house really wasn’t. There were two Overhead doors roughly midway in width between a one-car and a two-car size. Both doors were open. The left-side door revealed the ramp down to the very large garage that was under the house. The right-side door revealed a workshop and storage for gardening tools and equipment. It was there that Jenny was working.

Brad walked in and whistled softly. “Good grief, woman! Whatever are you doing?”

The workshop and storage area was remarkably finished. Not only was the floor covered with epoxy paint, but the walls were, too. The floor was a medium gray while the walls were white, but at the junction, instead of a 90-degree angle, they met in a curve to eliminate any cracks or crevices.

“What’s all this for?” Brad asked.

“I’m really just practicing for the inside,” Jenny replied. “I’m practicing my cabinet work and painting. How do you like it?”

“It’s going to be the most elaborate storage area and workshop ever built is what I think.”

In addition to beautifully-made cabinets on the wall, there were hooks for hanging rakes and tools as well as spots for a garden tractor and the other paraphernalia that normally clutters a garage. The workmanship was perfect.

When Brad commented on it, Jenny only replied with a sniff that she was an engineer after all, and if a dumb lawyer could do it, she certainly could.

All five then toured the unfinished house and grounds. Because the Christians had a 50-meter Olympic pool, Kim and Brad had agreed that a second one would be a bit of overkill. Instead, in anticipation of babies and small children, they were building a baby pool and a second 25-meter teaching pool. It was only about four feet deep at its deepest rather than the seven-foot constant depth in the Christian’s. They never even bothered to count the number of bedroom suites in the house, but there were a lot.

Overall, it was shaping up to be a very nice home, indeed.

In October, it was time for another Aerospace Technologies picnic. There were two significant changes this time. Instead of just having a Miss Aerospace Technologies, there was another beauty contest for married women and even a third for “seniors”. This last was at the insistence of Trudy Harrison and Connie Miller, both of whom entered. Indeed, not only did they enter, they were both dressed the way Kim had appeared in February: totally naked except for tiny white thongs. The two women by then had figures that were utterly perfect.

When Trudy appeared on the stage, she announced that even old bags could derive some benefit from the new Female Fitness equipment. With no support, her golden breasts were upstanding and perfect.

The auction of unattached girls in the morning had indeed produced a record amount of money for the employees’ Christmas party fund. The Beauty Queens went for more than $1,000 each. It was a function of their beauty coupled with the much larger group of workers — employment at the two facilities was by then almost triple what it had been in February — and the workers were by then much more highly paid.

Jenny won the Miss AT prize, while Kim won Mrs. AT. Trudy and Connie tied for the seniors title.

Kim claimed to have edged out Carol Christian — both of their scores were at the top of the scoring range, requiring a playoff — by commenting loudly to the assembled workers, “Surely, you’re not going to vote for... a lawyer... are you?”

The crowd roared with laughter at her quip and gave her the title.

George Harrison presented the awards — even better prizes than at the previous picnic. As he awarded her prize to Jenny he said, “I need to tell you folks a little story. Many of you know it — you were there — but some of you don’t.

“A couple of weeks ago, there was a major effort to organize our workers. The union held a meeting for all employees to explain the advantages of union membership. At any rate, when they got finished with the list of things they would do, one of you guys — who probably should remain nameless — rose and said, ‘We don’t need you guys. Jenny already does everything you say you’ll do for us, but she’s better at it and she’s free.’ With that he got up and walked out.

“I don’t think the union even got 2 percent of our workers to sign cards asking for a representation vote.

“Finally, I’ll say one more thing: Jenny Clark is one of the finest human beings I’ve ever met.” Then Harrison grinned and added, “In an informal survey, we find that your feelings for Jenny run the full gamut from love to worshiping the ground she walks on. What a woman!”