Chapter 34

Yeah, yeah... I knew it was only a dream. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing a white suit, unless I was going to a costume party as Edgar Winter. Of course, knowing it was just a dream didn't do a thing to slow the hammering of my heart.

What actually hit me in the chest was about one hundred and five pounds of squirmy little woman. I threw my arms around her and squeezed until she squeaked. I opened my eyes, looked into Peggy's smiling face and grinned back at her with love and affection.

"Hey there squirt. How're you doin'?"

"Terrific, now that I know you're okay. You rampaging polar bear, you scared the hell out of me, you know that?"

"Sorry. I'll try to be kinder and gentler next time."

She pressed her lips against mine and gave me a kiss that I'll remember till my dying day. I quickly forgot the pain in my chest, aggravated by her three point landing on top of me, and the dull ache in my belly and got instantly as horny as a three peckered weasel. Reaching down I cupped her tiny ass with one hand and goosed her. Peggy squealed into my mouth and wiggled hard against me. I heard someone clearing their throat off to the side.

I disengaged our mouths and stage whispered to her, "I think we have an audience."

Peggy giggled and turned to look over her shoulder.

Mr. Jones stood next to the door, leaning against the frame. He was watching us with a small smile on his usually stony face.

"You might want to go easy there for a couple more days. The holes in your chest and belly haven't had all that much time to heal. I know you're tough but there is such a think as pushing your luck."

"Spoilsport." Peggy groused as she slithered down off me and sat primly on the edge of the bed.

I got a good look at the cast that covered her right arm from knuckles to elbow.

"How's your arm, sweetie?"

"It itches sometimes, but other than that it's okay." She held it out for me to see. It was an interesting shade of green and looked more like fiberglass than any cast I'd ever seen before. There were names scrawled across it in magic marker. I could make out Lilly's and Izzy's, Dr. Wills had added his name, along with Joshua and Grant and someone named 'Davey Jones'.

"Davey Jones?" I muttered. Then it dawned on me. I looked up and Mr. Jones actually blushed.

"You have no idea how much shit I've taken over the years with a name like Davey Jones." he said.

"I can pretty well imagine. You have my deepest sympathies." I smirked.

"Fuck you too, sir." He tossed me a brown paper bag, which I caught like a football.

"Get dressed and come on downstairs. We're moving again." He walked out and headed back towards the room Anya was in.

Peggy leaned towards me. "I think Davey has a crush on Anya." she whispered, and giggled.

I raised an eyebrow and chuckled with her. "Now wouldn't that be something?"

I got out of bed and stripped off the hospital top and pants and pulled on the brown slacks and military style pullover knit sweater, taking care not to catch the plugs in my arm. At the bottom of the bag was a worn pair of tennis shoes that looked remarkably like my own. I slipped them on and laced them up. Perfect. I rolled up the hospital garb and shoved it all into the bag, glad to be done with the stuff.

Peggy and I went downstairs where Dr. Wills, Izzy and Lilly were waiting for us. I opened my arms and got mobbed. It was wonderful. The image of the three of them acting as my personal firing squad faded away and became nothing more than an unpleasant memory in the face of this much happier reality.

Once the girls were done saying hello we all took a seat on the couch.

"We're going to relocate you all to another location. The plan is to keep moving for the next two days." the Doctor informed me.

"Why two days?" I asked.

"Three days from now we meet with the congressional sub-committees."

"You talked them into a joint session?"

"It wasn't easy, but yes, both committees at the same time."

"Excellent. Now we just have to figure out how to get me inside without being arrested or killed."

"At our next stop we'll meet someone who should be able to solve that little problem." he said cryptically.

Mr. Jones came down the stairs with one arm around Anya's waist, holding her steady and upright. They walked slowly into the living room and he helped her into a chair.

Peggy got up and walked to where Anya was sitting. Anya blinked slowly.

"I'm really sorry you got hurt because of me." Peggy said and gave the blond girl a brief hug.

Tears formed in Anya's eyes and she hugged Peggy in return.

"I..." she broke down and sobbed.

I stood up and knelt in front of the two girls. Linking with Anya I could feel her despair and her feelings of failure and incompetence. I drained them away, replacing them with understanding, appreciation and respect.

"Anya, you didn't fail. You did what you could in a bad situatition. You were outnumbered and ambushed. No one expects you to do the impossible. You didn't do anything wrong."

She calmed down and wiped her face.

"How's your head?" I asked.

"A little fuzzy, like it was stuffed with cotton balls. It hurts a lot too."

That, at least, I could do something about. I hunted down the pain she was feeling and surrounded it with more pleasant feelings. Anya sighed with relief and then blushed bright red.

Well, the feelings I used to dull her pain were the ones I'd gotten from Peggy. I suppose a bit of blushing was inevitable, under the circumstances.

Mr. Jones rounded everyone up and we straggle marched outside and into the big SUV parked on the driveway.

While we sat there I leaned over to Izzy and whispered in her ear, "How many days have I missed?"

She put her lips to my ear, nibbled on my lobe for a moment and then whispered back, "Four."

Four days? I'd lost four days. It didn't seem like four days, but without a calendar how could I tell?

"Really? Four days?" I was stunned.

"Ike, you were hurt bad. You shouldn't even be up and moving around yet."

Four days. Lost and never to be had back. Those governmental morons were just racking up the brownie points.

Peggy crawled up into my lap and leaned back against my chest. I pulled Izzy and Lilly beneath my arms and linked with the three of them. Three sparks, three tiny little embers that represented the very best part of me, I gave to each of them. All three shuddered and pushed harder against me. I felt stronger and more alive than I had in ages.

"One down, three to go." I murmured happily.

I have no idea where we went, not exactly. To be honest, I wasn't paying all that much attention. Between cuddling with the girls and thinking about how I might be able to repair the damage I'd done to Anya I was pretty well preoccupied.

Wherever it was we were going, we got there and Mr. Jones and Dr. Wills ushered all of us inside a rather grungy looking warehouse in a seedy looking part of some place. I took a deep breath. Dank, salty, grimy, sooty, rank, rotten, dirty and decaying.

"Shit... is this Baltimore?" I asked Mr. Jones.

"Yup... I take it you were doing something other than watching the road signs?"

"Yeah, actually I was trying to work out a way to give Anya her free will back."

He stared at me for five very slow heart beats and then blinked. "I'd appreciate that."

"No promises. I don't know if I can. But if I can figure out a way that won't endanger her, I'll do it."

He nodded. "Come on, we have to get off the street."

The inside of the building was much nicer than the outside would lead anyone to believe. Once we were in, Mr. Jones threw a switch that activated an automatic door opener so he could drive the SUV into the building. There was more than enough room in there for a fleet of SUVs.

Off to the left of the vast garage was a kind of pre-fabricated building with a set of large windows that faced us. Dr. Wills was standing inside and waved for us to join him. I herded my girls and Mr. Jones helped Anya.

Peggy was right... he had a serious case of the 'likes'.

Inside the dry-wall enclosure we found a very homey little setup, including a small kitchen area.

There was also a wide collapsible table with a three-part folding mirror set up on it along with the largest assortment of make-up I'd ever seen. The girls rushed over and began pointing and picking up bottles and containers. Dr. Wills turned to them and cleared his throat.

"Ladies, please! Allow me to introduce Janice McNeal. Ms. McNeal is one of the premier theatrical makeup artists on the east coast and she has agreed to see what can be done to alter Ike's appearance."

The woman sitting next to Dr. Wills stood up and approached me, examining me from all sides and as many angles as she could as if I were some kind of museum exhibit.

She was not a young woman, but she wasn't all that old either, probably in her late thirties or early forties. She had dark black hair in tight cornrows and probably weighed twenty pounds more than was ideal for her five foot seven inch frame. The twenty extra pounds all looked to be located on her chest.

"Amazing skin. May I?" she asked me and then reached out and placed her palm against the skin of my neck before I could reply. "Just amazing." Her face lit up and she actually rubbed her hands together in excitement. "You are, without a doubt, the whitest white-boy I have ever seen."

I called my sister over and put my arm around her shoulders.

"If you want something to work towards, try and make me look like Izzy here."

"Hmmm... sure, I can do that, no problem. The real trick will be getting it to hold up for any length of time and fixing it so that no one suspects it's cosmetic."

For the next two hours Janice worked on dyeing the hair on my head, trimming my beard down to a goatee and dyeing it, and then darkening my skin from scalp to shoulders and my hands from fingers up to mid forearm.