Chapter 2

"All right," my wife Karen said as the three of us sat around the kitchen table. "Explain the whole thing to me from the beginning."

She had arrived home in mid-morning on Saturday, dead tired after taking the red-eye back from the coast, and I had dragged her into the kitchen, with maybe a little too much excitement, to tell her that I'd located another "living doll." I'd found two "living dolls" in my parents' attic when I was a high school junior, back in 2004. They were dolls that, I swear to God, I could turn into anybody I wanted, with a couple of odd provisos. Like, I couldn't turn them into a man. Which was not a problem; any body I'd be likely to want was going to be female. And I could choose any date for the woman, as long as it was after 1959. Which was fine, too; I didn't need to meet Marie Antoinette that badly. And then there was some stupid restriction about the time. I couldn't change the time. If I made my request at 10:53 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, I'd get the woman the way she looked at 10:53 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, on whatever date I'd chosen.

Obviously, none of these limitations had represented a serious drawback. I'd had a lot of fun with the dolls, and I'd put them to pretty good use, at least in my opinion. Not including my own, I was directly or indirectly responsible for five happy marriages, including the marriage of Julie, the high school cheerleader and Karen's best friend, to Gordon, the math geek and my best friend.

Once Karen had learned about the dolls, we'd also rid the school of some nasty assholes. And finally, I'd fucked my dick raw, at least until I met Karen. After that, I hadn't needed the dolls much, and since our wedding — the day after we graduated high school — they'd been gathering dust in my closet at my Mom and Dad's. Or at our Mom and Dad's I should say; Karen was my parents' goddaughter, and, after I'd used the dolls to sort out some messy problems in her life after her real parents had died, Karen had considered them her mom and dad as well.

Julie had also learned about the dolls in high school, and she had grudgingly admitted yesterday that yes, "Dana Scully" could be one of the dolls. Karen was a little more skeptical. I started to tell her about the porn tape, and then Julie interrupted to explain why she'd brought it over.

"Wait a minute," Karen held up her hand. She narrowed her eyes. "Are those my clothes?"

"Well, I didn't know whether I'd be staying the night," Julie reddened. "So I borrowed some things."

"Bet the bra's a little big, huh?" my wife smirked.

"Yeah," her best friend answered quickly, "but so are the panties."

"Cunt."

"Bitch," Julie smiled. "Actually, I still have on my own things underneath. I just borrowed your jeans and this shirt."

Karen smiled back at her.

"Now about the video?" she asked.

Julie started to explain again and Karen again interrupted her almost immediately.

"So your client was killed execution-style," she asked, "and you decided to involve my husband?"

"Hey," I protested, "back off."

Karen transferred the look from Julie to me.

"I knew perfectly well how her client was killed before I signed that paper," I lied. "If you want to get mad at somebody, you can get mad at me. I am an adult."

That was not usually an argument I had any success with. But perhaps because Julie was here, Karen bit her lip, and then finally turned to her best friend.

"He's right," she said. "I'm sorry, Jules."

"No, you're right," Julie said. "It was a stupid thing to do."

"She probably wanted to enlist the services of a genius," I said.

When Karen opened her mouth to retort, I pointed to the MacArthur Fellowship letter hanging on the wall. She sighed. I looked at Julie and winked. That was the only way I ever won arguments.

"So, genius, maybe you should just tell me what it is that makes you think it's one of those dolls?" Karen turned to me.

"Actually, it was really just the way she said 'master, '" I explained.

"That doesn't prove anything," Karen scoffed.

"I know," I agreed, "but then I started thinking. "Suppose I had a doll, and I wanted to make money. How would I do it? And here's your answer."

"Porn?" Karen asked.

"Ten thousand dollars a shot?" I said. "That's how much Julie's guy paid for it. You could do two a day easily. That's five million a year."

"Seriously?" Julie asked.

"Without working weekends," I added.

"But where are you going to find customers willing to pay that for, what, an hour-long video?"

"Well," I was enjoying the way the two women were listening to me like I actually knew what I was talking about, "look at the client base. Men. With significant income. The same guys who'll pay two or three grand extra for a plane that will get them somewhere an hour earlier. Ten grand is a drop in the bucket. Particularly if you can manage to get their voices on the video, like this one did, so they can pretend they're the guy with the big cock fucking whoever they want. I mean, if you had a living doll you could do anyone. You'd only need like 500 clients a year. And that's assuming they only want one video a year."

"And that assumption ignores the fact that they're men," Karen turned back to Julie before I could protest. "Well, it's certainly possible. I mean, if he had two, there could easily be more. So does that help you out any?"

Julie was just looking at the floor, turning redder by the second.

"Julie?" Karen asked. "Jules?"

"I made it up," Julie finally blurted out.

"Made what up?" Karen asked.

"The whole investigator thing," Julie said. "My client died of a heart attack and the case was dismissed."

"Honey, why?" Karen asked gently.

"So I could —" Julie was starting to tear up. "So I could, you know..."

"Fuck him?" Karen asked. "All of this was so you could fuck my husband?"

"Yes," Julie sobbed.

"You waited until I was gone and brought over pornography with a little mystery attached so you could get him to fuck you?" Karen continued.

Julie nodded miserably.

Karen sat back in her chair and laughed harder than I'd ever seen her. Finally, she realized that Julie and I were staring at her and wiped away the tears.

"So how was it?" she asked.

"We never did it!" Julie cried out.

Oddly enough, that was perfectly true.

"After I showed it to him," she sputtered, "he spent the night doing research on the internet and watching the tape, and freeze-framing it, and looking things up. I woke up this morning in your bed, wearing one of your nighties."

Both women were staring at me.

"It was one of the dolls!" I protested.

"So what?" Karen said. "You had a beautiful woman in your study, panting for sex, and all you can do is think about your dolls? And they're not even yours. What, do you wanna start a collection or something? Men.

"As for you, Jules," Karen dismissed me with a glance as hopelessly useless, "first of all, that's why I told you I was going away. You've been wasting that gorgeous bod for at least six months now, long after you needed to stop mourning for Gordon, even as wonderful as he was. It was well past time that you got yourself laid. Why didn't you just tell him?"

"I was embarrassed," Julie murmured. "And then he got so involved."

"Well, I can understand that," Karen said. "He is still a nerd at heart. But really, Jules, the porn, the mystery? Come on — second of all, he's a guy!"

"I beg your pardon?" I interjected.

"Julie, watch," she said. She turned to me. "Jason, would you please fuck Julie Pinsky?"

"Certainly," I said. I'd known yesterday that Karen would have approved of my taking Julie to bed.

"And third of all," she was talking to Julie again, "it's Jason! That sofa in his study converts into a bed. You don't even need the please!"

I wasn't sure I liked where this was going.
"Jason, would you fuck Julie Pinsky?" she asked.
"Um, sure," I agreed.

"You don't even have to make it a request," Karen said. "Jason, fuck Julie Pinsky."

"Yes, dear," I said.

"In fact," Karen looked at her watch. "You talk entirely too much, Julie Pinsky. Honey, I'm leaving right now to take the kids to your brother's for a sleepover."

"Uh-huh," I said.

Karen caught my eye, and then nodded her head at Julie.

"Jason, put me down," Julie protested, beating on my back with little effort and even littler effect. I'd simply grunted and hoisted the surprised brunette onto my shoulder, and was now making my way toward the study.

"Daddy, what's wrong?"

I looked down to see my two little girls as we crossed paths in the dining room.

"Aunt Julie was very bad yesterday and she has to be punished," I told them. "Would you like to help?"

"What did she do, Daddy?" Danny demanded.

"She made Daddy do all sorts of unnecessary research," I said, "when all he had to do was some very simple probing."

"Jason Thompson, don't you dare — OW!"

While I'd been explaining the crime, I'd pulled out one of the dining room chairs with my foot. Devilish little Danny, a gleam in her eye, had climbed into it and delivered a healthy six-year old smack on her godmother's upturned ass.

"You do talk too much, Pinsky," I said, turning to the right to allow Beth a turn. She declined the chair and simply gave her Aunt Julie a sharp open palm on the upper thigh. As fast as Beth was growing up, I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd winked at me and told me to make sure the little slut was well and truly punished.

This time Julie kept her scream to herself, although I did feel another shiver make its way through Julie's body.

"Come on, girls, let's go!" their mother yelled from the kitchen.

By the time I heard the car pulling out of the garage, the sofa bed was open and Julie Pinsky's sopping wet panties were hanging off of the lamp on my desk. By the time Karen returned two hours later, the little slut had been well and truly punished, and I had recovered sufficiently to think about punishing her again.

Karen silently stripped off her clothes, and eased her way into bed with us, still unnoticed by our visitor. I'd spent the last ten minutes teasing Julie, running my hands over her beautiful body, brushing against a breast, a thigh, a hip. Julie had closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of my fingertips. Now I leaned down, circling one of her rapidly rising nipples with my tongue and then sucking it in between my lips.

"Oh, Jason," Julie whimpered. "That feels so nice. Oh, Jason, I can't take having you do both of them. Jason?"

"Pinsky, just shut up and enjoy yourself," Karen whispered after she released the other nipple. "Those little rug rats are going to be at Steve and Shelly's all weekend. Can he really do both of them? With boobs this small? I don't think he's ever even done that to mine."

Julie just reached out and brought Karen's head back down to her breast. That shut her up, too.

By Sunday evening, when Shelly brought Danny and Beth back, and stayed for dinner with her two kids, Julie had moved "just a few things" into our spare room. After all, I had to go out of town later in the week, and she could help Karen look after the girls while I was away.

In theory, anyway. Little hellions would be running naked down the streets of Wilmington by Thursday afternoon while their mother was bedding her best friend.

"If you ladies will excuse me," I said as dinner was winding up, "I have a public speaking engagement to prepare for this week."

"Public speaking?" Karen scoffed. "Who wants to listen to you?"

I made a little money doing some speaking tours, but Karen couldn't pass up a reason to give me a hard time. Just like she could never pass up a reason, I thought to myself, to give me a hard-on.

"Mrs. Snyder's fourth grade class," I said proudly. Beth beamed at me from across the table.

On Tuesday morning, I looked out over the sea of fresh, unspoiled, largely uninterested faces. Perhaps if I was a fireman, or a tugboat captain, or somebody who actually made something, like a baker, they would have been a little more enthusiastic. As it was, I basically had an audience of two: my daughter Elizabeth, and her teacher, Mrs. Snyder, who gushed over my work like I was only a year away from the first of what would undoubtedly be many Nobel Prizes for Literature.

But I was nothing if not a storyteller. A few of the kids knew what a detective was; a few more had heard of Encyclopedia Brown, another fictional character that I'd despised back when I was in school. After a while, they started to accept the messes that Joe Verage found himself in, and then some even got a little interested. By the time Mrs. Snyder asked me to read a selection of one of my books to them, they were all at least paying attention.

"It had been a long time since I'd ridden a bicycle, not since I was a young child, in fact. And I'm sure that the installation of airbags had been a 'big deal, ' involving competing considerations of child safety and civil liberties. But I had missed that debate. So that when I popped a wheelie to jump my bike over the curb that now stood between me and the ice cream truck I was pursuing, the truck whose driver I'd mistakenly paid with the counterfeit currency that I'd discovered, I was genuinely surprised to find myself knocked sideways off the bike and into the prize gardenias that my mother's neighbor, Mrs. August Chulmley, had been painstakingly cultivating for the last five years.

"'Mr. Verage, ' the voice came.

" I blinked opened my eyes. A formidable figure loomed over me, the product of —"

"I'm just going to skip a little here, kids," I said. I didn't think that the expression "years of surgery by the best ear, nose, throat, and boob men in the United States" was something they needed to hear. Mrs. Snyder, though, was convulsed with laughter over in the corner. Most of the kids were smiling as well, I was happy to see, even if they didn't get all of the jokes.

"Okay, here we are," I found my place.

I got a nice round of laughter and applause, and announced that I would be happy to answer any questions that they had.

"Mr. Verage, are all your books funny?"

"Actually," I said, "I'm Mr. Thompson. Beth Thompson's dad? The character in the book is Mister Verage. But the book is written in something called the first person, so it sounds, when I read it, like I'm Mr. Verage. But yes, I hope that they're all funny. I like making people laugh."

"Mr. Verage, what's your next book about?"

Okay, enough about me; Mr. Verage it was. I made a point of looking around the room, making sure that nobody was hiding under the desks. I swore the whole giggling class to secrecy. I made Mrs. Snyder double swear, to the delight of her students, and cross her heart. I looked around again.

"International spies," I whispered as loudly as I could.

International terrorists, actually, but spies sounded like more fun, particularly at this age. Terrorists sold better, of course.

"Do you know any spies, Mister Verage?"

"No," I said. "But tomorrow I'm flying down in a secret plane to Washington, D.C. — "

Actually, it was Amtrak.

"—where I'm going to meet with the President of the United States —"

Actually, my request for information on terrorists had been routed — by the President, who was a fan — to a much lower level government functionary.

"—and she's going to introduce me to people who know spies."

Actually, I had an appointment at the Federal Counterterrorism Command.

"Mr. Verage, do you know Britney Spears?"

I looked over at Mrs. Snyder.

"Tanya is a big fan," Mrs. Snyder explained. "She asks everybody that."

"O-kay," I nodded. "No, I've never met her, Tanya. Although I understand that she serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Maybe I'll meet her this time."

I rolled my eyes and sent Mrs. Snyder into paroxysms of laughter.

"I know," I said. "Californians."

It was Californians, after all, that had sent Britney Spears to the Senate three years ago, after Dianne Feinstein retired. The Democrat and the Republican vying for the open seat were both scandal-plagued nincompoops, and some of Ms. Spears' teenage fans — and what was she still doing with teenage fans, anyway, at the age of 37? — had started a write-in campaign.

At the same time as these teenagers began their "Write-In Britney Spears" campaign, a group of older cynics had started the "This Whole Thing is Bullshit!" campaign. Britney probably got a couple thousand write-in votes on her own. Early on Election Day, though, ballots started appearing with "B.S." scrawled across them. Oh my God! People might think that a substantial number of Californians were smart enough to realize that both major party candidates were idiots, and that if those were the choices, they'd just as soon do without a senator, thank you very much. The Democratic head of the state election board and her Republican deputy panicked, and instructed local officials to count those ballots as votes for B — Britney S — Spears. By the time they realized that a plurality of California voters had done the unthinkable, Britney Spears had been declared the next senator from California. Senator Britney Spears. The mind boggles.

"Mr. Verage," Mrs. Snyder finally stopped laughing long enough to raise her hand.

I raised my eyebrows in astonishment. I looked at my daughter and back at Mrs. Snyder. Come on, lady.