Chapter 9: Black Friday

The next morning, at like 6:30, there was a tap on the door and Lissa burst in. She was wearing the long-t-shirt nightie I'd seen her in the morning before. "Time to get up, uncle Jason," she trilled. "We're going SHOP-ping!" She'd said 'shopping' exactly that way, as if it were two very exciting words that were even more exciting when put together unexpectedly. Like maybe it was a new word for 'orgasm, ' I chuckled to myself, recalling yesterday's vocabulary quiz.

I had been lying there awake (having set my alarm), but I was radically non-mobile -- a fairly typical morning-time state for me. "Need coffee," I grunted. It was meant as a joke, but much to my pleased surprise, Lissa raced out of the room and returned within moments with a steaming mug of joe.

"Oh my goodness, thank you. You are a goddess." I said with utter sincerity. I sat up and sipped the beverage, and noted that Lissa was failing to leave the room. I was very conscious of my nakedness below the covers.

Lissa sat in the computer chair and spun it around. It occurred to me that if she was pantiless, as the rules required, with her legs out like that, all she'd have to do is spin another quarter turn in my direction and I'd see something truly wonderful. But she didn't. A tease, indeed, I reflected, sipping my coffee. Lissa pretended to be preoccupied with something on the desk.

"Can I help you with something?" I finally said, in mock seriousness.

She laughed. "Mom told me to make sure that you actually get out of bed. She said you are notorious for going back to sleep." This was, perhaps, historically accurate.

I grinned, and decided on the direct approach. "Unfortunately, my dear, that might be true. But I also regret to inform you that I sleep naked, and you probably REALLY don't want to be here when I 'actually get out of bed' as you put it."

She made a funny face then. Hard to tell what it meant. "Oh dear," she giggled. Then she leaped up, grabbed my kimono from where it draped over another chair, and flung it at me. I flinched as I almost spilled my coffee. Might have been interesting if I actually had -- all the leaping and shouting and such would have been fun, in retrospect. But I didn't. Instead, I caught the kimono.

Then, she said, "Ok I'll shut my eyes -- you have 5 seconds." She immediately shut her eyes and began to intone "one ... two..."

I blurrily reached the conclusion that this was fun. I set down my coffee in a careful, quick motion, and as rapidly as possible, I rose and had just brought the kimono closed when she reached 'five' and popped her eyes open again.

"Ah, you're up. Good," she grinned. And at that, she raced from the room.

Really, a very effective way to get me up, I reflected. In more ways than one, too -- glancing down at the ill-concealed cylinder attached at an awkward angle to my pelvis. Re-collecting my coffee, I padded out to the dining area and sat down at the table, one hand in a pocket to dissimulate aforementioned object.

Lissa had already disappeared into the bathroom, but Denise was there in her robe, sipping her coffee and eating some toast.

We discussed the plan for the day. We would be leaving at 7. No mention made of the night before. As soon as Lissa emerged in her towel and turban combo, I fetched my bathroom kit and took my own shower. The urgency of the morning's plan had me sufficiently distracted that I didn't have to put up a protracted struggle with Mr Woody, so in a few minutes I emerged and went into the den and shut the door to get dressed.

All very orderly -- we were out the door by 5 till seven. My sister was very good at making schedules happen, I'd always known, and Lissa was clearly a chip off the old block in that respect. I was just along for the ride, I decided -- at least for the day. This wasn't really a variation from the day-after-Thanksgiving pattern that had prevailed in my family for many years.

Denise was wearing a nice green medium-length skirt, kind of billowy and flirtatious, along with a cream silk blouse and a denim jacket, with some comfortable looking flats on her feet.

Lissa was more casual, with a pair of overalls, some kind of tube top underneath, and some slip-on canvas shoes, Vans maybe. She had her hair in a pony tail, and was looking very little-girlish.

I realized that although it didn't look particularly sexy, the loose-fitting overalls were probably great for what you might call "access." They had those big buttons with wire loops on the side that meant that anytime she sat or twisted a certain way, you realized you were looking right at her naked hip bone. And although one couldn't quite tell from a cursory examination, I of course KNEW she wore nothing underneath -- no panties! And no bra under that little tube top that was basically just a thin pink strip of cloth from her armpit to a few inches below the bottom of her breast line. If she leaned forward, and one was sitting at the right angle, one could probably look in from the side and see her belly button, the overalls were loose enough. And that meant, if she leaned forward more...

I was wearing some jeans, with boxers underneath, comfortable sandals, and a t-shirt with a jacket. It was unseasonably warm for the end of November, so we really didn't need to worry about dealing with the cold before getting into the mall we were going to.

We parked at the mall and the "girls," as I was thinking of them, immediately set off with me in tow. Oh, they clearly had a program -- but, at least for the first several hours, that program was evidently more related to material acquisition than to the sexual escapades that were near and dear to my own heart. Although they seemed to spend an awful lot of time in dressing rooms.

Finally, we stopped and had a snack at a coffee joint (some kind of Starbucks clone) around 11 o'clock.

Surprisingly, Lissa announced that, having seen all the good sales, she was starting to feel "all shopped out."

"There's a few more things I'd like to check out," Denise said. "How'd you like to wait here while I go do that?"

Lissa nodded, and Denise turned to me. "I expect you'd rather stay with Lissa than come with me, Jason?"

I wasn't sure what the "plan" was, though I was certain there was one. I figured the correct choice was being presented. And it was what I preferred, anyway.

"I'd definitely rather sit here with Lissa than keep walking around." And added, with humor, "I'm a male, after all -- males prefer sitting to shopping."

Lissa laughed at this, and Denise grinned, and without a backward look, she was off, waving a distracted, one-handed goodbye behind her lovely, retreating, swaying behind.

I looked over at Lissa, who was nursing one of those over-sweetened frozen coffee concoctions. She grinned around her straw, but we were both quiet for a while, and I turned away to do some people watching. Trying to avoid the obsession I was developing with my niece.

After about 5 minutes, she'd noisily slurped away the bottom of her drink (in a way that for some barely conscious, and completely inexplicable reason, had me riffing, in my mind, on Nabokov's character Ada, from his novel of the same name -- if you're curious, look it up -- I much prefer it to his more well-known "Lolita").

She tossed the plastic cup into the trashcan behind her, and turned to me, "there is one thing I'd like to shop for, but I need your help."

"What's that?" I asked.

With her chin, she gestured at the Victoria's Secret store across the way. "I want to go in there."

"Maybe you should go with your mom in there," I suggested, but very half-heartedly, as I was remembering both my conversation with Denise last night, and was also feeling some certainty that this was part of a developing plan both women had already worked out between them.

"I can't. Because it's FOR mom."

I was confused. "You want to buy something for your mom at Victoria's Secret?" I asked.

She nodded. "She was complaining to me a few weeks back that one thing she misses since, uh, dad died, is ... no one buys her nice frilly things anymore."

"I see," I volunteered, non-committally.

"So I think we should get her something frilly. A Thanksgiving present, kinda."

" ... OK," I said, slowly. "We?"

Long pause. Finally, I gave in, as she just sort of stared me down like a self-satisfied housecat. "Ok. What did you have in mind?"

She regained her animation, and I realized she'd been uncertain of victory in that silent debate we'd just had, although it had seemed foreordained, to me.

"Hmm, like a nice baby-doll thing. But here's the thing ... you have to pretend you're, like, her boyfriend ... they'd think you were, like, extremely weird if you said you were her brother."

"I think you're probably right, there," I admitted, grinning with her. I decided to just "go with the flow," as Denise had urged, last night, and so I stood up, collecting the bags of already-purchased items which I was "in charge of," per Denise.

Lissa jumped up beside me and helpfully grabbed one of the bags I wasn't carrying very gracefully, and we strolled across the way. Before we got inside, she leaned up to my ear, and said softly, "They're going to think you're a weirdo, anyway, coming in here with a girl my age." And giggled.

I only had time to nod before we got inside the store. Lissa seemed to know where to go, and we weren't there long before a clerk came over to help. A college-age girl, slightly plump but not at all unattractive. A bit of a goth vibe, going. I'd have quickly obsessed on her, had I not been with my nymphetic niece.

Lissa took charge, explaining immediately that we were shopping for a baby-doll for her mom and that she was along because I would get the wrong thing otherwise -- leaving unsaid but implying I was "mom's" significant other.