Chapter 21

By Cindy and Walt

I suppressed the urge to run to her and begin nursing on her heavy breast. Instead I just said, "Nice."

"Not as nice as yours. I had breasts like those when I was 16, but it's been downhill ever since," she admitted.

"Joan, yours are bigger than mine and they are heavier and softer right now," I said.

"It's called sloppy and saggy. You are sitting there as a model and I'm here with a pencil in my hand," she said. She took a deep breath then added, "Now turn and look out the window for me." I did then she ordered, "Turn your head a little more. That's right."

I allowed her to draw for over an hour before I said, "That's about all I can stand for one day."

"You did remarkably well," she said. "Most models start bitching after fifteen minutes."

"Well after about fifteen minutes I began thinking about your body," I said with a leer. "That helped me to endure staying in one place."

"You do know you are a terrible flirt," Joan said.

"Yeah, but only with you. You are like a bird Joan, easily frightened off," I said.

"You are right. Now it's time for me to put my clothes back on, and pack up my pencils for the day," she said.

"How about packing first and dress just before you walk out the door," I said.

"You are worse than any man I ever dated," she said.

"No honey, I'm better," I said. She actually giggled like a school girl.

After a few more minutes she replaced her bra and top then said, "You know this was a lot more pleasant that I thought it would be. You are aggressive but in a cute way."

"Well, I tend to get more bold on the second date," I said.

"Oh is that what this was?" she asked. I just smiled. "If it was then you are a cheap date."

"I don't know, do I get the drawing?" I asked.

"Not just yet, it isn't finished but you will get to see it," she said.

When I looked at the drawing it was me, but it was also better. A victim would recognize me but someone on the street most likely wouldn't. "It's a little too good," I said. "You promised it wouldn't be that close a likeness."

"The one I finally keep for my portfolio won't be. Here you can burn this one," she said.

"No I won't burn it, but I will keep it safe," I said. Then I pulled her to me and gave her a real lover's kiss. She pulled away without returning it and ran for the door. "Call me." Then she was gone.

After Joan left I had a cup of coffee and worked on my plan for the rest of the afternoon. Since the Voice on the Phone had pretty much told me to hold off on Marcus Black till the package came, I had no real plan. Without a plan to invade his turf I was at a loss. I checked the email drop and found a message from Morris.

'Sorry to inform you we can find nothing helpful for Rachael Rankin. I suggest you drop it, so as not to bring attention to yourself. As to Jeremy and Alice, we can find nothing in their background from Interpol. That does not mean they are clear, just that under those ID's they have no record.

The Controller couldn't find out anything with all their resources. That created a nagging thought. Maybe I wasn't really working for the SBI. I was learning more about the people and structure of the operation and I found it a little iffy.

I wasn't positive of course, but it was possible that the information they gave me, any good hacker might be able to come up with.

Still they did get me out the joint, so I had to give them some credit for that. I just wasn't sure how reliable my Controller was.

Was it possible that we were all working in a gray vacuum? It was possible that we would all be disowned at the drop of a hat. If that were the case was there anything I could do to save myself, I wondered?

Of course the only entity I knew capable of any help at all was Church Camp, or whatever it really was.

Fuck it, I thought. I would just have to play it by ear. All the best laid plans of mice and men etc. I was neither a mouse nor a man. I was just a convict who no longer existed as Rachel would have said, if she had known the real me. Then of course, I wonder who the real me was these days.

I had no idea what I was waiting for, but I was determined to play it cool for a couple of days then figure out how to fuck Marcus Black. He knew what I wanted to know I was pretty sure.

I tried to forget all about Rachael for a while since there was nothing I could do. Instead I turned my mind to dinner. I had begun eating dinner at home, since it was just easier. It was breakfast out, no lunch, and dinner from a can or from the freezer.

My kitchen had no real stove or ordinary appliances. It was a true galley kitchen. Everything was compact. The cabinets with doors below the shelves were filled with small appliances, as well as dishes.

I had a toaster oven for toasting bread, and it could heat a can of corn, or a pile of tater tots. Then there was the small low watt microwave. It held a smaller bowl and had to cook everything longer, but it was a fucking microwave, so what. Of course I also had a George Foreman, so I could do a steak up in a hurry.

Carlos had managed to make the counter, on the wall across from the shelves, a place I could use for the preparation of food, and also a place to eat.

One more funky thing about the galley kitchen was its lack of water. The bathroom was right next door so I could step into it where Carlos's brother had replaced the small hand sink with a plastic janitor's sink. It had plenty of depth to wash dishes. It wasn't the perfect arrangement but it was just quirky enough that I loved it.

On a really cold day, I could always cook in the living room on top of the wood stove. It was how I disposed of my paper packaging, paper napkins, plates and other unwanted papers as well. They made very little ash and that was my big concern. Shoveling out the ashes hardly seemed lady like. It was also a lot of work, since I had a kind of natural gully on the property. I used it to dispose of the ashes. It seemed to work pretty well, but it was about thirty yards from the back door.

That night I chose a frozen Mac & Cheese dinner along with a pre-made hamburger patty ala George Foreman. It actually was pretty good. Even it the fancy hamburger bun had come from the deep freeze. I really preferred the burger from McDonalds, but hell mine was a lot less trouble.

After dinner I had a George Foreman to clean and a couple of forks and knives. I didn't mind using the paper plates, but I drew the line at plastic forks and the like.

After dinner I went back onto the net and began to research all the people I had met. I pulled up the google clipping files on Morris and Mission. It was hard to believe they were using their real name for the operation. It reinforced the idea that they were the amateur hour of spies.

I would bet my ass that the Church Camp guys would never use their real names. I was beginning to think the people at Church Camp might be the better allies.

After 10 PM I tried to clear my mind by going into a chat room. I pretended to be a club dancer and offered to sell a video of a pole dance for twenty bucks. I knew no one would bite, but the back and forth was fun. Since going inside I had some kind of sex or I masturbated daily. That night I took care of what Joan left boiling inside me by finding a man who thought he was some kind of bad assed alpha male.

I lay in my in my bed after the diversion and laughed my head off when I thought about it. He tried to bully a woman who had murdered two gun thugs. Of course he didn't know I had stabbed them with a pointed stick and then threw them overboard. It was actually laughable, so I laughed again. It also made me sad for some reason. Before I made myself completely depressed, I fell asleep.

When I awoke at 6 AM, I really was in no condition to go out. Not only was I shaky from lack of sleep but the house was cold. I had not gotten into the habit of stoking the fire before I went to bed, simply because it hadn't been cold up until that point.

I found the fire had burned completely out overnight. I found some kindling. I had it because I always collected and saved small twigs and scraps from Carlos's work around the place. I could use a small hatchet to split the factory wood and if necessary I could chop a little kindling from the split logs I bought from one of the local men.

That morning I used a paper plate as the fire starter and some split factory wood to feed it. Finally I added the split logs slowly so they wouldn't overwhelm the struggling fire. I told myself that starting a fire in a wood stove was a dying art and I was preserving it. Truth is getting the right shit was about all there was to it.

When I finally got warm I put on the fleece outfit over my sleep outfit then I bypassed the designer jeans for some Walmart work jeans. They were baggy enough to allow room for the fleece and thick enough to cut the wind.

I had pulled the long sleeve fleece top on over the short sleeve thermal weave tee shirt I recently purchased. On mornings like the one I was working with that day, I had planned to just add layers to my body covering.

After the fleece top I added a nylon parka to repel the wind. Once I was dressed like the Pillsbury Doughboy I waddled out the door and mounted my bicycle, which I kept under a tarp on the rear deck.

I really wanted to go to Helen's for breakfast, but I had promised myself to never eat there again. That being the case I headed off to the plaza.

The plaza was a longer ride, but it was a matter of principle. Okay if it had been a few more miles, I might have forsaken my principles.

There were several places from which to choose at the plaza. I made the absolute wrong choice that morning. I went to one of those chrome and glass places. They claimed that they were famous for their waffles, so I ordered one.

The waffle came out undercooked. I had no idea that was even possible, but there it was. The inside of the waffle was nothing but raw dough.

I didn't send it back. I just left the half eaten waffle and paid my bill. I did remove them from my list of breakfast possibilities.

When I got home I found the house pleasantly warm, even though I hadn't built a roaring fire in the stove. The water was also hot, so I stripped off all the layers and stepped under the shower with nothing but a bar of soap.

After the shower I climbed the stairs that were almost a ladder to the loft. Once I was up the steep stairs, I found some clean panties and a long sleeve, but light weight tee shirt. The baggy jeans had been left hanging on a nail in the living room. Those I replaced with the much classier fitted ones from a department store.