“Whatever you say, Tiffany. You’re the boss.”
“Hmmmph!”
She immediately changed her mind about the shop not being so bad when she backed into Rita, a lifesize balloon of a nude, flame-haired woman with breasts the size of cantaloupes and red nipples resembling maraschino cherries. Two of the bimbo’s plastic girlfriends, Bridget and Trish, stood next to her—a blonde and a brunette.
Do men really buy garbage like this? When the drunk Santa put his arm around the blond balloon’s waist and hauled her up to the cash register, Jessica answered her own question. Yep, they do.
“Would you like a Bruce Balloon, honey?” Luke chuckled.
She looked where he pointed his free hand and saw a six-foot tall male balloon whose endowments were impressive, to say the least. Bruce. Jessica’s eyes almost bugged out.
“Uh, I don’t think so, honey,” she responded, trying to appear casual.
Luke’s devilish hazel eyes crinkled with mirth as he guided her over toward the video shelves and began to peruse the offerings nonchalantly. After flicking through A-cup Cuties, Breaststroke, Porking Miss Piggy, and Hot to Trot, he turned to the “legitimate” movie section. Hah! There is no such thing as legitimate in this place. There he snickered as he read the titles aloud. Hannah Does Her Two Sisters, Forrest Hump, High Nooner, Close Encounters of the Lewdest Kind, Lord of the Fly, The Breasts of Madison County, and Three Days of the Condom.
“Let’s get out of this section,” she urged.
“No, no, no.” He rebelled as his eyes latched onto something new. “How about this, sweetie?” he asked brightly, shoving a video case in her face. “Tiffany’s Great Adventure.”
She made a gurgling sound of revulsion as her face heated up some more. At a sudden blast of cold air, her eyes darted to the doorway where the teenage boy exited, followed by the plastered Santa and the yuppie couple, who’d bought some assorted lotions and a video.
“Merry Christmas,” the proprietor called out after them cheerfully. “Hope you have a great night. Ho, ho, ho!”
The other Santa followed soon after, purchasing nothing.
Okay, only three more to go—the two women and the cowboy. With any luck, there wouldn’t be any new customers at this time of night.
“Have you ever tried these?” asked one of the women next to her. Her friend had moved to the register where she was paying for the Jingle Bells jock strap.
Me? Is she talking to me?
She was. “Have you ever tried these?” the woman repeated, holding up two eggs connected by a thin electric wire to a battery-operated controller which began to vibrate when she pressed a button. The woman twittered, and Jessica’s mouth dropped open. She refused to look at Luke to see what he was doing.
“What is that?” she blurted out, and immediately regretted her loose tongue when Luke answered, “Love eggs.”
She and the woman both looked at him, and he shrugged. “I read about them in a magazine.”
“Sure you did,” Jessica muttered under her breath.
But he heard her. “Hey, I haven’t been in one of these places since I was a teenager. Not my style.”
Soon after, the two women left the store, and the cowboy headed toward the back of the shop where a weary-looking woman dressed only in a black teddy, garter belt, and stiletto heels emerged through a set of swinging, western-style doors. She was crooking a long painted fingernail toward the cowboy, who shuffled back with a puppy-dog grin. Jessica wasn’t sure if it was the dude’s turn for a nude massage or a body piercing.
No matter. That left her and Luke alone with the proprietor.
“Can I help you folks?” the old guy asked. “Great handcuffs, by the way.”
Jessica was about to pull out her gun when Luke pinched her fingers in warning and handed the owner a bottle. “Yeah, I’ll buy this.”
She hadn’t realized he still carried the warming oil.
“That’ll be nine ninety-five.”
One-handed, Luke fished out his wallet and laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter.
Okay, this is it. Now’s the time. Oh, geez, oh, geez! Jessica reached in her pocket for the empty pistol, but in the process accidentally elbowed a display on the counter. To her horror, she knocked over a sort of vibrator thing with a huge wiggly tongue on the end, which began to jiggle madly. With two fingers, she distastefully tried to pick the thing up and turn it off, but it shimmied away from her, right off the counter to the floor. She dropped down to her knees, pulling Luke with her, and tried to catch the obscene object.
Luke and the shop owner were laughing hysterically at her antics. Angry now, she gave the thing a kick, which shut it off.
When she stood up, shaking with mortification, her cap and wig slipped and her long hair billowed out in a flaming explosion midway down her back.
Luke gaped at her as if someone had just handed him a bomb. “I can’t believe it! You look like Little Orphan Annie,” he exclaimed, fingering one of the corkscrew curls—the bane of her life. At least he’d stopped laughing at her.
The fact that he added, “You’re beautiful,” came too late. Comparing her to Little Orphan Annie was not a compliment in her book—not now, and not when she’d been a real orphan. And there was no way she was beautiful with her wild mop of red hair. No way!
She fought the tears that filled her eyes. Angry with herself and Luke, she jerked out her revolver and started to aim it at the guy behind the counter, who was holding his sides as he continued to howl. With a quivering voice, she shouted, “This…is…a…stick—”
“No!” Luke roared, and with one swift motion he hefted her into the air and over his shoulder, the gun dangling from her fingers. As he headed toward the door with his free hand clamped over her struggling behind, he informed Sam the Sleaze, who’d just noticed the gun and was making hyperventilating noises, “Don’t worry, this is a game my wife likes to play every Christmas.”
Sam expelled a wheeze of relief. “Hey, I see this kind of thing all the time. It’s the curse of my business.”
“I’ll give you a curse,” Jessica raged.
“Merry Christmas,” Luke laughed.
“Ho, ho, ho!” Sam chortled.
“You scum! You slimeball! Put me down. Right now. I can’t believe you did this. Oooh, oooh, this is awful. I needed that money. You don’t know what this means.”