Chub jokes and female-threesome innuendoes rolled off their backs. The Mathers twins, for instance. Less than head lice they'd been in their attempts to draw verbal razors across the girls' brains.

But as soon as she and Pim heard how Ig and Opie Mathers had bullied Nils Fancher, they invoked their November pact, secured the testimony of reliable witnesses, tracked the slugnuts down, told them what was about to happen and why, and flogged the living s.h.i.t out of them to within a hair's breadth of what the law allowed.

Ig and Opie's flesh had sizzled beneath a white-hot brand, high flutes of pain issuing from split lips as U for Unkind seared deep into their foreheads.

It had been nothing like the violence normal people dole out to remind one another that life is cool, that they're alive, and that they have "a whipped kind of love to share," as the Pink Ladies so righteously belted out on the radio.

Altoona sang along.

Nearly too late, she spied the street sign. She turned wide on a screeecha"what the h.e.l.l, nothing coming her way.

Pimlico's house was five down on the right, where Stardust Place teed in. She roared into the driveway, jerked up hard on the brake, and killed the engine.

The sound of her black leather skirt shifting over the seat was covered by a vigorous shake of trees outside the car. That and the blare of a TV inside Pim's house turned the night as crisp and alive as cathedral air.

On the umpteenth ring, one of Pim's moms came to the door. It was the scraggly one, whose hair reminded Altoona of tossed straw.

"Oh yeah, right," she said, "come in."

She was thin and naked, fresh welts raised across her belly. Dark puffy bags slung beneath her eyesa"not the morning hangover ones that fade with coffee, fresh air, and locomotion, but the sort that endure and define. A hastily pulled-up lobebag hid her lefty.

In the vestibule, the straw-haired mom angled her head back as if readying a sneeze. Her mouth widened. "Pimmie! Your date's here!" A wasted gaze at Altoona. "She'll be down."

"Thanks."

Pim's pop shouted from the TV room, " here!" Nola was already on the move. "I'm coming fast as I can, b.u.t.tf.u.c.k," she mumbled, casting an all-men-are-sc.u.m look toward Altoona.

Pim yelled, "Be right down!"

"going?" Again the man's voice, apparently to Pim's other mom.

Altoona had never met her girlfriend's father. All she knew about him was that he cared not the whit of a s.h.i.t about his daughters.

From the TV room, Pim's kid sisters made gross-out sounds. Altoona recognized the political spot. Oink-oinks blared from a hefty porker. Its throat caught on something. Then a blurt of spew hit an empty trough, replay, replay, replay. The camera jittered through a series of ugly jumpcuts as a stern DoleMorec.r.a.p announcer intoned Fenny Boyle's sins.

And it was only primary season.

Things were certain to heat up, the vitriol eating away at an already frayed political fabric, from now to November, Jesus G.o.d!

Onscreen, Fenny Boyle's digital clone, as convincing as technology could make him, knelt and (the kids fake-wretched again) bobbed, coming up with a dripping grin of brownish gunk and saying, "Mmmmm, tastes great!!!"

Pa.s.sing it off as true wasn't as important as convincing voters it was a plausible scenarioa"that was what the game was about.

Pim's other mom burst into view, naked as well but with fewer welts. She pumped Altoona's hand, her lobes right out there in plain sight. "How ya doin'?"

As urbane as Altoona prided herself in being, she was always startled to see Britt Franken's left lobe exposed like that, wet with recent chewing.

But she liked Britt a lot.

There was plenty of heart behind her hard-edged exterior, and no room for bulls.h.i.t.

Not waiting for Altoona's reply, Britt opened the hall closet, her reach stretching the blue-veined backs of her thighs and lifting her right foot off the carpet. When she turned, two items were squat-towered in her hands, a yearbook and a dated Futterware container, the orange-lidded kind that had been popular when Pim and Altoona were in grade school.

"For s.h.i.t's sake, Britt, you gotta see this!" More a command than a suggestion.

"In a minute, you smelly heap of sewage," said Britt, her last phrase dropped way low and delivered with a grin in Altoona's direction.

Britt's hands worked at the lid.

"He loved me then. Kent Bodeen and Mimsie Chesk were chosen our year, pretty much nothing-people n.o.body in the cla.s.s gave a d.a.m.n about, so it worked out pretty well. The Frankenburger in there," Britt indicated the TV room, "kept looking over at them once they were draped out for all to see. He kept talking strategy, talking about the hunks of flesh he'd go after. His hands, when he wasn't fondling me, drifted to his cleaver. 'Just slice off something good,' I told him, 'something our kids can be proud of.' And when midnight struck, my fella dove straight in and got us some upper lip and the tip of, I'm not fooling now no not a bit, Mimsie's left earlobe."

Sure enough, as the lid drew back, a hefty lobe, shrunken in the process of being preserved and capped at the stump like a rabbit's foot, lay there in all its glory. It may or may not have been a lefty. But right or left, the possibility that he had slashed through to hack off a dead student's lobebag, claimed the coveted tip, and not kept it himself, spoke volumes about their puppy love.

"Wow!" said Altoona.

Britt nodded. "Don't it just beat all?"

Upstairs a door slammed.

"Hey, little miss fat f.u.c.k, my lefty's throbbing and my whip hand's getting real itchy." Deadly warning.

"All right, all right. Gotta go. You two chickies have a swell time." She shrugged at the blood-smeared yearbook in her hands, resealed the Futterware, replaced both items in the closet, and b.u.t.tocked off out of sight.

"Pretty sorry excuse, ain't she?"

Altoona turned to her descending date.

The pain having at last subsided in her crotch, Pim's s.e.xy slink was back. She wore fishnet stockings, a tight black killer dress that ended a hand's breadth above her knees, and a face whose frail wounded wince burned deep in Altoona's heart.

"Your mom's not all that bad."

Scrunch about the eyes: "Give me a break." A cleaver dangled beside the Futterware on Pim's hip.

"Uh, sure, sweets," said Altoona.

"On second thought, give me a hug."

Leather brushed against leather as Pim cozied into her arms and angled up, engulfing in sweet lip-warmth Altoona's friendship lobe.

People said the lobes weren't connected. But she'd be d.a.m.ned if, every time her girlfriend's mouth closed on her right lobe, she didn't feel heat tingle in the left.

"You're walking just fine, hon."

Pim shrugged. "I took longer to heal than you, I guess. Last night helped."

Altoona remembered wet slides of niobium cathedraling at either side of her mouth as she softly dug for the love nub between. "Yum. You were okay a week ago, from what I could see."

"Yeah, possibly. But I didn't want to tear anything before Cabrille checked me out one last time."

Altoona laughed. "She was really coming on to us."

"Again!" Eyes wide for emphasis.

"Right."

"Cabrille's good. You can tell when she touches you, when she slips the needle in and explains how to clean the piercings and put on the Polysporin. But man, the way she looked at us that night . . . ."

"Yeah, it was pretty sick."

Altoona had held Pim, comforted her, wiping drops of sweat from her brow, and knowing as the woman proceeded upwarda"left right, left right, like a saleswoman threading bootlacea"that she would be next.

Cabrille, thirty miles away in Topeka, showed, even that night, a glimmer of interest beyond professionalism. But years and a life (Altoona suspected) too weird to contemplate had put the bag-breasted, crow-footed piercer beyond the reach of desire.

Besides, she was a woman, and a female threesome was illegal, not to mention yucky even to contemplate.

"She must've thought we were pervies."

"Yeah," Altoona said, "or potential ones."

"Some folks don't listen," said Pim, taking Altoona's hand and leading her out into the cool quiet night. "I told her about Condor and Blayne, how we thought their mouths were way cool when they showed up all swollen and pus-y from Christmas break."

"They sure took a razzing."

"Kids and teachers both." Pimlico opened the pa.s.senger door. "But folks changed their tune when everything healed up and Blayne started to work his zipper, slow and idle, right there in history cla.s.s."

Altoona settled behind the wheel. "He kissed me, you know."

"The heck he did." Pim peered over to test her. "Oh bulls.h.i.t! You're such a bulls.h.i.tter!"

"He did!"

"Yeah, right." She slid closer. "Was it like this?" Pim's feisty bod overlaid hers, her fingers up under Altoona's lobes, her lips coming down to pillow against her mouth.

Pim broke the kiss, smiling, her right hand drifting down to grope Altoona's leather-mounded left breast.

"More metal in it," said Altoona. "More tentative, but real s.e.xy. We were between cla.s.ses."

"The f.u.c.k he kissed you. Did he really?"

"You'll see." She fired up the rattletrap, giving it extra pedal to make to vroom. "I wanted to surprise you. They're in a receptive mood. I got 'em h.o.r.n.y for the big fourway."

"Both of 'em? Oh bulls.h.i.t, bulls.h.i.t, bulls.h.i.t!" She hit the seat with the flat of her hand. "Come on Altoona, I don't like it when you tease."

"It's not a tease. We set it up. During the search for the dead couple, in the costume shop behind the stage. All you've gotta do is bring along your enthusiasm and your killer bod."

Pim countered with a renewed volley of bulls.h.i.ts, but it was clear she was starting to buy in. Altoona hoped Blayne had been able to persuade Condor, and that what both she and Pim longed for might begin tonight.

She flashed again upon their piercer, on Cabrille's calculated ramblings about the delights of female threesomes. No, they weren't pervies by that standard, but Altoona guessed more than a few prudish eyebrows would be raiseda"and the law brought thundering downa"were word to leak that a foursome was in the offing amongst those who had bought big-time into the zipper craze.

Well f.u.c.k 'em, she thought, zooming backward into the street from the driveway. Love was love, whatever shape it took. Praise be to G.o.d for a world that could produce Pimlico, and praise abounding for the possibility of digging their talons into two super guys like Condor Plasch and Blayne Coom, brilliant, weird, dark, brooding sons of their mamas' most bizarre and urgent dreams.

"Hang on, hon," Altoona said. She pushed on into the promise of night, her brain radiant with possibility.

5. High School Secured.

There was a split focus in the cabinet room: the video screen that covered an entire wall, and President Hargill Windf.u.c.ker's asinine comments.

Although the s.h.i.te House video feed was and would remain private, famed sportscaster Blennuth Ponger had, this year, been shanghaied into the role of TV announcer. Ponger's laconic delivery betrayed his feeling that he was clearly out of his league.

"Here come the seniors."

Long silence.

"Our saucy little Home Ec teacher, behind the wheel of her killer car, is just a mile from Choke Cherry High."

Long silence.

"Right here, beneath this scrawled number, a big black fifty-seven, will the chosen couple meet their destined fate."

That sort of thing.

President Windf.u.c.ker filled in Ponger's long stretches of silence with "Cute couple o' kids" or "That Home Ec gal's out for bear, isn't she?"

Whenever Cholly Bork voiced these inanities, angling the strings so that the presidential head shifted thoughtfully, the twelve cabinet officers turned from the screen and toward Gilly Windf.u.c.ker to murmur and mutter "Very cute" or "She sure is, Mister President."

They sounded like churchgoers mumbling the phrases of a litany. They looked like spectators at a tennis match.

In her shiny red sports car, Karn Flentrop preened for the camera. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, her nails long and pearl-sheened as the steering wheel rotated this way and that. She came to a stop, yanked up on the handbrake, and slid her sultry legs out of the car, taking the elevator to the backways as she patted her perm.

"Her moment of glory," mused Windf.u.c.ker.

"Glory indeed, Mister President."

Camera switch. The young victim, a fresh-faced boy with much promise and no future, was helping his date out of the car, swish of a prom dress, her hand lifted like a swan's neck to his. The shot of them as they crossed the parking lot and entered the school wasn't the clearest, but it was critical not to arouse their suspicions.

Gilly Windf.u.c.ker noted, "That gal would have made somebody a wonderful mom. Nice lobes on her, she's packing quite a pair."

"It's a crying shame, sir." "She's a gem." "Her young man could be in pictures." "They make us proud to be Americans."

As the doomed couple pa.s.sed through locker-lined hallways to the gymnasium, Blennuth Ponger launched into the usual canned bios. In the upper right part of the screen, an inset series of stills and home videos tracked their childhoods, first steps, pony rides, birthday parties, theme park vacations.

"It kinda reddens the lobes, dunnit, watching them kids grow up, knowing what we're gonna see in a while, getting caught up in the antic.i.p.ation?"

"It does, Mister President."