Her toes sank out of sight as she sat up straighter in the Jacuzzi. “Will that make you feel more in the mood?”

“Yeah. Actually, it would.”

“Okay.” She pointed to her dresser. “Look in that top left-hand drawer there. You’ll find some scented candles and a box of matches. Light some of those and you can turn off the overhead light.”

He did as she instructed. Then he hung his trench coat on the coatrack by the door before slinking into the bathroom.

Good thing this was a luxury condominium-given the size of the typical hotel/motel bathroom, Jules expected to barely have room enough to turn around, but there was ample space here. He examined the harlequin suit after he managed to wiggle out of it. He’d definitely have to get it dry-cleaned; the sides beneath the sleeves were already yellowish with drying perspiration.

He leaned against the sink as he stepped out of his underwear. So he was actually going to do this. He was actually going to get laid. Jules stared down at his stomach. He couldn’t see his privates, but his belly’s white folds were sturdily propped up in the middle.

Maybe his pecker was happy, but for some reason his eyes were beginning to water like hell. What the devil could be causingthat? He checked behind the shower curtain. He saw nothing but a bar of soap, a bottle of conditioning shampoo, and a Lady Bic razor. He examined the sink a little closer. The stinging in his eyes got worse. He knelt down and opened up the cabinet beneath the sink.Whew! What a stink! When his vision cleared, he saw a canvas duffel bag sitting beneath the drainpipe. He pulled it toward the edge of the cabinet and opened it. The contents nearly knocked him against the opposite wall.

What the fuck? Garlic cloves! Enough to cook a feast for the entire Mafia! And crucifixes?What was she doing with all this crap (and in the bathroom, yet)?

“Jules? What’s taking you so long in there, handsome? I’m getting lonely.”

He shut the cabinet and quickly dabbed his eyes with some toilet paper. When he left the bathroom, his fleshy tent was already beginning to sag. Should he ask her about the weird crap under the sink? Or should he just climb in the tub and pork her while it was still an option?

“Thereyou are,” she said brightly. “I was afraid I’d turn into a prune before you got here. Come on in! The water’sdelicious!”

His big head (the one atop his neck) told him to leave. His little head (the one below his stomach) told him to get the hell in the hot tub already. Little head overruled big head. Jules grabbed hold of the side of the tub and climbed in. It was a big Jacuzzi, true, maybe big enough for four or five normal-sized folks, but with Veronika already ensconced, he felt like the proverbial sardine squeezing into a sardine can.

The upside of this situation was that his naked flesh was jammed tightly against her naked flesh. “Mmmm, c’mere, lover,” she whispered. “This time, you aren’t goinganywhere.”

She kissed him more expertly this time. He felt lost in her glorious body. Lost, and he never wanted to be found again. And then she stopped kissing him.

“Huh?” He opened his eyes. “Whassa matter? You were doin‘great, baby-”

“Hold your horses, handsome.” She removed the cork from a small bottle of clear liquid. “This bath oil is my absolutefavorite. It’ll make us smell all flowery fresh for when we climb into bed.”

She poured the contents of the bottle into the tub. The water’s bubbling immediately tripled in intensity. Jules felt the stings of a thousand fire ants over every submerged inch of his body.

“Aahhh!Holyfuck! What’d you do?”

Agonized, Jules struggled to pull himself out of the cramped Jacuzzi. The water boiled fiercely, but Veronika was unaffected-far from being in pain, she tightened her legs’ vise-grip around Jules’s torso, forcing him back into the violent froth.

“Lover, what’s the matter?” Her strong hands pressed down on his shoulders. “Stay in the tub with me, darling-”

“Leggo, you crazy broad! Letgo!” He plunged his hands into the burning bubbles and dug his jagged fingernails into her imprisoning thighs. She yelped. Her grip on him loosened, just enough for him to propel his bulk onto the top step and scramble over the Jacuzzi’s edge. Veronika screamed in dismay and made a last-ditch grab for his privates, but her fingers slid off the slippery, reddened folds of his belly as he flung himself over the side.

His foot whacked her head as he tumbled onto the floor below, hurling her back into the water. He landed on his left shoulder. A sudden sharp pain told him he might’ve dislocated it, but that hurt was nothing compared to the burning he felt from the neck down. He crawled across the floor to the bed, grabbed the bedpost, and pulled himself to his feet.

“Jules! Don’t leave me!”

He didn’t look back. He grabbed his trench coat from the rack, then winced as he flung it around his shoulders. He nearly tore the door off its hinges getting out of the room.

“Jules! Come back!Jules! ”

Her plaintive screams followed him into the hall. His thighs rubbed against each other like poison-coated sandpaper as he stumbled toward the stairs. Every last quivering part of him burned with the fires of hell. Especially the part that had gotten him into this mess in the first place. It’d be a long,long time before his little head was in any shape to give the rest of him orders again.

Served the little bastard right,Jules imagined Maureen hissing as he limped into the darkness of Barracks Street.Served the boiled little bastard right.

Doodlebug’s flight, the red-eye from San Francisco, was already two and a half hours late. The Delta terminal’s coffee stands had all closed long ago. Glum, sleepy, and surly would-be greeters were sprinkled throughout the waiting area, which had been fitted with plastic seats that were reasonably comfortable if judged against the standard of medieval torture devices. Worst of all, Jules’s body felt like a throbbing wad of gristle.

For the hundredth time in the last five minutes, Jules shifted position in a futile effort to achieve a modicum of comfort. Successfully concealing the rashlike physical evidence of his latest misadventure from Maureen had been a minor miracle. He wondered if that miracle would last another night.

At last, the lights of an approaching jetliner flashed through the terminal’s windows. Like zombies crawling from their graves, the greeters bestirred themselves, rose from their seats, and shuffled toward the gate. Jules joined the bedraggled procession. He tried hard to convince himself that Doodlebug’s visit would have its positive aspects, but the only one his flailing mind could grasp was that Maureenmight harangue him slightly less while his ex-sidekick was in town.

The first passengers to exit the tunnel were three teenagers, all struggling under the weight of overstuffed duffel bags. One was a brown-haired boy about the same age as Doodlebug had been when Jules turned him. It’d been years since Jules had seen his onetime sidekick; could this be-? No; the boy was immediately scooped into the arms of a gaggle of relatives and dragged toward the luggage retrieval.

The jetliner continued vomiting out passengers-tourists in lewd T-shirts, ready for Bourbon Street; businessmen with their copies of theWall Street Journal; purple-haired grandmas toting giant stuffed bears. Jules began to wonder if maybe Doodlebug had missed his flight. Wouldn’tthat be the kicker! But then one of the deplaning passengers hooked Jules’s interest. This one was a real stunner. Skintight red mini dress; long auburn hair that looked good even under the ghastly fluorescent lights; big gorgeous blue-gray eyes; slender hips; and legs that would flatter a Parisian runway model. Way too skinny to be Jules’s type, but he still could appreciate her from a purely aesthetic point of view.