Lemon Lime had a mind of her own.

Over the past several days earthside, she rented a car, dragged Secret Agent Preston Percy on a shopping spree of department stores and restaurants, and shown every sign of taking up permanent residence in a shared motel room on Telegraph Road. You would have thought they were on shore leave instead of an important assignment for the Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning, which was to find the two UFOs ICHHL’s satellite, the Blow Dryer, had tracked as they descended from earth orbit.

As the daughter of the former President of the United States, Lemon was used to being recognized and traveling with a Secret Service detail. Since there was no detail on this trip, Secret Agent Preston Percy was forced to serve as her bodyguard, a stressful role to which he was unaccustomed. He’d convinced her at least to adopt a disguise: she purchased a dark-haired wig to cover her long red tresses, but kept the trademark red beret and rose-colored glasses. This allowed her at least some freedom to venture out of the motel on her own.

“Did you bring me cigarettes?” Preston asked upon Lemon’s return one afternoon. The TV was on KNN, the Kolordot News Network, and an ashtray nearby was filled with musty, charcoal-like remains.

“Something better,” said Lemon, throwing down some Crowley’s shopping bags onto one of two beds, followed by a designer purse she had bought and was already using as a shoulder bag.

“No cigarettes?” asked Preston. “Jesus, I could have gone across the street to the gas station in all this time you’ve been gone …”

Lemon slipped a carton of cigarettes from her designer purse and tossed them to Preston. “Here, you big baby.” She rifled through the shopping bag and pulled out some sexy underwear, held a brassiere, panties, and garter belt up against her torso, which was adorned with a WJZZ French-cut T-shirt. “What do you think?”

“I think you need a boyfriend,” said Preston, breaking open the carton and removing a cellophane-wrapped package. He tapped it against his palm to tamp the tobacco toward the filters. “You’ve been cooped up in the Blow Dryer with all those women too long.”

“You’re my boyfriend,” said Lemon. “We’re supposed to be undercover, remember?”

“We’re not undercover,” said Preston, moving toward the curtained window by the door and peering out onto busy Telegraph Road while he opened the package of cigarettes. “We’re supposed to be tracking down those UFOs we spotted. They could have landed and move across the country several times over by now.”

“They’re still in the area,” said Lemon, dropping the underwear onto the bed. “The Blow Dryer’s been watching for irregular flight activity from orbit, and they haven’t spotted any, or they’d have alerted us. And if they move, we’re ready to follow them.”

“I don’t think those communicators work,” said Preston, referring to two walkie-talkie-like devices on the nightstand between the bed. “The reason the Blow Dryer hasn’t contact us may be because the signal is dead.”

Lemon checked the devices. “The signal is working. I just have it on mute. Besides, they could always send down another shuttle if they needed to deliver us a message.”

“If they could find us,” said Preston. “This isn’t exactly the location we told them we’d be. Your taste is seedy motels is appalling.

Lemon took off her red beret, dark wig, and rose-colored glasses, then pulled off her WJZZ T-shirt over her head, revealing her bare breasts without a bra; she hadn’t even bothered to turn her back to Preston.

Preston, done looking out the window at the berm of Telegraph Road, glanced at Lemon, then busied himself lighting a cigarette.

Lemon took off her jeans and stood fully naked between the beds, then glanced eagerly at Preston. He took a drag from his cigarette.

“Are you just going to stand there or are you going to change into something else?” he said. “Or take a shower? Now that the car’s back, I’d like to go searching for our UFOs, beginning at their last known point of landing.”

Lemon, her hands on her hips, sighed disappointedly. “Nothing doing, eh?” she said.

“What do you mean?” asked Preston, emptying the full ashtray by the TV into a wastebasket.

“Doesn’t this do anything for you?” asked Lemon, dejected. “I mean, I know I’m not exactly college age anymore, but I stay fit …”

“You look fine,” said Preston, flicking an ash into the ashtray. “Now put on some clothes.”

“Oh, you’re no fun.”

“What did you want? You know I’m gay. I haven’t done it with a woman in I don’t know how long. And it wasn’t anything she took pleasure in, believe me.”

“But you used to be with a woman,” said Lemon.

“One woman. She was my first girlfriend in college. My only girlfriend. Before my ‘awakening.’”

“Well, what did you do with her? You had to do something.”

“Oh, Christ, Lemon. Put on some clothes and let’s get some dinner—I’m starving. Then, follow these tracking devices before the trail goes any colder. They’re only a few miles from here.”

“What did she do to you? Did she turn you gay or something?”

“She didn’t do anything,” said Preston, perturbed now. “Pammy was great. We did boyfriend-girlfriend things. She had a boyish body, completely flat-chested, when I first met her; she was almost bulimic, for Christ’s sake. We would, like, do stuff, you know. Not go all the way, that sort of thing.”

“Handjobs? Blowjobs?”

“Yes, if you want to get graphic.”

“I do want to get graphic, terribly. What did you tell her? That you were religious? That you were saving yourself?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. I didn’t know myself, exactly. At least not consciously.”

“What did she think? You were with her a long time—in college, and then in New York. Didn’t she realize …?”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

“You’d have to ask her, Lemon,” said Preston, flopping down on a tattered upholstered chair by a lamp, the ashtray in his lap. “Did Pamela Jointly realize she was a fag hag? I don’t know. She wasn’t stupid. I guess we lived a lie for quite a while. I don’t know what she told herself. I don’t remember what I told myself.”

Lemon sat on the bed nearest the chair, tugged at the cuffs of Preston’s slacks with her bare toes. “Didn’t you ever try to … do it with her?”

“Of course we tried to do it,” said Preston. “You don’t live with a girl for four years without at least trying. I was just very bad at it, and I didn’t know why. She tried stimulating me every which way—she was quite good at it, too. Home video was a new thing, and she played tapes for me.”

“Did it help?”

“Well, there was one scene with two guys and girl. That got me going. That was pretty good.”

“But she still didn’t catch on you were more into guys?”

“Jesus Christ, Lemon. Is this a shrink session?”

“I’m a psychologist by training, and I’ve I studied your dossier. I like to know who my colleagues are.”

“Then you know I’m a private person and don’t like to talk.”

“Just tell me about the dildo?”

“The what?” said Preston, snuffing out the cigarette in the ashtray.

“Preston, I know every purchase you’ve made since 1975. I know you bought a strap on dildo in 1979. You and Pammy both worked for the Manhattan Project at the time; you were living the same New York apartment.”

“It was a Valentine’s Day gift I bought it for her to use on me. Needless to say, she didn’t care for it. She was revolted by it, in fact. She looked ashen when she opened the wrapping; she didn’t say a word. She just quietly tucked it into an underwear drawer and never mentioned it again.”

“That’s sad. But she still didn’t figure it out?”

“Oh, I think on some level she knew. Shortly thereafter, she came home to find me in the shower, blowing a typesetter from work named Gerald.”

“Did I ever tell you I was stuck on a gay guy in junior high school and high school?”

“Don’t tell me you turned him straight.”

“Now, but I got really good at giving head and masturbating myself.”

Preston winced. “Lemon, for Christ’s sake …”

Lemon got up, turned off the TV, and flicked off the lamp. The motel room darkened, except from the cracks of light through the curtains over the window facing Telegraph Road. Preston watched the dim outline of Lemon’s nude form as she knelt between his legs.

“Lemon,” he said.

Lemon Lime was already reaching between her own legs as she unzipped Preston’s fly.

“Just call me Gerald,” she said.

***

Chase Bradford was sweeping up the grass clippings from the driveway with a broom and dust pan and emptying the grass catcher into a metal trash can with a black plastic liner. His yellow tank top was drenched in perspiration and there was grass on his legs below his cutoff shorts.

“I’m making grilled cheese and tomato soup,” said Donna Blank, calling through the front screen door; she had on well-worn jeans and a black tank top. “I don’t cook, I’m afraid.”

“Great,” said Chase. “I’m just finishing up. I’ll be in in a minute.” He took the broom and dustpan and tossed them into the trash can, picked it up and rolled the lawnmower up the driveway toward the open garage.

Donna looked through the screen door up and down the street at her still-new neighborhood. “I wonder what the neighbors will think,” she said to herself. “A boy ten year’s younger staying over.” She looked down at her feet, saw the green eyes of a black cat staring up at her. “What do you think, Dr. Sax? Will they buy that he’s my cousin visiting from art school? And for how long? Do neighbors even care, these days? No, I suppose they don’t.”

As Chase closed the garage door, Donna was setting out the soup and sandwiches on the picnic table on the patio in the back yard. The cat was wandering over the new-mown lawn.

“I’m not good enough to dine in your kitchen,” said Chase. “I’m just the houseboy.”

Donna smirked. “You’re staying in my basement, Charles; I’m putting you up as a favor to Clarissa. Believe me, if my friends knew I was sheltering the creator of Megatron Man, you’d be in a worse predicament.”

“It’s just until the first of August,” said Charles, straddling the bench of the picnic table to sit down. “I signed a lease on an apartment downtown, I told you, and I can start moving in as early as next week. Besides, I didn’t think megaheroes read comic books.”

“Oh, the Troy+Thems have been following your comic books,” said Donna, ladling soup into a bowl. “They’ve noted every inaccuracy and flight of fancy in your first three issues. Generally, they pretend not to be bothered, but I know the copies Clarissa has dropped off have been well-read. Beatrice, for one, I think would like to tear you a new asshole.”

“It’s fictionalized,” said Chase, dunking half a grilled cheese sandwich into his tomato soup. “It’s called literary license. I’ve been meaning to ask you, Donna: Do you wear a padded bra when you’re the Phantom Jungle Girl?” he asked. “You sure are a lot chestier in your tiger-striped bikini, at least in the newspaper photos.”

Donna scowled. “That’s just what I’m talking about,” she said. “Charles, you’re a very talented cartoonist, but you have no social skills. And you don’t have any respect for women.”

“What do you mean?” asked Chase, hurt. “You don’t like my drawings?”

“You’re drawings are … plausible,” said Donna, stirring her soup. “It’s just that they’re … obsessive. And exaggerated. You should draw women that are more realistic. More like me.”

“That’s what Peggy Weir always tells me,” said Chase. “She goes to Warren Woodward. She’s flat as a board, too. She modeled for me; I can draw accurately. It’s just the comics is an exaggerated medium; you have to amplify everything.”

“I know, and color code them,” said Donna. “You’re readers can’t tell good from evil unless everything is in black and white. But it’s not just drawings; you need to make your women characters more proactive. They’re just wallflowers and eye-candy; sex objects.”

“Will you pose for me? Peg posed for me. I talked her into posing for me. She couldn’t get out of it, after having challenged me to draw more realistic women.”

Donna’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m just saying,” said Chase. “It wouldn’t have to be nude or anything. I’m already drawing cats better, just being around Dr. Sax for a few days.” The black cat had taken a seat on the edge of the patio, and was watching the pair quietly as they ate. “I can’t exactly ask a cat to sit still and pose; I just watch her slink around.”

“I saw your sketchbooks,” said Donna. “You’ve also been drawing me. You must have a good visual memory, because I never see you actually sketching. You’ve just been studying my ass and drawing it later.”

Chase blushed.

They ate in silence for some moments, listening to the traffic from Inkster Road behind them, and the sound of distant lawnmower in the evening twilight.

“Are you a lesbian, Donna?”

“Not that it will make a difference as far as you’re concerned, but no,” she said calmly.

“I’m just asking, you know, because Clarissa … and that woman, Dana ….”

“No, we’re not all lesbian,” said Donna. “Some of us are very straight.”

“Do you have boyfriend?”

“At the moment, no,” said Donna. “I had one great love in my life; but he’s gone now. And I’ve been content to be alone.”

“Are you a widow?” asked Chase.

“Not exactly. We never married. But it was … like a marriage.”

Donna glanced over at Dr. Sax.

“I’d like Dana to pose for me again; she used to be a figure model down at Kirby. Do you think she’d pose for me again, or is she too busy being a megahero? That Domina’s got a fantastic body.”

Donna laughed. “I know she’s posed for art classes, but I’m not sure what she would say about posing privately for one artist, let alone a male. I’d like to see you ask her. In fact, you’ll get the opportunity this weekend; the whole bunch is coming over for a picnic. Which reminds me, I have a whole list—I’m sending you shopping tomorrow.”

“Really? That will be fantastic,” said Chase, wiping his lips with a napkin; he was finished with his meal and was getting up. “Can I help with the dishes?”

“No, don’t worry. I’ll get everything. Thanks for mowing the lawn, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Chase, getting up from the picnic table. “I’m going to take a shower and go draw.”

“You do that,” said Donna.

Chase went into the house, the screen door slamming behind him. Donna pushed her bowl and plate away.

“God, I just lost my appetite,” she said to the cat. “The idea of him jerking off in my shower. And then, we’re going to have to listen to him again all night. How did we get stuck with a young, dumb comic book artist as a houseguest, Dr. Sax? Maybe I can give him some cash for the lawn and send him off to movie, get him out of the house for at least one night.”

Donna stirred her soup again, sighing.

“The first of August can’t come soon enough.