Summer Swap 6-19

They were all together in the yacht’s most frequented room on the fourth level, all of them stooped or on tip-toes, looking to find Lily wherever it might be she was hiding. Sully looked behind the couch, Chey behind the curtains. Carla wandered with arms crossed, and Cody kept shouting out Lily’s name. He’d donned new shorts and a T-shirt, but couldn’t stop playing with the uncomfortable caged bulk behind his fly, grabbing, tugging, scratching.

Byron said, “We should split up, gang.”

Philippe laughed. Chey said, “We do have a lot of rooms to search.”

Byron said to Chey, “I thought Scarlet would be the Daphne. You want to be Velma?”

Paloma said, “Who’s Daphne?”

Chey rolled her eyes. “Oh, I get it. Scooby Doo.”

Philippe explained to Paloma in Portuguese what the joke was.

Arlo stood near Carla in the center of the room, not even trying to help them look. He said, “Guys, we’re never going to find her. She can curl up really small. When she hides, she hides.”

Cody huffed, his nostrils flaring. “Is she okay? Like mentally?”

Arlo looked offended. “Yeah, of course she is. She’s having the time of her life right now. All these years we thought we were the freaks, and we had to keep it secret. Turns out we’re not so freaky after all, not in the comparative sense.”

Byron regarded Arlo from behind, in three-quarter profile. Arlo had just admitted to them all that it wasn’t just Lily who was the surprise freak, but that he was too. He said, “What are you into?”

Arlo turned. “What do you mean?”

“Your kink. You said you guys were freaks. What kind of freaks? What’s your thing?”

“Me? My thing?” Arlo scratched his arm, shifted his eyes. “Basically anything Lily tells me to be into.”

Carla studied Arlo with a measure of warmth and of admiration.

Scarlet said, “She could be anywhere. This boat is—”

Sully said, “Ship.”

“Whatever,” Scarlet said. “Yacht. This yacht is huge. There’re like five levels, all those bedrooms, the whole engine room, like, she could be anywhere. Shouldn’t we just go back to where the game was and wait for her to show up?”

“Not so urgent,” Cody said, “when it’s not your fuzzy little box locked up, is it?”

Scarlet said, “Good luck tricking me into locking up my box. You put your dick in a cage and didn’t wonder why?”

“She said it was a toy, Scarlet.”

Carla soothed her husband, stroking his chest. The voice of reason, she said, “Let’s just go back to the table and wait to see what she has planned. Okay?”

“Just get me a toolbox,” Cody said. “I’ll be out of this thing in a minute.”

“No one’s putting snips or blades anywhere near my man’s sensitive treasures.”

“I’m getting this cage off my dick, Carla.”

“Oh, no you’re not.”

Cody looked at Carla, features pinched, part disdain, part questioning. “Oh, I’m not?”

Carla smoothed her hands on his chest some more. “I know my big strong army man can get his dick out if he wanted, but where’s the fun in that?”

“Where’s the fun in it? The fun is that I can use my dick.”

“I thought you were up for this challenge?”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not. You’re acting like my favorite macho man, but look, baby, this is fun. I want to see where it goes.”

“Well, it’s going places without my dick. So...”

“Baby, I think you got out-played. Say it with me...”

“Say what?”

“Say it: respect.”

Cody’s mouth fidgeted around, his eyes narrowed, shifting from left to right. He began to smile. “Respect,” he muttered, seeing it now.

“Lily got you.”

He nodded. “She got me good.”

“We want to see how this plays out.”

“Okay.”

Byron said, “I wonder what she has in store for you?”

***

It was just outside in the fresh night air that Lily made her appearance at last. High above their heads, maybe twenty feet above, a dark figure appeared at the edge of the yacht’s helipad and looked down upon them. Byron spotted her first, alerting them. They all looked up.

The cloaked figure switched on a battery powered lantern and held it outward. It was Lily and the cloak she wore was just a blanket wrapped around her, right up over her head and forming a cowl-like hood. Scarlet snorted and covered her mouth. Lily set down the lantern so the light cast up on her body from below in a dramatic fashion. She held something else outward now, something small and shiny, pinched between thumb and forefinger.

Chey gasped. “The key!”

Scarlet snorted again behind her cupped hand, and then toed the back of Chey’s knee, making Chey drop a few inches. Chey shot her a dirty look. Scarlet snorted more.

With the blanket flapping in the light breeze, and the held-out key, Lily looked to Byron like some oracle in a post-apocalyptic world. Holding the chastity-cage key high above her head like a powerful magical totem, an ancient thing of power, something Sauron would amass orcish armies to seek.

Byron said, “This is the best night ever.”

He looked to see if anyone agreed. Carla was standing right next to him, face turned up, eyes dazzled by what she saw. Carla said, “This is amazing. Maybe the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

Sully agreed. “The drama, the theater...”

Arlo said, “She went to art school.” He shrugged, put his hands in his pockets. “Minored in theater.”

Carla made the fingers-to-mouth gesture of a chef’s kiss towards Lily, eyes up in wonder at this incredible spectacle.

Cody cupped his hands to his mouth and called up to her. “What do I have to do to get that key?”

Lily smiled, pulled the cowl hood over one eye like the Phantom of the Opera, lowered the key and popped it into her mouth. Then she enacted the cartoonish theater of swallowing, Vaudeville style, making the gulp sound and all.

Cody said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Everyone else cracked up. After a long moment of breathless laughter and some applause, Cody said, “It probably comes with two keys.”

Lily smiled and held up a finger, an instruction for them to wait. She presented another shiny key, then did the same all over again. Everyone but Cody laughed. When they all applauded her performance, Lily bowed for them, stage left, stage right, full ceremonial bows as if they were also throwing roses up to her feet on the the helipad stage.

Cody muttered, “I’m getting a fucking toolbox.”

Carla laughed and threw her arms around her husband. “You’re just going to have to suffer, handsome.”

Cody said, “Yeah, but for how long?”

Byron said, “I think you have to wait about nine hours, then find it in her poop.”

***

Scarlet greeted Lily as she climbed down the ladder from the helipad and joined them on the deck, putting her arms around her to protect her from the gathering crowd. She said, “I think you might be my hero, Lily.”

Then they were surrounded. Cody was direct. “I want that key, Lily.”

Scarlet said, “You saw she swallowed it, Cody. What do you want to do, maker her barf it up.” Lily giggled and Scarlet cuddled her.

Cody said, “My dog ate a whole bowl of cherries once, and the vet said to give him hydrogen peroxide to make him barf.”

Scarlet said, “What kind of psycho vet do you have? Did your dog barf up these precious cherries?”

“Cherry pits are toxic, Scarlet. And you’re missing the point.” Now Cody said to Carla, “Do we have any hydrogen peroxide?”

Carla said they probably did, maybe in the first aid kit, and Cody asked Byron to go fetch it.

Byron said, “Why me? I don’t care if your dick’s locked up. I think it’s funny.”

Chey said to Lily, “Were those the real keys you swallowed?”

Lily shrugged. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Carla held out her hands to get control of the anxious group. She said to Lily, “What’s next, Lily-bug? What’s the next part of your game?”

Lily hid behind Scarlet, peeking around her hair at the rest of the gang. In a strange and creaky voice, one Scarlet surmised was the voice of her blanket-shrouded oracle, Lily said, “What am I when I'm tall when I'm young, but I’m short when I'm old?”

Cody said, “Knock it off, Lily. You’re creeping me out.”

Carla elbowed Cody, her eyes still on Lily and smiling wide, eyes full of intrigue. “You’re a candle. What’s next.”

Now Lily extended an arm over Scarlet’s shoulder and curled her finger like an inch worm, each wiggle on a syllable, creaking, “Yes, my pretty one, you are correct!”

Scarlet watched Byron laugh so hard he folded over. Sully was having a hoot as well. Scarlet chuckled and it made Lily’s creepy talking-finger nod up and down.

“Quit laughing, redhead,” Lily said in the ancient oracle’s voice, “you’re making me sea-sick.”

Even Chey began to laugh. Paloma watched wide-eyed, like this was the craziest thing she’d ever seen from any of her American friends. Philippe’s smile showed white in his dense black beard. Cody’s brow furrowed and he showed a distinct worry in his eyes.

Cody pleaded, “Lily, please...”

Lily croaked now, “Yes, your treasure is trapped and it wants its freedom.” She gave him a teasing finger wiggle, still hiding behind Scarlet, who faced the rest of them just like Lily, getting the best seat in the house, Lily’s hot breath tickling her shoulder.

Cody said, “What’s wearing a blanket and about to go overboard?”

Lily giggled and taunted Cody some more. “I am taken from a mine, and shut up in a case, from which I am never released, and yet I am used by almost every person. What am I?”

“Uh, you’re my dick? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“You’re getting warmer,” Lily croaked. “But if I were your willy”—now she clamped a hand over her mouth and said in a muffled creak—“I would sound like this.”

Sully-boy was red-faced with laughter. Byron had to turn away. Chey was fixated, like she was intent on solving the riddles so she could free her favorite penis in the whole wide world. Arlo admired his wife, arms crossed, eyes filled with joyful mirth.

“I just have to say,” Carla said, “I think I’m in love with Lily Dixon.”

Lily croaked to Cody, “I am bullion. And you are bull. Bull dick, get it?”

“It’s not funny,” Cody said.

Lily’s finger wiggled. “Then why is everybody laughing so hard?”

Cody looked around and admonished all his friends, all of them busting up except for Chey who was on Team Cody. Cody said, “Because they’re all idiots, that’s why.”

Sully said, “And this is coming from the guy who stuck his dick in a mousetrap.”

“She said it was a toy.”

“Give us a clue, Lily,” Carla said.

Lily said now, “What has keys but can’t open locks?”

Chey said, “Is this a real clue, Lily?”

Before Lily could even answer, Cody shouted, “A piano!” And then he was gone, racing back inside the yacht’s top level, bursting past the doorway. He was gone before anyone could even react. Then one by one they sputtered their own disbelieving laugh.

“Holy shit, this is awesome,” Philippe said. Paloma spoke obvious words of encouragement aimed at Lily in her native tongue.

Carla took Lily under her arm, saying, “Are we heading to the piano, or is my husband on a goose chase?”

Lily—oracle voice gone, back to normal now—said, “Let’s see what our bull has found in the parlor.”