Lock, Croc and Two Smoking Barrels

"Missy, I have a crazy plan, and it doesn't involve sex at all." Michael explained. "Do you think you and Odile look alike at all, other than the obvious? Like, height, measurements, stuff like that?"

"She's at least four inches taller than me." Missy pointed out the most apparent difference (well, the second most).

"Do you have high heels, like really big ones? Like fuck-me-heels?"

Missy sneered at Michael, incredulous. "Do I have fuck-me-heels? Of course I have fuck-me-heels. Don't be silly." She kept looking at Odile. "Why don't we go to the mirror?"

They entered the bathroom so she could look at herself and Odile. "We have similar lips. Her cheekbones are less prominent. She's a little more muscular than me, but that could just be the scales."

"What about... these?" Odile gestured to her breasts. "Whatever they're called."

"They're called 'tits,' sweetheart." Missy said. "And yours look pretty nice."

"I don't know. They just get in the way when I swim." She looked down at them.

Missy moved over and reached her hand and pulled Odile's breasts out of her bathrobe. She allowed this. "Man, those are really nice." She nodded. "And for me, tits don't get in the way. They move stuff out of the way. They open doors and help you. They are your two best friends. So I should stop smothering them." Missy threw her robe completely off and looked at her breasts in the mirror. "I think I've got you beat, Odile."

Odlie looked to her right, at Missy's legendary rack, and back into the mirror for the direct comparison. "I don't know. They look pretty close to me."

"Well, the hand is faster than the eye, so let's try this way." She spun Odile to the side, her tail pulling the shower curtain along as she turned. They faced each other, and before Odile could react, both of Missy's hands were on both of Odile's breasts. She kneaded them in her palms, folding them against her thumbs, which gently rotated her green nipples. All in the pursuit of science, of course.

"Yeah, those feel a lot like mine." She lifted them upwards, trying to gauge their weight. "But I still think I have you beat." Missy said. "See, touching them has me all hot now..." Missy dropped the breasts, which returned to their position with a single bounce. She slipped her hands behind Odile's head and kissed her once, very slowly, on the lips.

Michael, watching the whole spectacle, his boner aching in its denim prison, wondered if this was what the other guys on the Internet meant when they called him a 'cuck.' He thought it was the insult du jour, but maybe they were right after all.

Released from the kiss, Odile did smile, but neatly pulled out of Missy's grip. "Michael, will your plan work?"

"I think so." Michael said. "Missy, get dressed. I'm going to take you outside." She dressed in her bathrobe with the utmost reluctance. "More than that. Like, real clothes."

"I don't have any real clothes."

"What?"

"I live here. And all I own are swimsuits and lingerie."

"OK, well, go get a bathing suit to put on under it."

She left. Odile tucked herself back into her robe. "She seems nice."

"Maybe. I've only talked to her twice, and she's tried to have sex with me both times."

"Well, I tried to eat you when we met, so..." Odile chuckled dryly, drifting off into another thought. "She's really pretty. I... wish I looked more like her."

Michael swung his arms around her and hugged her tightly. "I choose you, every day of the week, and twice on Sundays. Don't forget that."

Odile hummed gently.

***

Outside the park, the crowd was starting to regret starting the protest so early. They were a giant sweating mob. That much was normal, but the sun was directly overhead, and there were no water fountains outside the park. The protest has lost much of the vigor it had started with, but it came back when someone recognized the hapless park employee who had told them he'd summon the enslaved half-human cavorting hopelessly for Salty Peter's amusement.

Michael hustled to the front of the crowd, a woman in a bathrobe walking barefoot behind him. Michael would personally rather eat a nacho chip off the floor of a movie theater than walk around here barefoot, but it didn't bother her. Maybe she just didn't like the Y-shaped tan lines flip-flops would leave on her feet.

"Hello, everyone!" Missy surprised Michael by immediately taking the floor. "I'm Linda Faiman. I work here at Salty Peter's Cove of Fun, but most crucially... I am an actress."

Michael watched the crowd settle a little as she spoke. "I'm so happy you're all so concerned for my well-being, but... The Amazing Alligator Woman, or Alli-Girl, as I like to call her... she's just a fictional character. It's me in about four hours of makeup. I think Julie, the makeup head, she's going to be thrilled you all convinced Alli was a real person."

Missy opened her arms. "Don't be sad that you were fooled. There's nothing foolish about compassion and caring. I'm so glad you all came out in support, but... I'm doing just fine, folks! Thanks for coming out!"

She started to walk away. The crowd crackled with life again, but for once, the anger wasn't directed at Michael, but at each other. One guy shoved the dreadlocked dude. "You idiot! You told me she was real!"

"Hey!" Michael pointed sharply at him. "If I knew I was going to have a riot on my hands, I would've told you all to get lost from the start. So if you're going to fight each other, do it somewhere else!"

The crowd, mostly defeated, dispersed with the excruciating lack of enthusiasm of the end of movie night in the lounge of an old folks' home. Michael sighed and returned into the park. Missy was standing there, waiting for him. "You just told 100 people to bug off, and they actually did. That is the hottest thing any guy has ever done."

"They wouldn't have believed me if you weren't so convincing. Thank you so much. I owe you one."

"Fuck me."

"You just met my girlfriend."

"Girlfriend is just a word."

"If you really want some..." Michael said. "Look for an employee named Kevin. He's Japanese. Trust me."

"How do you know?" Missy asked. "Are you gay?"

"No, I'm not. I just--" Michael attempted to explain it gingerly. "I have it on good information."

Missy shrugged. "All right. I'll keep my eyes out for him."

"Do you really not own any normal clothes?"

"I own ONE one-piece swimsuit, which is black, so it's perfect for funerals."

"Well, I'll see you by the pool." Michael split off from her to return to his room, though perhaps he should pretend he was 'working' for a little while longer. If he saw Kevin first, he'd have to give him a heads-up.

He unlocked Odile's room and entered. She wasn't on the bed, so he turned to his left and found her in the bathroom, sat on the toilet backwards, her arms leaning on the tank.

"Whoa! Close the door!" He threw his hands over his eyes. Odile looked over at him like nothing was out of place. Unmoved, she slapped the door with her tail and shut it.

Michael gave her a few minutes to finish up, flipping through the channels in vain to find something to watch at almost noon that wasn't the news or the Price is Right.

Odile came out, but he never heard the toilet flush. Despite this evidence, Michael was pretty certain she wasn't actually raised in a barn. He had heard the shower run for a minute, and her leathery skin was sparkling with moisture. He stood from the bed and grabbed her, and they kissed. They toppled into the sheets, shuffling back as Michael unfastened his jeans.

Odile noticed, and pushed Michael back a few inches, enough that she could speak. "I'm sorry, I don't want to do that right now."

"That's OK." Michael said. "Maybe tonight, after the show, then?"

"I don't think so." Odile said. "See, while you were gone, I tried doing that thing you did to me... to myself, and... I scratched myself."

"Are you OK?" Michael asked.

"I'm fine, but... I don't think it's a good idea for us to do that right now."

"You're right." Michael shifted around behind Odile and spooned her, her tail passing between his legs. "But... maybe we can do the other thing?"

Odile turned back to face him. "What other thing?"

"You know... the other thing." Odile's face was as blank. In the interest of demonstration, Michael brought Odile back to the edge of the bed, her legs hanging off and her knees touching the carpet. Michael took her tail by the base and coaxed it away from her rear...

What he was looking for, between her buttocks... it wasn't there. Now he understood why she was confused. There was only one entrance and one exit.

One exit... Michael realized something Odile had in common with birds, frogs and the platypus. If he'd known this... maybe he wouldn't have been so eager to get his mouth on it. Then again, plenty of the most virile men ever to have their sex tapes committed to VHS were more than happy to do that. Why was he, perhaps ironically, such a pussy?

It didn't matter. The moment had passed. He gently patted Odile's buttocks, seeing if there was any reaction. She looked at him like she wasn't sure what he was working towards. He sighed. "How about I get us some lunch?"

"That sounds good."

Michael tucked everything back in, and took off on the errand. He would get her something nice, but the combination of this discovery and his own shame at his uncontrolled revulsion... he wasn't very hungry.

Chapter 20: Croc Climbing

Days passed, and Odile and Michael fell into a routine. They'd wake not too early, Michael would scare up some food from the kitchen for breakfast in bed, or breakfast in bathtub if Odile got a steak. He'd then pretend to work for some time. To be fair, sometimes, the work wasn't pretend, like the time he finally got press-ganged into cleaning up vomit off the sidewalk. Apparently, determining whose responsibility the puke was worked something like Tag. If you were the first person to hear about or see the vomit, it was yours.

He lucked out, it seemed. It was near enough to a hose and a drain, it really wasn't that difficult at all. He just sprayed it down the drain and generously splashed the area with a bucket full of some unknown disinfectant he found in the janitor's closet. The janitor was nowhere to be found, sadly.

He had spent time with Odile idly watching TV, but the lack of entertaining programming on the meager hotel cable and Odile's tendency to sleep in the relative cool of the indoors... Michael would spend his afternoons letting her sleep, while he went to the hotel's underused gym.

Michael had never worked out before, except for going for the occasional walk or jog, and one embarrassing year of taekwondo when he was a kid. Maybe that was because he had nobody to go with. Running on the treadmill next to him was his work-out partner, Missy.

How he wished there were two treadmills facing each other, rather than all in a line. No sports bra could hope to keep those orbs in place, so Missy didn't even bother, exercising in a green bikini. Michael knew some of his bustier female friends complained about the discomfort untethered bouncing provided when running or exercising, but Missy didn't seem to care.

Lucky him.

"How are things with Odile?" Missy asked.

"Good." Michael tried to talk and jog at the same time. "I mean, we're still sort of stuck here. I don't know how we're going to get out of here, especially with that contract."

Michael had told Missy some of the details on how they'd come to wind up here, but by no means all of them. "Well, this beats living in the swamp, eh? And the view's better."

It certainly was. From here, he could see the mountains. Michael didn't even bother saying it aloud, as he knew that's exactly what she meant. "Yeah, but I don't think Odile wants to be here forever."

"I saw the show last night." Missy said, wiping the sweat from her brow. "It was... well, she's the most interesting part. The rest of the show sucks. Yes, a duck will follow you if you lead it on with a Cheez-it. Riveting entertainment."

Michael stopped his treadmill and looked at her. "You went to the show?"

"Yeah. What else was I going to do?" She continued to run for a few seconds before hopping off the treadmill.

"You really shouldn't be seen in the same place as Odile." Michael said.

"Oh, none of those hippies were there, Michael." Missy said. "You told me nobody else knew about that, not even Salty Peter himself. So nobody would know about it."

"Unless they had someone in the audience."

"You're so paranoid." She waved her hand at him. "What are they going to do? Throw a hacky sack at you?"

As it turned out, the parts of his story that he'd left out... those were the reasons he was paranoid.

Missy's finger went to her neck, below her ear and just below the end of her jaw. "I think that's good enough for today."

"Yeah, I'm pretty tired." Michael said. "I guess I'll see you later."

"Oh, no you don't." Missy said pointedly. "You always leave to shower back in your room. Well, not this time. I'm not done talking to you, so you're going to shower here."

Michael shrugged. "Yes, ma'am." He said with a gentle smirk. "We here at Salty Peter's Cove of Fun are here to help you in any way you need."

"Any?" She said eagerly.

Michael sighed. "When we started exercising together, and you said, 'do you want to have a workout together and get sweaty,' I was indeed able to parse that was a double entendre."

"It was a single entendre. I was asking you for sex." Missy said. "But then we got here and started working out, so I was like, sure, let's work out. It was like I was asking you to eat some clam and you actually started eating a clam."

Missy lead him into the men's locker room. There was nobody else around. Missy and Michael were the only ones they'd ever seen inside it. "OK, time to shower. You first."

"Why me first?"

"Because I want to show you a trick." She smiled.

Hoping this would be the kind of trick he liked, but without much confidence, Michael slipped the sweaty shirt off his torso. He caught a glimpse of his form in the mirror. His physique was hardening slowly, his muscles deepening more than he had when he was eating nothing but coconut and banana. He'd been on the run long enough that he was finally starting to consider getting a haircut.

With Missy looking at him expectantly, Michael dropped his gym shorts, under which he wore nothing. He stood facing her, nude. Missy stared at his unit, mouth open, closing only to swallow a little saliva.

Standing there naked didn't embarrass him, but he felt the blush race across his face as he slowly grew hard as she stared. Once he reached a full erection, she stopped staring and looked at him in the eye. "Ta-da!" She shouted. "I can give men boners just by staring at them!"

"I think it works the other way around, too." Michael mused. "Was that why you did this?"

"No, but now that you've got a boner, now you won't feel weird about it happening when we're in there." Missy said, undoing the knot in her bikini top and freeing her giant breasts from their emerald prison. She stepped out of her bottoms and walked freely into the shower, her loofah hanging from the bend in her elbow like the tassel on a mortarboard.

Michael followed her in, and she turned on two showers next to each other, as if she anticipated him trying to escape to one across the room somewhere. He stood under the second one, scrubbing himself with his bar of soap. Missy filled the loofah with some fragrant pink soap that would undoubtedly confuse whoever would next step in here.

"They still don't know you don't really work here?" Missy asked, lathering up her breasts.

"No, and now that most people recognize me, I think I'm out of the woods until someone checks the records or realizes I'm not getting paid." Michael scrubbed his arms, trying to lift the layer of sweat off himself.

"Everyone knows who you are now?"

"Just about. Even Salty Peter himself, but..."

"But what?"

"I'm avoiding him because... he walked in on me and Odile having sex."

Missy turned to him. "You're not a virgin?"

That was another detail he'd left out of his background. "How did you know I was a virgin?"

"You're NOT a virgin if you've had sex, Michael."

"Well, we got cut off. We didn't finish. I don't know if I am or not anymore. But the main thing is... he thought I was someone who snuck in by stealing someone's shirt and nametag and went in to have sex with her."

A pause, where the water pelted the suds off Missy's immaculate tits. "But that's exactly what you did."

"He's the only one who saw that, besides two other guys who threw me out. Everyone else just thinks I work here. I'm just hoping he writes it off as a drunken hallucination."

"And you haven't made love to Odile since? Wasn't that like ten days ago?"

"Shit keeps getting in the way. She's more lethargic than she was in the swamp. She's inside all day, no sunshine. That's the real reason I want her to get out of here. I think she wants to go back to nature."

"Well, if you're able to resist my charms," Missy gently rubbed the loofah under her arms. "I'm sure you really love her." She pointed at him, the gesture slinging a tiny blob of suds at him. "By the way, that's how I knew you were a virgin. I knew because they're the only ones who turn me down. And not all of them, either. Some of them are more than happy to lose it to me, and I'm more than happy to help them get that incredibly arbitrary milestone out of the way and give them pointers on what to do next time. But some people are hung up on it... like if they're in love."

"I haven't been masturbating, either." Michael confessed, trying to clean his groin with a gentle touch, like cleaning a loaded gun.

"Jesus." Missy said. "That's not love. That's just crazy. But, to be fair, I never masturbate. I just find someone to fuck."

"Why do you live here, anyway?" Michael asked. "I've never been clear on why you live at an amusement park."

Missy looked at him, and then away. She hung the loofah on a hook and took her bottle of shampoo, one that claimed to be gentle on hair dyes. She told the story as she lathered and rinsed her hair.

"When I was little, I wanted to go here, but my father wouldn't take me. He was a drug addict. Not an alcoholic, though he was also that, but 'alcoholic' doesn't do justice to what he was on. He was on the big H, and all our money went into it until we lost our house and I had to move in with my maternal grandmother. She died, dad went to jail, mom abandoned me... and to make up for all that bad luck, I won the lottery. I took it in the yearly installments, but... the first one set me for life. I just do day-trading from my laptop now and either make money or don't. And I pay a lot less in taxes if I just don't own a home. I don't even own a car. I've got nothing to worry about, an endless supply of bored and sexually frustrated tourists to fuck...

She grew still, as the water pounded on her shoulder blades. "And no friends."

A pause. Michael turned off the water. "One." He said, facing her.

She turned to him, a smile growing on her lips. She jumped forward, grabbing his head, and kissed him. Her lips were burning hot, and Michael reciprocated the kisses until Missy slipped her tongue in his mouth. He stepped back. "Friends, Missy."

"Oh, you get erections when talking to your friends?"

"I might if they were naked."

A beat. Missy turned off her shower head. "Stopped again by your impenetrable wall of logic." She walked out of the shower and towards the benches, finding a pile of towels and taking one. She wrapped herself in it and tossed one to Michael, who did the same. "What say you and I dry off and get some lunch? I'm hungry."

"I've been eating in our room a lot, since Odile can't really leave the room during the day..."