Tami Beethoven

"Let's get cracking," Homer said. Again he divvied up the responsibility for searching each area of the terminal, among Rod, Trent, whoever else could help. It turned out everyone volunteered, without exception, including Girardo and Dr. Lambert. "This time look into corners, into closets... When I find that creep I'll either run over him with this thing or strangle him."

It was ten minutes later when Rod got a call on his cell from Gretchen.

"It's stopped," Gretchen said. He could hear in the background the loud clatter of that old VW's air-cooled engine. He pictured Gretchen looking over at Tami, lying on her side in the back seat. "She's crying a bit but I think she's about to doze off."

"Oh thank God," Rod said. At the moment he was sweating, shirt unbuttoned, sitting cross-legged in his destroyed suit on the floor of the restaurant kitchen. "Ask her if she can pull that thing out."

"OK I'll -- oh wait -- she already pulled it out. It's on the floor... Tami? No, she's asleep now."

Well... it will be a good long time before Tami wants to have anything to do with that tail. "Gretchen, thanks. Can you stay over tonight?"

"Sure. She needs taking care of now."

"Amen to that."

Rod sighed, the emergency suddenly over. He looked around him. He had searched under every cabinet, every table. Found out things about this restaurant that he rather would not have known. Like how dingy the sink was. But nothing that looked like a remote.

He wearily dragged himself up and went out to the bar, which Jorge had practically dismantled. Homer was there in his wheelchair. People were coming back from their searches, exhausted. Tables were overturned, papers scattered. The place looked like a bomb had hit it. In the corner, two security guards were conferring, each looking quite perplexed.

"She's OK, out of range now," Rod said.

Homer was frustrated and flustered, not a usual condition for him. "I'll be danged," he said. "So it wasn't a malfunction, there is another remote. But damn well hidden."

The night framed Homer and Rod, up next to the glass walls overlooking the airport. They looked at each other.

Then their heads slowly turned up to the FAA control tower, unapproachable federal property, its silent tinted windows, black in the night, watching over everything.

. . . .

Of course Tami had to call in sick but he made the calls for her. Everyone on campus knew what had happened; there was no problem with her missing classes and meetings, or her grounds crew assignments. Lots of e-mails asking how Tami was. He answered them all the same. "She's resting. Thanks for your thoughts."

Tami slept for two days. Oddly, she felt uncomfortable on the bed, she wanted to sleep on the cold tile of the kitchen floor. A normal person could not do that but Rod kept reminding himself of her trip across the country nude, sleeping on rocks, desert sand, and stiff dry prairie grass. How he wished he could have rescued her from that. Yet it was part of what made her what she was: strong. He tried sleeping next to her on the floor but couldn't. Finally he dragged the couch into the kitchen and slept on it, waking now and then to look down at her.

Rod made meals for her and walked her to the shower. She was a bit dazed and dead tired. She drank huge amounts of water. He hated himself for having gotten aroused at her torture, hated himself. Yet it was probably a normal male response. He had heard a psychology major friend of his talk about "the wisdom of the penis" -- what turns you on is, on some level, good for you. What a crock!

On the third day, a sunny brisk day with a cool wind, he came home and found the house empty. Then he saw that the TL's had set up a table in the back yard. Upon which was Tami. Each of the six of them was attending to a body part of their naked Queen -- massaging her neck, her tummy, her arms, her legs, her feet. Yet staying away from her sexual parts. That must have taken a lot of self-control on their part.

"We've done this three afternoons now," Barbara said. "I think she's coming around."

"Indeed I am," Tami said, surprising her acolytes, turning around and sitting up cross-legged. She sipped an espresso Melissa had given her. Then she leaned forward and hugged Rod. He pulled her up off the table and she wrapped her legs around him, massaging his butt through his pants with her tough heels.

He felt tears coming to his eyes. "Thanks, girls, thanks," he said.

After a moment, as if in thought, Tami whispered in his ear, "Rod, let's make love. Nice and gentle. I want to get back to what love feels like."

"Oh thank God you're all right!"

The TL's knew to disperse as Rod carried Tami into the house.

Tami and Rod, after lying in bed for a while, hands clasped. They started slow and did manage to make love. Tami was lazy, drowsy at first, as if she was a virgin, uncertain as to where things might lead.

After about twenty minutes she had her first orgasm, a slow, rolling affair. They both sighed with relief, almost crying. Tami had not been permanently damaged by her ordeal. No doubt the love and concern around her had helped. As opposed to being alone and leered at in a cold, sterile lab.

Soon there were other climaxes.

But a problem surfaced. And it was not Tami.

Part 48

"Nnnhh! Nnnhhh! Nnnnnnhhhh!"

Rod looked up at Tami as she crested yet again. He was so glad that she was back to her old self. That horrible experience at the airport restaurant must have been worse than her travails at Chalfont. True, she was surrounded by people offering love and support, even though they were helpless to do anything aside from hold her hand. Or her pussy lips. That was desperate, Barbara holding open Tami's pussy so that it would be filled with cold water. He supposed that would normally kill any woman's desire, even someone so used to the cold as Tami. But it didn't help.

"Mmmmmmm... mmmmmm..." Tami slowly rode him as she came down to the plateau.

It was grotesque, seeing the spritzes from Jose's seltzer hose shooting into Tami's opened pussy, only to see the water squirted back out again at 0.8 second intervals. A horrible experience for poor Tami. At least at Chalfont it was a controlled experiment. No one knew the cause of the pulsations of the tail deep inside her, it might have been a tail malfunction, going on and on and on, maybe a short circuit, a spark deep inside that might electrocute her...

"Oooooohhhh... love you baby..." Tami bent down to kiss him on the cheek. He expanded it to a tongue kiss and then she straightened up and threw her head back, her whole body trembling as she ascended again.

He cursed himself for not thinking of the obvious solution, finally arrived at by Homer, to get Tami the hell out of there. Then they both looked at the FAA tower and got a creepy feeling. It was only a hundred feet away, if that. To someone working a remote up there, the restaurant would be well within range. And with the glass enclosure, at night, he or she could see clearly what Tami was doing, and would enjoy the poor naked girl's uncontrollable bodily responses. Of course that was just a guess. Finding out what was going on up there in the tower was just unknowable. Even if you tried, you'd probably be suspected of being a terrorist. No, not a good idea for someone in the National Guard completing a scholarship obligation.

He was not much use to Tami during that airport ordeal. At least now, he was useful to her.

"Zhhhh... ohhhh... " This one was mellow, calm, rolling. Not like her violent ones. He wondered what her mind was like right now, what it must be like to feel all that pleasure. Now that her orgasms were voluntary he felt more at ease asking himself the question he had pondered during Tami's torture. What was it like -- to have a shattering orgasm, and then, a few seconds later, another? And another? And another? And -- and so on? Whenever he came, spurting his seed deep into whatever orifice Tami had offered, he always needed at least a few minutes to get hard again. And then it was not easy to have a second orgasm, at least not the past couple of years. From what he knew, it would get even more difficult as he got older. Tonight, he hadn't come even once yet. He had gotten close at the beginning, but he knew he had to last, so he held back. As she was having her THIRD orgasm. And now, though erect, he was quite a ways from the desire to ejaculate.

"Mmmmmmm... mmmmmmm..."

He looked out the window, to the hedges out back. He could still see them at night because of the streetlight. They were starting to bud, finally. April was almost here, after a wet and cold March. Tonight it was a bit windy. Now one of the azalea buds blew off and arced in a trajectory halfway across the yard, like a long fly ball, before landing in the grass.

"Uhhhhh... uhhhhh..."

The trajectory of that bud -- what year was that World Series? 1991? 1992? That fly ball that won the seventh game. Man, that was some series. Braves versus the Twins. His uncle Cabot, from St. Paul, was visiting with his family and Cabot was in heaven. Yeah, spoiled. The Twins had just won a series a few years before. Meanwhile the Red Sox were into the 70th year or so of their curse. At the time it seemed like the Sox would never ever win again.

"Zhhhh..."

Every damn game of that series was a cliffhanger. And then that seventh game. He was only ten years old then but he remembered it vividly. Wait, let me adjust my hip so that Tami's clit gets a better pressure from my dick --

"OH! Yes Rod! Ohhhh..."

Strange. It was one out and a guy on third, bottom of the twelfth inning or something like that. Who was that? Dan somebody. The batter was Gene Larker, he thought the name was, a benchwarmer, and he hit a fly ball that went over Brian Hunter's head in left field. Hunter didn't even try to go for it, he knew it would be deep enough to let that Dan guy tag up and score. He just started trotting in before the ball even landed, as the crowd went wild and Uncle Cabot jumped up and down, knocking his beer bottle over, while Pop smiled tolerantly and said, "How about that!"

"OHH!" Tami's eyes bugged out as she approached a big one. "OHHH! OHHHH! OHHH! Godddd! Zhhhhhh -- OHHH!"

WAS that ball really out of range? He wondered why Hunter didn't run back and at least try for it. The odds were a hundred to one, but this was the deciding play of the World Series, for God's sake. Maybe that Dan dude might have slipped and fallen on the way to home plate, twisted his ankle, torn a tendon. Things like that do happen.

Tami rested her gasping, sweaty self onto Rod's chest. He could feel her nipples poking into him. He massaged her back, right under the shoulder blades. Now she stuck her tongue way into his mouth. Rod returned the kiss and looked up at the ceiling, dully visible with the nightlight on, the Spiderman nightlight she said she had had since she was a kid.

"Mmmmm..." Tami, her sweaty chest slipping over his, moved her hips so that her clit was pushing against his pubic bone. That had been orgasm number twenty-two. "Mmmmm... ohhhhh..."

He looked at the clock radio. It was 8:17, that meant they had been at it for one hour and six minutes. Exactly one orgasm per three minutes. A pretty good clip. He wondered if he could get it down to once every 2.8 minutes. That would be a pretty good E.R.A. He remembered Tim Wakefield, the Red Sox pitcher, trying to get below 3.00, not always with success. Of course, knuckleballers are expected to give up some runs. The important thing is to give up fewer runs than the other guy.

"Gg - ahhh!" Tami jerked in response to a favorable motion against her clit. She tried it again. "Gahhhh... ggg... gahhhh..."

That crack on the ceiling really has to be watched. Last week it was only a foot past the molding, now it was more like two feet. Something up there must be settling.

"Ohhh..." Tami was going up again. "Oh - oh - ohhhh..."

The crack reminded him of the graph of a second degree differential, the one he was using to calculate the stresses on that dam project --

"OHHH!" Tami's eyes opened. "OHHH! Nnnnnn -- nnnn -- UHHH!" With a great heave she started bucking her hips in time with the spasms. Rod, looking at the crack, heaved along with her to the last, irregular jolt.

Tami caught her breath and stroked his face. "Your turn, Baby..."

"What?"

A low, womanly giggle. "I said your turn Baby."

Rod looked up at her. Then at the ceiling. Then he looked down at Tami's breasts and was silent and motionless for a moment.

Tami's eyebrows furrowed. "What's wrong, Baby?"

He tapped her shoulders and said, "I... I just have to be alone a moment."

He got on his bathrobe and hunted for his slippers. Then he slid open the door in the living room and stepped out to the back yard and inhaled the windy cold air.

Five minutes went by before he returned. He found Tami standing in the middle of the living room, bolt upright in her usual posture. Breasts thrust out, hands at her sides, legs a little apart. She was covered with drying sweat, with her drying juices running down her thighs. There was a look of concern on her face.

Rod sat down on the couch. Tami sat down next to him, caressing his shoulder through his bathrobe. Her toes came up to caress his knee.

He exhaled. "Babe... I'm... jealous."

"Jealous of what?"

"Of your... capacity. I wish I could come over and over like you do... And I feel so... ROTTEN about it. I think of that DVD of you at Chalfont, being forced to..." He shook his head, then he made himself look Tami in the eye. "And then what happened at the restaurant. That must have been hell."

Tami looked down and nodded. "Yes it was." She held his hand. "But I had you there. That's why I didn't go out of my mind."

"Yes, yes, I know. But STILL I'm jealous. I'm always asking myself how it must feel, to come over and over." He blinked and his eyes became wet. "God, how crummy!"

They sat like that for a few moments. Then Tami said, "I had a feeling something was up."

Rod chuckled mordantly. "I won't be up for long, if this goes on. What's in my head, I mean." He chided himself for making such a juvenile joke.

Tami knelt between his legs and got out his limp dick.

"No Baby, don't."

She toyed with it. "You know Rod, I'm the one who should be jealous. I'm jealous of this. This magic wand. Sometimes I wish I had one."

Rod smiled weakly. "It's not what it's cracked up to be."

She picked it up with one hand and ran her tongue under it, the sensitive part. Perhaps reluctantly, it began to stiffen. Then she brought her limber foot up and around. "And these two... little items," she said, hefting his balls with her toes, one by one, with her big toe and second toe, grunting as if they weighed as much as cannon balls. "Mmmmhh! Wow that's almost beyond my strength!"

She took his dick into her mouth like it was a lollipop and looked up at him with a blank stare.

He chuckled. "You look really innocent."

She giggled, which with his dick in her mouth was quite a sensation. Then she gave his balls a closer look. "Think of all the billions of sperms in here. Billions!" She looked up at him. "What's female orgasm anyway? A way to feel good? But when a MAN comes, he's propagating the species. That's what life is about, what keeps life going. The male orgasm. When you come, it's like the whole surging wave of the universe goes through you, in that moment life goes forward into the future. No woman can possibly know what that feels like." She sucked on his dick loudly, then with a final slurp let it fall. It was mostly hard by now and stuck out at her. "That's why I'm jealous."

"Your Catholic upbringing is showing."

She smiled. "'Every sperm is sacred.' As they say, you can leave the Church, but it never leaves you."

Rod picked up his dick and waved it back and forth slowly, appraisingly, as they both looked at it. "Tell me, were you a good Catholic girl? Did you go to Catholic school?"

"No, but I went to Catechism class, every Monday. They'd let us Catholic kids out early for it. I was a pretty good girl. Well, except once, in third grade."

"Oh? What happened?"

"Well, we had gotten trained in First Communion, and you know how it goes? The priest says, 'Body of Christ', and you say, 'Amen', and he puts that wafer on your tongue. It's really dry and always sticks to the roof of your mouth, but you're not supposed to stick your finger in there to get it loose. It's like glue. Anyway, there's the priest, and the line of kids kneeling at the padella..."

"The what?"

"That low railing, it's called a padella. So it's, 'Body of Christ', 'Amen', 'Body of Christ', 'Amen', 'Body of Christ', 'Amen', When he got to me, he said, 'Body of Christ', and I said, 'I know.'"

Rod laughed. "Well DID you know?"

"Of course, I believed all that stuff, so I figured I wasn't being cheeky. I KNEW it was the Body of Christ and I figured I was just letting the priest know that I knew."

"I bet you got a talking to."

Tami's eyes rolled. "Oh Lord. The priest called my Mom, and then my Dad heard about it... I had to confess it and my pennance was to say 50 Hail Marys."

"Wow."

"Actually we kids could rattle them off pretty fast. It doesn't take much practice." Tami got up on her knees closed against each other, the rest of her upright as if at attention, breasts stuck out as if she wasn't aware of them. "Watch." She cleared her throat.

"HailmaryfullofgracetheLordiswiththeeblessedartthoughamongwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombJesusHolymarymotherofgodprayforussinnersnowandatthehourofourdeathamenHailmaryfullofgrace --"

It seemed gibberish but eventually Rod slowed it down in his mind and understood what she was saying. By that time she had gone through about eight recitations. Stopping for a quick breath every minute or so, Tami got through all 50 of them before it got boring.

Rod clapped. "You are forgiven."

Tami lay down against his thigh and played with his dick again. "Do you feel better, Baby?"

"A little."

Now Tami knelt in front of him, holding his erect dick in front of her face. She made a little bow with her head. "Body of Christ." Then she inhaled the first four inches of it so as to make him gasp.

He could feel the surging wave of the universe beginning within him. Between his gasps he said, "Oh Babe, you are bad. You'll burn in hell."

Tami giggled and between slurps said, "Jesus wouldn't mind. In fact he'd get a kick out of it. I'm sure of that now." And now she took him in even deeper.

. . . .

The next afternoon, up in the woods miles away, in the little trailer overlooking the dam site, his subconscious mind was pondering what Tami had said, while his conscious mind was working on the plan for one of the dam buttresses, when his cell phone rang.

It was the polite, tense, Pakistani-inflected voice of Dr. Abu Jamal from Chalfont.

How odd. "Mr. Sykes, I hope you are well."

"Yes, I am. What's up? Is Tami all right?"

"She's not here. I called to speak to you, to discuss her case."

"Okay..."

"It's best that we discuss it at our office here, you and I and Dr. Kantor, if you don't mind."

He put down his pen and switched the cell phone to his right hand. "What's up?"

"Can you be at my office at seven o'clock tonight?"

"Tami has a student government meeting then."

"She doesn't need to be there, just you. I am glad that she would be otherwise engaged. I ask that you not tell her where you will be."

"Um... OK I'll be there."

"Thank you. Until later."

After the call was over he began to work on the plans again, but then called right back at the number on his cell phone.

"Dr. Abu Jamal, Tami really should be there. I don't see why we should be keeping a secret from her."

"Mr. Sykes, when we began our course of treatment we elicited from Tami an agreement that her case could be discussed with you, outside of her presence, if necessary. It's BECOME necessary."