Having two naked boys who would do anything she told them to do had turned into such a kick. Philomena loved it. She understood the phrase, 'drunk with power,' suddenly. "I want you to take a bath -- and shave," she said.

"Shave?" Willie and Dick said at the same time.

They didn't know what to do with their hands -- they wanted to hide behind them but that wouldn't work. They wanted to conceal their groins and their lack of balls but Phil wasn't allowing that. So they gestured wildly while they protested.

"Why do we have to take a bath?" Willie asked. He had an aversion to bathing, anyway, being wet wasn't his favorite thing in the world. It made him cold and sometimes he even got sick; he'd had that problem most of his life. Any sort of exposure to a chill could turn into a cold for him, then bronchitis, then pneumonia. Once he'd even ended up in the hospital on oxygen -- all because of an unscheduled bath. At least, that's the way he remembered it.

Dick protested too. "I don't have to shave yet, I mean, I have but I really don't need to. Maybe in a year or so..." His voice trailed off as he realized that without any balls, he'd probably never need to shave. While that might save him some expense in terms of razors and shaving cream, he didn't really think it was a good trade.

"Yes," said Phil. "You have to take a bath, we're going to be doing magic and I'm going to be naked too and we might touch and I want to be sure that you don't have cooties."

"Cooties?" Dick and Willie said together, gesturing again.

"And when I said shave, I didn't mean just your faces. I mean shave everywhere, well, not the top of your heads. But shave your armpits and legs and your tummies and chests and arms and especially," she paused to take a breath, "shave your groinal areas."

"No way," said Willie.

"Groinal area?" said Dick. "You mean -- down there?" He pointed but turned slightly to conceal the area from Phil's view.

"Yes," said Phil. Keeping a straight face was the hard part, she thought. "Yes," she said again. "I want you both as smooth as babies. The magic will work better that way," she lied.

Dick looked at Willie; he knew the other boy had a problem with getting wet. Willie looked at the floor, then the ceiling, then at Phil. "You sure?" he asked.

"I'm positive," she said. "The bathroom is through there, just go through the closet, there's another door that leads into the bathroom. There's soap and shampoo and washcloths and towels and a new packet of Venus triple-blade razors."

"Augh," said Willie, perhaps because of the name of the razors, perhaps out of fear of getting wet, perhaps for no reason at all.

"Go on," said Phil, motioning them toward the narrow door. "Oh, and there's not much hot water in this old house, you'll have to both shower at once. That way you can help each other shave, too." She thought that last little wrinkle to be inspired.

* * *

Willie put his hands on his hips and glared at the shower, a tiled rectanglular upright box with glass doors barely three foot by four foot, lavish for a converted Victorian. "No way are we both going to fit in there, it's not big enough for Superman's undershorts."

"Oh, sure it is, it's bigger than a phone booth," said Dick, reaching in to turn on the water. "Hey, there's only one knob?" The little bath had a detachable shower head on a hose, too; one of the sorts that had six or eight settings for stimulating sprays -- not merely lavish but approaching decadence.

"When did you ever see a phone booth? I hate those one knob things, my aunt has one." They were both naked and a little uncomfortable about that and so tended to talk without paying much attention to what they said. They had towels and for a moment it occurred to Willie that he could wrap one around him like a, like a skirt so he wouldn't feel so naked. No, he decided, he wouldn't do that. Besides, all the towels were pink.

"I saw one in a museum once, in Pasadena," said Dick. "Good water pressure."

"Huh?" Willie had lost track of what they were talking about. "What had good water pressure in a museum?"

"The phone booth," said Dick. "The water is getting hot pretty quick, too," he added, holding one skinny arm under the stream.

"Oh, la-di-dah." Willie sneered. "'I go to museums in Pasadena and the phone booths have lots of hot water'."

"No," said Dick, "this phone booth does."

"Shower."

"Shower," agreed Dick. "I bet we could take turns and still have enough hot water." He pulled his arm back after adjusting the flow again.

"Are we really going to shave all over?" asked Willie, looking at the package of pretty pink and lavendar razors Philomena had left on the bathroom counter.

"Well, not the top of our heads, she said," Dick corrected. He always liked to be accurate when possible.

"When you pick your nose do you look up 'pedant' in the encyclopedia so you can see which nostril has a booger hanging out?" asked Willie.

"Huh?" said Dick who was impervious to most personal insults through lack of enough social skills to understand sarcasm. He touched the tip of his nose with a forefinger and looked crosseyed at his thumb.

"Never mind," said Willie, who was used to his friend's cluelessness and other quirks. "You go first, you've got the water just like you want it."

"No, you go first, because you're afraid of bathing and shouldn't put it off," said Dick who was used to his friend's prevarication and other quirks.

Phil's voice came through the door, she must have been standing in the closet, listening. "If you aren't both bathed and shaved in fifteen minutes, I'll throw you out of the house naked."

"She wouldn't," said Willie. "It would be embarrassing to her, too."

"Well, think of what she's already done to us," said Dick.

"She couldn't," said Willie. "We each outweigh her by at least twenty pounds."

"Remember, she's a witch," said Dick.

The boys both looked at the shower stall again as Phil's laughter came through the connecting door.

* * *

[next: Potatoes and Roots]