Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 19. Wear Under Not wearing panties felt naughty, different than just being naked. I looked naughty in the dressing room mirror and I discovered that I enjoyed that. I had to suppress giggles almost every time I saw myself in the mirror. I began to doubt I’d ever been anyone other than the girl I could see.

Harlette had wrapped a tight little mini-skirt around my hips, it came down far enough to be decent if I didn’t bend over or spread my legs much but the lace tops of my hose showed above the boots and below the skirt. A light, translucent band-type top covered my nipples but left them sort of visible. The velvet corset showed between the top and the skirt, too.

We’d gone into the dressing room to pick out jewelry and so Harlette could do my make-up. After admiring my reflection, I sat down in the chair with my legs stretched out in front of me, ankles together, while she worked. Before we got started, though, I picked up Muffins the cat and put her on the dresser.

“Talk,” I told her.

She sat down and began to wash. This didn’t keep her from talking at all, of course. “First,” she said, “do you know who that Willie guy out there is?” Meaning Mr. Styx, the mummy in my bedroom.

I shook my head. “I’ve got some ideas but I’m not sure.” I thought he might be the original me, or at least my body, but that didn’t make any sense at all. And how come he did such an uncanny impression of my father singing “Clementine”? Of course, being a mummy, pretty much anything he did came under the heading, uncanny.

Despite being infatuated with my reflection, I still remembered having been a man. I didn’t want to think I’d been Mr. Styx but what was another absurdity before lunch?

“Okay, last night, Kate was using that guy to help her power a spell,” said the kitten. “She made a sex battery with him, her yin with his pitiful yang.”

At first I thought the cat had said ‘yen’ and ‘wang.’ Made sense either way. “Kate meaning me?” I asked, trying to keep things straight.

“Well, you, but you’re not all Kate and all of Kate is not you.” She stuck a back foot in an ear and stirred till her eyes rolled up. “Do you remember anything?” she asked calmly as if she practiced her auto-lobotomy skills everyday.

I nodded. “I remember some things but not specific stuff. And, and some of it seems to be from someone else’s viewpoint.” I didn’t like saying too much about what I remembered. It wasn’t so much that I thought I’d sound like a nutbar if I discussed it but I didn’t want anyone to think I was a chewy one.

“Hell’s Labradoodle Sanitary Patrol,” said Muffins. “We may never sort this out.” She still had a foot in her ear and a this-space-for-rent expression but that didn’t seem to effect her speech.

“Why didn’t she–I mean you, I mean Kate–why didn’t Kate call me to come help with a spell?” asked Harlette. She held a set of earrings up, hoops that looked like they might be nineteen-and-a-quarter inches around, too. “I went to Santa Monica to a new club but it was dead there.”

It occurred to me that in this bunch, that might not be a figure of speech. I had a mental image of a hundred or so Mr. And Miss Styxes slow dancing. I decided not to ask.

Earrings. Well, why not? But such huge ones? I nodded at the hoops and Harlette put the first one in. I pretended that it made me lopsided and flopped my head over to the left. I got one of Harlette’s gurgles as a reward.

Muffin shook her head, dislodging the foot from her brain. “It was kind of an emergency. This fool, Willie Convoy, Conrad, or something, came to her as a client. He had sex problems, of course, and she agreed to help him because he had a spark of talent.”

Sex problems. Why did that not surprise me? But talent? Magical talen? I wondered but I didn’t say anything, yet.

“How’s that an emergency?” asked Harlette. She balanced me out, both hoops grazing my shoulders if I moved a millimeter, and selected another pair of smaller hoops. To my surprise both of those went on the right side, apparently to make nice jangles.

“Frank Zed,” said the kitten, like it deserved a drum roll.

Outside, in the bigger room, Mr. Styx did make a noise, a rattling, sighing, thrashing about gasp; the sound someone who refused to scream might make while riding a bicycle full tilt into a blackberry hedge.

“Got his attention,” commented Harlette. She picked out a string of pearls for another piercing in my left lobe. Just how many holes in my head did I have? Did I have too many? Did I need more?

The noise out in the bedroom continued for a bit but eventually faded. Mr. Styx did not make an appearance in the dressing room just then. Good thing, too, it was entirely too close in there for someone who smelled like a pork barbecue gone terribly wrong.

“Frank Zed. Should I know the name?” I asked. I felt I almost did. I could see two images in my mind. A stylized FZ where the upper bar of the Z connected with the lower arm of the F in a circle that looked like the lens of a camera–or the barrel of a gun. The other image had a strongman kneeling and supporting a ballerina, the two of them contained in an outlined FZ.

I knew I had seen both images recently. They must be trademarks, I decided. One or both of them had been on the DVD cases I’d looked at earlier, that’s where I had probably seen them.

“He’s the producer of the Wendy Splendid videos,” said Harlette, confirming my guess while supplying my left wrist with a dozen or so thin bangles. “Company name FotoZed. His real name is Fernando Zettolini and his father and uncles are mobsters in Toronto, Canada. Carl Zed, Bobby the Pump Zetto, Nick Zetto. He goes by Frank Zed.”

I blinked. “They have mobsters in Canada?” I said.

“Of course they do,” Harlette commented. “It’s a civilized country. Mobsters are what you get in civilized countries. Elsewhere they call them gull-spanking warlords.” My right wrist got five bracelets, more substantial than the bangles on the left.

I held a delicate little hand out flat and waggled it to express my skepticism. Canadian mobsters saying, “Youse tryna be a wise guy, eh?” It didn’t seem likely.

All of the pieces of jewelry appeared to have some sort of affect; not the auras of living beings but something similar. I shook off the wonder of the jewels and the sociological speculation about or neighbor to the north and tried to get us back on point. “What about Zed?”

“He wants you back. Wendy, that is,” said Harlette. “You’re easily his biggest star, thirty nine movies in two years and every one of them still making him money. There are collectors out there who would buy any new Wendy Splendid movie. They’ve got a new girl using the name but everyone knows it ain’t you.”

“And,” said the kitten, “because you used magic when you made them, every time someone watches one and gets hot, but doesn’t cum, you collect the orgs.”

“Orgs?” I blurted. Royalties on porn? Hooda Thunkett?

“Orgs are the theoretical energy unit of sexual magic. It’s like a quantum bet on a cosmic dice table, cum or don’t cum.” Harlette’s explanation just confused me. What the heck did people use for chips in that game?

I looked back at the kitten. She crossed and uncrossed her eyes and I almost missed what she said next trying not to get a giggle caught crosswise.

“That’s right. Frank’s been wanting Kate to sign a new contract since the old one expired. But there’s no advantage to you, er, Kate, since you’ve pretty much got all the orgs you can use, now. The same people watching new videos wouldn’t generate much more....”

Mr. Styx at the doorway interrupted. “Hhhh. Rrrr. Hhhy, rrr. Rhr hhh hrr ryrh, yrrrrhrrhhh!” he said, gesturing earnestly with his bony, stick-like hands.

“He’s a creepy frond-licker but I think he’s trying to tell us something,” said Harlette.

“Tutankamon’s fallen down the well?” I gasped. Don’t hold your breath in surprise while wearing a tight corset–you run out of air real fast.

Behind him somewhere, my cellphone played “Only a Girl,” again. Mr. Styx slumped, like a tower made of popsicle skeletons when the glue softens. “Rhryrhyhh,” he said. “Rhh hyh yh.” He lurched away.

“Did he just say he’d get it?” Harlette asked.

“Hell’s Pimple-Encouraging Potato Crisps, I think he did,” said Muffins.

“Go get the phone away from him before he scares some credit card telemarketer out of her panties,” I said.

Harlette looked at me, gurgled, then dashed out of the dressing room to do as I had ordered. Hey, having an acolyte could be nice, I decided.