"He's what? Must have a bad connection, Vin. Sunspots maybe?"

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Green Sun
Chapter 11
Teenie Weenie, Red Bikini

by Donna Lamb

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"Waddaya mean, the kid's in trouble again? Didn't I get him a nice job in a casino and hook him up with a true fox? What's gone wrong now?" Larry the Wolf, also known in life as Lorenzo di Guelphi, sipped a double dry martini in his favorite dimly lit Trenton angel bar and talked on his cellphone to Coordinating Archangel, Vinny Gallo.

The pretty young Ministering Angel Third Class, Martina Przewski, sitting in Larry's lap made a face at him. Larry shrugged, business was business and Guardian Angels were never off the clock. "He's what? Must have a bad connection, Vin. Sunspots maybe?" Vinny had taken over watching Larry's clients so Larry could have a few days R&R.

The next thing Martina knew, Larry had spit a good mouthful of gin with hardly any vermouth down her decolletage and had started to stand up before remembering her. He caught her with one arm and stood her on her feet. "Sorry, Marti. My client has got himself into some strange shit out in Vegas. I gotta fly." A full G.A. First Class, Larry had two sets of wings and he spread them both, filling the narrow bar with pinions and feathers.

"Vegas? In July? Larry you gonna cook," Martina protested.

"'S'okay, doll," Larry said. He grinned and flapped gently. "I'm air conditioned." He rose slowly through the ceiling of the basement bar and on up through the ramshackle old brownstone that now housed a barbershop, a Jamaican grocery store, a second floor church, three lawyers and The Original Trenton Detective Agency, Rafael Original, Detective-in-Residence.

Rafe looked up from where he'd been sleeping with his feet on his rolltop desk as Larry rose through his floor. "Goin' somewhere in an all-fired hurry ain't you, angelman?" he drawled. "I know you know where the doors is."

"My boy out west has got himself pregnant somehow, got to see what I can do," explained Larry to the sometime occult investigator. "Don't ask how, 'cause I don't know yet." He drifted on up through the ceiling to the roof where he could safely use his wings to go supersonic.

"Hunh," said Rafe. "Sunspots maybe?" he suggested to Larry's toes.

* * *

In Los Angeles, Davy Wilson did the only thing he could think of to solve his nakedness. He raided his sister's wardrobe. Since he planned on going to the beach, he looked first for a swimsuit. The remaining evidence of his masculinity being hardly as big as his little finger--it hadn't grown when he did--he simply tucked it back and discovered that he fit very nicely into Mandy's red bikini. He admired himself in the full-length bathroom. "I think I'm prettier than Mandy, 'cause she's got girl cooties," he snickered.

Reluctantly, he decided that he'd better wear the top of the suit, too. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to tie it on. He picked out one of Mandy's beach cover-ups, a faded yellow one that hung down to mid-thigh, plus a pair of canvas sandals, red to match his bikini, and then he went back to his room to get the $33.73 cents he had saved up from his allowance.

But he couldn't get the front door open. Nor the side door, he tried it too. He frowned into the mirror over the fake fireplace in the living room, and got distracted momentarily by his sister frowning back at him. He stuck his tongue out at her. Then the phone rang.

He paused before answering it, wondering if he sounded like his sister, too. Finally he just picked it up and said, "Hello?" in exactly that rising lilt Mandy used that drove their Dad crazy. And he hadn't even tried to.

"You g'ammaw say you ain't livin' the house wit'out you pants on," said the voice of G'ampaw Soo from the upstairs apartment. "Gray fellow told her and she tell me. So put some pants on or a skirt, what you t'ink?"

Davy didn't point out that G'ammaw Soo had died six years ago, G'ampaw knew that but it never stopped him from finding out things from her or having arguments with her, and the family had just decided to act as if the old lady's ghost still lived upstairs and tried to run the old man's life--and everyone else's. "Yes, sir," said Davy.

"T'at you Amanda?" asked the old man.

"No, this is Davy," said the boy who looked and sounded like his sister.

"Okay, fine t'en," said the old man and hung up.

Davy went back to Mandy's room, picked out a denim mini-skirt with a wide leather belt, put it on, feeling only a little odd, then tried the front door again. It opened. Pleased, Davy trotted out, locked it behind him and scampered down the sidewalk toward the bus stop.

Bo Lim'nhee of the Grays followed him. "Avka usu tot," he said. Then he added, "Whew!"

continued...