“Anne, take a look at this.”
“Say, Heather, you look good even with clothes on,” Saul gibed.
“You do look terrific, Heather. Try to ignore this brute,” Anne said.
“This is what I plan to wear to San Francisco tomorrow.”
Heather wore her favorite kind of outfit, a mid-thigh dress of heavy, well-fitted knit with push-up sleeves and a zipper front. It was a rich red that picked up the lights in her long chestnut hair. She wore no jewelry.
“You´re wearing stockings? I´ve never seen you do that.”
Heather grinned broadly. “Nope. You said I should try for impact. And I decided it shouldn´t be anything like what Mei-Ling would do. Here it is.”
She pulled the zipper down, let the dress fall to the floor and stepped out of it with one motion. She wore black virtual stockings that rose to her hips, but left her abdomen bare. From the deep brown forest of her pubic hair, a fountain of fireworks rose toward her breasts, exploding in silvery rays at her nipples and fading into the background of her skin toward her neck and arms.
“Holy mackerel!” Saul said. “Hey, gang, come and look.”
“Heather, that´s wonderful.”
“I love it!”
“What an incredible idea!”
Anne said. “What´s in back? Anything?”
Heather turned. The ‘stockings´ colored her buttocks almost to the waist, following the contours and dipping into the cleft. Tiny stars sent rays out from the dimples. Above, a sunburst of fireworks spread across her back and shoulders.
“God, that´s great. Mei-Ling will go nuts.”
“I figure, either that, or she´ll throw me out. Decided to go for broke.”
“She´ll love it. This is so creative, she´ll simply go wild for it. Then, she´ll take the whole idea and run with it in her own style. You´ve blown the whole concept of Virtual Jewelry away from mini-tattoos into an art form.”
“Thanks. That´s what I had in mind. What do you think, Will?”
“Heather, it´s wonderful. Almost makes me want to go back to graphics.”
Heather gave him a hug. “Thanks, Will. But you stay out of my patch, I´ll stay out of yours.”
“Speaking of that, you look so fantastic, I´d really like to ...”
“Later, okay? And we´ve got all weekend, too.”
“Right, it´ll be a relief after talking with horse owners all day Saturday and Sunday.”
.oOo.
They returned Sunday night, late. On Monday, Anne, Mary and Saul had breakfast with Heather and Will. Heather wore a tee-shirt. Anne gave her a look, said nothing.
“How´d the horse stuff go, Will?” Mary asked.
“Got three more commissions, one of them for two paintings. Mary, you said I don´t need you any more. That´s not so, you know. You always make those meetings something special. But as far as knowing more about horses, you are right. It was like I had x-ray vision. It really paid off with one of those guys.”
“How?”
“He wanted me to disguise the animal´s bad hocks. I told him I paint the horse as it is, that´s the only way I work. But I showed him how I could do him in a gait where the problem wasn´t hardly visible. Sort of like what you suggested to me the first time we went to Kentucky. I really had a great time. Just lonely.”
“Lonely?”
“Yeah, Heather stood me up.” Will grinned at her.
“What is this?” Anne wanted to know.
“Well, we went to the Lins´ just like we planned,” Heather said. “We went into that lovely jewelry room Mei-Ling has, and we talked, just the way you and Saul did. Mei-Ling was wearing the same kind of outfit you told us about – she said it´s her uniform for the store, helps sell erotic jewelry.”
“Boy, you can say that again,” Will put in. “She is one of the most beautiful women I´ve ever seen, including all of you.”
“Well, anyway, I gave her the spiel about Virtual Jewelry and Virtual Clothing. She sort of listened like she´d heard it before.”
“I gave her a pretty good rundown on the phone,” Anne said.
“Well, I thought I wasn´t really getting it across, you know, and like I´d better do something before she fell asleep. So, I said, ‘Mei-Ling, telling isn´t like seeing.´ And I got up and dropped my dress like I did the other day. Well, she lit up like a candle and hugged me ... By the way, that´s kind of a kick. When she hugs me, her face fits right between my breasts ... Anyway, then she started feeling me all over. She went over every inch of my skin, didn´t miss anything. She even spotted where you have to paint into the crack in back. She found the joins in the patterns, even though I can hardly see them myself. And then she stood back and made me turn around at least three times.”
Will said, “All this time, Jimmy and I were watching. Mei-Ling was like some of those collectors we see; she all but used a magnifying glass on Heather. When she got through, I could see that Heather was hot as hell.”
“I´ll say. She wasn´t being sexual at all, you know, but it turned me on so. Then she told Jimmy and Will to get lost and do their business. When they´d left, she looked at me and said, ‘Heather, I apologize for going over your body so intimately.´ I said it was okay with me. And she said, ‘But I can tell from your scent´ – you know how I start to smell when I´m horny – she said, ‘I can tell from your scent that I´ve gotten you all excited. I´m excited myself. Would you like to do something about it before we get down to business?´ So, we did.”
Will added, “You should see those two together. Mei-Ling is perfection in miniature. Heather is Rubens, sort of, just not pudgy. She´s just as I first drew her – Ceres. What a contrast. And what a team! They spent the rest of the weekend working and loving. I had to go do my horsing around all by myself.”
“Will, we just hit it off perfectly. And yes, we spent all weekend talking about ideas and trying things. After Mei-Ling and I got my problem solved, she never put on clothes again. I did her up with VeeJays and VeeCees and she used my little bod like a canvas. The fireworks lasted until Saturday morning, but from then on, it was one thing after another.”
“I picked her up Sunday, and we barely made the plane.”
“We made a few discoveries, too. Seems like the adhesive works for her jewelry as well as ours. We tried painting some of those nipple rings of hers and putting them on. They stick wonderfully, and the sticky stuff stays on the rings, not so much on the skin. Comes off easily, too. I just need to get some that´s colorless.”
“Sounds wonderful. Anything else? Is that why the tease with you wearing a shirt?” Anne asked.
“Of course. You know I don´t wear clothes without a reason. Look at what Mei-Ling did.”
Heather rose and pulled her shirt off. Her full breasts were cupped by sculpted silver doves whose wings swept up and toward her shoulders. The impression was of two doves flying toward each other. Their eyes, of course, were Heather´s nipples.
“Golly,” Saul said.
“She just whipped these up on Sunday morning. The adhesive holds them in place; I didn´t need to pierce my nipples. Anyway, you need the adhesive to hold the silver tight to the skin. But don´t miss the squash blossom.”
Almost overlooked, Heather´s stomach was adorned with a beautiful squash blossom made of delicate silver and with a turquoise in the center. It was held at her navel by the same adhesive.
“Mary, you know, Mei-Ling made this for your mom, but couldn´t figure out how to attach it. Now we know. Mei-Ling´s wild about the whole thing. She says she´s going to develop a whole line of Virtual Jewelry and Virtual Clothing for the Far Eastern market. You know those cheong-sams her mother wears? Mei-Ling and I are going to do them as virtuals. She got her mother to take hers off so I could look it over. Now, there´s another great-looking woman.”
“So the two of you had a ... what? A profitable meeting.”
“We had an incredible time. Will and Jimmy kept us happy Friday night, and the rest of the time we just rolled around and made love whenever we took a break from making art. She´s as bad a nudist as I am, you know.
“And one other thing. You asked her for daytime breast wear, Anne. I´ve got a box of stuff that´ll blow your mind.”