I am going to tell you something very strange: it was she who seduced me.
--Vladimir Nabakov, Lolita
"And she looks half-dead, so what would you have done? I took her back to
the warehouse and I fed her, and...I don't know. I took her in...I didn't know who she
was. She was afraid to tell anybody...and she didn't know I'd killed her father...so there I
was, sensei to the Shredder's daughter, I was calling her Kireime then..." Leo squints at
the level, balancing on the new deck's surface. "I think we finally got it level,
anyway..."
"So you never..."
"What?"
"You never..."
"For cryin' out loud, Raph, she was thirteen."
Mike takes the pin out of his mouth and asks, "So when did you find out she was really
Oroku Mgume?"
"The day we left for California."
Homogenic is over and the CD player's moved back to Debut.
Byron frowns. "Why did anyone think putting speakers outside the house was a
good idea?"
It takes courage to enjoy it...the hardcore and the gentle...big time
sensuality...
"You getting as sick of Bjork as I am?" Mike asks. Maureen's got a reception tonight,
and won't be down until tomorrow. It hasn't done wonders for his mood.
"Oh," Leo says drily. "You mean it's not an official all-Bjork weekend?"
I don't know my future after this weekend. And I don't want to...
"All right," Raph says. "I get the idea. Pumpkins all right?"
"Sure."
"I'll be good," he tells them, getting up. "I'll even put it on shuffle."
"You're too kind," Byron says, dripping sarcasm.
"If it'll make you happy, I'll put Culture Club on next, okay?"
Byron rolls his eyes at him.
"George Michael? The Village People? Wait-- I know-- Barbra Streisand, right?"
"Do you wanna eat this hammer?"
"Oh, that I've gotta see," Raph laughs, disappears into the house.
A few moments later the music comes crashing through the window:
the world is a vampire, Billy Corgan growls.
"Bullet with Butterfly Wings--"
"Who told him Pumpkins were all right?"
"Uh...I didn't."
"Not me."
"Mike?"
"Well...nobody said they weren't..."
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage...
Raph pops out the door grinning, tosses Don the beeper. "Yours."
"Shit," Don says, runs in the house.
They work in silence for a while-- relative silence, anyway...
Tell me I'm the only one
Tell me there's no other one
Jesus was an only son
Tell me I'm the chosen one...
Don comes back out. "Beeps me, and when I call all I get's the friggin' machine..."
And I still believe that I cannot be saved...
"I feel bad about the others being taken out of the program," Serena says. "I mean, I
know it was bad..."
"We have a zero tolerance policy here, Serena, you know that."
"I know. And that's the way to do it, you can't have it any other way, I know, but I miss
them...and I appreciate your keeping me here, even with..."
"Your pregnancy just makes our work that much more important. Keeping your baby
healthy and drug-free is our top priority now, right?"
"Right," she says tentatively, and he smiles at her.
The Smashing Pumpkins marathon continues on the CD player. You're the one
that I adore, you'll always be my whore...
"Look," Don says, "I saw him first. That's all there was to it, it was that simple--
"
"Don, even if this hadn't happened years ago, even if I had done anything
with the guy, is it my fault he liked me better?"
Byron looks up from his work. "I thought you were straight."
Mike sniggers. "Raph's...uh..."
"Flexible," Raph snaps, his face somewhere between a smirk and a snarl.
"Yeah, flexible...especially in the--"
"Michaelangelo--"
"Were they always like this?" Byron asks Leo.
"Hell, no. They used to be a lot worse..."
you'll be a lover in my bed, and a gun to my head
"Hey, guys!" Raph, Mike and Leo all turn toward Anna, who's got Carlos by one hand
and is pulling Angela along with the other. "How's it coming?"
"Great," Raph says. "As long as the tub comes by this afternoon, we'll be all set..."
we must never be apart...
"Everything's hummin' right along..." Mike says.
Leo asks, "You three havin' a good time?"
"Yeah. I think it's about time for a shift change, but..."
"You guys wanna go swimmin'?"
The kids yell, "Yeah!"
"Great," Mike says, "c'mon in the house, we'll get yer suits on--"
They scamper inside, following at his heels. Anna collapses on the edge of the deck, her
legs showing in the slit of her long skirt. "Do you know," she asks, "how many times I
tried to get those two to go swimming?"
"Ya gotta have the gift," Don says, grinning.
"I guess..."
"Oh, for cryin' out loud..."
"What?" Leo asks Don.
"Beeper." He pulls it off his belt, reads the number. "Ah...yours, Raph."
Raph mutters something obscene about the broker's mother and a four-legged animal
found commonly on farms, grabs the beeper, disappears inside the house.
The sound of a truck outside; Byron and Anna exchange glances. Anna leaps up and
starts running for the front of the house, Byron right behind her.
"No fair! I wanna sign for it!"
They can hear Anna yell, "You snooze you lose, pal!"
Leo and Don grin at each other and turn back to their work. Mike and the kids emerge
from the house. "I don't give a rat's a...ah...behind what Greenspan's doing,"
Raph's saying from somewhere inside the house. "It'll wait until Monday, awright? I'm
tryin' to spend a weekend with my family..."
"Leo?"
He glances up at Don. "Yeah?"
"Were you happy?"
Leo stops hammering, turns to him. "Yeah," he says. "I mean...I couldn't have done it
much longer, but I knew it wasn't gonna last...but yeah. I was happy."
"Good."
Leo stands up, is about to say something when Raph comes stomping out, holding up the
beeper. "Another one came in when I was on the phone," he says.
Don glares at the device. "Where," he asks with heavy irony, "would we be
without twentieth-century technology?"
"Wanna find out?"
Don looks at him, and an evil grin creeps over his face. "Yeah."
Raph turns toward the river, half-hidden throught the trees..."Let's see how good this arm
is..." He throws the beeper...
A few seconds later, they hear the splash as it hits the water.
Don laughs. "You still got it, bro."
Raph puts his arms around them, Don on one side and Leo on the other. "You know, I
think this is gonna be a helluva weekend."
Byron's got control of the CD player by the time Casey, April and the kids come
crashing into the house.
Baby, Marvin Gaye croons, I can't hold it much longer...
Michaelangelo glances ruefully at his sauce. "I'm gonna miss her tonight..."
Raph says, "I know, I know..."
Mike hears the door open behind him, but he's adding the cream..."Hi--"
"Boo," Maureen says, grabbing him by the waist.
Fuck the sauce... He spins around, pulls her into his arms. "I thought--"
She grins, rubs her nose against his beak. "I told her I was sick, I had to get home..."
And when I get that feelin'...I need sexual healin'...
"Aw, sweetheart..." he pulls her mouth down to his, kisses her.
Makes me feel so fine...
She moves closer to him, her arms twisting around his neck, and he moves his hands to
her back and shoulders, caressing her...
Sexual healin', baby, it's good for me...sexual healin' is something that's good for
me...
"Hey," Raph barks, and they break apart. "I know we gotta tell the kids about the facts of
life sometime, but do we hafta demonstrate?"
Maureen glares at him.
"Good ta see you too," he says, grinning. "C'mon, we gotta show 'em--"
"You're done?"
"Even got the tub in, we'll have it hooked up tonight--" He runs out of the kitchen.
Maureen whispers to Mike: "He let us put in any more--"
"Nope. Don't think he's gonna..." He puts his arm around his wife and they walk into the
living room together.
Darlin', you're so great, I can't wait for you to operate...
"Yeah," Byron's saying to Casey. "The steps back there...I don't know what's going on, I
think they're gonna have to be replaced--"
They all auditioned each other; Byron was the only one who could even try saying it
without cracking up.
"They were fine last time we were down," Casey frowns.
"You better go out there and check."
"Yeah, I will," he says, striding to the door.
Leo, doing a terrible job of hiding a grin, takes April's arm, guides her in Casey's
direction. "You might wanna take a look too..."
Casey stops at the doorway. "Holy..."
They all tumble onto the deck. April looks at their faces, Leo and Don and Mike and
Raph, and for a minute it's like they're all fifteen again.
"Timber's all pressure-treated," Leo says, "so it should last--"
"And we pegged the whole thing," Don adds, "no nails to snag the kids--"
"You can guess whose idea that was," Raph says sarcastically.
"And look--" Mike, practically bouncing to the end of the deck, "we put in a hot
tub!"
Leo adds, "You can also guess whose idea that was..."
"What..." April says, looking back and forth from one end of the deck to the other, back
and forth, back and forth... "Why..."
"We wanted to do something for you," Mike says. "For all you've done for us. Byron and
Anna n' Maureen helped out too..."
Casey asks, "how much did this cost?"
"Doesn't matter," Raph says.
"Something like this," Don adds quickly, "the big cost's the labor anyway, it went up
pretty quick..."
"Once we all had Don's okay to start, of course--"
"Hey, you have to check the plans--"
"Measure once, cut twice," Mike teases.
"Anyway," Don says, glaring at his smart-ass brothers, "we just need to hook up the hot
tub, and we'll be--"
"So who paid for it?"
"We split it," Mike says to Casey. "Don't worry about it, okay?"
"How did you split it?"
"Four ways," Raph says. "Even."
Of course, Leo thinks, he's only talking about the deck, and not mentioning
the loan he made me...
April asks, "So we'll be in it by tonight?"
"Absolutely."
"Cool," she says. "But you guys didn't have to do this..."
"We wanted to, April," Raph tells her. "You guys never had to do all the stuff you did for
us, either..."
"Nice of you to give us something we couldn't take back," Casey mutters.
April frowns at him. "I don't know how to thank you guys..."
"Don't," Leo says. "Just enjoy it, okay?"
Please don't procrastinate, Marvin's voice murmurs...
"How much are they offering us?"
"Enough to keep Serena and the child in food and Pampers for quite some time."
Hanson suddenly appears in the doorway. Nakamora's starting to hate him, his hesitant
manner, the way his left hand twitches when he gets nervous. He's starting to realize that
they can't trust him. Not completely, at any rate.
"Dr. Nakamora?"
"Yes, Hanson?"
"I've run the studies, and everything seems fine, but like I said, you really should get an
OB/GYN to take a look at her..."
"We've explained the need for secrecy before, Hanson. The conception was
successful...but that doesn't mean that need has abated."
"Look, I knew this wasn't exactly approved scientific procedure, but what we've
accomplished...this is the first known human cloning in history. Do you really want to
take any chances with its survival?"
Nakamora and Tokugawa exchange glances.
"I'll discuss this with the good doctor," Tokugawa says. "Should we take that job?"
"I'll consider it." Nakamora turns back toward his desk, and Hanson and Tokugawa
leave.
At dinner that night, Angela notices the ugly scar on the back of her uncle's
hand.
"Uncle Leo?"
Leo looks up from the fettucine. "Mm-hmm?"
"That scar...it looks funny."
"Angela," Maureen warns.
"It's all right," Leo says, looks down at the old wound. "Yeah, I guess it does look
funny...it didn't heal like a regular cut, there was some nasty stuff on the blade that cut
me."
The kids, always too smart for their own good, start paying attention. "Poison?"
"Uh..." Leo looks at Carlos, at the disapproving eyes of the parents in the room.
"Uh...yeah. It was."
"Did it hurt?" Shadow this time.
"A lot at first...then it started going numb, my whole arm went numb..."
They're impressed. "Wow," Carlos says.
"When did this happen?" Don asks sharply.
"Four years ago," Anna says. "He almost died."
"I did not almost die." He glares at her.
"You spent a week in bed talking with people who weren't even there, Leo."
Shut up, Raph, and C'mon, Don, how the fuck could you know how I feel--
and Mike, oh, Mike, please, please don't cry like that...
"What's in this sauce, Mike?" Byron asks. "It's decadent..."
"Mm," Anna says, having trouble getting the fettucine around her fork; the noodles brush
her wrist. She lifts her hand up to her mouth, licks the sauce off with relish...
"Mike," Maureen says. "He asked what was in the sauce..."
"Ah...tequila, and cream, and triple sec--"
"Yow," April says, "no wonder--"
"Ah, it all cooks out," Mike grins. "And Ancho chiles."
"And I love mushrooms," Anna adds, spearing a few more with great enthusiasm.
"I like to see my food enjoyed..."
Maureen's fork hits the plate with an emphatic clink.
"Oh, no, you don't."
"What?"
"I know what you get a nice view of outa that window...tonight I'm doing the
dishes."
Mike looks up, out the kitchen window. Anna, Leo, Raph and the kids are busy playing
some strange combination of football, soccer, and...volleyball, maybe? "They're making
up a new sport...is that it?"
"Don't 'is that it' me, Mister..."
Raph tackles Anna, grabs for the ball in her hand--
"What?" He turns to Maureen. "I don't...Anna? You think-- aw, Maureen, I never--"
"Never what?"
"Uh...Maureen, if you for one minute think I'd..."
"I don't think you would, but I still don't like you thinking about it--"
"I--"
"You're a rotten liar, Mike--"
"I still think you're the most beautiful, sexy--"
Her frown eases a little. "Really?"
"Maureen..."
A hint of a smile on her face now, challenge blazing in her eyes: "Prove it."
Before she has time to react he has one arm on her back, scoops her off her feet with the
other, starts carrying her toward their room--
"Mike, wait, I didn't mean--"
She can hear the smile in his voice. "You said prove it..."
"What about Angela?"
"Angela's outside playing...whatever they're playing..."
"But--"
"What, you're not interested?"
"I didn't say that--"
"Then what's the problem?"
"Nakamora?"
"Yes?"
"We will take that job. See about getting us a new...subject."
Nakamora nods.
"And do me a favor; check Hanson's background for me again, that project he was
involved with...find out what went wrong."
Raph turns the hot tub back on, eases into the water.
All the couples had gone to bed early, anyway...maybe Casey was right and Mike
had snuck something into the food...he'd barely had a chance to talk to him
tonight, April'd gotten him into the hot tub, talked Raph and Leo into putting the kids to
bed, and disappeared with him very early in the evening...they hadn't even seen
Don or Byron after dinner...
Raph had tried sleeping. He figures the tub's worth a try.
He plugs the headphones in, hits play. Casey'd been the last one to mess with the
CD player, and John Hiatt's guitar comes to life in his ears...
Sometimes I don't even move a muscle
Baby, when you lie awake all night
I think I got nine lives in these corpuscles
But girl, you know sometimes I don't think right...
He relaxes into the water, runs over the list in his mind. Hot tub's outta the way, that's
one thing...he still hadn't had a chance to ask Leo. Carlos would bug him about it in the
morning, too, the kid practically worshipped him...
He hears someone stepping out onto the porch, turns and sees Anna's legs. He looks up,
catches her eye, nods at her.
She's got a tank top on and a pair of boxers. Both silk, he guesses, just brushing against
her skin. No underwear, by the looks...
Raph closes his eyes and tries to focus on the music.
When I was a kid I thought that someday
I could tame this lion heart some way, somehow...
Her knee brushes against his thigh, and he forces himself to stay still.
Now I'm hungry for the love
That doesn't know what it's dreamin' of
Reaching for the meek and mild
Like something wild...
He stops the CD player, takes the headphones off. "Hey."
She smiles at him in response.
He looks at her, at the fabric billowing around her breasts, and tries to ignore the ache
between his legs.
She reaches over, inches away from his neck, turns up the bubbler. She settles back,
further into the water, stretches her arms around the sides of the tub. "I like this,"
she says, smiles, closes her eyes. "It was a good idea."
She's seventeen years old, you stupid fuck. Get the hell out of the hot tub.
After a minute, she asks, "wanna rub my back?"
"I...I don't think ya want me to do that."
She stands up; the tank top's sticking to her body now, her nipples hardening, and his
hand reaches for her before his brain can stop him.
She peels the tank top off and drops it beside the tub. "C'mon," she says. "I'll sit on your
lap and you can rub my back."
"What are you doing?"
"What do you think I'm doing?"
"Why?" He touches her side, just where her damp skin touches the water. Her skin is
soft, silky almost...
She slides the boxers down her hips.
"What is this? Some twisted way of getting back at your father?"
The shorts come out of the water; she wrings them out, puts them next to the tank top.
"Some Leo thing?"
"I don't know," she says. "Why are you doing it?"
"I'm not doing anything," he says. He's so stiff he can hardly move.
"Not yet," she says, and steps closer to him.
He puts a hand on each of her hips, and she balances her knees against him, her thighs
gripping his, his hands supporting her back. He moves his mouth to her body, his tongue
just brushing her belly button, moving further down her stomach...she moans and he
moves his hands down, pushes her body up, positioning her, trying to get his mouth
between her legs.
"Mm...what?"
Mike, his finger stroking her jaw: "You wanna make love?"
Maureen squints at him, her voice still sleepy: "Again?"
"Yeah, again..."
"What makes you think I want to make love again?"
His mouth, close to her ear..."You know you talk in your sleep, right?"
She smiles, puts an arm around his neck. "I think you did put something into the
food."
"Tell me what it was, I'll make it more often," he says, pulling her closer.
"I don't like that dress."
"Why not?"
"It's ugly."
"Well, I like it, and it's my Barbie..."
"Arnold? No, there's no Arnold Jones here--"
April jerks the phone out of Maureen's hand-- "Hello? Yes, I'm his wife, he uses
Casey...no, he's out right now, but I can...oh. Oh my God. Yes, yes, I'll have him call.
Yes, what's the number? 212...right..."
"You want her to wear the blue shoes?"
"Yeah."
"Arnold," Maureen says to herself, trying it out. "Arnold?"
"No, no, thank you, I'll tell him as soon as I get home. No, I couldn't, I'm sorry. I never
knew her...we'll be down as soon as we can, I don't want to have to bring the kids
down...Maureen, could you watch the girls for a while?"
"Yeah," Maureen says, startled out of her reverie. "No problem..."
"We'll head out as soon as he gets back. Yes. Thank you." She puts the phone
down.
"No," Angela says. "Not with Ken."
"Why doesn't she want to go out to dinner with Ken?"
"Arnold?"
"Yeah," April says, a little dazedly, "Arnold..."
"Ken's a jerk."
"So he uses Casey instead?"
"Arnold was his father's name."
"Look," Shadow says, "my Barbie can go with Ken, and yours can take Dimitri."
"But then Anastasia won't have a date," Raven complains.
"Dimitri'll be your date, too," Carlos assures her.
"So why..."
"Casey doesn't like to think about his father," April says, balls up a fist and pushes it into
her palm.
"He..."
April nods. "Broke ribs, busted his nose a couple times...you get the idea."
"What was--?"
"They think they've found his sister." She glances over at the kids, makes sure they're
still lost in the world of Barbie. "They want him to ID the body."
Yes, I know what you're thinking (among other things)...Click here for a rather amusing, and somewhat appropriate, sound from "South Park"...heh, heh...yes, I am a twisted little chica...
