The American Princess - Best Love Story Ever Read Free Page B

fun."
     
     
     
-2-
MERCURY
Speed-bumps

    Nineteen years earlier , on an overcast
Saturday in March of '75, Mercury had arrived at Myrtle Beach. The
three-day commute from Olympus had been tedious, but it had to be
made; Dixie Lee Chance had to die before her baby was born.
    The messenger god had staked out the Strand
Princess, and he was rewarded for his patience when Dixie Lee
waddled up to a cab.
    She looks like a heffalump, he'd thought. A
beautiful green-eyed heffalump, granted, but a heffalump
nevertheless.
    "Grand Strand General," Dixie Lee said, "and
hurry!"
    Mercury had moved quickly. He'd possessed
Waldo Whittle, the obese cab driver who had responded to Dixie
Lee's call, and then he'd hurried, but not to the hospital. He'd
taken Dixie Lee to a secluded house he'd rented on Red Fox Road in
Surfside Beach. There, he'd handcuffed her to a bed, and unsheathed
his hunting knife.
    "What are you doing?" a disbelieving Dixie
Lee cried.
    "You have to die before your baby is born."
If I can do this.
    "Please," Dixie Lee pleaded, "don't hurt my
baby."
    My god she's beautiful. Damn it! I can't end
her this way. He'd locked her in the bedroom, her wrist still
handcuffed to the bed, and gone to buy a gun. Shoot her? That I
should be able to manage—if I close my eyes.
    When he'd returned, Saturday-night-special in
hand, Dixie Lee was busily giving birth to Betty-Jo. Her head was
already out.
    "Stop! Don't push!" he'd yelled. He tried to
shove baby Betty-Jo back in, but it wasn't happening because she
was slippery, and he couldn't risk harming her once she'd been
born. "This can't be how they get the caramel into the Caramilk
Bar," he said.
    Dixie Lee had stifled a smirk and continued
to push. "You're not ready for prime time stupidity yet," she said.
"First you have to practice getting toothpaste back into a squeeze
tube."
    He'd loosed a crooked smile, which quit
abruptly when he shoved even harder, and found that Dixie Lee was
still winning the baby-pushing event. But he couldn't give up—the
stakes were too high.
    Betty-Jo's shoulders were almost out when
he'd had what he thought was a bright idea. He retrieved the toilet
bowel plunger from beside the toilet, and positioned it over the
baby's head. It fit perfectly. "A tiara for you, Princess," he
said. Then he pushed on the plunger as hard as he dared. But even
with the added leverage, Betty-Jo still wouldn't go back into Dixie
Lee where she had to be if he were to complete his mission.
Betty-Jo Chance made her worldly debut two weeks early.
    Now what do I do? He'd reached up to tug on
his earring, but of course it wasn't there. Then he'd tried to page
Venus, but she wasn't picking up. "To Hades with you, Goritch! If I
could replace you in bed I'd have dumped you long ago."
    The goddess was crackers. She made him brush
the roof of his mouth because that was where she said the odor
causing bacteria lived, and she wore red silk teddies with 'I Love
My Piranha' stenciled across the chest. No sane goddess loves
piranha! Unfortunately, she was the only goddess, sane or
otherwise, who'd sleep with a short guy. He knew that from painful
experience. Over the centuries he'd tried to bed them all. Maybe if
I got a pair of elevator shoes, he'd thought.
    He'd given Betty-Jo's bottom a whack, and got
her howling. Then he'd boiled the blade of his knife and severed
the umbilical cord. Ironic, he thought, minutes ago I was trying to
kill The Princess—now I have to make sure she lives. That insight
had infuriated him. You schmuck! Look at you! Stuck on earth
suffering from a premature birth, and sexual gratification
underload. But at least you can do something about your
gratification problem. You can get yourself a mortal—have some fun
for a change.
    As luck would have it, fat Waldo's wife was a
sexy, raven-haired beauty with an hourglass figure. Rebecca Whittle
had married Waldo after she got plastered one evening, ended up
pregnant, and decided that any father for her daughter was