"When's the last time you called your mom?" Fiona asked as they drove to pick up Charlie late that afternoon.
"Uh . . . Friday? Maybe?"
She retrieved Michael's phone from the console and started pushing buttons on the screen.
"Not now!" Michael exclaimed in surprise. "I'm driving."
"Since when can't you talk and drive?"
"You could be a public service announcement. You're not supposed to talk while you're driving."
"Oh, okay, Mr. Rule Follower," she said, rolling her eyes. "Fine. I'll put her on speaker."
"Fi! No!" But it was too late.
"Hello?" croaked Madeline.
"Hi, Madeline," Fiona said. "I've got Michael here, too."
"Hi, Mom," said Michael flatly.
"Hi, baby. What's new?" she asked.
"We're just calling to see how you're doing," Fiona answered.
"You know, I think I'm finally starting to feel human again," said Madeline. "I've been awake for six hours in a row today."
"That's grand," said Fiona. She waited a moment, then punched the silent Michael in his right thigh.
"Yes, very good news," Michael said while trying to hit Fiona's leg back. But she blocked him.
"How are you and Charlie?"
It was quiet for two seconds, so Fi punched Michael again.
"We're fine, Ma. Hang on a second, okay?" He pressed the mute button. "Stop it," he ordered. "I'll talk when I want to." Fiona huffed and turned to face the window as Michael unmuted the phone. "I'm back. We're fine," he repeated. "On our way to get Charlie now."
"What's he been up to?"
"Uh . . . I'm thinking. His train obsession seems to be calming down. Now he's obsessed with Legos."
"The regular ones or the big ones?" Madeline asked.
"Well, we did have just the big ones, but then Jesse got him this 400-piece ninja something-or-other with regular Legos."
"Oh, god," she replied, laughing.
"Yeah, that's why we didn't speak to Jesse for a week."
"It's actually quite educational," Fiona chimed in. "I've been taking the opportunity to teach Charlie about Japanese warfare and its influence on contemporary military theater."
"Which is surely appropriate for a three-year-old," Michael said dryly.
"Not three yet," Madeline said, "That reminds me. What'd you two decide about the party? Rent a place or have it here?"
Fiona looked surprised. "Sorry? Did you say what did we decide about the party?"
"Yeah. What's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing, except that this is the first I'm hearing of it," Fiona said, glaring at Michael. "Why didn't you tell me?" she barked.
Michael cleared his throat. "Yeah, Ma, about the party. I really think we should keep it small. Maybe just all of us and Charlie."
"I completely disagree," Fiona declared. "All of us and Charlie is called Thursday, Michael. This is his birthday. We need to celebrate. I was going to bring it up this weekend, as a matter of fact, that we needed to get it organized."
Madeline coughed a few times. "Obviously we're having a party, Fiona. Don't worry," she said soothingly. Then she changed tones. "Michael, don't be an idiot," she snapped. "Of course we're having a party. So am I to take it that you've done nothing so far?"
"I've done something. I've decided we should keep it small," he said flatly.
"Oh, for god's sake, Michael. Forget I asked. Fiona, honey, do you want to come over tomorrow and we'll plan? I'm dying to see Charlie, anyway."
"Absolutely," Fiona answered, still shooting death rays at Michael. "Maybe we can have lunch."
Michael stared at the road and tried to tune out the conversation as Fiona and Madeline continued to talk. Just a birthday party, he kept reminding himself, trying to keep it in perspective. But he couldn't ignore his anger. This conversation fell into a long history of the most important women in his life asking for his input and then shitting all over it.
"Hoomayme," Charlie said at dinner, his mouth full of rice and beans.
"Is that English?" Michael asked.
"Finish what's in your mouth and then say it again, Charlie," Fiona said.
He chomped for a while, then swallowed. "Who made me?" he repeated.
Michael and Fiona looked at each other nervously. "What do you mean, cutie?" she asked.
"Who made me?" he clarified.
"Do you mean how did you get born?"
"Yah, who made me?"
By now Fiona and Michael were both well versed in the rule of answering kids' questions: answer only the question asked. "Your mommy and daddy made you," she said. A pregnant pause followed.
"Okay." Charlie shoved in another spoonful of rice and beans. Michael and Fiona looked at each other again, this time relieved.
They shouldn't have done that.
"Hoomaymymahydahy?" he asked almost immediately.
"Who made your mommy and daddy? Well," Fiona said carefully, "your mommy's mommy and daddy made her, and your daddy's mommy and daddy made him."
"Okay." He thought for a moment. "Did they use nails?"
"Nails?" Fiona repeated, puzzled.
"Yah, like when you builded the table. You used nails."
Fiona laughed. "Oh, I see. No, they didn't use nails. You don't need nails to make a person."
"Okay." More rice and beans. This time he actually waited until he finished chewing and swallowing before he spoke. "How do you make a puhson?"
Fiona smiled nervously. "Michael?" she said.
Michael released the breath he'd been holding. "You want to know how a person is made, Charlie?"
"Yah."
"How do you think a person is made?"
Charlie looked pensive. "I think with Play-Doh."
"Play-Doh, huh?" Michael said.
"Yah because Play-Doh is soft. Legos ah too hahd."
"You're right, Charlie. Legos are too hard to make a real person." Michael closed his eyes and let another breath go. When he opened them, he saw Fiona glaring at him. "Chicken," she mouthed.
"Sucker," he mouthed back.
Later that night, Michael was lying in bed, reading his email on his phone while waiting for Fiona to come to bed.
"Do we have any dental floss?" she called from the bathroom.
"In the medicine cabinet."
"No, not the flosser things. Regular dental floss."
"I don't know. Why?"
"I need it."
His I-want-to-kill-you smile emerged involuntarily. "Obviously you need it, or else you wouldn't have asked. Why do you need it?"
"For my web. Or, I should say, for the Black Widow's web."
Michael groaned. "God."
"Oh, come on. It'll be fun!" she said, coming into the bedroom.
"And I take it I'm supposed to get caught in the web," he said flatly.
"You read my mind." She grinned, climbed on the bed, and straddled him.
"Fi, I don't want to get caught in dental floss," he whined.
"It's a moot point if we don't have it. Hmmm." She leaned in to him and thought for a moment. "Shoelaces!"
"No."
She sat up straight on her knees and put her hands on her hips. "You're beginning to piss me off, Michael."
"The knots are a pain in the ass to undo, Fiona."
She looked disgusted. "You think I can't make them easy to undo?"
"I think you won't make them easy to undo."
She rolled her eyes. "Fine. I promise to make any knots relatively simple to undo."
"Not good enough. Last time you used shoelaces, it took me forty-five minutes to untie them. Look, Fi, I'm not twenty-two anymore. I need to sleep. I'll trade sleep for sex, but unknotting shoelaces? No thanks."
Fiona pouted. "Tape."
"The Black Widow is a stripper, is she not? Let's focus on that part instead of the web."
She huffed dramatically. "Fine. Just to let you know, I'm assessing an extra week as a penalty."
"An extra week to your month?"
"Yes."
"Let me make sure I understand. You devised the bet."
"Yes."
"You lost the bet."
"Yes."
"You agreed to refrain from committing felonious assault in exchange for retroactively winning the bet."
"Yes."
"I say I want to focus on your naked body instead of untying knots, and you believe that entitles you to another week."
"Yes."
"Just checking."
"Fi, uh, I hate to sound ungrateful, but I can't keep my eyes open out here. Do we have an ETA?" Michael asked twenty minutes later.
"Ninety seconds," she called from the bathroom.
Michael closed his eyes and nodded the way you do when you forget the person you're talking to can't see you.
"Did you hear me?"
He nodded again, then realized what he was doing. "Yeah." He kept his eyes closed, but forced himself to stay awake.
A minute later, he heard the bathroom door open. Fiona strutted out wearing a black print crop top, black leather chaps, and strappy, silver sandals on four inch heels. Her hair was pinned up in a sexy-sloppy pile atop her head. Loose tendrils sprang out here and there.
"Okay," Michael said, quickly scooting himself upright against the headboard. "I'm awake. Wow."
She twirled slowly, revealing her bare bum.
"Hello. Not that I'm complaining, but since when do you have assless chaps?"
"Remember Winston?"
Michael thought. "Lawyer with the Breakers?"
"Yep. I picked them up to visit Big Ed's bar. But I wore jeans underneath them." She kneeled on the bed, then prowled like a cat until she was straddling Michael. "Whatcha think, sugar?" she drawled. "Jeans tonight?"
"Are you cold?"
"Not a bit, sugar."
"Are you prone to contact dermatitis?"
"Depends what I'm contactin'."
"You know what I say? I say live dangerously. I say fuck the jeans."
She leaned in closer. "You sure it's the jeans you want me to fuck?" she purred.
He flashed a huge smile.
"But first thing's first, sugar. Thousand bucks. Let's go."
"A thousand bucks?"
"Thousand bucks."
"What am I buying?"
She guffawed. "What are you buyin'? Uh, you forgettin' 'bout a little thumb drive you wanted me to lift off that bald little doodlebug?"
"Oh, I remember. And I also remember we agreed on five hundred."
"Cost of livin' increase."
"We agreed Tuesday."
"Things are hard all over."
"Well, then we have a big problem, Widow. 'Cause I'm not paying a thousand dollars. And good luck finding another buyer, because, best I can tell, anyone besides me who'd want it would just as soon kill you and save themselves the grand."
The Black Widow looked a little worried.
"And it's only a matter of time before the doodlebug figures out the last time he had it was when he was in your company," Michael added.
Now she looked a lot worried. "Tell you what," she said after a moment. "How 'bout I make it worth your while?"
"How so?"
"For one thousand American dollars, I will let you pluck that thumb drive from my person."
Michael contemplated her offer. "Huh. That's intriguing. Where on your person is the thumb drive?"
She leaned in. "It's a secret," she whispered.
"I see. So I'm going to have to search your person before I get to pluck your person?"
"'Fraid so, darlin'."
He eyeballed her up and down. "Yeah, what the hell. I suppose I can blow five hundred bucks to pluck. Probably a better investment than the market right now; am I right?"
"Always bet on Black."
"All right, Spider Woman, let's get on with it. Sit back. I'm going to start at the top and work my way down." Michael massaged Fiona's scalp with his fingers and, after a good minute or two, started pulling out the bobby pins. They multiplied like gray hairs—for every one he pulled, two more seemed to grow in its place. Once he'd finally set all her hair free, he returned to the massage. This time he managed to elicit an involuntary "mmm" or two.
He moved down and held her petite face in his hands. He stroked cheeks and tickled ears and strummed lips. "Nice try, Widow," he said in his best beat cop voice.
"What?"
"You really thought you could hide it in your mouth?"
"I don't know what you're talkin' about, darlin'. It's not in my mouth."
"Fat chance. Open up." She did. Michael slid fingers all over her gums for a while, squeezing and pulling her tongue every now and then. Then he rested his thumbs on the inside of her cheeks. Then he rested his fingers on the outside of her cheeks, and he proceeded to pay those cheeks some very nice attention. She made happy noises.
Even a mouth massage can get you through the night when Michael is the masseur.
"All right, Widow, it's clean at first glance, but I reserve the right to conduct a more thorough investigation later."
She shrugged. "Suit yourself."
"Tilt your head back," he ordered, and she did. He whispered his fingers down the length of her neck several times, finally landing on her shoulders. After some firm, strong squeezes of basically the entirety of her upper arms, he said, "Arms up," and she complied again. And then he tickled her armpits.
Fiona is not a fan of the tickling.
So she punched at him reflexively, but he was prepared for it and blocked it. She was about to yell, but he was prepared for that, too, and clamped his hand over her mouth. "Probably don't want to wake the buzzkill sleeping thirty feet from here."
She squinted her eyes, extracted her right leg from the pile of limbs, raised it all the way up, and kicked him in the head. Kind of lightly. Not really, though. Michael wasn't mad. Tickling Fiona comes at a price, and today the price was a kick to the head, but the satisfaction of catching her off guard was a bargain at twice the price.
"Do that again, sugar, and any part of you that touches me is a part you ain't gittin' back." She smiled sweetly. Any Southern belle worth her salt smiles when she's threatening to kill you.
"Loud and clear," Michael grinned. "Let's see, where was I? Oh, yeah." He hooked his thumbs under the straps of her crop top and snaked them over her shoulders and down her arms. He leaned forward and pulled the top center of her shirt forward so he could peer down her shirt. "Pretty dark in there. Lemme get a better look." Then he shimmied the shirt up and pulled it off over her head.
Michael skimmed his finger down her midline from the bottom of her satiny, black bra to the top of her pants. Her abdominal muscles tensed involuntarily. She closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and exhaled deeply. So he did it again. More deep breathing.
"I take it that kind of tickling doesn't make you want to kick me in the head?" he asked.
"Mmm."
"Good to know. All right, Widow, enough of this shit. I got your number. I know exactly where you hid the thumb drive." He reached around and unhooked her bra, then pulled it off. "Huh," he said, sounding confused. "Well, what the . . ." He raised her breasts, checking for the elusive thumb drive between them and her rib cage. "Ohhhhh, I see what you did. Clever, Widow. Real clever. You figured you'd just implant that drive next to your other implants. That it?"
"I beg your pardon, sugar," Fiona said haughtily. "Ain't nothin' implanted in me 'ceptin' what the good lord saw fit to bless me with."
"We'll see about that." Michael cupped each breast, wiggling and pressing his fingers into the little, doughy mounds.
Fiona closed her eyes and exhaled deeply through her nose.
And that's what they did for the next eight minutes. Michael did all sorts of lovely things to Fiona's breasts and nipples and décolletage. Occasionally he'd nibble fingers or tickle toes. Just for flavor. Fiona breathed hard and sweated and drifted into her own little Shangri La, complete with erotic strip searches and sniper rifles.
Not a bad way to spend eight minutes.
"Widow, widow, widow," Michael sighed, shaking his head, once Fiona rejoined him back on Earth.
"Yeah, sugar?"
"Widow, I just can't believe you're gonna make me do this."
"Do what?"
He groaned. "Oh, come on, Spider Woman. Give it up. You're gonna make me go spelunking, aren't you?"
"ExCUSE me? Make you? You know how many men want to go spelunkin' in me?"
"Oh, I can imagine, but you see, Widow, women have a bad habit of falling in love with me after I spelunk."
She guffawed. "Is that right?"
"Oh yeah, yeah. I become irresistible. It's a real problem. And, you know, you seem like a nice broad and everything, but I'm not looking for a serious relationship right now."
"No offense, sugar, but I'd kill myself and donate my body to science 'fore I let you touch it again after this. Don't you worry 'bout bein' irresistible. You're right resistible, far as I'm concerned."
"Never underestimate the power of a good spelunking, Widow. Anyway. You set? 'Cause I'm ready."
She got herself comfortable and splayed her hair out on the pillow. "Go on, git it over with," she sighed.
So Michael explored the Widow's dark caves. A few times. Just to make sure he hadn't missed anything. You can't be too careful with black widows.
Author's Note: Thank you for your IMpatience! All the "Oh my god, PLEASE update" reviews were so sweet. :) I know it's been a long time. First life got in the way, and then I lost my mojo for a while. I hope it's back!