“It’s not easy for you, I would imagine,” said Shandee.
“No, it isn’t. The sex happiness of so many people — it weighs on you. We have our fun, sure, but we have our problems, too. The Pearloiner has been on a spree lately, stealing clits. She is one sick bitch. Zilka got her clit stolen clean away.”
“That’s terrible,” said Shandee.
Lila leaned forward. “That’s why she’s so vague sometimes. She’s lost her focus. And yet life does go on. You see that light?” Lila pointed to a small red light that blinked above the words PLEASURE FIRST. “Every time somebody has an orgasm somewhere in the House of Holes that light lights up. Whenever that light lights up I feel happy. I was working in hospital administration — I was seeing my friends get old, my life go by. Now I’m living. Don’t you wish you were having an orgasm right this second?”
“I guess so,” said Shandee.
“Well I do. After I have an orgasm I get so darn much work done. However.” She thought briefly, tapping her pen lightly on her nose. “Do you know how to fly an airplane?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.” Shandee waited.
“That’s too bad.” She clicked a button. “Zilka. Could you bring those three arrivals in from the waiting room?”
Shandee thought she should bring the conversation around. “So how do you think I should best go about searching for my Dave?” she asked.
“Let me muse on that further,” said Lila, taking off her bifocals. “I’ll need to hold the dear one again.” She sniffed Dave’s arm’s knuckles and pressed his hand lightly on her breast. “Hmmm. Let me just consider awhile. Mmm.”
Zilka opened the door for Hax, Ruzty, and Dune.
Lila quickly lowered Dave’s arm and looked over the crowd. “My goodness,” she said, “this is a pleasant afternoon. Dune, hello again, you rogue. Can any of you three fly a plane?”
“I can sail a boat,” said Hax.
“I drive a stunt motorcycle,” said Dune.
“I can bend my thumbs backward, like this,” said Ruzty, demonstrating.
“That settles it. Hax and Dune, you’ll fly the pornsucker ship to Baltimore with one of the pussypilots. Daggett will give you pointers. Daggett!”
A dark-haired man appeared with a heavy bag on his back.
“Daggett, we’ve got an emergency overload,” said Lila. “We’re going to have to suck all the bad porn out of Baltimore, Maryland.”
“Not Baltimore!” said Daggett.
“Yes. Buildings and Grounds says there’s a sentient mass forming in our main settling tank. We need dilution. Take these two fine men to the pornsucker squadron right away. I will brook no delay!”
Daggett bowed and complied.
“Have fun with that dude’s arm, girls!” called Dune as they left.
“That boy is fresh,” said Lila cheerfully. “And now, Zilka, will you please help this lovely young man here, with the flexible thumbs”—she gestured at Ruzty—“to kick off his pants and lie on the massage table. It’s a nice solid table, bamboo.”
Shandee, watching out of the corner of her eye, saw Zilka begin to busy herself with removing Ruzty’s wardrobe. She was curious to see Ruzty naked, but she forced herself to look back at Director Lila. Meanwhile, Lila was frowning and squeezing the length of Dave’s arm. Eventually she said, “Shandee, here’s your best course of action. A lot of our armless men end up at the Hall of the Armless Men Who Still Want to Fuck Twat. That’s way across the salt marshes.”
“Oh, okay,” said Shandee.
“With those legs on you, you’ll have to get yourself a tall pair of waders. They’re sold on O Street, at a little place called Wade for Me. Ask for Angelo, he’s a sweetheart. He’ll measure you all over. But first I’m going to ask you to give us some help right here in Intake. Because we are busy.”
“Sure, I’m game,” said Shandee.
“You’ve arrived here on what’s called a work-study scholar-ship,” Lila said. “We’ve got dozens of men arriving every day, with their wallets. The rush is on. We scan them for badness when they rematerialize — we’ll find any of nineteen diseases, cough, runny nose, STDs, of course. Is it nineteen, Zilka, or twenty-three now?”
“I don’t know,” said Zilka.
“At least nineteen diseases, plus any tendency toward thieving, scamming, or violent behavior. Which doesn’t mean some real a-holes don’t get in.”
“For instance, what’s his name, Pootie,” said Zilka, folding Ruzty’s pants.
“Pootie was awful. So we screen them. And we know that some of these arrivals are nervous and uncertain, as well as extremely good looking, and they need a good friendly penis scrub. That’s what we want help with at the moment. From you.”
Ruzty was standing completely naked, his hands crossed over his crotch. “Excuse me?” he said. “Hello?”
Lila turned. “Hon, what’s your name, sir?”
“Ruzty. I’m from Vermont.”
“Well, Ruzty from Vermont, I don’t see how you can have a problem with getting naked for a brief Penis Wash tutorial. We need to show Shandee the way we do it here at the House of Holes — the old-fashioned up-country way. Zilka?”
Zilka guided Ruzty onto the massage table, and the three women leaned over him. Zilka stroked his short hair. Lila stroked his chest muscles and right shoulder. “Aren’t you a smooth sight, oh my,” she said. “A regular Marky Mark.”
Shandee caught Ruzty’s eye and smiled at him. He rolled his eyes. “Sorry,” he said, in his fetching accent.
Zilka held up two orange mittens. “Okay, so your job is to put on these sponge mittens and go out and wash the men who pass by you on the line. It’s like a car wash. And the way you do it—”
“Excuse me, let me just interject,” said Lila. “It’s like a car wash with only luxury sport coupes, Ferraris, Miatas, etcetera. The men who go through the Penis Wash are personally selected either by me or by Aunt Maven or by somebody in charge. They are some of the tip-toppest-looking men who come in. So it’s an honor to be washed on the Penis Wash, and it’s an honor to be a penis washer. Both. Now carry on, Zilka, you’re doing good.”
Zilka held up her mitten. “Now we don’t have any warm-water sprayer in here to show you, but on the wash station you have a sprayer that hangs from the ceiling, and you have foot pedals and you spray the man down, like this, shpffffffssssssh, all around his crotch and his scrotum, get it all wet and sloppy, and then you pull down the soap hose, and you spray that on him and then you take your gloves and work the suds all up like this, squoosh squoosh squoosh.” She made pretend scrubbing motions an inch over Ruzty’s crotch. Ruzty crossed his hands over his chest and beamed at Shandee.
“Can I talk to the man as I’m scrubbing him?” asked Shandee.
“Yes,” said Zilka.
“Of course you can,” said Lila. “They don’t really know what’s happening yet. They’ve just arrived, and this is the first time that they’ve been naked here. So yes, talk to them if you want. It’s a matter of style. This experience is important, and your job is to make sure that they’re clean and they’re happy. Happy and clean.”
“But you can’t take too long,” said Zilka, “because you’re at a spray station and you only have a few minutes, and you have to be sure they’re all rinsed off.”
Lila made a conceding nod. “You don’t want to be leaving them soapy,” she said. “And you can scrub them all over, not just their crotches, obviously. But try not to spray directly in their faces, unless they want you to.”
“I think I’ve got the basic principle,” said Shandee. “Can I see how the gloves feel?”