Adams’ Apples
17 Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner
“HELLO. I’M REBA SMITH. I’ve been sent by the alphabet soup department to collect a baby from Mr. Adams,” the redhead at the door said. Ramsey looked at her skeptically. Another Smith sent to collect Jack’s… Wait a minute.
“It’s not right to make someone work on Thanksgiving,” I said. “Come in and join us for dinner. We’re just having drinks before we go downstairs for the meal.”
“Oh yes, thank you.” Reba pranced into the room like she owned it, went directly to Jack and kissed him. He spit champagne through his nose.
“I beg your pardon, miss,” Jack sputtered. “What are you doing? I don’t go around kissing strange women.”
“I won’t be strange for long, Jackie-poo. You’ll get used to it.”
“What agency did you say you’re from?” Sheila asked. This person looked and sounded awfully familiar.
“Oh, you know. The redhead one. They’re all the same.”
“I don’t think so,” Mr. Smith MIB said moving between Jack and Reba. I’d guessed right and the MIB came out of their rooms at ten Thursday morning as if they’d been there all along. For that matter, maybe they had. Already this morning, they’d begun forging a truce with the colonel and had vetted both Sheila and Kitty. “Let’s see your ID. I’ll run a check on it while Ms. Smith here takes you to a different room to strip search.”
With Reba squealing all the way, Ms. Smith escorted her into a bedroom. “In the bedroom with just me or out here with everyone watching,” she growled. Reba was pushed into the room. Smythe was already on his phone looking over the shoulder of Smith at Reba’s ID. Sheila was likewise on her phone, having snapped a picture of the newcomer and sent it to someone.
“Well, this is exciting. Mattie, better call the kitchen and have them set another place. I think we’re up to fifteen now,” I said. Mattie made the call from a house phone. Elizabeth hooked my arm and led me to our room.
“She’s a fraud,” Elizabeth hissed.
“Of course she is. Cleverest of the contenders so far. Might be worth considering,” I laughed. “I do wish we could get people to use a different alias than Smith. What is wrong with Jones? We could even use some Herrera for variety.”
“Who is Herrera?” a baffled Elizabeth asked.
“That’s Spanish for Smith.”
“What are we going to do, Ramsey? She didn’t come here to make a collection like Sheila. She came here to get pregnant. Jack isn’t safe from her.”
“I think we should play along for a while and see what the others come up with. Everyone was on a phone.” I kissed my wife and glanced meaningfully at the bed.
“It’s time for Thanksgiving Dinner,” she hissed.
“I was thinking of getting a head start on the wishbone.” Elizabeth squealed and ran from the bedroom with me in hot pursuit.
The room was in a flurry of excitement.
“Secret Service suspects she’s the president’s daughter. She went off the grid two days ago,” Mr. Smith MIB said.
“I’m right here,” Kitty answered. “I’ve been updating my chat page every day!”
“The other one,” Smith replied. “There’s scuttlebutt that there was a big argument with POTUS and she left the West Coast White House without looking back. SS didn’t even know she was gone.”
“Oh. Poor Scarlett. She has no idea how to live in the real world. But one thing is for certain. That woman is not Scarlett Muffley,” Kitty declared.
“NSA is convinced she’s a Russian plant, sent here to seduce and turn Jack Adams, then to defect with him to Russia,” the Colonel said.
“Do they have any proof of that?”
“Who needs proof when it’s the Russians?”
“The FBI says she’s one of the several hundred women they’ve tagged as a potential saboteur or possible rapist. They’re still trying to match her to the right file,” Lieutenant Smith broke in.
“She’s blonde,” Ms. Smith MIB said, pushing Reba out of the bedroom ahead of her.
“You can’t prove that! All my hair is red!”
“I talked to you,” Ms. Smith said. “That was sufficient.”
“She’s my boyfriend’s ex-wife,” Sheila said, showing the picture on her phone. “Reba Dean, nee Watkins, nee Dean. I knew I recognized her.”
“Your boyfriend! You’re fooling around with my husband? I’ll sue you for disaffection.”
“You did that quite well before we met,” Sheila answered back. “She is obsessed with having a baby so she’s not the only one in her clique who’s childless.”
“The kitchen called and they’re ready to serve dinner for the Smith party,” Mattie said. “Shall we go to the dining room?”
With the number of accusations, rumors, conjectures, and hurt feelings, it was much the same as any family Thanksgiving dinner. Dessert had not yet been served when another young woman who looked remarkably like Kitty stormed into the dining room.
“Scarlett!” Kitty shrieked. “How did you get here? The last we heard you’d escaped from the family unit in California and no one knew where you were.”
“I hitchhiked. Kitty, help me. Please!” The young girl threw herself into her sister’s arms. “I read your chat page, so I knew you were here. It’s awful out there. Daddy wants to get me pregnant and everyone hates me.”
“Here, Miss Scarlett,” Lieutenant Smith said, rising from his chair. “Please have a seat at our table. I bet you haven’t eaten. We’re about to have dessert but I’m sure the kitchen can serve you a full meal.”
“When did you last eat?” Kitty demanded.
“Sometime yesterday. I only had twenty dollars when I left the madman,” Scarlett sobbed. She didn’t appear to be more than fifteen, but otherwise, just a younger and more innocent version of her sister.
Food was summoned, Scarlett ate, and Kitty coaxed the story from her while everyone had dessert.
“Excuse me, but are you saying you don’t want to get pregnant?” Jack asked bluntly.
“Oh, yuck! With a man? I’d rather die,” Scarlett announced. Forks were dropped on plates. “Daddykins thinks that if I was just ‘with child,’ it would straighten out my hormones—with the emphasis on straight. Now… If she could get me pregnant,” Scarlett pointed at a very startled Evelyn, “I might be persuaded. You are seriously cute.”
“Um… Well… I… Uh…”
“Oh, don’t worry. I never try to turn someone from hetero into homo. But men are, like, yuck.” She looked around the table and lowered her eyes. “Um… present company excepted, of course,” she sighed. Lieutenant Smith visibly wilted. His eyes had not left her since she burst into the dining room.
“What do you plan to do now?” Colonel Smythe asked.
“As soon as it opens Monday, I’m going to the American embassy and asking for asylum,” Scarlett said firmly. “Will you shelter me until then?”
“We need to look at the room assignments,” Ramsey sighed. “Mattie?”
“If the colonel and lieutenant share a room, we can put the sisters in the spare. But what are we doing with that one?” Mattie pointed at Reba who had been edging away from the table only to find her ankle was cuffed to her chair.
Kitty was simply shaking her head over her sister’s naiveté.
“That won’t work,” she said. “Honey, you can’t ask for asylum from the American embassy. You’re an American. They’d just turn you over to the White House. Who knows what might happen then? They might lock you in the kennel.”
“That would be just like Daddy! He wouldn’t even let me have a puppy!”
“And I certainly won’t be sharing a room with a lieutenant,” the colonel humphed.
“Okay, let’s try this on for size,” Ms. Smith MIB said. “Mr. Smith and I can share a room. This Mr. Smith. After all, we’re on assignment. Then Scarlett can have my room until we figure out who to palm her off to. The colonel and the lieutenant can continue to have their rooms and Kitty can decide who she’s sharing with.”
“Wait. That still leaves her.” Everyone looked at Reba.
“Oh, just cut her loose,” I said. “What damage can she do now?”
Once we were finished with Thanksgiving dinner, we all trooped back to the suite. Mostly, we were laughing at one thing or another because it was a Smith thing. We’d had a family dinner.
“After dinner drinks?” I asked in general. Orders began flowing in and I started mixing. An odd movement caught my eye and I spotted the colonel putting an arm over Jack’s shoulders and toasting with their martinis. I moved a little closer, raising my own martini to the room in salute.
“Jack, I know we got off on the wrong foot. Every soldier knows you start with the left foot and I boot-jacked right into the room leading with my right,” Smythe said. “I want to apologize for that. There was a lot of pressure. No excuse, but it affected me. You don’t know this, but they reactivated me. That’s right. I was retired. But my country called and there was nothing I could do but respond. I just messed up.”
“It’s okay, Colonel. I think we’ve gotten past the biggest fuck-ups,” Jack said.
“But I’m really here for you, Jack. I’m here for you. Monday morning, they’re going to march you into the clinic and start treating you like a come dumper. Oh, I’ve no doubt Sheila will do her best to make it good for you. But you’ve got to protect yourself, too.”
“How should I protect myself?”
“You’ve got to work into it slowly. Think of it like this: You decide you need to get fit so you go to a gym. You pick up some weights and do some lifts. Then you spot some machines and follow the directions. It’s all new and interesting, right? Then you hop on a treadmill or a stair-stepper and focus on the aerobics. When you get finished you get to thinking you really want to get ripped and you’re not feeling bad, so you do the whole circuit again. Maybe you decide you can handle it fine, so you do another circuit. Then you shower up, stop at a restaurant and eat a big steak. You go home and watch a little TV, maybe have a drink or two. You flop in bed thinking, ‘This was a pretty good day. I’ll do it again tomorrow.’ Then you go to sleep.”
“Okay. What’s that got to do with Monday?”
“What happens when you wake up the next morning? You feel terrible. Everything aches. You’ve got a headache because you’re dehydrated. You’re physically exhausted. You don’t want to move.” The colonel lifted his glass and took another swallow from his drink. “The same thing could happen to you Monday. You go into the clinic. Sheila is there to coach you. You get a good come and she boxes it up properly for the science weenies. And she’s back an hour or two later. You’re thinking, the first time wasn’t bad. She’s right there. You can do it again. Maybe you’re a little slower, but you still get a good come that she boxes up and puts in the freezer.”
“I think I see where this is going. She’s going to come back again, isn’t she?”
“Son, she’s going to come back as many times as those bastards shove her through the door. She’s going to coax every last drop of semen she can from you, even though it’s taking longer each time, you’re getting tired and sore. But she’s doing everything possible to inspire you and get you off so she can box it up and freeze it. And finally, you jerk and nothing comes out. She’s got nothing to freeze so you go home. The next morning, you don’t feel like going in. You’re tired. But there she is, waiting for you. Maybe she’s topless this time and you think, it’s not so bad to be in your line of work. You pop and she catches. She looks at it a little critically because it’s not as much as yesterday. And you only manage three before your prick has the dry heaves. And you think it’s getting a little raw. And the next day you don’t want to go in at all, but it’s your job to save the human race, so you manage just one weak little shot and you’re done for the day. There’s no sense going in the next day.”
“So, I should pace myself?”
“It’s just like working out in the gym. Don’t stress yourself the first day. One circuit. Come back the next day and do one circuit. The next day, maybe you’re ready to add a rep. In five days, you’ve worked up to maybe three times a day and instead of being a task master, Sheila is becoming your coach. She’s keeping you motivated. She’s praising your work. Your goal should be to get four good shots a day by the end of a month or so with only needing the weekend to recoup. And you should be able to sustain that as long as you’re getting good nutrition, staying off the booze, and making good use of your coach.”
“Wow! How do you know so much about this?”
“Well, it’s the reason they called me back into service. You see, I went to college. And officers’ school. And command college. And war college. But I also went to Georgetown. I went to West Point. I got my BS, my MS, and my PhD. They don’t use those titles in the Army. It sounds silly to be Colonel Dr. Smythe. Or Colonel Smythe, PhD. But I wrote my dissertation on the Weaponization of Spermatozoa. I know a lot about come.”
I choked slightly. By this time everyone had gathered around to listen and Smythe was soaking up the attention.
“You figured out how to kill the enemy with come?” I asked.
“No. No. Nothing like that. It’s a theoretical paper, not a practicum.” Smythe looked critically at his empty martini glass and Elizabeth rushed to the shaker to fill it again before he continued. “I was on a team whose job was to find weaknesses in our service. Whether it was bad supply lines, broken weapons, or organizational structure. What I noticed was the increasing number of women in the Army, on the front lines, in command, in upper levels of the command structure. Nothing against women in command. Bless them, most of those idiots need a mommy to give them orders. But I had to consider whether the modern interweaving of women throughout the TOE created any vulnerabilities. That’s when another officer—real chauvinist asshole—said ‘Can you imagine what a shitshow this will be if they all get pregnant?’ And the truth was, I could imagine it. If a delivery mechanism could be developed that sent active sperm into each of our women in the army, we could instantly have a third of our entire force suddenly out on maternity leave—half of those would never return.”
“What kind of delivery mechanism would that be?” Elizabeth asked, barely holding back her laughter.
“We have—and this is top secret—all kinds of stealth weapons. Airplanes that can’t be seen by radar. Guns that can’t be heard when they are fired. Bombs that leave all the buildings standing. I theorized the development of a stealth penis. Unleashed on our armed forces, it would have a devastating effect.”
The room was stunned to silence. Such a diabolical weapon. Elizabeth started pouring another round of martinis.
“Hey. What happened to that Reba Smith woman?” she asked. “I haven’t seen her since dinner.” The Smith MIBs looked at each other.
“Shit,” said Ms. Smith. “I left her leg cuffed to her chair.”
“Did you cuff Scarlett Muffley, too? Where did she get off to?”
“Scarlett?” Kitty called. “Scarlett! No. She’s not here. What happened to my sister?”
“Maybe she kept Reba company?”
Kitty, the Smiths, the lieutenant, Sheila, and Mattie all rushed out the door. The colonel wobbled after and I confined Jack and Evelyn to their room before sitting down with my back to their door and pulling Elizabeth into my lap.
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