“Who was that?”
“A Japanese girl. Most able. Her name was Mata Hari Kari. I had to dispose of her when I learned she was really a suicidal Japanese spy planted in my service by the CIA.”
Kim fell silent as Shrimp returned with the food. Quite hungry herself, Penny was happy to devote her full attention to the viands. Finally, both of them had eaten their fill.
Kim broke the silence. “Tell me,” he said in a voice fraught with erotic implications, “is it true what they say about Occidental women ”
“I don’t know. What do they say?”
“That an hour after you’ve had one, you’re hungry again.”
“Why not try and find out?” Penny murmured, beginning to hope for a chink in the armor of her virginity —and then immediately ashamed of herself for the unintentional racial slur implicit in the Freudian thought. She decided that the slip was Occidental rather than on purpose.
“An excellent suggestion,” Kim Asutra agreed. He pushed back his chair and moved around the table to where Penny was seated. He took her hand, held the chair for her to rise, and then led her over to a low divan set against one of the walls of the dining room. “Allow me,” he said smoothly and parted the folds of the kimona Penny was wearing. Then he stood back and surveyed the perfect figure of the now naked girl before him. “Ahh, so-o-o!” he exclaimed appreciatively.
“So?” Penny echoed impatiently.
“I shall be with you in a moment, my lotus blossom.” Kim Asutra crossed to a small table across the room, opened the drawer, and took out a small box. Then he returned to Penny and opened the box.
“What’s that?” the innocent girl asked innocently.
“You might term this device the Oriental equivalent of Serutan,” Kim explained. He held up the stout, pencil-shaped, stiff piece of rubber so that she might have a better view of it. “I have reached the age where the spirit is willing, but the flesh is all too weak. I’m sure you find this an adequate substitute.”
“I’m not so sure,” Penny said doubtfully. “But even if I do find it adequate, what about you? What will you get out of it?”
“The end,” Kim repeated himself, taking time out to return to the table and lick his chopsticks over Penny’s precious nude body, “justifies the means.”
“Well, all right,” Penny agreed reluctantly, deciding that any sacrifice was worthwhile if it would relieve her of the burden of her virtue. “The end awaits.”
“Just one more moment.” Kim turned his back courteously, searched strenuously within his own kimono, finally located what he’d been seeking, and strapped the dildo in place. Then he turned back to Penny. “I am coming, my little passion bird. I am coming.”
“So quickly? But I thought you had trouble—-?”
“Oh, why is English such a confusing language? Never mind.” Kim embraced the darling young virgin. His hand stroked her dovelike breasts expertly. His lips traveled over the ivory curve of her belly. He watched carefully as the light of passion grew in the jade of her eyes. The contrivance he wore began to duel lightly, teasingly, with the red-coated sentinel at the entrance to her palace of pleasure. He rose up, ready now to invade that palace. But—
“Dessert.”
The word, sounding stoically from the doorway to the dining room, made Kim break his rhythm. It also made him lose his customary Oriental inscrutability. The words he now addressed to the servant Shrimp in Chinese poured out in a torrent of anger worthy of a Chiang Kai-shek refusing American aid funds.
Shrimp backed off and Kim returned his attention to Penny. His lips swooped down like a hummingbird to sip at her steaming passion-kettle. “How can the fool speak of dessert,” he muttered, “when such ducky sauce as this awaits me?”
“Fortune cookies and tea.” Shrimp was back and his voice was insistent.
“We’d better humor him.” Penny restrained Kim’s anger. “You know how these Chinese waiters are.” She turned to Shrimp. “Do you have any kumquats?” she asked pleasantly.
“No. Just fortune cookies,” he replied.
“Well, I had one!” Kim punned indignantly. “Or at least I would have if you hadn’t interrupted, you imbecile.”
“A thousand pardons, Master. But I must respectfully insist you eat the fortune cookies.”
“Come on,” Penny urged. “It’s the only way to make him go away.”
“Oh, very well,” Kim sighed.
They returned to the table and Shrimp set the tea and fortune cookies out before them. Penny immediately broke her cookie open and read the little slip of paper inside it. “CONFUCIUS SAY GIRL WHO IS CHASTE EVENTUALLY GET CAUGHT.” Penny read it aloud. “My,” she sighed, “I hope that’s prophetic Now you read yours,” she told Kim.
“Don’t be silly. These things are all a fraud.”
“Please. I think they’re so exciting. Do it for me.”
“Oh, very well.” Kim broke his fortune cookie open petulantly and rattled off the words on the slip of paper inside: “HELP! I’M A PRISONER IN A CHINESE BAKERY!”
“Oh, that’s a funny joke,” Penny giggled.
“That’s no joke,” Kim said. “This is serious. No wonder Shrimp insisted I have dessert. This message is signed by my Number Two Son. The King Tong must have captured the bakery. I must leave immediately to rescue him.”
“But what about me?” Penny wailed.
“So sorry. But that’s the way the fortune cookie crumbles.”
“But you can’t just go and leave me like this when I’m so sexually stimulated and all!”
“A thousand pardons. But this is a matter of family honor.”
“So am I!” Penny insisted. “And it certainly doesn’t say much for the honor of your family when you leave a girl all hung up this way.”
“Hmm. There is justification in your argument. I have a responsibility to my Number Two Son, but there is also responsibility to you. Under this roof, under these circumstances, you are Kim quim. Family honor demands that Kim satisfy you. Ahh!” He snapped his fingers. “I have the solution. I must rescue Number Two Son, but Number One Son shall remain behind to fulfill Kim obligation to you. I shall summon him.”
A moment later a tall, handsome, well-built Chinese man is his early twenties appeared in answer to his father’s summons. “Kindly present lady with joss-stick fulfill family obligation,” Kim instructed him.
“My humble pleasure.” Number One Son bowed low.
“And mine,” Penny purred. “He is quite an improve — I mean, he will do very nicely. Very nicely indeed.”
“You are welcome,” Kim told her. “It is really nothing. It is family tradition for eldest son to take woman discarded by father.”
“Then I’m glad to be a reject,” Penny sighed.
“I go now to rescue number two son,” Kim Asutra said. He bowed even lower than his son had and departed.
“We will be more comfortable upstairs,” Number One Son told Penny, leading the way.
In the bedroom, he divested himself of his robes and stood before Penny in the altogether as she lay down on the bed. His muscles rippled and his skin shone like bronze. His over-large joss-stick pointed like a sword toward the ceiling.
Penny gasped at the size of it. “Boy,” she murmured, “they don’t call you number one for nothing.”
“I but honor my father’s wishes,” Number One Son intoned.
“That’s not very complimentary, but under the circumstances, I don’t care. Just call me Anna May Wong and do right by me.” She held up her arms to him, arched her trembling thighs in a wide V, and closed her eyes.
It was at that moment that a small lit stick of dynamite was tossed through the open window of the bedroom. It landed neatly in the juncture of the V and lodged there. “Hurry up,” Penny whispered. “I’m really sizzling.”