“Jes’ hand it back heah,” Cly said sweetly. “Good.” She took the bill back. “Now, Penny, hand me that theah choppah. Thank yew.”
“What is this?” The guard’s jaw dropped open.
“Mah name is Cly, an’ this heah’s Penny.” She poked him in the ribs with the tommy gun. “We rob toll booths.”
“Penny and Cly!” Fear spread over the guard’s face. “Gee! Please don’t hurt me!” He shoveled quarters through the car window.
“Would yew do us a favoah?” Cly jingled when he’d finished. She took a small Brownie camera from her pocketbook and handed it to the guard.
“Say ‘Cheese.’ ” He snapped the shutter.
“Ah’ll take foah wallet-size, two five-by-sevens an’ one eight-by-ten tinted an’ framed,” Cly jested.
“Let’s go.” Penny was impatient.
“You can’t,” the guard pointed out timidly. “The light’s still red. You have to pay the toll.”
“We jes’ robbed you.” Penny was irritable. “What diffrence does anothah foah bits make?”
“Robbery’s one thing,” the guard insisted. “Going through a toll booth without paying is something else again. That’s a very serious offense.”
Cly didn’t bother arguing. She selected two quarters and tossed them into the basket on the side of the toll booth.
An hour or so later they cut off the parkway, started down the highway heading south, then pulled up at a roadside hamburger stand. A carhop took their order and returned with a tray loaded down with hamburgers, Cokes, French fries, ketchup and mustard. She hooked the tray on the window on Penny’s side of the car and Cly and Penny started to eat. ,
They didn’t see the State Police patrol car when it first pulled into the lot. One of the troopers in the car noticed the antique auto and nudged his partner. The other trooper nodded and they got out of their car, guns drawn, and started for Penny and Cly.
Cly spotted them and threw the car into gear. Penny hefted the tommy gun threateningly as they zoomed past the troopers. One of the officers dived for the back of the flivver as it passed. He got a handhold on the old-fashioned spare tire rack and planted his feet on the wide bumper. He struggled to aim his gun.
Penny had put the tommy gun down and was trying to disattach the tray from the car window. Cly stared into the rearview mirror and watched with horror as the trooper sighted down the barrel of his gun. Her body flexed in anticipation of the bullet’s impact and she screamed.
Simultaneous with her scream-—quickly, yet somehow with the psychological aura of slow motion—the hand with the gun fell away from eye level. The trooper’s eyes widened. The face itself crumpled, seemed to shatter, to break into blood-red flesh fragments. The gory visage hung there a moment, and then vanished from Cly’s limited view. There was a dull-sounding thump as the trooper fell from the car to the road.
“Ohmeohmahohmeohmah!” Cly mouthed half hysterically. “Yew killed him, Penny! Awl that blood,” she sobbed. “You blowed his face right offen his haid. We’ah murderers now! All that blood! Yew made us murderers an’ we’ll fry foah it!”
“Hawse droppin’s!” Penny was surprisingly calm. “No sech thang! ’Tweren’t blood a-tall. That was ketchup. Wind took that paper container of ketchup when Ah unhooked the tray an’ it got him right ’tween the eyes. Ketchup looks a lot like blood.”
“Truth is it looks even worse.” Cly realized as she looked in the rearview mirror again and saw the trooper getting to his feet. The second trooper joined him on the run and now both of them stood in the middle of the road and fired after the Ford. Cly sighed over the gob of ketchup which was still all over the first trooper’s face. “Ah reckon when they put his photo in the papah lookin’ like that, we’ah gonna come up mad dogs even iffen y’all didn’t shoot him.”
“Image is a hard thang to change,” Penny agreed. “Folks been findin’ that out from Benedict Arnold to Richard Nixon.”
“Richard who?”
“Nevah mind.” Penny relaxed as they went around a bend in the road and the troopers’ bullets no longer followed them.
Less than an hour later they reached their destination. Cly’s brother Robin and his wife Marian received them with open arms.
“Figgered y’all mought come heah.” Robin kissed his sister and wrung Penny’s hand. “Been follerin’ youah ’scape on the newscasts. It’s a real credit to the fam’ly.”
“Y’all jes’ come on in an’ park youah loot,” Marian clucked hospitably. “It’s too bad the children is sleepin’. They suah would get a thrill bein’ up to welcome y’all. Jes’ as well though. Yew mus’ be tuckered out from youah journey.”
“Penny and me is sho’ ’nuf ready foah bed,” Cly agreed.
“Ain’t too tard for that, hey!” Robin snickered and nudged his sister. “Ah jes’ bet that Penny’s a real hunnerd percent man,” he joshed her.
Penny didn’t say anything, but the thought was that Robin would be awfully surprised to know just how far off he was. Lewd laughter followed them as they went upstairs to their bedroom. When Cly closed the door, shutting it off, Penny commented on Robin’s evaluation.
“Ah ain’t no great shakes as a lovah-boy.” Clutching the tommy gun for security, Penny backed away from the advancing Cly.
When she had Penny backed against the wall, Cly stroked the tommy gun and then reached lower. “This heah’s youah weapon/An’ this heah’s youah gun,” she singsonged. “This heah’s foah shootin/An’ this heah’s foah fun!” Cly grabbed.
Penny pulled away and crossed the room. The female brain suddenly found itself identifying with its new male body and there was resentment for the injuries done to Pennington P. Potter before the transplant. This resentment focused on Cly.
The way it looked, Cly had driven Potter to theft and suicide. Penny felt she owed it to her male torso to get revenge. Of course Penny had a tremendous advantage. Who knows better than a woman how a man should react sexually to another woman if the aim is to really hurt her?
“Didn’t yew enjoy makin’ love to me befoah?” Cly sounded hurt as she wriggled out of her dress and pulled off her stockings.
“It was awl right.” Penny stifled a yawn.
“You’ah not very ’thusiastic.” Cly doffed her bra and stroked the ridge marks it had left under her small, perfect breasts.
“Ah’m tard. An’ Ah told yew Ah ain’t no hotshot with the girls.”
“Wouldn’t that depend on the girl?” Cly wriggled her hips coyly and arched one long, slender leg in a gesture of invitation.
“Suah Would.” The flatness of Penny’s voice was a rejection.
“It’s been an excitin’ day, sugah.” Cly lay flat on the bed and looked up at Penny with smoldering eyes. “Ah’m still all het up. Ah need some lovin’ to calm me down.”
“Why not jes’ have a cup of hot milk?” Penny, clad only in jockey shorts now, stretched out on the bed beside Cly and turned out the light. “Ah’m really not in the mood.”
“Then Ah’ll put yew in the mood.” Cly’s fingers danced tantalizingly over Penny’s bare chest.
Penny didn’t respond. Cly kissed Penny, a long, deep kiss, but it likewise drew no response. A bite on the neck was followed by a tongue dipped into Penny’s ear. Cly might as well have been sharing the bed with a giant popsickle. Determinedly, she reached under Penny’s shorts. It took willpower, but Penny still managed not to react. Cly tried for a long time, but she finally gave up when Penny simulated the regular breathing of sleep.
This first rejection was only the beginning of Penny’s revenge. Cly hadn’t been exaggerating the strength of her desire. Now it required release. Sounds and movements said Cly was pursuing that release without Penny’s cooperation. Raising eyelids just enough to peek out from under them, Penny watched.