Feast of Saints Read online

  When he entered the tiled room, Jake congratulated himself on his foresight. There she was, bent over again, over the now open Rubbermaid tub. Without straightening, she twisted her hips to look at him and waved her hand around the room.

  “This is perfect. I saw a bench in the gym. Can we pull it in here?”

  “I’ll get it,” he said, tearing his eyes off of the seam of her jeans. When he returned, she was placing an organized tray of what appeared to be color-coded, white plastic toothpicks on the counter. He sat in the barber’s chair and had to adjust to keep from uncomfortably crushing his half hard-on. Looking in the mirror, he tried to remember his last good date. Gauging by his hair trigger with Lilly, he decided he needed to get out more. Work less.

  “Okay, ready?” she said, turning toward him. She was wearing surgical gloves.

  “Ready for what?” he asked warily.

  She smiled reassuringly at him. She had pretty, pearly, little white teeth and plush, baby doll lips.

  Jake watched her mouth as she said, “I’m going to do a quick allergy test and I’ll leave you with a skin patch that I want you to wear for twenty-four hours. Before we start filming and applying the special effects materials to your skin, we need to know if you’re allergic to any of it. None of the materials I’ll be using cause a severe reaction with moderate exposure, but during filming you’ll be wearing them all day, every day. If you are allergic to any of it, it could limit what we can do with the effects.”

  “Okay?” She was waiting for him to respond.

  Looking from her mouth to her wide, hazel eyes, he said, “It doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “It’s not really.” She smiled that pearly, reassuring smile at him again. “Do you mind taking off your shirt?”

  He pulled the shirt over his head, tightening his abdominal muscles and liking the pleasant feeling it gave him to undress in front of her. Lilly stepped beside him to grasp his upper arm with one gloved hand. She scrubbed his skin with a sterile alcohol wipe, then used a medical marker to quickly draw a series of five horizontal and four vertical intersecting lines, numbering the axes.

  Picking up the color-coded plastic spiked toothpick from the number one spot on the tray, she said, “This part’s not very nice. It’ll sting but not as bad as a bee sting. There’s a tiny drop of the potential allergens on each of these. Don’t pull away or jerk your arm, otherwise I’ll miss my mark, okay?”

  “I think I can handle it,” he said, amused. She sounded like she was reassuring a child. When she made the first prick, he just couldn’t help himself from playing with her.

  “Ow!” he yelled loudly, causing Lilly to jump back, her startled expression amplified by her big, thickly-lashed eyes.

  When Jake chuckled at her, she wagged her finger at him.

  “That’s not funny! You really scared me!”

  Laughing harder at her flabbergasted finger pointing, he huffed out, “Yes it was,” completely unrepentant.

  She pursed her sweetheart lips at him. “Just keep it up, big guy. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. You realize I have nineteen more of these, don’t you?” She waved the plastic toothpick threateningly.

  With one last snort, Jake stopped laughing and stared into her eyes. This close, he could see that her irises were forest green around the edges, then abruptly transitioned to golden brown close to her dark pupils. Warm and layered. Complex and beautiful. Captivating and otherworldly.

  “Do your worst, Pixie,” he said.

  When she’d completed the pricks, she applied the skin patch, instructing him again to leave it on for twenty-four hours. Removing the surgical gloves, she said, “It’s waterproof, so you can shower. I don’t think this will happen, but if you see any redness around the rim of the patch before twenty-four hours, go ahead and take it off.”

  Inspecting the grid on his arm, she said, “So far so good. I’m going to start the casting. I’ll do the most uncomfortable casting first, which is your head and face. I asked you if you were claustrophobic because it can feel quite unnatural to have so much of your head and face covered. Instinctively, you’ll want to remove it, although it can’t harm you.”

  Placing her bare hand on his shoulder she said, “You’ll have to help me by staying still and keeping your mouth closed. I’ll talk you through it.”

  Her tiny, bare hand on his skin created an altogether different and distracting sensation than her plastic gloved hand had. Experimenting, Jake shifted his shoulder under her hand, causing her palm to slide over the muscle. Her fingertips trailed his collarbone as she pulled her hand back. His nostrils flared and his breathing quickened as her caress provoked a sudden need for more oxygen. The nerve endings tingled from the base of his throat, fanning out over his chest and hardening his nipples.

  Stand down, Miles, he commanded himself, using his mother’s given first name for him.

  His heated reaction to her was a wake-up call that he needed to wise up and stop messing around. If Lilly had the talent that Phillip thought she did – and Ty proclaimed she did – she would be working with him, for him, for months. He didn’t want to scare her off. Or open himself up to a harassment suit.

  Stepping away from him, she turned to her Rubbermaid box and pulled out another plastic tray clearly marked, “J.Durant, head cast.” In it were apparently all of the materials she needed for the next part of the job. She certainly was organized.

  “I need to coat your hair so that it doesn’t stick to the casting material.” Picking up a tube of what looked like thick, greasy hair gel, she applied some to her palms, rubbed her hands together then threaded both hands through his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead and massaging the gel along his temples and hairline. To reach far enough, she had to stand between his legs and lean toward him, so close he could smell her skin and hair.

  She smelled like vanilla sugar cookies.

  Jake clamped his jaw shut as a blast of desire shot from the roof of his mouth to his groin. He suppressed a sudden compulsion to lean forward and rub his nose along her bare neckline.

  Oblivious to the effect she was having on him, Lilly talked while she worked.

  “I brought a clarifying shampoo that I’ll leave for you that will help get this out, but you may have to shampoo a couple of times.” She dabbed more of the gel on her fingertips and smoothed it gently over his eyebrows.

  He closed his eyes and was immediately sorry as an image of what she would look like standing naked between his knees in nothing but those damn hiking boots invaded his brain.

  Finished with the hair gel, she said, “You look like one of your hoodlum characters. All you need is a big fat cigar.”

  Jake opened his eyes to look at her. Oh, I’ve got that right here, he thought. He knew he was leering at her, but hoped she’d think he was just in character.

  Patting him on the shoulder, she said, “It’ll take me a few minutes to mix the alginate used for the casting. It’s the same stuff the dentist puts in your mouth to take an impression of your teeth, which I’ll also do after we’ve done your head and face. I’m sorry you have to wait between each stage. I can’t mix it beforehand because it sets so quickly.”

  He was glad of the reprieve as she moved away from him to pull more supplies out of the bottomless Rubbermaid tub. She mixed water and some kind of white powder in a container. As she mixed, it changed color and turned into a purple gooey mess.

  She carried the goo to where he was sitting. “I’m going to work quickly, and spread the alginate over your face, head and neck. It will cover your mouth. Just try to relax and breathe through your nose. The alginate sets in five minutes, but I’ll have to wrap it in plaster bandages for support so that it doesn’t tear when I take it off. The plaster takes longer to dry, about five to ten minutes. The alginate warms as it hardens, so don’t be surprised by that. It won’t get uncomfortably warm.

  “Ready?” she asked brightly.

  “I guess,” he said, dubious. He couldn’t decide i
f all of the explaining was helping or hurting. But she did work quickly, and expertly. Spreading the goo gently but firmly with her fingers and palms, she covered his head, neck and ears first, reminding him occasionally not to move.

  When she covered his eyes and mouth, the sensory deprivation and instinctive fear of suffocation caused his heartbeat to speed up, although he could breathe just fine through his nose.

  Lilly began saying brief and reassuring things every few seconds.

  “Looks good… that’s going on nicely… only a little longer… it may feel slightly warm now… that’s it, almost done.” Her calming tone was muffled but discernible.

  She must have known how disconcerting it was having his ears covered and his mouth and eyes glued shut. But once he got over the initial feeling of impending suffocation, it wasn’t so bad, even soothing as she continued to reassure him.

  When she softly tapped the top of his head to satisfy herself that the cast had hardened sufficiently to be removed, she said, “You’re doing great. Just continue to stay still. I’m going to split the cast down the back and pull it off of you.”

  It came off surprisingly easily. When he looked in the mirror, he didn’t see any remnants of the hardened material on his face or hair.

  Lilly gently set the cast on a counter out of the way. She pulled out another organized tray marked, “J.Durant dental cast.”

  Jake, who knew that Phillip had called Lilly the day before to request her to be here, was starting to have an appreciation for how organized and prepared she was on such short notice. Mixing another smaller batch of goo, she smiled ruefully at him.

  “This is the last of the unpleasantness. But if you’ve ever been to the orthodontist, you’ve done this before.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I didn’t like it.”

  “I know. It feels like the alginate is going to run down your throat and choke you, but I promise it’s not. It cures so fast it won’t go anywhere I don’t want it to go.”

  Lilly touched his chin and gently tugged his mouth open, then used a spatula to spread the goo over his teeth and the roof of his mouth, avoiding his tongue.

  “I have to press to make a good impression.” she said, inserting a mouth piece. It was not pleasant, but he didn’t feel panicky like he had when his childhood dentist had done this.

  “Almost done, just a couple more seconds.” She smiled at him appreciatively, like he was a well-behaved patient.

  “Okay, that’s it,” she said, loosening the hardened material and pulling it out of his mouth. She deposited the dental casts in a plastic bag and set them by the head cast.

  Bending over her bin, she popped up with a bottle of water. “Here you go. Rinse and spit. The worst is over.”

  The hand and feet casts were simple in comparison. All he had to do was dunk each limb in a container of goo, wait five minutes and gently pull it out. The challenge was the prep. To ensure they would come out of the hardened material smoothly and make a good cast, Lilly spent ten minutes gently massaging oil into his hands and feet.

  His sexual excitement, which had been smoldering for well over an hour, was catapulted to an intensity that he had difficulty managing. He frowned ferociously at himself in the mirror when she turned away to mix a new batch of alginate.

  When she was ready, he started to stand to help her dip his foot, hoping she wouldn’t notice his bulging jeans. Thankfully, she stopped him, saying, “It’s better if you sit. You’re less likely to step down with your weight and ruin it.”

  Settling back in the chair, Jake calculated he had about thirty minutes between the time she spent mixing each batch, and the time it took to set each cast, to get his raging erection under control. He needed a distraction. Reaching into his front pocket to pull out his cell phone, he stifled a groan as he grazed his sensitive cock.

  Sliding his finger across the phone’s glass screen and tapping in his security code, Jake began flipping through his inbox subfolders, scanning his priority one business emails. He received email at a daily rate of about two hundred per hour. The sole responsibility of one of his four secretaries was to triage the electronic messages as they came in. That job, and it was a big one, meant reading every email, categorizing it by business type, making an educated decision about its priority, and moving it into the appropriate subfolder. Otherwise, he would never have time to do anything but wade through email all day.

  Jake deliberately tuned Lilly out, turning his attention to her only long enough to follow her direction on how to hold his hands for the casts. One-handed, he continued reading and responding to emails, typing with one thumb. He still didn’t look up when she made him switch hands.

  By the time she gently worked the last hand out of the hardened material, he could breathe easier, his business empire and his body under control. Putting away his phone, he asked, “All done?”

  “Not quite,” she said, eyeing his naked chest and reaching for the oil. “I need to cast your chest, then your back.”

  He nearly leapt out of the chair to take the tube from her. “Here, let me do that,” he said quickly. He was not about to let her slather his chest in oil. He’d have her on the floor.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll mix the molding material while you apply the oil to your chest.”

  Was that relief in her voice? Jake didn’t like the thought that she might be unaffected by him, when all he could think about when she touched him was bending her over the mirrored vanity.

  Rubbing the oil on his chest, he asked, “Everywhere?”

  “Yes,” she said, measuring and mixing a large amount of alginate. “Imagine you’re wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off and apply the oil everywhere the material would cover you. Do everything but your back. I’ll have to get that.”

  When she’d finished mixing, he helped her move the heavy, wet mass closer to the chair, glad he could finally stand without revealing his physical reaction to her.

  When he sat back down, Lilly reclined the barber’s chair and began spreading the alginate over his chest and shoulders, tolerable only because the goo prevented skin to skin contact. She covered his entire chest, over his shoulders, under his armpits, along his sides. When she’d finished spreading, she went to the sink and uncovered a tray of wet plaster bandages.

  “I’ll lay a matrix of plaster bandages to support the alginate cast. Otherwise, we’ll ruin it taking it off of you,” she explained.

  He hadn’t seen this part of the process. His hands and feet casts had stayed in the containers she’d had him dip into. She had used plaster on his head cast, but his eyes had been covered.

  She unfolded each wet strip and layered it on his chest like a giant lasagna. When the last strip was placed, she asked, “Are you okay? It can be a bit heavy. If you can, try not to take deep breaths until I get this off. The stiller you are, the more detailed the molds will be.”

  Jake made a show of holding his breath, puffing out his cheeks.

  She laughed. “Don’t pass out on me!”

  Every few minutes she touched the plaster, and then began tapping here and there when it started to harden, making sure it was uniformly dry before attempting to take it off.

  When she pronounced it dry, he rapped his knuckles in the center of his chest. “I feel like the Chief Inspector in the Curse of the Pink Panther,” he said.

  Lilly smiled broadly at him. He’d struck a chord with her. She said enthusiastically, “There were some fabulous special effects in those Pink Panther movies. Brian Johnson worked on at least one of them.”

  At his uncomprehending expression, she went on, “He later won an Academy Award for Visual Effects for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – you know, the one with Yoda. It was the best Star Wars movie by far.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, amused by her enthusiasm. “I think I like the first one best. When Chewbacca fixed the Millennium Falcon and it finally hit hyper drive, now that was something to see.”

  “Okay, you got me there,” she s
aid, leaning over him and pushing her little hands under the alginate around the edges to loosen it from his chest like a baker prying up a rolled out pie crust.

  “You’re going to have to help me lift this off of you,” she said.

  Picking up his hands, she placed them under the alginate at the level of his hips where she wanted him to push up and stuck her own hands under the cast under his armpits.

  “Okay? On three. One… two… three!” With a sucking sound, the alginate pulled free.

  “Can you help me get it over to the counter? Be careful not to crack the plaster or it will tear and we’ll have to start all over.”

  Gently, the two guided the chest cast over to the counter and laid it plaster-side down. It looked like a giant, oddly shaped, empty tortoise shell.

  Smiling at him, she said, “We’re almost finished. You’ll need to lie down for the back.” She pointed to the padded gym bench. Jake did as he was told, squelching a tingling feeling of anticipation. He heard her rubbing her palms together, warming the oil. And then she was touching him.

  She had an incredible amount of strength in her little hands. As she rubbed in the oil, she alternated between pressing the heels of her hands and kneading his knotted muscles, working over his trapezius, erector and dorsal muscles. It was stimulating, yes, but more than anything it just felt damn good. He was nearly asleep when she stopped to mix the alginate for his back. It was cold at first, but warmed as it set, completing the best massage he’d ever had.

  When she began her systematic tapping on the plaster, he mumbled, “It’s going to be hard for me to help you get this off.”

  “Oh, I can get this one by myself,” she said breezily. “When I did the front, I included the tops of your shoulders and sides, so it was twice as heavy and hard to get off because of the way it wrapped around your body.