From: gooley@netcom.com (Mark. Gooley)
Subject: sulfur prosthetics gleam orange under the burning sea
Followup-To: alt.fan.gooley,alt.cesium,alt.spleen
Summary: nigra sum sed formosa, and does anybody read this line?
Keywords: coleus, tarragon, maschil, burnish, epithelium, epithalamium
Organization: The Gorilla-Shaped Cookie Trust, GmbH
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 15:55:45 GMT

	The Director's charming receptionist, Laura, chatted with me as
I waited and as she filed some papers with a bastard-cut file.  She had
inky black hair and creamy skin, and over her paralyzed legs she wore a
mermaid tail, dull bronze scales slowly giving way to her bare midriff
so that I could not tell exactly where the costume ended and Laura began.
Her wheelchair, all black graphite and sea-green nylon, was more a
conveyance for a land-bound mermaid than for a cripple; her bikini top
and light jacket seemed to be made of purple seaweed, and her perfume
smelled of orchids with just a hint of kelp.  A young man dropped by on
no particular errand and stared at her with undisguised desire, smitten
by the resident mermaid, until he could think of no further conversation
to make.
	"Wouldn't even look at me before I got the tail," said Laura,
after he had left.  "Now he's in love." Presently a box on her desk flashed
a green light and gave a chime, and with surprising agility she zipped to
the door to the Director's office and let me in.
	"Ah, Jenkins, good morning," said the Director.
	"It's afternoon, sir," I told him.
	"A confession to make, Jenkins," the Director went on, taking no
notice of what I had said.  "You see, for some time I have been practicing
a deception on my staff, and I think that you should be the first to know
the truth."
	"Well, sir?" I asked him, after a pause of a full fifteen seconds.
	"Perhaps I'd better, ah, show you," he said, and he clawed at his
face, tearing off pieces of rubber that I had thought his skin, pulled off
what I had long known to be a toupee, and revealed himself to be a pleasant-
faced woman of perhaps thirty-five.
	"You see how this might be a bit embarrassing, Jenkins," she said
in a warm (30 degrees C.) contralto voice.
	"Yes, ma'am," I said.  "Nobody will see why it was necessary."
	"Frankly, Jenkins," she said, brushing out her hair so that it
fell in becoming chestnut-brown waves of hackneyed beauty, "I'm not sure,
either, why I did it."
	"Just a convention of this type of story?"  I suggested.
	"Probably," she said.  She got up, her womanly head incongrous on
a masculine-looking body, and from a closet took out a decorated screen and
some expensive-looking feminine clothes.  As she removed the rest of her
disguise and put on the new clothes, we discussed my mission.
	The woman who stepped out from behind the screen looked like a
lovely young executive in a long dress rather than in a business suit.
"I'll be your partner for this mission," she said.  She seemed to have
become younger: certainly she was not over thirty now.
	"Won't you be recognized?" I asked.
	"I haven't appeared in public undisguised since I graduated from
Smith College," she said.
	"O Lord," I said, "not a Smithie."
	"'Fraid so," she said, with a charming giggle.
	We posed as husband and wife.  She slipped into her role as a
stockbroker, and I slipped into mine as a champion breeder of Dobermans.
A consummate professional, she played her part to the hilt, at no time
letting slip that she was not who she seemed to be.  I followed suit, even
though dogs instinctively attack me (making my job nightmarish until I
learned to control them).
	A year after our mission began, I drove her to a deserted spot in
the woods, one certainly free of listening devices.  "What about our mission?"
I asked her.  "I've been doing nothing.  Are you engaged in something where
you work?"
	"Darling," she said, perfectly portraying a bewildered and concerned
wife, "what in Heaven's name are you talking about?  Mission?"

	It's not a bad life, I suppose.

Mark., losing my touch
gooley@netcom.com
Newsgroups: alt.non.sequitur,talk.bizarre