I touched my hand to the glass and the illusion was gone. There was only a dark fuzzy clump of wadded cloth in the bottom of the case. It had not moved. It could not move.
Still, the attraction had not gone away, and an erection pressed hard against the denim of my jeans as I looked in at the panties.
'Dude!'
Ray's voice carried across the silent room, and I turned to see him standing on the other side of the counter back in the gift shop.
'Anything worth seeing in there?'
I hazarded one last look at the panties, then shook my head and walked toward the museum entrance, surreptitiously pressing down on the front of my pants. 'Not really.'
'Ready to hit the road, then? We're losing time.'
I nodded, walked out of the museum. For some reason, I didn't want Ray to see the panties. I felt protective, almost jealous, of what I had seen, and I didn't want to share it. I glanced behind me, at the other cases I hadn't yet viewed, but I realized that I didn't care what was in them. Whatever curiosity I had initially felt had fled.
I stepped around the counter to where Ray was drinking a Coke he'd bought. The old man grinned at me as I passed by him, and though it might have been my own paranoid imagination, it seemed as though he knew what I had experienced in there, what I had felt. 'See anything you like?' he asked.
My answer came out harsher than I intended. 'No, your mama's vibrator wasn't in there.'
He laughed, a high harsh cackle, and I did not look back as I followed Ray out of the building into the parking lot. 'See any of that stuff they advertised on the signs?' Ray asked. 'Hitler's toupee, Elvis's uniform, Marilyn Monroe's panties?'
I shook my head. 'It was all fake.'
'That's what I figured.'
I did not feel like talking, and once in the car, I leaned my head against the passenger window and pretended to fall asleep. I tried not to think of what I had seen in The Place, but I could think of nothing else, and I kept my hands in my lap, pressing down on my erection, hoping Ray wouldn't notice. Eventually I did fall asleep.
I dreamed of Marilyn Monroe's panties.
Phoenix was where we were to part company, and we reached the city three hours later. I was going to stay at my brother Jim's house there for spring break, while Ray was going on to Palm Springs, where he hoped to get into some serious partying. He'd come back through in six days to pick me up, and then we'd drive back to Albuquerque together.
I was silent as I unpacked my bag and suitcase from the trunk, and Ray looked at me strangely as he helped me carry the ice chest into my brother's house. 'Are you okay?'
'Sure. I'm fine.'
He nodded, but I could tell he didn't believe me, and he still looked uneasy as he said good-bye and pulled away ten minutes later.
I had been looking forward to staying at Jim's ever since the semester started. I hadn't seen him for a while, and I figured we could hang together, maybe get in a little hiking, hit some of our old haunts. But I felt restless, and as I sat there in my brother's living room, drinking a beer, listening to him tell me about his job, about the babes he'd gone out with since the last time we'd spoken, I found myself tuning him out.
And thinking about The Place.
There was no doubt in my mind that the dirty mildewed material I had seen really had been Marilyn Monroe's panties, but I could still not figure out how they had ended up there, in the middle of nowhere, in the hands of that old man. The whole thing seemed creepy to me, unsettling, and the fact that I could not stop thinking about it — and that every time I did recall what I had seen, I became aroused — frightened me.
'So what do you want to do tonight?' Jim asked. 'Want to hit some of the clubs?'
I didn't really feel like doing anything, but I found myself nodding. 'Sure,' I said. 'That'd be great.'
The hip nightspots had changed in the two years I'd been gone. Jim took me to the newest meat markets, and he met a tall blond bimbo while dancing who was more than willing to come home with him. I was sitting alone at the bar, trying my best not to meet or talk to anyone, and he sat down on the stool next to me and asked me if it was okay if the woman spent the night, and I said I didn't care and was ready to head back whenever he was.
I sat in the back of the car on the way home, with the two of them up front, and as soon as we reached Jim's house, I said good night and locked myself in my bedroom.
I awoke sometime in the middle of the night to take a piss, and I pulled on my jeans and walked down the hall to the bathroom. I turned on the light, closed the door, and saw, on the shower rug next to the tub, clothes. Jim's and the woman's. I stared down at the black satin panties lying atop the wrinkled minidress. I bent down and slowly picked them up, running my fingers over the smooth material. It had been a long time since I'd had sex, over a year, and this woman's underwear should have been exciting to me. But I felt nothing as I rubbed the soft panties over the skin of my face.
I kept thinking how much sexier these panties would be if Marilyn Monroe had worn them.
If there was mold growing on them.
I dropped the panties, my erection springing to life as I thought of the grayish green fuzz on that wadded clump in the museum case.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I hurried back to my bedroom.
I tried to fall asleep, but I was wide-awake, thinking, my brain unable to concentrate on anything other than what I'd seen in The Place, and finally I succumbed, pulling down my underwear, grasping my erection and stroking it as I thought of the sensuous way in which the moldy panties had shrugged at me, beckoning me. I came violently, the biggest orgasm I'd ever had, so much semen pumping out onto my chest that I thought it was never going to stop.
I cleaned it up with Kleenexes, dumped the Kleenexes in the trash can, and lay there breathing deeply until I finally fell asleep.
In the morning, I knew what I had to do.
I asked my brother if I could borrow his old Dart. He was reluctant at first and asked what I wanted it for, and I said that there was an old girlfriend I wanted to look up. I pointed out that he would still have the Lexus to drive around in, and he said okay, he'd let me borrow the Dart, but I had to promise to bring it back before nightfall because the taillights didn't work.
I lied and said I would.
I reached The Place just after noon.
The old man was again behind the counter, only this time he looked at me more suspiciously when I paid my dollar and walked into the museum. Or maybe I was just being paranoid.
The panties were as filthy and disgusting as I remembered. Green and gray and black and fuzzy. The allure was there, though. Stronger, if anything. My penis grew, the erection straining against my pants. More than anything, I wanted to smash that glass so that there was nothing between the panties and myself. I examined the case and saw that one of the glass sides, the one opposite the identification sign, was hinged. There was no lock on it, and I touched it and it swung outward.
I glanced quickly toward the door, to make sure the old man hadn't seen me, but I could only see the back of his head and the right half of his body. I quickly closed the door to the case and glanced around the museum. There were two doors other than the entrance through which I'd come, and I gave Marilyn's panties one last loving look, and then walked over to the door on the side wall. Again I looked toward the entrance to make sure the old man wasn't watching me. I didn't see him at all, and I quickly turned the knob and opened the door.
I closed it just as quickly. It opened onto the desert on the side of The Place.
A possibility.
I walked to the rear of the museum, glanced up front, then tried to turn the knob on this door. It was locked.
That settled it. If I was going to break in, I would do it from the side.
I glanced around at the museum's other exhibits, then moved back over to the case with Marilyn's panties.
'Time's up.'
