Remo groaned. "Molly Pardon as in country music singer Molly Pardon?"
"The same," Chiun enthused.
"Mountainous mammaries, big blond bogus bouffant, that Molly Pardon?"
"I have it on good authority that her hair is not bogus. Her silky tresses are naturally pale and golden."
"As natural as the boobs, anyway." Remo shrugged. "I've heard her sing."
"She has an angel's voice," Chiun enthused.
"Wolverines defending a carrion stash sound more angelic."
"She's no Wylander Jugg," Chiun admitted, "but she sings with the same sincerity and passion. It is the music of real people, music that flows from the heart and soars from the lips, Remo."
"You say soars, I say hurls."
Chiun beamed. "You are an admirer of the beauteous Molly Pardon? I never knew this, my son."
"I wouldn't call it admiration so much as fascination," Remo said when the second billboard followed just minutes after the first. Molly Pardon herself was pictured, a fifty-year-old bleached-blond giantess rendered in thermoset plastic. Her ruby-red lips, open in a wide Southern-girl smile, could have swallowed a minivan. Her famous mass of hair had been constructed with the not-found-in-nature fluorescent yellow of plastic lemons. Her face had been re-created with a photorealistic transfer technique so accurate that a layer of fleshy-colored enamel was added to blot out the crow's-feet around the eyes and surgical scars around the scalp, lips, temple and chin. Not that anyone even saw her face. Remo found it impossible to focus his attention beyond the swell of her re-created cleavage, which reflected the daylight like patent leather.
"That is one immense Molly," Remo said.
Chiun was mildly stunned at the spectacle. "It is large."
"Large? I'll bet they recycled five or six thousand soda bottles into each one of those knockers."
"Pah! You see only her womanly charms," Chiun said.
"How could I see anything else? Those things should have telescopes sticking out of them."
"She is well endowed, granted, and yet her attraction is in her voice, not her bosom."
"On anybody else you'd have called them 'udders.'"
"They would be so if she flaunted them in the same way the women you cavort with parade their milk-producing organs."
Remo laughed. "Come on! You're not seriously trying to tell me that Molly Pardon doesn't trade on her boobs."
"She does not!"
"You're wrong and you know it, but far be it from the Wise and All-Knowing Master Chiun to own up to a mistake."
"Someday I might make a mistake. Then I would indeed be the first to acknowledge it."
"And someday monkeys will fly out of my butt."
Chiun nodded seriously. "Such a feat would certainly be unique among all the Masters who have come before you. Is this the type of outrageous anecdote you plan as your legacy in the scrolls of the Masters?" Remo was about to respond when he caught it again. The whiff in the air, so faint, so fleeting, he was almost not sure of it. Then he saw Chiun lift his head and draw air into his nostrils. Chiun smelled it, too. It was here. Whatever it was that was making people go violently bonkers, it was right here in this bus.
Chapter 20
Frank Curtis always did what he was told. As long as it was Greg Grom who told him what to do.
Frank Curtis had infinite respect and measureless affection for Grom. Every word President Grom uttered resonated with ageless wisdom. Every action Grom took was purposeful and correct. Doing Grom's bidding was so gratifying.
Not everybody understood that, including his best friend since college, Randall Switzer, who would say, "I don't get it. You used to hate that guy, Frank."
"I never hated Greg!"
"Yeah, you did. You told me you did. You said he was the biggest moron ever to belong to Mensa."
"I never said that!"
"You called him an ambitionless, egoist jerk-off."
"Never," Frank Curtis had protested.
"The point is, you used to despise this little schmuck, and now all of a sudden you think he's God's gift to you."
"Don't call him a schmuck, Switz," Frank warned.
"I won't call him a schmuck if you admit that you used to say he was indolent as a sloth but with less personality."
Switz had been Frank's best friend for twenty years, but not anymore.
Frank's wife wasn't much better. "Frank, tell me the honest truth, honey," she demanded finally. "Are you gay? Are you having relations with this young man?"
Frank shook his head sadly. "Pauline, you know I am not gay."
"But Frank, I don't understand this obsession," Pauline wailed. "You're missing work, you're constantly away from home. Whatever this boy wants is your top priority, and everything else comes second. Where did this come from, Frank? You've never acted this way before-it's an infatuation!"
"Pauline, it is simply my respect and admiration for an important and powerful man."
"Powerful?" Pauline snorted.
"He's the elected president of Union Island!"
"It's just a small town that happens to be surrounded by water. If the place didn't make so much money on tourism, the mayor's position wouldn't even be a paying job."
Frank had not cared to continue that discussion. If Pauline Curtis couldn't show a proper level of respect for President Grom, then she could just go to hell.
Just that morning his boss had turned against him, too. "Professor Curtis, is this young man blackmailing you?" asked University Director Jack Holdsworth.
"Of course not! A ridiculous suggestion."
"I cannot think how else a rather unimpressive graduate student-a student you once fervently disliked-could turn you into his errand boy," the university director observed. "He's got you jumping through hoops. You've spent all your vacation days and personal days in his service-not just this year's, but next year's, as well. Hear me out-a few years ago, when Mr. Grom was our student, you disciplined him in a way that he may have found humiliating, although you were perfectly justified. It seems to me that he may have been angry enough to dig up some sort of dirt on you and use it against you."