When I got into town early on Monday morning, I headed right over to Mr. Richards' shop. He was there already and after making some pleasantries about the holiday and the weather, he grabbed his photo book, and we drove down to the police station. He knew the chief pretty well, and within a couple of minutes, we were sitting in his office and telling him our news. He had a stern look on his face and didn't seem very surprised, having already been informed of the goings-on at the market over the weekend. He called a couple of his officers in and sent them up to the market to seal off the area and collect the evidence. "Mr. W didn't want to get us involved with what happened inside the store," he said, "but this is outside the store, in my jurisdiction, and I'm going to make sure that his bastard son is charged with every possible criminal count I can come up with." He picked up a photo from his desk, then put it back down; we couldn't see the photo, but I knew it was the one of him and his son. He excused himself then, thanking us and saying that he had a lot of re-search to do.

Leaving Mr. Richards, I went back up to the store, only to find it closed, with a big sign in the window, saying "Closed for Renovations. Watch for our Grand Re-opening." I knocked on the door, but no one answered and I figured it wasn't a very good idea for me to use the key I wasn't sup-posed to have. Walking around the back, I heard voices and then saw the Guests -- many more than there had been before -- back under the tent, their kerosene heaters going, the security guard in his shack. He waved at me and I smiled and waved back, but I had to know what happened, so I made my way to a pay-phone and called Luanne.

"Oh my God!" she said when she'd answered. "What a weekend you missed! You've got to come over so I can tell you EVERYTHING!" When I told her that I hadn't even been home yet, she said, "Doesn't matter! Get that big butt of yours over here NOW!" When I got there, I didn't even have a chance to walk in the door before she started telling me that the store was going to be closed for a week and Mr. W was back in town and the Guests had returned. She stopped suddenly when I took off my coat and the expansion of my body became obvious. "Wow!" she said, running her hand over the sweater that encased my new bulges and sending little shivers up my spine, "I guess you really did just spend your time eating!" "More than I'd imagined possible," I said. She put her hands beneath her prodigious stomach and hefted it a couple of times, saying, "I did some damage, too, but... You keep eating like that and pretty soon we're gonna be sharing girdles!" "No," I replied, "I think that was just a one-time thing."

"Well, anyway," she said, "let me tell you about what happened. But... do you want some-thing to eat first? Of course you do." I sat on the couch while she disappeared into the kitchen for a couple of minutes, returning with a pumpkin pie, a platter of croissants and a couple of little dishes of jelly and butter. She sat down next to me, her fat thighs flattening out and just barely touching mine. "So, I come in at six on Saturday," she began, after buttering a couple of pastries and handing one to me. "And just as I'm going to unlock the door, I hear a car pull up and a familiar voice say-ing, 'Surprise!' It was Mr. Walters, come back to visit. He looked great! He said that he'd been relax-ing and taking it easy, but he was itching to get back to work. He told me he'd gotten our messages and just knowing we were thinking about him made him feel even better. Until we opened the door, that is..." She paused dramatically while finishing the last bite of her roll.

"You wouldn't have believed it," she continued, preparing another croissant for each of us, this time with jelly, too. "The place was a disaster. It almost seemed as if someone had gone through the place and opened every box and can and jar and bottle. There were half-eaten loaves of bread and cakes and sandwiches all over the place. And sleeping on the floor, in every aisle, were the Guests. We stood there for a couple of minutes, with out jaws practically on the floor. First Mr. W's face turned white and then it turned red and I started to get worried. He walked over to one of the Guests who was curled up on the floor with his head on a couple of towels, shook him awake and said, 'Just what the hell is going on here?' His yelling woke up most of the others and they started straggling to their feet and coming over to where we were standing, the old-timers obviously glad to see him and the newcomers just following along.

"He was furious, but he kept his temper and said, 'Just what is the meaning of this? I help you out, I take care of you, I treat you better than you'd be treated anywhere else in the world and you repay me like this: by destroying my store?' Luther -- you remember him? -- he comes up and says, 'No sir. We didn't destroy nothing. We were just hungry. Didn't get no food for three days. The government people just took us on the bus, then asked some questions and left us go. So we come back here, but there ain't no food and the camp is closed and its real cold. Then that man opens the door and says you wanted us to come inside. Most of this stuff was broke already, and we just ate some things cause we were hungry. We didn't mean no harm or nothing.'

"I was a little confused by what he said," Luanne continued, now slicing us some pie, "but Mr. W was really lost. I had to tell him about what had been happening with the camp and with Scott -- and believe me, that didn't do anything to make him any calmer. But he apologized to the Guests and told them that he'd make sure they were taken care of again, just the way they were used to. Then he called the cops and we started walking around and cleaning up what we could. By the time the chief himself got there, we'd pretty much determined that there was no way we'd be open-ing for a couple of days. The place was decimated -- if I didn't know any better, I would've believed that a pack of wild dogs had been through there, eating everything in sight and -- have some more pie!

"Meanwhile, I'd been chattering away at Mr. W while we were attempting to assess the dam-ages, but he was obviously thinking about other things. He asked me if I thought that the Guests had really done this much damage and I said, 'No way!' Then he asked why I thought someone would do this to him, and I told him that maybe they wanted to make it look like the Guests were really criminals. He asked who had disabled the alarm and who the man was who let them in, but I had no idea. And then he asked where Scott was for the weekend and I realized what he was think-ing. I told him that Scott had gone down to Pennsylvania for a weekend of camping and hunting with two of his college buddies."

A smile came over my face just then, as I swallowed a big chunk of my third slice of creamy pie, thinking about how I'd broken the law, and yet still managed to achieve some justice. "What are you smiling about?" Luanne asked, and I told her about my discovery of the paint flakes and Mr. Richards' photos. "Jeez! I believe it, but I can't believe it! What a fucking bastard! And poor Mr. W knew -- he knew right away -- because when the cops came in, he told them that he didn't want to press any charges and that he'd take care of it internally. The chief said that if he didn't file a police report, he'd never get the insurance company to pay for the damages, and Mr. W said that he'd make sure that the guilty party paid for the damages. Then he had me call the staff and tell them that we'd be closed for the weekend -- with pay -- and that they should show up on Tuesday to start some renovations and re-stocking. When he realized that I hadn't called you, and I told him that you'd been fired, he told me to get you on the line and tell you that you were un-fired and desper-ately needed -- there's a long, rambling message on your answering machine about that, as well as about some other things..."

"What other things?" I asked, finishing my last bite of the flaky crust and realizing that the two of us had finished everything she'd put out for us to eat. "Things," she said, "like the way I can't seem to get you out of my mind. Like the way I kept eating like a total glutton all weekend, and thinking about how you would react when you saw how I've gotten even fatter. Like how I was driving Jimmy into these crazy fits of lust with my gorging, making love a dozen times and the whole time I just kept thinking of you..." She put her hand on my thigh and I was frozen with inde-cision, staring at the wall, refusing to look at her. She's married, I thought. I know her husband. He's a great guy. He loves her -- is totally crazy about her. How could I do what every inch of my body was urging me to do?

"It got so crazy," she continued, "that I just had to tell Jimmy about it." I looked at her then, surprised at this revelation, and she kept talking, saying, "I didn't know how he'd react, but... I al-ways think that he's just a guy: kind of oblivious to the things going on around him, kind of simple, in a way. And then he'll say something that totally surprises me, and makes me realize that he misses nothing, but just chooses not to respond to everything. He said that he knew you were a lesbian -- or bi-sexual, anyway -- and that he could tell that I had some desires in that direction that he could never satisfy. He said that he thought you were gorgeous and sexy and that he was glad we shared our taste in women. Then he said that he knew me and he loved me and that he had no insecurities about losing me and that as long as I promised to be honest with him and tell him everything, he was comfortable with whatever I chose to do. I got a little nervous asked him if this meant that he had some outside interests, too, that he wished for permission to explore, but he just laughed and said, 'Why should I even think about looking outside when every fantasy I've ever had is sleeping beside me every single night?'"

She let out a big sigh and said, "So, all this is on your answering machine, too. It's a very good listener!" We both laughed and as the tension drained away, I found myself face-to-face with the woman who had gradually been replacing Joellen in my fantasies. Our lips met and our tongues met and our hands wrapped around each other's backs in a tight embrace as we probed the depths of each other's warm and tender mouths. The next few hours come back to me in a series of flash-bulb snapshots. Flash: Luanne with her sweatshirt over her head, her bra-less boobs resting on the sides of her now-exposed, stretch-marked, blue-veined and massive belly. Flash: the two of us, now totally naked, squashing ourselves together in the middle of the living room, belly-blubber against belly-blubber, nipple against nipple, hands reaching around and grabbing each other's fat asses. Flash: the top of Luanne's head as she rests one knee on the couch and nuzzles, kisses, teases and sucks my rock-hard nipples. Flash: the incredible mound of her gravity-defying belly and the glis-tening wetness of her hot pussy as she lays on her back on the bed while I kneel on the floor, prepar-ing to drive her wild. Flash: the sensory deprivation I undergo as she clamps her wonderfully thick and flabby thighs around my ears and my cheeks and my face, while bucking and shaking in the throes of orgasm after orgasm. Flash: her satisfied and dreamy expression as she suckles at my breast while her hand busily explores the depths of my pussy. Flash: my own swollen belly, forced by my arched back into a place impossibly high in my field of vision, hiding Luanne's entire body as her tongue fondles my clitoris and sends electric shocks through my entire being.

We lay together in the bed for a long time, kissing and nibbling on each other's earlobes or lips, our hands ceaselessly exploring the acres of flesh beneath the sheets, our slightly sweaty bodies sliding against one another, molding to each other's every fold and roll. Afterwards, we got up and headed, naked, into the kitchen to see what there was to eat; it being Luanne's house, there was plenty, and we got busy demolishing her store of donuts, licking the tiny drips of jelly and pow-dered sugar from each others lips and cheeks and breasts. We finally got dressed at four o'clock, knowing that Jimmy would be home soon. Sure enough, just as we finished getting our clothes on, he walked in, saw us and smiled, saying, "The guilt in this room is palpable! You both look like you've just eaten the canary. You obviously can't hide it, so at least tell me it was good!" Luanne went over to him and hugged him tightly and the bulge that grew in his pants was very noticeable. Then he looked at me and said, "Someone's been doing some extra-curricular eating. You look like you've put on fifteen pounds since last week!" "I might have," I said, "but your wife shanghaied me before I could even get home, so I have no idea." "Well," he said, "that just won't do. So you march that amazing butt of yours right into the bathroom and you come back here with a report, soldier!" I saluted and turned on my heel, then walked away, swiveling my hips and swinging my big ass like some saucy vamp.

When I stepped on the scale, I had to step off again because I was sure it must be wrong. I checked to make sure it was really starting on zero before stepping up again and watching the dial spin around and back, around and back, finally coming to rest at two-hundred and sixteen pounds! Okay, I thought, doing some quick calculations, a couple of pounds for the food I'd just eaten, eight pounds for my clothes and shoes and the stuff in my pockets. That brought me down to about two-hundred and six pounds -- twenty-six pounds more than I'd weighed after Joellen had left last weekend! When I came back out of the bathroom with my news, Jimmy and Luanne were involved in a deep kiss, and I was surprised that I didn't feel jealous at all. I told them what the scale said, and -- although I didn't think it would've been possible -- the bulge in Jimmy's pants seemed to grow a little larger. He held out his arm, motioning me to come join in the three-way hug, so I did, resting my head on his shoulder, one hand on his back and the other on Luanne's wonderfully soft butt.

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