by Linda Grimes
Of course, Billy hadn’t let her rejection hold him back in his wholehearted effort to prove himself irresistible to every other female in our school. Or later, in college. Or later still, in all of New York City. Being so newly deflowered, I wasn’t sure if I was quite secure enough to take it in stride if he were to look at her with nostalgic lust in his eyes.
Molly made a big point of visiting the en suite bathroom off my bedroom as soon as we got there, tossing me a superior look over her hairy shoulder as she closed the door behind her.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “It was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment. This isn’t exactly a by-the-book situation, you know.”
“Oo-aa,” was the only reply I got. It sounded kind of grumpy.
After I heard the toilet flush and the sound of water running in the sink, I knocked softly. “Come on, Molls. Open the door. Let me see your eyes. Are you changing back?”
Silence.
“Molly?”
Nothing.
I sighed and dug a hairpin out of my top dresser drawer. Picked the lock. (Not hard—it wasn’t a great lock.) The shower curtain was closed. Peeking behind it, I saw Molly hunched over at the back of the tub, her face buried in the arms she had crossed over her knees. Still furry.
Damn. I’d really thought she was on the verge of changing back.
I climbed in and sat in front of her. “Ah, Molls. Come here, sweetie.”
She crawled onto my lap and looked at me with her beautiful, black-fringed Doyle eyes. The deep blue was striking against the burnt umber of her face.
“Aw, honey. Are you stuck? Can’t get any farther?”
She nodded and said, “Yesh.”
I jumped, startled to hear a human voice, warped though it was. “Whoa! Molls, you can talk. Your vocal cords are back!”
A few happy, simian shrieks (most of them from Molly), and then she said, “Hoo-ay!” She didn’t sound entirely like her old self yet, but it was a start.
I hugged her close. “Whatever James gave you must be working. It’s only a matter of time now, sweetie. Be patient. It will come.”
Chapter 17
Dad had fixed up the basement ages ago to look like an Irish pub. A little on the dim and shabby side, with the unmistakable cachet of Guinness on tap, it was as wholly welcoming as Dad himself. As I suspected, he was behind the bar, having already dropped his Moe Howard aura. He always chose one of the Three Stooges, much to my mother’s dismay; truth was, he’d rather play host and bartender than try to fool anyone for long.
I perched myself on a bar stool next to JFK and said, “Manhattan. Two cherries.” I didn’t care how sissy Clint would look sucking the cherries off the stems. At the next gong I was going to reveal my freckles, and then somebody would be sure to guess me anyway, so it really didn’t matter.
Dad grabbed a shaker, added ice, bourbon, sweet vermouth, and a hint of bitters, and did his special mix-it-up dance, rattling the drink like it was a maraca and he was Carmen Miranda. “Happiest sound in the world, isn’t it, Mr. Eastwood?” he said with a wink.
“Right now I’d have to agree with you.” I kept in character, in case JFK was Mom. She got really pissed off if we didn’t take the game seriously, Dad excepted.
“Here you go, sweetie pie. Two cherries, with stems.” He leaned over the bar and kissed my forehead. I was going to assume he’d figured out who I was.
“What gave me away?”
“Two cherries. You always specify.”
The gong went off above us.
“Thank God,” I said, and let my freckles loose. I threw in my eyes for good measure. Since Dad had technically outed me, I could justifiably drop the whole persona, but then my pants would fall off when I stood up, so I decided to keep playing until I was back upstairs. It wasn’t like Dad would tell on me.
JFK was suddenly bald, with a recognizable constellation of sunspots on his pate.
“Hi, Uncle Joe. Gotcha,” I said. Uncle Joe was Dad’s fraternity brother. A lot of adaptors wind up going to the same universities—life is easier when you’re not alone in your weirdness. He’d been a regular fixture at Dad’s basement bar for as long as I could remember.
“Damn. Wish I could return the favor, but I’m a little hazy on which Halligan hooligan you are.” He looked a little hazy, period. He’d probably been sitting there, quaffing his favorite brew, since the party started. You’d think the kiss, or even my freckles, would’ve given it away, but Uncle Joe knew Dad was as likely to kiss my brothers as me, and the freckles were probably a bit blurry to him at the moment.
“So, where’s that hot redhead you came with? She ditch you for somebody better looking?”
“Spat me out like a dirty stream of tobacco juice. Ran off with a doctor. Women,” I said with mock disgust.
Molly had left with a doctor of sorts, smuggled out the back door with James. They were on the way back to his lab, where he would work on speeding up Molly’s change-back. He’d naturally been conservative in the dosage of whatever he’d given her, and he was excited to see his treatment had started working. Now he had to decide whether to up the dosage, or to wait and see if the lower dose would prove to be enough. When others had asked where my little orange buddy was, I told them I’d rented her for only a few hours, and her keeper had collected her. Mae West had given me a piercing look after my explanation; I figured she was either Mom or Auntie Mo, and had ducked downstairs as soon as I could.
I was dying to dump the Clint aura. Nothing against laconic cowboy types, but holding a cardboard aura for long was a pain in the patoot. Secondhand auras were okay. They took longer to absorb initially, but if the original adaptor had snatched the energy, it was easy to copy and hold it. Cardboard auras took more concentration, and therefore more mental energy. After the past few days, I didn’t have a lot of that to spare.
I excused myself from the bar and wandered back upstairs, flaunting my freckles and twirling a cherry stem between my teeth. The gradual unveiling of the adaptors continued with predictably excruciating slowness. At least half had been identified by others and were back to being themselves, as the honor code required.
The ones still in the running had somehow managed to expose only ambiguous parts of themselves, so while they didn’t look exactly like their chosen celebrities anymore, nobody else could be sure who they really were. It might continue in the same vein for one or two more reveals, but not much longer than that. Mainly because, with the amount of alcohol consumed, it became harder and harder for everyone to use their best judgment about which trait to reveal. When Marilyn Monroe sprouted chest hair, we were all pretty sure it was Mr. Henderson, who ran a specialty biker shop, but the clincher came when he chose to reveal the hula girl tattoo on his bicep. He could never resist making her dance for an audience.
Meryl was keeping herself well hidden. Not that I was looking. Much. I couldn’t spot Caesar or Phelps, either. Maybe the three of them had gone off together for a powwow. Goody for them, I thought as the next gong chimed and I let fly with my strawberry blond locks. Who the hell wouldn’t recognize that? Geez. How slow were these people?
I meandered over to the bar the caterers had set up in the living room and ordered another Manhattan while I scanned the crowd. Since I was no longer in charge of the munchkin, I didn’t feel morally obligated to abstain from mood enhancers. I was just taking my first sip when Jordan and Brian-Molly came crashing through the room, giggling wildly. Uh-oh. This couldn’t be good. Not wanting to give chase while balancing a stemmed cocktail glass, I did the only sensible thing and downed the contents in one gulp, scooping the cherries out with my tongue and spitting the stems back into the glass before handing it to the bartender, not even glancing at her. Which was probably rude, but I had to keep my eyes on the kids.
The two were headed for the kitchen, which was strictly off-limits to everyone—but especially Jordan—except the serving staff. Brian ought to know better. If it was still Brian, and I suspected
it was, since I seriously doubted Mark or Thomas would be taking such delight in Jordan’s shenanigans.
“You there—Mr. Eastwood!” a harried voice stopped me. “I don’t suppose you could do me a favor and round up those two brats for me? Maybe teach them a few manners? Physical persuasion is entirely permissible. Even encouraged.” Okay, this had to be Auntie Mo. Her Mae West was a little frayed around the edges since the last gong, and she didn’t even try to keep up the proper sultry delivery of every line. “I have a few things I have to see to, and don’t have time to clobber them myself.”
“Sure thing, Aunt—um, Miss West,” I said to her retreating back. When she swung around to glare at me, I shrugged my shoulders apologetically for my slip, and took off after the pair before she could lay into me. She knew I knew who she was, and I knew she now knew who I was. Didn’t mean we had to get formal about it. It wasn’t really cheating, since the hostesses were never in the running for the prize, anyway.
A crash and an angry, deep-throated yowl emanated from behind the swinging door that led into the kitchen. “I got it,” I hollered over my shoulder to Auntie Mae-Mo, who was now being dragged into a dance by Andre the Giant (who, judging by the spectacular eyelashes revealed after one of the gongs, was a Doyle of some persuasion, maybe even Uncle Liam, from whence the eyelash genes hailed). She waved me on. Uncle Liam didn’t grace the dance floor often; it wasn’t something Auntie Mo was likely to pass up.
Feeling just a wee bit light-headed from the Manhattans, I followed the irate ramblings of the head caterer to the far side of the center island. There, on the floor, lay the remains of a hundred or so spun-sugar swans. Poor Mom. First my paper cranes weren’t up to snuff, and now the swans had prematurely sung their song. Looked like the darkly decadent individual servings of chocolate mousse on tap for dessert would go out birdless.
One of the caterers—a tall, painfully thin, middle-aged woman with just a hint of a mustache, distantly related to Auntie Mo but not herself an adaptor—had Brian by one arm. He looked up at her with Molly eyes as big as baseballs and tried to break free. Jordan, of course, was already slipping out the back door. I took hold of Brian’s other arm.
“There you are, you little scamp. Your mother is looking for you.” I gave the caterer a reassuring look. “I’ll take care of this. Sorry if she caused you any trouble.”
The caterer didn’t seem inclined to release her catch. “I can’t be expected to keep things running smoothly with kids underfoot. It’s not just this one”—she shook ersatz Molly a good one—“it’s that other little hoodlum. He got away this time. My contract specifically states I do not work parties where children are present. If either one of them sets foot in this kitchen again tonight, I’m out of here.”
“I’ll take care of it.” I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile while I pried her fingers off Brian’s skinny little-girl arm. His Molly eyes got even bigger, and he backed away hurriedly. Guess my remaining Clint features didn’t do reassurance all that well.
I pulled Brian out the same way Jordan had gone. “Come on, Molly, let’s go find your buddy.”
“Geez, I don’t know what you expect me to do with him,” Brian muttered in Molly’s voice.
“You can try to keep him occupied in a nondestructive way,” I hissed. “Take him to your old room and show him some of your ‘toys’—he’ll think he and Molly are getting away with something.”
“I suspect he’d have more fun exploring the drawers and closets in your room,” he said with way too much innuendo for a ten-year-old girl.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said. Not that I’d left anything incriminating in my parents’ house. Not that I’d ever had anything incriminating to leave. Well, except diaries full of barely postpubescent fantasies about Mark, but knowing how snoopy most members of my family are, I’d taken care to write everything in code. Besides, I’d taken them with me when I left.
“Well, at least help me find the little bugger first,” Brian said. “Molly must have a bolt hole around here, and I’m sure she’s told Jordan where it is.”
I gave it some thought. “Follow me. I think I might know where it is.” I led the way through the dining room out to the terrace. The backyard was small, and the terrace took up most of it. At one corner, Dad had built a koi pond, and behind it a grotto, half-hidden from view by a ten-foot waterfall. In New York City you have a lot more room to build vertically than horizontally. The tiny cave was always a favorite place for us to hide out and watch our parents’ parties when we were kids. I suspected the younger generation still felt the same way about it.
Sure enough, there was Jordan, standing behind an elm tree, peering intently into the cave. Huh. Why wasn’t he in there himself? Did somebody beat him to it? I snuck up behind him and peeked over his shoulder, wondering what he found so fascinating that he didn’t even notice Clint Eastwood’s sudden appearance.
My stomach clenched around the Manhattans I had recently downed, squeezing until I thought the cherries were destined for a return trip. Inside the mouth of the cave, standing just beyond the artificially cascading water, was Billy, completely himself again. Apparently, while Mark and Thomas had been looking for Meryl, Billy had been changing back into his own clothes. With him was Jordan’s sister, Monica.
And by “with him,” I do not mean they were passing the time of day like friendly ex-schoolmates. I mean she was glued to him like a bad toupee.
I froze, confused. Maybe it wasn’t Billy … but, no. I recognized his clothes. Hell, I’d given him that T-shirt myself last Christmas. I’d had a picture of his car’s hood ornament airbrushed on the back, silver on black, with a big red heart around it. It was supposed to be a joke, but he wore the shirt every chance he got.
Maybe it was Monica’s doing. Maybe she’d surprised him. Caught him off guard, kissed him before he could stop her …
She pulled her face away from his and laughed suggestively. “I swear, Billy, if I’d known you’d turn out like this, I wouldn’t have said no in high school.”
Now’s your chance, Billy. Push her away! Explain you’re with me now!
He leaned over and kissed her.
*
I marched inside, Brian and Jordan in tow, and was met by the dulcet country strains of Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” as we entered the house. Ha ha, I thought, looking heavenward. Very funny. Just what my life needs—a soundtrack.
Auntie Mo was herself again when I found her, having dropped the Mae West aura completely. Which reminded me to drop good ol’ Clint—I wasn’t in the mood to play anymore.
“I’m going upstairs to change. Molly’s getting tired. I’ll take her back to James’s apartment with me and tuck her in there for the night so you won’t have to worry about her. You’ll have to find somebody else to ride herd on this one,” I said, nudging Jordan toward her.
“Thank you, sweetie! It’s too loud around here for her to get to sleep upstairs. You have money for a cab, yes? I appreciate it.” She pulled Brian-Molly up into a huge hug. “You behave for Ciel. I’ll see you both tomorrow. Not too early, mind…” She winked at me and grabbed Jordan by his elbow as he was trying to slip away. “Oh, no you don’t, bucko. Your parents have been unveiled, and I believe they are suffering from a burning desire to spend some quality time with you.”
On the way upstairs, I grabbed another Manhattan from the tray of a passing server. Downed it in one, and handed it back to the carefully unsurprised young member of the catering staff, not bothering with the cherry. I wasn’t hungry.
Once I’d changed, I slipped out the front door while Auntie Mo and Mom were too busy in the kitchen to notice I didn’t have Molly with me (Brian had already changed back to himself), absently grabbing my great-grandfather’s walking stick from its place of honor in the umbrella stand by the front door. Great-Granddad was no longer with us, except in spirit, which the whole family was convinced now occupied the ancient, darkly gnarled cane. I felt the need of a stead
ying presence, both mentally and physically.
On purpose, I did not think about Billy and Monica. Instead, I thought about clowns.
Clowns are supposed to make you happy, but really they scare the shit out of you. Why would any grown-up subject a poor child to clowns, anyway? I thought about the first time Mom and Dad had taken me to the circus, and how I’d loved every second of it right up until they took me behind the scenes after the show and a clown had loomed over me with his grotesquely painted face. When he reached for me, I screamed and threw up all over his elongated shoes.
That’s what I felt like, even not thinking about Billy and Monica. Like I needed to scream and throw up. My brain might have been willing to cooperate with me by ignoring what I saw, but my stomach definitely wasn’t.
I stumbled down the porch steps to the sidewalk. Turned right and headed for … well, that was a good question. Couldn’t go to Billy’s place, for obvious reasons, not the least of which because it was probably still blocked by crime-scene tape. Couldn’t go back to James’s, because that was where—no, could not go back there, not now. Brian’s maybe? But Suze wouldn’t be expecting me. She hadn’t been with Bri long enough to take kindly to unexpected drop-ins by his family members.
So where?
The second Manhattan (or was it the third? fourth? I was a little woozy on the numbers) hit my brain. I kept walking, steadying myself with Great-Granddad’s stick. So what if I didn’t know where I was going? I was going; that was what mattered.
Why? I asked myself. Why had this happened? I finally got rid of my annoying half-virginity, and I had to get walloped with this? (Yeah, I might have still been a little sensitive about the virginity thing. Sue me.)
I stumbled over an uneven patch of sidewalk, shanghaied by a new thought, gripping the stick to keep from toppling over. When we were little, Mom always said, “God punishes right away,” if we got hurt while doing something we shouldn’t have been. Was this punishment for letting Mark kiss me? It was pretty “right away” in the grand scheme of relationship things.
