It's Raining Men

by Jennifer Stevenson

  I thought about pyramidal hierarchies and wondered where on the pyramid the slackers’ hell would feature.

  Complicated world they lived in.

  The font got normal in the body of the memo.

  The memo was long and rambling, and I found myself skimming. Projects were being terminated, and assets were being shifted. It made zero sense to me.

  Until, buried way down at the bottom of the memo, I found a single line: Ravenswood Project: aborted. Review process incomplete.

  It looked all so dull and corporate and frankly kind of ineffectual, like one of Boshy’s memos, announcing that every employee of the organization was expected to drink only Boshy products out of loyalty and dedication to “viral marketing,” which was something Boshy knew even less about than I did.

  Those last three words made my tummy me feel unsettled. “Review process incomplete.”

  What would a “review” constitute? How would it go for Archie, if the Regional Office sent somebody down—sorry, up—to make sure the Ravenswood Project was completely shut down? And then what if they found…this lair? Would the lair count as appropriately hellish? It was certainly a long way from cleanliness, I thought, looking around me.

  The guys had an incredible sense of humor about their jobs and boundless contempt for their superiors. I just hoped that their armor against disciplinary action was stouter than their conviction that hell would never send anybody to check up on them because hell was so shorthanded.

  The door opened. Archie stuck his head in, saw me sitting on the john lid, and started back. “Sorry.”

  “I’m just reading,” I said. I stood and handed him the memo.

  He took it, gave it a glance, and laughed. “Backup toilet paper.” He tossed it on the magazine pile. “We like to keep them in here to remind us who we’re working for.” He sniffed. “Have you been cleaning in here? Because if so, thank you.”

  “You don’t expect me to put my bottom on that thing,” I said, indicating the throne, “without detoxing it?”

  “Good grief,” Archie said. “Let’s go.”

  “Not so fast.” I sat down on the edge of the chipped porcelain bathtub. “Do you really think hell will throw you in a volcano or drown you in a lake of cat’s pee?”

  He smiled. “Not a hope, sadly. More likely I’ll get called in for a talking-to by my supervisor, big whoop. And if I forget to show up for that meeting, what happens? My supervisor feels relieved, and I get a green sheet in my file.”

  “Well,” I said, curious, “if you’re not scared of them, why do you work for them?”

  He sat down on the edge of the tub beside me and put his elbows on his knees, staring at nothing. “Do you know what it’s like to live forever while everyone around you dies? Everyone you meet dies, Chloe. Think about it.” His eyes darkened. “Even you. Everybody I ever, ever meet, dies. And yet I go on, like this pretty much, wondering how to make it through another frickin’ day.”

  “Hence the lair,” I said, the light bulb going on.

  “And the guys.” He jerked a thumb at the closed door. “I need them. Funky-smelling, lazy, not too bright maybe, but they’re always here. Like me, they know that eternal youth is a burden. Working for the Regional Office is a lifeline. It helps us cope. It’s a kind of cheesy imitation of what the people around us are living with for real.”

  I put my hand on his. “Their lives aren’t any less real just because they’re shorter.”

  “I know that. Chloe, I envy them—” He broke off. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, but thanks for listening.”

  “Sure. Is it true?”

  He blinked. “You mean, am I telling the truth? Oddly enough, yes. Weird, huh? I can’t seem to stop telling you the truth.” He patted my hand and got up. “Doesn’t change anything, but hey.”

  I stood up. I noticed that even with me in flats, with him in sneakers, I was a fraction taller than he was. “I think it does change something.”

  He smiled a little bitterly. “That’s why I’m the bartender, and you’re the girl with tears in her eyes once a week. Now I need—” He tried to steer me out of the room.

  “Wait, wait,” I said. “I have to wash my hands.”

  “Still? What have you been doing all this time?”

  But he went out and left me alone. I snatched the memo off the top of the stack, folded it really small, and buttoned it into the back pocket of Kama’s black silk boxer shorts, which I was still wearing. Then I flushed the john for effect, and washed my hands for real, scrubbing long and hard. The room wasn’t really clean—only a steam-shooting pressure-wash would do the job right—but I felt I could walk in and out again and sit down briefly without infecting myself.

  Archie was waiting for me in the hall. “Now I need a favor,” he said uncomfortably.

  This sounded good. “Sure, what?”

  “I need a couple of your pubic hairs.”

  I choked. “Really.”

  He looked up and down the hall. He lowered his voice. “Look, I don’t stoop to this stuff often. It’s the kind of sticky hocus-pocus that mortals get up to when they’re messing with each other’s heads, you know? But Lido is going to construct a spell for you.”

  “This sounds so not good. Magic is for messing with people, and therefore you want me to give you two of my actual pubic hairs so Lido can work a spell on me? Try again.”

  “It’s the thingy. The victims’ compensation,” he said. He seemed sweaty and nervous. “We want to attract the right guy to you, somebody decent. You know.” He fidgeted in front of me, his hands twitching, his eyes going left and right up and down the hallway.

  “Why don’t you just put your spell on me like you usually do?” The thought made me feel a little sick. I didn’t want to have one short night of demon sex with Archie and then forget his name so some stockbroker could come and sweep me off my feet.

  “I can’t.” He glanced down, then up. “They’ll be watching.”

  “Horse pucky,” I said. “You guys don’t get watched. It’s part of your credo. Nobody’s watching.” But I had a prickly feeling.

  Archie very definitely thought someone was watching. He glanced up and down the hall again. “Look, if you’re superstitious, I understand. Many people are. But it’s not going to work without the hairs. Lido says.”

  “And you believe him.”

  “He was right when he set up the spells for the Ravenswood Project. You know, the conspiracy to keep you surrounded by jerks? And every other woman in the neighborhood,” he added hastily.

  “I dunno.” I was enjoying his discomfort. “Lido also told me something about you, and I wondered if it was true.”

  His eyes rolled. “Yeah? What?”

  “He says you let your tutor use your name and sell your inventions. So you’re really the real Archimedes? I mean, the smart guy from Greece?”

  “Lido should shut up.”

  “It explains a lot,” I said. “The laziness thing. How smart you are. I just can’t understand why you would let someone else take all your credit.”

  He shrugged, pushing off the wall and moseying up to me like a high school boy trying to act tough. “You should talk. Smart girl like you with a business degree.” He breathed hot on my chin. “Going bra-less so you can sell sticky drinks to yuppies.”

  He stood so close to me, I could smell the sweat on his neck. Yum. He was working up his courage for something. I could only hope I knew what it was.

  Sure enough, after one more glance around, he pushed me up against the wall and mashed me.

  I sailed off to heaven.

  Archie, Archie, I kept thinking. Be my indecent man. I don’t care if you never clean the toilet or use cloth towels in the kitchen.

  It kind of shocked me to realize I was thinking in terms of kitchen towels. Then my hormones caught up with me and my head went black and sparkly and the vibrations in my butt rose up through my chest and made me breathless and Archie’s hands were everywhere,
and I do mean everywhere—how did he do that? I felt like he had eight hands, and at least five of them were under my clothes, stroking, probing, pinching, plucking—

  “Ow! Hey!”

  I pulled away and clonked him hard in the face with my forehead. “What the fuck?”

  He stepped back, panting. “Sorry. Sorry. I need these hairs.” He touched his nose. “Ow.”

  I leaned against the wall and fought for breath. “Ow yourself.” I put one hand over my crotch and the other hand on my forehead. “You lunatic.”

  He stood wavering in front of me, his face flushed and his eyes dark and big with some kind of emotion, and then he bolted down the hall.

  As I reentered the TV area, I looked the slacker demons over with a sisterly eye. “One shower for five guys? I can’t believe this place.”

  Baz shrugged. “Kama and Veek fight over it sometimes.”

  Eventually I staggered out of there.

  Chapter Six

  THE GUYS HAD ASKED me to help fill in more paperwork for them, partly from my memories about Archie’s escapades and partly from my imagination, which, they said, wasn’t hideously jaded like theirs and soured by years of faking monthly reports.

  Then they produced thirty kinds of firewater, with which Baz and Archie got into a mixology competition. Baz’s recipes tasted better, but I couldn’t give him a higher score. It would have crushed Archie. I began to see how they had come to be so protective of him. He didn’t have their happy-go-lucky attitude. Archie was too competitive. He cared.

  Look at the way, I thought fondly, he had to fix every woman he slept with. Mister Variety-is-everything was in fact a sex-demon do-gooder.

  This made me wonder why he had never tried it on me. Did I not rate getting fixed? Did he not feel sorry for me? Did he want me to suffer?

  Or did he know that one kiss would have me thinking about kitchen towels?

  I felt a lot of mixed feelings, and being drunk skunky and sent home at five thirty in the morning with a hangover didn’t help. Chicago at dawn was hazy and smoggy, a bit like my brain. A commuter train ran past along the Ravenswood line tracks outside the lair’s front door, making my head hurt.

  Plus, on my way out the factory building’s door, I felt a sudden, sharp, burning pain on my right buttock.

  “Ow! Dammit!” I slapped at my butt, and then, desperately, right there out on the sidewalk in broad daylight, I pushed the boxer shorts down to my knees, leaning against the side of the Lair’s exterior wall as I did so, feeling drunk and sordid.

  My pocket was smoking. Like, something-on-fire smoking.

  What the hey?

  When the smoke stopped, I pulled the shorts up a bit and looked at them.

  The little button-down back pocket was a scorched mess.

  Shaken, I pulled the shorts up and went to the corner for a taxi.

  It wasn’t until I was in the taxi that I remembered I had folded the memo from the Regional Office and put it in my pocket.

  Where it had burst into flames once I left the building.

  I was in a girl-brained fog all the next day at work.

  “Now try it over shaved ice,” I said, smiling for the four millionth time that morning. “We call it Yellow Snow.” I poured banana schnapps over a snow cone. “It kind of sneaks up on you.” This phrase was my winner. I always used it with male customers.

  Sure enough, the beefy, sunburned yuppie tossed it off, smacked his lips, and wiggled his eyebrows. “The beach roofie!”

  “Exactly,” I said, smiling and praying for sundown.

  Lake Michigan glittered. Forty volleyball nets had been set up on the sand of North Avenue Beach, and at every one of them, a dozen beach creatures bounced and squealed. Inflatable palm trees hid my view of Lake Shore Drive and somewhat muffled the sound of traffic, louder than the beach surf. Behind me, a giant banner strung between the palm trees screamed Boshy Beverages Goes Bananas!

  In spite of the noise and smells and the dumb drunk yuppies, I still tingled inside from Archie’s kisses. It was as if he’d found an On switch inside me, and flipped it. The yuppies sure noticed it. I was moving product like mad. They leered, I diverted them to the free alcohol, they drank, they wandered off.

  Inside, I simmered. Archie, Archie.

  It was eleven thirty now, and I was wilting. My Boshy Brands bikini itched. My legs were sticky with spilled product, and I smelled like banana syrup. My smile hurt my face.

  My gallant customer turned and bellowed to some lobster-colored athletes. “Hey, guys! C’mere and try this!”

  I had eight cases of product left. If I over-poured for the next three hours, I might get to go home early.

  “Break time,” said a silvery voice behind me. I turned.

  A blonde in a Boshy bikini stood there, hands on her hips. She smiled, fresh and energetic.

  Break time, I thought, and my whole body relaxed. “You’re kidding. I thought I was alone here today.”

  “Well, now you have me,” she said, and I felt like curling up at her feet and howling like a baby. “Go jump in the lake. I’ll mind the store.”

  I smiled pathetically and ran for the water. The lake was ice-cold and sandy and smelled like cocoa butter, but I scrubbed myself off in it and even dunked my head under. Who cared if my hair went stringy when it dried? These yahoos weren’t looking at my hair, and their girlfriends would like me better if my hair wasn’t as nice as my body.

  When I walked back up the sand to our station, the blonde was sitting in my beach chair looking at a clipboard in her lap. So she was here to score my job performance after all! And she’d just sent me away from my station. Great.

  I stood over her, buffing myself off with my Boshy towel. “What’s the deal?”

  She looked up. “Oh, hi. Park there—” She pointed. I was about to remind her there was only one chair, and I couldn’t sit on the sand in my wet bikini, but when I looked around there really was a second chair.

  I sat cautiously, toweling my hair.

  There was something weird about her look. Something off. She was gorgeous in a big, blonde, beach-bunny kind of way, all cheekbones and wide, wide blue eyes. Her tan was very deep—almost an orangey brown—totally not fashionable. But on her it looked good, like the classic seventies surfer girl. More than that, she radiated. Radiated what? Even I felt it, a great big, sunny hello feeling. That ought to have had the guys buzzing around like yellow jackets, but there were no customers at the station.

  Then I realized I couldn’t hear the volleyball players, the waves, or traffic on Lake Shore Drive.

  It was as if we sat in a bubble of silence.

  All the hairs on my body stood up.

  “Who are you?” I said, not even a little bit grateful any more.

  She looked up from her clipboard and smiled. I felt that sunshiny feeling again. “I’m here to help.”

  I didn’t trust that feeling. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Tenariel. I’m a caseworker on the victims’ compensation program that’s being run for residents affected by the Ravenswood Project.” She put her tanned hand out, long fingernails painted white gold like her mane of white-gold hair, and I shook it, dazed. “You know what the victims’ compensation program is for?”

  “I know,” I said grimly.

  Waves of spookies washed over me.

  And I felt waves of shock, too, because Archie’s bullshit story and his goofy magical roommates were real, so much more real than a drunken evening entering fake sexual conquests into hell’s database, or getting my suit ruined.

  I felt waves of panic, wondering what would happen to me now that I had apparently become involved in the craziness, even if this lady seemed concerned about me. Because, holy shit, she was powerful—I looked around and realized that the screaming, bouncing, drunken, utterly silent yuppies didn’t seem to notice we existed. It was as if she’d punched a mute button on the world.

  I felt waves of gut-clenching fear, fear for Archie. If she could
do all this, what might happen to Archie? I wished I’d read that memo more carefully before it had burnt itself up.

  “Relax,” she said. “I won’t hurt you.”

  “No,” I blurted, “you just turn me over to the secular arm to get staked out on an anthill.”

  She made a gimme-a-break face. “That’s for staff, not mortals. Even for staff, I barely have the resources to file an evaluation form in their folder.” She leaned forward and very carefully patted my sandy bare knee. “I just want to check in with you. We have to make sure you’re being treated the way the program intends.”

  Every time she touched me I felt a wave of reassurance. “Well, uh.”

  “Has Archimedes told you what to expect?”

  “Not really.” I rose in the beach chair and brushed sand off the backs of my legs. “He only took a pubic hair sample last night, so I think pretty soon now they’ll have a spell or something worked up. I dunno…” I trailed off, wishing I hadn’t said that much. I brushed off my butt, and, feeling conspicuous, sat down again.

  Her eyebrows went up at the pubic hair sample. “I see. He’s not leaving anything to chance.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A hair sample, a drop of blood—these guarantee that the spell will bring the right man to you and only you.”

  “The right man—”

  “A decent man. To compensate you for all the jerks you’ve had to date.”

  I said sheepishly, “Well, I dunno. ‘Had to’ is a bit harsh. I was the one who dated them, Archie didn’t make me go out with jerks.”

  “Oh, honey,” Tenariel said, and she sounded suddenly more cuddly and girlfriend. “Who knows why we go out with jerks? The point is, he set you up to suffer. And that has to be rectified.”

  Fear for Archie pushed me to speak. “Is this what they mean when they say ‘the review process is incomplete’? I mean, that’s all you’re doing, right, is overseeing the victims’ compensation program. There isn’t some kind of deadline?” I gulped. “With penalties?”