“That’s up there with anthill, I’m afraid,” Tenariel said ruefully. “Penalties, I only wish. Sometimes, to get through my day, I have to put my faith in karma.”
“Karma? That’s like, what goes around comes around?” I thought about Archie’s track record. I didn’t picture karma being any kinder than plain old divine—or secular—penalties.
“We’re not monolithic, you know,” she said to my frown. She looked fully human and kind of embarrassed and sweet and tired and exasperated with her job. “More like a well-meaning mess.”
I tried to smile. “I resemble that.”
She nodded. All business again, she flipped through pages on her clipboard, initialing them here and there.
“Well. Sadly, this is probably the only visit I’ll be able to make. I’m sure Archimedes will be careful with that hair sample. It would be a very bad thing if he had to collect another. If you catch my drift.” Tenariel said sternly, “You’re earmarked for the devotion of a decent man, not his skanky excuse for lovemaking. He’s done enough damage to your purity.”
My purity? That was a joke, right?
But I didn’t say it out loud. I swallowed hard. “Right.”
“Okay, then.” Tenariel signed the bottom of the last page on her clipboard and flipped through it quickly, licking her perfect fingertips and making the papers crackle. “I think we’re done. Thanks for your time, and good luck.” She shook my hand vigorously and smiled that sunny smile again. “Go home. Take a nap. You’ve earned it.”
Suddenly my ears were full of noise: cars honking, traffic whirring by, the hiss of waves on the sand, and the yelping babble of forty simultaneous volleyball games. I looked around. They were all there. They’d always been there. I just hadn’t noticed.
I didn’t notice Tenariel leave, either, no surprise. What blew my mind was the sight of eight opened cases of Boshy Banana Bat Piss, the capless bottlenecks sticking out of each little compartment; the garbage can mounded over with teeny sticky paper cones; the Hefty bags empty that had once held Boshy koozies, Boshy bottle-stoppers, and Boshy rubber bracelets; and the bags of shaved ice under my card table collapsed, melted, empty.
Somehow, while I’d been dunking myself in the lake those few minutes, she’d given out all my samples. I looked at my watch. Eleven forty-five.
Slowly I deflated my palm trees and boxed them, tied shut the garbage can liners, folded down the box flaps on the empty liqueur bottles, packed up my bottle openers and shakers and all the accessories of my demo, lugged it all back to my hatchback, and drove home in my sandy-ass bikini, thinking a lot of things.
Mostly, I didn’t know what to think.
Chapter Seven
THAT SATURDAY NIGHT I had a gig at Give a Ball for AIDS, a big charity event on Chicago’s north side. Boshy always sends cases and cases of whatever he’s pimping that day, and of course someone has to pour. Tonight it was Grape Bubble Gum Vodka. Signature cocktails: the Spitball, the Loogie, the Wedgie, and this summer’s big hit, Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts.
I got there two hours early to set up. Michele’s Ballroom swarmed with adorable gay men, all dressed to the teeth. They were nice to me, but the general attitude was summed up by the organizer Marc’s remark:
“Oh, honey, you really must be dedicated to AIDS research. ’Cuz you’re not getting any action tonight.”
He followed this up with a big schmecking smooch on the cheek, so I didn’t take it wrong.
Archie was setting up a bar on the other side of the big room. He’d shaved—good heavens, his bare chin was an invitation to sin—and he looked amazing in his bartender tux. We were each tucked between pillars, so it was kind of cozy, if you could ignore the ruckus of manhunting and the fifty feet of ballroom floor between us.
He smiled across at me. My heart flipped over. When he beckoned, I flew the fifty feet to his side.
“’Sup?” I said as breezily as I could.
He was holding out his closed hand to me. “This is probably the worst place ever to give this to you. On the other hand, maybe not.”
My heartbeat doubled up. “What is it?”
He grabbed my hand and put something in it and folded my hand up over it. “Don’t lose it. It should work within twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”
“Oh. The decent-man charm. Convenient if I want a really decent burglar coming in my window,” I said. I peeked. It was an old-fashioned rabbit’s foot on a bit of key chain, with a thing like a gelatin pill capsule tied to the foot with green thread.
“Don’t open it,” he said, watching me fiddle with it.
“This contains the hair?”
“That’s right. Just stick it in your pocket and don’t let it leave your person until it works.”
“You’re mighty sure it’s gonna work.”
He shrugged. “Lido made it. He’s good.” He got a funny expression, and then he grabbed my hand again and pulled me close and smooched me hard on the cheek. “Go, girl.” Then he pushed me away.
I watched him turn away and busy himself setting up his fruit box.
Feeling forlorn, I went back to my own station. I’d scarcely set out my own pickled onions and chopped limes and variety olives when I heard a pssst!
I looked around. From behind a pillar, looking like chopped liver in shredded cargo shorts and a rocker beater with all his tattoos hanging out, Lido waved to me.
This should be interesting.
I glanced across at Archie. He stood half-turned away from me, but somehow I felt he was watching. To see if the charm worked, of course.
So I picked up a cardboard box and carried it over to the pillar. “That is so not the dress code tonight.”
“No shit.” Lido’s eyes were rolling ’til the whites showed. “Did he give it to you?”
“Yes.” I pulled the rabbit’s foot out of my tux pocket.
Lido snatched it from me and, with a weird little pass of his fingers and a phrase muttered in a foreign language, he yanked the capsule off the chain. For an instant he held up the capsule, showing it to me, then he dropped it in the empty liquor box I carried. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”
“What was that?” I said. “I thought you wanted this to work.”
“I want you to be happy,” he said, and drilled me with a blast of sincerity from his bunny-brown eyes. “I’ve depersonalized it. But just to be on the safe side, get rid of it.”
I frowned. “Why would you want to do that? Call me dumb, but—”
“Look, you want Archie, don’t you?” Again with the bunny eyes. A trio of hot young gay guys wearing white ties and the bottom halves of their tuxedos giggled past, and Lido resumed his imitation of a cat on hot bricks.
“I-I do,” I stammered, not sure why I was admitting this. “But how is it going to help—”
“Get him into bed a few times and he won’t be able to let go.”
“But—” I said, still puzzled, though my pulse quickened at the suggestion.
Lido put thumb and forefinger together in a circle and talked fast. “It’s more than lust or love or all that. It’s an occulto-hermetic imperative. I’ve been watching him for more than fifty years. He doesn’t understand how he ticks. None of these guys does. They’re not interested in the theory. They just want to get laid.”
“But I don’t see,” I said, a little louder because the band was beginning to warm up—oh duh, that was why Lido was here! I recognized The Piddlies, Lido’s band. “How is your theory going to get him into bed with me?”
Lido’s sincere look turned to exasperation. “If this charm doesn’t work, we’ll have to make another, right?”
What the heck was he driving at? “And…?”
The hot waiter boys giggled past in the other direction, and this time Lido looked after them a moment before answering me. “And if you have to give him more pubes, I’ll throw away those hairs too.”
I guess I looked as dumb as I felt.
He sighed and knuckled me on the
forehead. “Figure it out! I have a gig now.”
“Why would you do this for me?” I folded my arms. “Kama doesn’t approve of me dating Archie. Veek thinks it’s funny. God knows whether Baz approves.”
His eyes hooded. “Don’t be stupid. I want you to keep my secret.”
I didn’t buy it. He turned away, and I had an inspiration. “Wait, Lido.” He paused, and I pulled him into a hug. “Thanks.”
He took it stiffly for a moment, and then he hugged me back. “You’re a good kid. Treat him right, okay?”
While his arms were around me, I slipped the rabbit’s foot into one of the baggy pockets of his cargo pants. “I will.”
The party wound down.
The Piddlies kept them jumping ’til the very end, when, to my complete surprise, they pulled out a whole set of slow dances—ballads of their own, corny weepers from Cake, from Death Cab, even “I Will,” by the Beatles.
Fifty feet away from me, Archie did what I did: he smiled, poured, opened bottles, put ice in plastic cups, poured, smiled, and smiled again. I felt my hands moving in time with his, and for a while I fantasized that he was moving in time with me, especially on that BoDeans waltz.
As Lido crooned, “Who knows how long I’ve loved you,” I started to go mushy inside. Nobody had asked me for a drink for fifteen minutes, and I stood behind my station, blessedly alone, watching Archie across fifty feet of slowly swaying tuxedos and sparkling dresses, melting.
In a tux, Archie looked almost respectable. Even closely shaved he looked dangerous to me, a scofflaw, a gypsy among the pedigree poodles and country-club lawn ornaments. His eyes smoldered at me across the ballroom. I wanted to dance with him.
My insides were hot caramel. I felt myself begin to sway with the song. For a glorious moment, I saw Archie’s hips move in parallel. Suddenly he scowled.
Then Lido swung into “When I’m Sixty-Four.” I looked over at the band in surprise, and when I looked back, Archie was gone.
Feeling abandoned, I started packing up my station.
I was putting empty Grape Bubble Gum Vodka bottles back in their boxes when Archie turned up beside me.
“What are you doing? They have guys for this.” He reached for the bottle in my hand, and I froze, hoping he would touch me.
Our eyes met. My heart started thumping. “I’m listening to the music.”
“So listen,” he said, pulling me away from my bar.
Whatever they’d taught him in hell, it made me feel like heaven. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, and we fox-trotted very slowly in a small space. His hands roved over me and my hopes grew.
“You’re not wearing it,” he said in my ear.
I rolled closer to him and murmured against his strong, sweaty neck, “I never wear perfume.”
“The charm.” Now he stopped dancing and looked me in the eye, his hands on my arms. “Where is it?”
“Uh.” I swallowed. “It’s here somewhere.”
He gave me a you-adorable-dummy frown. “No wonder guys have been ignoring you.”
“They’re all gay, or they’re here with their wives.” Offended, I turned away and resumed packing empties. “Was that why you came over here and danced with me?”
“I came over to check on you, yes.”
“Thanks loads.” I slammed bottles into their cardboard homes.
He stopped my hand as I was about to dunk another bottle. “I danced with you because I’m an idiot.”
My innards had congealed around a cold spot. “Thanks so much.”
He pulled the bottle out of my hand and leaned over to look into the box. “What the—” He reached in and pulled out, oh rats, the capsule full of my pubic hair that Lido had torn off the rabbit’s foot charm.
Archie held it up. A bit of green thread dangled guiltily from the capsule. “Where’s the rest of it?”
I was getting steamed. “I gave it away.”
“You what?”
Looking at the tiny capsule in his fingers I realized suddenly why Lido had taken it off the charm.
If the first charm didn’t work, Archie would need to get more. From me.
And the harder I made that for him…
I remembered dancing up against his hard, hot body. I realized I wanted to make it very, very hard for him.
I snatched the capsule out of his hand. “I don’t like the whole idea. It seems cheesy to me. How can you get someone’s one true love to just walk up to them out of the blue? It’s bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit.”
“It’s new-age,” I said, rhyming it with “sewage.” I looked at the capsule with contempt and then threw it on the floor and stomped on it. “Magic is just bullshit.”
Archie pushed me away from the stomped-on capsule. “I can’t believe you did that. Do you know how long it took us to make that?”
“Besides, if you want to do somebody a favor, how about all the other women in Ravenswood Manor who had to date jerks along with me? If you have a shred of decency you’ll do a charm for all of them, too.”
Now touch me again. Grab me and make me feel swoony.
“Yeah, yeah.” He glanced up from stirring the stomped-on mess. “Where’s the rest of it? C’mon, maybe we can salvage something.”
I looked across the ballroom. The Piddlies had quit. Lido’s boys were breaking down their setup, and Lido himself stood talking to Marc, the AIDS benefit organizer, who looked flamingly handsome in a Versace tux.
“Go get it back,” Archie said. “It won’t work for her.”
“For who?” I said. Then I saw he was looking past Lido at a redheaded woman in a gold tunic-style gown, languishing all over a country-club specimen who was standing near Lido.
“She’s got it? Go get it,” Archie said again. “When she goes to the little girls’ room, go after her and get it back.”
I couldn’t talk about Lido here. “What, mug her?” I made a face. “I’m not sure I want this whole charm thing to work, anyway. It’s a little creepy, letting you guys use magic to attract some random guy. How do I know this isn’t going to just get me pregnant and I’ll end up barefoot in some marble-floored kitchen in Kenilworth?” He wasn’t listening. He was ogling the redhead. “Yo, horndog, I’m talking to you.”
“End up in—marble kitchen—what?”
Lido had looked in our direction. Now he came over to us.
“It didn’t work,” I told him quickly, before Archie could speak.
“What didn’t work?” Lido sent me a warning look.
“The charm thingy.”
“She broke off the personalizer,” Archie said despairingly. “Next time, we make it too small for her to find.”
“Next time?” Lido sent me a wink.
I said, “Why should I trust you with a next time? You screwed up.”
Archie put his hand around my wrist, and my brain quit altogether. He pulled me to face him. “Next time,” he promised, looking deep into my eyes. He was so close, I could smell the starch in his shirt giving up to the sweat on his neck.
“Okay,” I said weakly.
With what was left of my will, I vowed that he was gonna have to fight for those hairs.
I didn’t have to bartend Sunday, so I hit the gym at dawn. Chloe was there, doing upper-body work. Not for the first time, I noticed what great shape her arms and back were in. For the first time, I thought about biting her on the back to see if she’d like it. Then I thought about those little whistling noises she made when she’d come four or five times in a row really fast. Then I thought—
Oh crap. This is why I never do anybody more than once. Why I see to it they never turn up in my life again. It leads me into temptation. And gives me the most distracting boner.
I sat down at the rowing machine next to her and put my back into it, staring savagely at my toes to maintain discipline.
She finished her set and sat still while I moved steadily back and forth. I guessed she was watching me. The boner got worse
. I felt myself accelerating and had to force myself to slow down, keep the rhythm smooth and my form perfect.
Her ankles were really sweet and slender. Her calves, when they slid in to view on my backstroke, had nice definition—not too much, but a nice round swell.
Get back to work, Archimedes.
After a minute I knew she was definitely watching me. I started to speed up again, realized I’d lost count of my strokes, and gave up.
“What,” I said, turning on her with a cranky tone I didn’t mean. “Stop it.”
“Don’t you have any feelings about the unpleasant things you do?” she said.
“Beg pardon? Here, hold the wrench.” I got up and crossed to the creaky old Universal machine.
She followed me. Those legs were really amazing in itty-bitty track shorts. “I mean, you work for hell.”
I straightened. “I thought you weren’t religious.”
“I’m not,” she said uncomfortably. “But the devil’s not supposed to be a nice person.”
“So I must not be, either, eh?” I took the wrench from her and started resetting the Universal. “Wrap your head around this for a minute. The Home Office, as we call the Christian heaven, and the Regional Office, as we call the Christian hell, are in a hierarchy. That’s what it’s all about. Who’s on top. And it’s very obvious who’s on top.”
“I hope so,” she said, squirming. “I was thrown out of Sunday School in second grade for asking too many questions. I guess I’m no expert.”
“So how unpleasant is it that somebody who works for the Administration has a dirty job? And whose fault is that, anyway?” I slid fifty pounds of weight onto the bench bar.
She frowned. “There’s something wrong with your logic. I’ll think what, in a minute.”
I sighed and sat down on the bench, elbows on my knees, tenting my hands. “Put it another way. Do you go to war-torn countries to watch American soldiers shoot people?”
“No.”
“Do you go to slaughterhouses to hang out while pigs and cows and chickens are slaughtered?”
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