I gulped. “I’m sorry.”
He patted my hand. “It didn’t matter. I was just fixating on somebody I couldn’t have, the way I always do, so I could get by. How do you think I’ve survived three hundred years of doing women when I wanted to be doing men?”
“Oh, Lido.” I felt forced to admit, “I don’t know if I could have done that.”
“What are you talking about? You did do it.”
“I mean, that’s—that was very mature of you.”
“It wasn’t. I just wanted to stop hurting. Turns out I’ve been hurting forever, and no amount of medication helps. I figured that out that Friday night.”
My breath caught. This was his first reference to anything close to Marc. Our eyes met. I kept my mouth shut.
He said, “I owe you an apology. I’m thinking that you did Archie some good, even if things suck right now.”
This change of topic made me stammer, “You th-think?”
“You’re a good example to him. He was always talking about how you would fall in love with this or that dickhead and break your heart, but it never seemed to discourage you. He couldn’t decide if you were brave or stupid or both. Because you kept trying. You kept jumping back in the game and exposing yourself to all that pain. You kept hoping.”
“When did he say that?”
“I dunno. For a couple of years now,” Lido said. He started idly flicking the lighter on and off. He didn’t notice that he had rocked my world.
Two years?
Archie had been thinking about me for two years!
This made me wonder for the first time if numb was better than agonizingly miserable.
And that thought scared me so much that my brain snapped into “sister” mode.
“So am I a good example to you, too? What happened Friday night to change your mind?”
Lido shrugged. “Like you said about the pooch.” He gestured with the lighter at the poodle in his cone, now walking away beside his master and the girl with the Rottweiler. “Maybe pain is part of healing. Of course, the dog’s nuts won’t grow back. But the heart is different.”
I held my breath, hoping to hold back stinging tears.
“Time to flush those happy pills down the toilet, girlfriend,” he said gently. And he held the rumpled card to the flame.
I found myself at the lair, mercifully alone, lying on a pile of old sweat socks in my room. I put ten seconds into holding still, eyes shut, breathing again with infinite gratitude for the privilege.
Then I got up, chucked on shorts and a tank and a pair of sneakers, and headed for Lido’s lab. I had an idea for a love charm that Chloe couldn’t give away, couldn’t duck, couldn’t divert, and couldn’t depersonalize. If it failed, it would be because she did want me after all. And even if she was out of range, it would do what she’d asked me to do—make amends to all the women of Ravenswood Manor who had ever been gypped out of their shot at a decent guy. So what if I’d made up the Ravenswood Project? Every woman deserved something nice.
I watched the card burn. Well, I didn’t need it any more.
Lido picked up the pillar candle and walked away.
“What are you going to do?” I called.
Lido didn’t answer. Instead he walked to the playground area, stepped up into the wood chips, and climbed slowly and carefully into the empty kiddie castle. I saw him appear in the castle tower’s window. He was lighting the pillar candle. He tipped it this way and that, then poured some melted wax out on the blue plastic windowsill. Then he stuck the candle bottom into the wax. The lighter flame snapped out, leaving candlelight.
For a moment I saw his shock of Mohawked hair, his blade of a nose, and his thin, tattooed shoulder lit by yellow candlelight. Then he leaned back against the tower wall and slid down until his head disappeared.
I was tempted to go over and look, but I sat frozen in place, thinking about Archie.
Archie had his own methods for getting a person to stop loving him. They just never worked on someone…my chest gave a little lurch…on someone he cared about.
Couples were drifting out of the park, towing their dogs. Someone without a dog wandered up. I saw it was Marc. He stood in front of the kiddie castle and looked up at the candle in the window. The candlelight cast a warm glow on his perfect features.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” I heard Marc say.
I couldn’t help straining to hear. Would my new super-hearing still work, even though I’d been cured of Archie?
Yup. Sure enough, as if I had a directional microphone, I heard Lido answer him.
“What do you want?”
“I brought you a present,” Marc said. Halfway across the park, in light so dim I shouldn’t have been able to see anything, I saw him reach into the back pocket of his jeans and pull out a paper, which he unfolded. “Don’t you want to see?”
After a long silent interval, Lido whispered, “I’m scared.”
“I know,” Marc said.
“Toss it up here.”
Marc unfolded the paper. It seemed extremely stiff. He made a paper airplane out of it and flicked it accurately through the window of Lido’s retreat.
I strained my ears. I heard rustling.
“What is it?” Lido said.
“C’mon, you can read Latin.”
“Yes, but the handwriting is atrocious.”
Marc laughed softly. “It’s your contract.”
“My—what?”
“Look at the bottom. Your name and an X,” Marc said.
Rustling. Silence. “How did you get this?”
“Bubbie had it. It’s been in the family for generations.” I saw Marc rise on tiptoe, as if he were trying to peer in through the tower window.
Lido sputtered, “But I—she—that was—a contract with the Regional Office!”
“Check the signatures,” Marc said.
Lido’s parrot-like head popped up in the window. He pushed the candle to one side and hung his elbows over the sill, angling the paper in his hands toward the light. He said a word like a sneeze. “Szépasszony? Holy shit, that’s one of Her names, isn’t it?” He added, “So—so none of my reports to the Regional Office ever—”
“Oh, I imagine She knows what a good job you’ve been doing.” Marc seemed more and more cheerful by the minute. He added, “And even if the contract had been with the Regional Office, it wouldn’t be valid.”
Lido frowned. “Why not?”
I saw Marc smile. “Two reasons, you dummy. Because you’re Jewish and because you’re gay.”
Lido caught his breath. He glanced in my direction. I quickly looked away at a pair of squirrels chasing each other around a scrawny dog-park tree trunk. “Chloe says we’re in the same business.”
“I have a better boss,” Marc said, and suddenly I knew who had taken Lido’s contract—a green-eyed madam with a million disguises. Marc’s voice brightened. “Are you coming down here, or do I have to rescue you?”
I peeked again just as Lido’s smile lit his face. “Oh, you come up here. I’ve never been rescued before.”
Marc stepped forward. Something crazy happened. The little blue plastic castle stretched. Somehow it swelled and puffed up and grew taller. The closer Marc came, the taller the castle grew. By the time he stood right under Lido’s candlelit window, the tower had soared sixty feet over his head.
Marc stretched a hand up and grabbed hold of the blue plastic-molded rocks in the castle wall. One hand, one foot at a time, he began to climb.
In the lab at the lair, it occurred to me that I’d overlooked a possibility. I went back to my room and, after a search, found where somebody, Baz probably, had put my wallet and my cell phone and my keys and all the stuff that had been in my pockets when I vanished out of my clothes on the MJ deck three days ago. I loaded the pockets of my gym shorts with these and went back to the lab, holding my phone to my ear.
“Lido?”
“I’m busy.”
“Do you have any idea where Chlo
e is?”
“She was in the dog park at Bryn Mawr and Ashland two minutes ago.”
Click. I looked at the phone. Then I realized I didn’t have time to ponder. I grabbed up the bundles of stuff I’d prepared and lugged them out to my car and boogied over to Cheaters.
The bar was full. Harold hailed the sight of me with relief, but I blundered through the bar without answering him. The stairs at the back led up to the second floor. From there I climbed up a ladder on the wall and up through a hatch onto the roof. It took four trips to get all my gear up there.
I had to get it alight before Chloe left the dog park.
I worked fast. Within two minutes the whole rig was set up in a circle around me. Then I touched my lighter to the first fuse.
I realized to my dismay that I was walking toward Cheaters.
What are you thinking, Chloe? It’s ten thirty by now. If Archie’s there, he’ll just refuse to serve you a drink. And if he isn’t, you have no reason to be there, unless it’s to rub salt in the hole where you used to hurt over him.
I kept walking. When I was a block away, I heard a tremendous bang, as if an empty dump truck had slammed into a concrete wall. Then I heard a whistle. I looked up as a streak of yellow sparks etched an arc in the sky, directly overhead.
Another bang went off, and another. The air overhead filled with colored lights and sparks. Fizzling crackles and pops broke the sounds of city traffic. As I came closer to Cheaters, I saw that the roof glowed, as if a bonfire was roaring up there.
Bonfire.
Archie.
The body burned, Delilah had said. The one thing all the slackers worried about.
My chest tightened painfully.
I broke into a run.
My cell rang as I was touching off the third bank of rockets. “Yo, I’m busy.”
It was Baz. “Are you under cover? Because another memo came about that joint task force, and I just realized you must have got back. You could have left a note on the table,” he added, reproach in his voice.
“I’ve been through hell,” I said, explaining, not complaining. “What’s up?”
“I found out who Tenariel is.”
I squeezed my cell phone against my shoulder. “Let me guess. An alias for Aphrodite.”
“Close. It’s the spirit name for an angel of Venus.”
“Shit.” Well, that wasn’t really news. My lighter was conking out. I shook it.
Baz resumed, “And this new memo from the Regional Office came around after you disappeared. The task force is on its way.”
“Really?” I had bigger things to worry about. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“Also one from the Home Office,” he added.
“Oh, really?” That made me pause with my Bic lit. “Did it say, this memo, where they got their information? Who picked it up first, the Home Office or the Regional Office?”
“What’s the difference? They’re both after you. ‘Task force’ is a four-letter word, buddy. Oh, and thanks for bringing them down on the lair.”
“Don’t fret. They’re more likely to come after me at work. That’s where we deployed most of the charms. The difference, is, if the Home Office CC’d the Regional Office, I might have a problem. If the Regional CC’d the Home Office, or if the Home Office got their information off one of their spy feeds down there, I’m not worried.”
There was a pause. “Looks like the Home Office picked it up from the Regional Office.”
So whoever had blabbed about my imaginary Ravenswood Project was in the Regional Office. I felt better. “Well, the minute they get around to writing the white paper, they’ll find their documentation has sprung a serious leak. Alt-Delete is my friend. And so are you,” I added, descending to a maudlin level.
“No shit? I wondered what you were doing when you vanished out of the lair. Guess I know now.”
“Yeah, and thanks for never telling me that Lido doesn’t have a file at the Regional Office.”
“Why would I know this?” Baz said.
“Because you helped them digitize in the eighties. Don’t tell me you didn’t check on your roommates.”
Baz chuckled, and I promised to stuff his head down a toilet when I got home, and he called me a faggot.
Then he said, “Watch your back.”
“Watching. Gotta go.” I hung up and touched off the third bank of rockets. I pictured the task force, sitting in ranks in their celestial helicopters and infernal bombers, never even noticing as my name and work address vanished from the memos in their pockets. Heh heh.
I was winded from sprinting when I got to Cheaters. I couldn’t believe Archie would set fire to it while it was open. Then a huge explosion of sound and light erupted from the roof. I ran for the door.
The place was full, of course, just when I needed to get through it in a hurry. Ladies’ Night. I told as many of them as I could to get out of the building because the roof was on fire. By now, bangs and whistles were coming every second or so, and if the customers were too drunk to understand what I was saying, at least they could see sparks showering from the sky through the windows. They all moved toward the door. I pushed my way against the flow like a demented salmon.
I got up to the roof just as a big boom went off overhead. A gigantic green flower burst in the sky, lighting Archie, shiny with sweat in his white beater, as he bent over something with a lighter in his hand.
I couldn’t stop myself from screaming.
He looked up and calmly walked toward me while a big pile of sticks behind him fizzed and sparked like a volcano.
“You ass!” I yelled over the noise. “Come downstairs and get out of here!”
He stopped a foot away from me and looked me up and down. In the pulsing glare of colored fire, he had never looked more like a sex demon. His cheekbones were sharp, his eyes in shadow, and his gorgeous biceps gleamed, sweaty in the green light. I wanted to rip his shirt off then and there.
Then I saw his eyes. “Chloe,” he said. “Be careful.”
Something above us went bang, louder than anything before. “What?” I yelled. A giant white flower bloomed in the sky. I was about to reach for him, and he took a step back.
Then I remembered how much it had hurt, getting him out of my heart.
“You went through a lot to get rid of me,” he said. “Don’t blow it.”
By now I’d realized that the roof was not, in fact, actually in flames. He’d put sparklers or Greek fire or something around the perimeter of the roof. No wonder it had looked like he’d torched the place.
“What are you doing?” I demanded crossly. “You gave me a heart attack.”
He glanced up. Fine ash was falling around us. “I hoped to give you—something better.” He looked behind me. Someone was climbing the ladder to the roof. I could hear swearing and clunking down through the hatch. I reached for him and he took a step back.
That hurt. I was tempted to slap his face. I guess my hand twitched, because he stiffened, as if bracing himself.
“Are you putting a whammy on me?” I demanded.
“No.” His eyes got bigger and darker. “I can never whammy you again.”
Bang! and whistle! came behind him. His sweaty shoulders went red, yellow, and red again, and he faded into the darkness. I made a grab for him and got him this time. He felt solid. That reassured me.
“Why can’t you whammy me?” I stepped closer. “Is it because you’ve been turning me into a sex demon, too?” His arm seemed to burn in my grip.
“Chloe,” he said, as if my name had been squeezed out of him. “Think, will you? Will you just think a moment? What do you want?” The Greek fire flared. He shut his eyes as if the light was hurting him. “Do you want to go through all that pain again?”
Reluctantly I let go. “I won’t have to if you don’t leave me.”
He made an exasperated noise. “Stop talking like a girl and think, will you?”
“All right,” I said. “Here’s the bald truth. I wan
t you. But I can’t stand watching you run away from real life any more.”
He said painfully, “Chloe, I don’t have a real life. I have bullshit jobs so nobody will ever notice how I don’t age. I give away inventions because I can’t seem to stop inventing stuff, and I don’t need the money, and I can’t afford to be found—”
“You’re terrified to be found by Aphrodite.”
He actually went pale when I said her name.
“You idiot,” I added. “You’ve been working for her all this time. You can’t hide from her. You can’t even hide from the Regional Office. By the way, Lido says they’re pissed at you over the victims’ compensation program, which doesn’t exist, and they’re coming after you.”
He looked up as I said this. Suddenly he leaped at me and shoved me backward, just as a heavy object fell out of the sky and hit the roof exactly where I’d been standing.
I tripped and sat down hard on the air-conditioning unit.
Archie spun, putting his back to me, and half crouched with his fists bunched at his sides.
“That one’s mine!” yelled a woman’s voice from the roof hatch.
“What are you doing?” I got up and pushed Archie aside. “What the hell is that?”
We stood looking down at a naked man lying on the roof. His skin was a dark maroon or cranberry color, and he was lying on a large pair of darker red, leathery wings. While we watched, he stirred, got himself up on one elbow, clapped his free hand to his forehead, and groaned.
“Mine!” growled that voice behind us.
A woman rushed past us and gathered the fallen—well, he looked like a demon—into her arms. “Are you all right?” she cooed. She seemed to be wearing pajamas.
She took his hand in hers.
He opened his eyes and looked at her.
Now I noticed that he had tiny red horns on his forehead. As I watched, they shriveled and fell off, and his wings seemed to retreat into his body somehow.
It's Raining Men Page 23
