I floated backward, watching her as a rabbit watches a cat.
She turned over. Her eyes were full of loss and bewilderment.
“No!” she wailed, sitting up, clutching the sheets.
I had thought I was strong enough to disappoint her.
She sobbed, “Vee-ee-eek!”
“Sh, sh, I’m here,” I said, materializing beside the bed. I reached for her hand. “Soyez tranquille.” My insides groaned with longing. I wanted to climb inside her and shut out the world.
She yanked me onto the bed and into her arms.
I pulled a blanket off the floor to cover us. She burrowed under it, clinging to me with all four limbs. “Don’t do that,” she said into my armpit. “Don’t disappear.”
“Sh, no, I won’t.” I only wanted to comfort her.
“You did before! In my dream, in the maze, on the Marais Poitevin,” she accused. “I woke up alone.”
“Wait. When did you dream of me?” I demanded.
She made an impatient sound. “I already told you! It was two nights ago. I was in my secret place back home, inside the maze at our Petit Trianon, and you visited me. You had many skills in my dream,” she said demurely.
I was dumbfounded. “Did you see me?”
“But yes. You were covered in salsapareille flowers and you had this tattoo.” She pushed me away and sat up energetically, bending around me, tracing between my thighs with her fingers. “Here, a serpent. Does it go all the way down?” She burrowed busily in my lap.
I hadn’t time to be shocked. Her fingers tickled.
“Stop, monkey!” I got hold of her hands and held them. “How could you see me? I was invisible.”
She shrugged. “To whom?” Before I could answer this unanswerable question, she was off again. “The tattoo I like best is the kingfisher perched on a massette, how you say, a cattail reed. It reminds me of home. Here!” She tried to roll me over and I wriggled out of her way, catching at her hands. “Now tell me, how did you come to be with me?” she commanded. “That night?”
“In your hotel room?” I was still hard like a stone. My thoughts came slowly.
“In my dream,” she said, slapping the bed impatiently. “You knew how to get through the maze. You found my cave. How did you do that?”
Well, there I was, caught. I had to answer a direct question. “I stole some of your hair from your hairbrush.”
She looked blankly at me. “When?”
“In the bar that night. After those men attacked you.”
“How did that help you find me?”
“I can follow your smell, your taste. A picture is also useful. But if I touch something that was once part of you, I can never get lost.”
“Is that what Jake meant by your leash? What is it?”
I lay there breathless, panicking, nailed down by her questions. Now I had to tell her.
She put a soothing hand on my arm. “You can trust me. I’m on your side, remember?”
That was right, she was. It might be for foolish reasons. But she wanted me to succeed against her father, though she thought it would be fraud.
“Well? What is the leash?”
I confessed, “It’s the cord that joined me and my mother.”
Her mouth made an O. “What’s it look like?”
I spread forefinger and thumb. “About so. A twist of dried-up old brownish-red stuff, like a strip of leather.”
“What can it do?”
I looked her in the eye. “Do you mean, what can you do to me while you have it?”
“No!” she protested. “I thought it was, oh, magic.”
I leaned toward her and put my hand over her heart. Had I made her love me? Too late to know. I said, looking into her eyes, “With it, you could kill me.” I held my breath.
She frowned. “My father must never learn of this.”
“I’m glad you think so,” I said sincerely.
There was silence. I imagined I could hear thoughts ticking inside her brain like ping-pong balls.
At length she nodded. “I will help you find it. If Jake gave it to me, it’s in my clothes or my stuff I had with me while I was visiting his shop. All those things are at my father’s hotel suite. We’ll go now, and we’ll look for it, and we’ll find it!” she said with determination.
“We?” I eyed her.
“Of course I will help. I want to raid his computer again and see what progress he is making at trying to find Jake.”
“He’s trying to find Jake?”
She rolled her eyes. “Do catch up, Veek!”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I’m not catching up too quickly.”
She flapped both hands. “Oh, never mind.” She flopped back beside me and pulled the blanket up to her chin, smiling up at me. “I wish you could come to see our Petit Trianon for real. It’s beautiful at this time of year. The summer flowers are almost over, but there’s fruit in the orchard, and the canals smell good whenever it rains, and they’re full of fish and crevettes and turtles. We can get a picnic basket from the cook and go into the maze in daylight. I’ll show you all the secret places!”
I could see it and smell it in memory. The cows would be moved from pasture to pasture on barges, chewing cud as calmly as if it were natural for cows to ride in boats. Thousands of lavender and pink and white marsh orchids would spear up among the reeds. I closed my eyes. The scent of wild iris filled my memory, and my bones melted with nostalgia.
She murmured, “The frogs make this noise, burr-roop, wip-wip-wip. If you hold still and listen hard enough, you can become weightless and fly up into the clouds!”
All this talk of Montmorency lit the candle of memory and threatened to burn me to ashes.
Would I ever see it again?
“And we’ll play tennis, and you will teach me to box!”
I blinked. “How do you know I can box?”
“But you were school champion at Eton!” Then she fell about laughing. “Oh, right. The real Clarence was school champion at Eton.” Her hands flapped again as she whooped. “You’re amazing. I believe you will do it! We’ll get the leash and we’ll outflank my father and you’ll win!” She beamed at me.
My gloomy thoughts couldn’t survive, awash in all this puppyish optimism. Sophie could conquer the world, if all it took was confidence and youth and sparkle.
Madcap and idiotic as her plans might be, she was giving me back the future.
Smiling, I touched her chin with one finger. “Every man needs someone to believe in him.” She smiled back at me with a sophisticated, womanly confidence. I said, “Nothing flusters you, does it?”
I leaned forward again. I knew a sex-demon kiss that would send sparks flying off the tips of her ears.
Our lips met.
A bang came from downstairs.
“Goddammit, what the fuck?”
Sophie froze. She sat up with a gasp, snatching at the blanket. The whites of her eyes showed.
More banging came from downstairs, and a man’s drunken, angry voice. “Somebody up there?”
She leaped out of bed and began pulling on her clothes.
In that moment, I realized this was not her friend’s house.
There was no friend.
She had broken into a total stranger’s house so that we could fuck in comfort on a bed. Typical Sophie.
I got up and pushed open the bedroom window. There was a roof outside, big enough to stand on.
I whispered to Sophie, “Dress. Get out the window. Wait. I’ll deal with him.” I gripped her arms and gave her a little shake. “You can.”
Angry footsteps were already thumping up the stairs, no louder than my heart.
I faded into vapor and whisked out the bedroom door.
The drunken householder was halfway up the stairs. He wore nurse’s scrubs and a thunderous scowl, but I could see in his aura that he was as scared as we were. He had an umbrella in his hand.
As he turned the corner at the landing I flattened against
the wall, stuck out a foot, and tripped him.
He tumbled to the landing. I was right behind him. As he tried to get up I picked up the umbrella and thrust it between his legs.
Down the stairs he rolled.
I didn’t wait to see if he had hurt himself. I whisked up the stairs, into the bedroom, and threw on my own clothes. Sophie was gone. The window stood open. Bon, she had got out. There was no doing anything about the smell of sex or the mussed sheets, but I pocketed the condom Sophie had put on me, and its torn foil wrapper. I swept the unopened condoms off the bed, threw them into the open nightstand drawer, and slid it shut.
Was that the last of our traces?
Curses and thumps came from below. Well, he hadn’t broken his neck. I didn’t mind having sent him down the stairs, but I was sorry for any man trapped in one of Sophie’s adventures.
I tiptoed to the window, clambered through it, and slid it closed. I found myself standing on the front porch roof.
Of Sophie, I saw no sign.
I rolled my eyes.
Inside, footsteps were coming up the stairs again, slower and with more curses. One hoped that the householder thought he had tripped himself on his umbrella.
Time to vanish.
YONI
Three hours passed. I hated to leave, but I knew my family must be having kittens back at the hotel. My phone showed a list of texts and voicemails I was afraid to listen to.
“You’ll come to the studio tomorrow?” I said as we descended the metal stairs from the sex demons’ living quarters to the first floor.
“Sure.” Baz stopped in the doorway to the factory floor, looking puzzled. “Could have sworn I heard Veek come home.” He looked back up the stairs. “I would know,” he said uncertainly.
I dug for money in my handbag. “Can you drive me? Or I can call a cab.”
“No, you can’t,” he said firmly, catching up with me. “I’ll take you home like a good boy.”
“We start recording at nine. I’d start at seven, but you simply can’t get studio guys up any earlier.”
“I believe you.” Baz stopped me at the door. “Do you want a ride, or shall we take the El?
I drew a long breath. Choices! I was giddy with them. “The El. I haven’t been able to ride public transportation in fifteen years.”
We walked out of the Lair and down the street, arm in arm. The street was deserted. On this warm Chicago summer night, a few stars poked through the city’s haze. I felt insanely good, like the first hour after a workout, only I hadn’t had to push myself to the point of fibrillation first.
“I think I could get used to sex,” I said. “If I could work out how not to clutter the room with goddess stuff. I’m sorry about your kitchen.”
Baz shrugged. “Those are all hallmarks of Aphrodite, you know,” he said as we turned onto Irving Park Road and walked toward the elevated train station. “Roses, emeralds, gold, lynx fur. I think it proves you’re coming along nicely toward apotheosis.”
“Groovy,” I said tartly as we turned in at the El station. “By the way, did you remember to put on your anti-charisma thing, or whatever it is you do?”
A flash went off in our faces.
Baz cursed and shoved me through the doorway ahead of him. I turned to look behind us, realizing that I shouldn’t, and the flash went off again as Baz picked up a heavy trash can and slung it at the photographer.
The photographer turned and ran.
Baz turned back to me, his face like a storm cloud.
“God dammit,” he growled. He took my elbow, stuffed a pass into the machine, pushed me through the turnstile, shoved the same pass in again, and followed me, making sure to keep a hand on me at all times.
I tried to calm him down.
But Baz couldn’t forgive himself. “I’m sorry about that. I’d have chased him for the camera, but I didn’t want to leave you alone in there. The sonofabitch,” he added, stomping up the stairs to the platform. “How the fuck did he find us?”
He wouldn’t stop cursing.
Finally I blew in his ear. That made him look at me in surprise.
I said, “Look, it stinks, but it happens. I get nailed about eight times a year. Will you lighten up?” I shook his elbow. “Get on the train.”
He stopped cursing, but he stopped talking, too. A lot of my rainbows-and-fluffy-unicorns feeling wore off. I tried talking to him. He sat there, glowering. He took me all the way back to my hotel and all the way up in the elevator without saying a word.
I turned to him with my keycard in my hand. “Chill, will you? There’s plenty of drama waiting for me on the other side of this door.”
He stood there, not looking very relaxed for once, and let me peck him on the cheek. I turned away, sighing inwardly.
Then he grabbed my hand and yanked me back for a nice big smooch. “Don’t forget me,” he begged.
I was about to answer him when the suite door opened.
“Well!” my Uncle Chester exclaimed.
“Drama.” I rolled my eyes at Baz and pointed a finger at him. “Tomorrow, nine.”
Drawing a deep breath, I walked into the suite. The door slammed as the elevator dinged.
And we had drama. An hour of it. I sat on the sofa and they stomped up and down in front of it. Aunt Maybellyne wanted to know if I had sullied my purity, her words, and Uncle Chester wanted to know if anyone had seen us.
Then I was forced to admit that we’d been caught at the train station by a paparazzo. That’s when the second-act finale hit new heights of volume and emo.
Who was that man who brought you home? Just a stagehand! A bum! He probably sold you out to the paparazzi! Did you realize how much trouble this could cause? How could you do this to us? Look at the time!
It wasn’t like our recent yelling matches—me saying how the money would be spent, them calling me a child who was too young to know anything about business. This time they thought they had something on me. They really spread themselves.
What upset me even more was how they talked about Baz. Skeezy starfucking stagehand, out to get something from you, that’s how they all are, blah blah blah.
I knew better, but I couldn’t help cringing.
I realized I was getting tired. Their voices rang louder, even though they were getting hoarse and probably were tireder than I was.
I realized they were waiting for me to break down crying. Then they would let it go.
I couldn’t do it.
Instead I stood up and took a step closer to them. Aunt Maybellyne backed up. Uncle Chester put his hands on his hips and waited for me to speak.
“He’s not just a stagehand. He’s Ashurbanipal from the Mesopotamians.” My voice wasn’t as strong as I wished it was. I’d used it up in performance tonight. If I wanted to sing tomorrow, I’d better not yell now. I added, “He’s sitting in on a cut for the CD tomorrow morning.”
That set off the third act. They had a lot to say about Ashurbanipal and the Mesopotamians. Aunt Maybellyne complained that Baz’s reputation was poor. Uncle Chester gloomily predicted that the paparazzo who nailed us tonight would recognize Baz, and I had to admit it was probable. Baz’s pale, skull-like face and skimpy dishwater-blond dreads were iconic.
And he didn’t look a day older than when he’d crashed and burned the band.
And I knew why.
At that moment it occurred to me that there weren’t any rose petals in the room. I looked around in the middle of Variations on a Theme of a Princess Despoiled. Had it all been an illusion? Had Baz made me see rose petals where there weren’t any?
Numb, curious, and going deaf in self-defense, I walked over to the bar and flicked on the light.
“Are you listenin’ to your aunt?” Uncle Chester demanded.
The ceiling, walls, floor, cabinets, mirrors, and bar top were definitely gold. Gold radiated in streaks out from that spot where Baz and I had kissed. The vase of roses was gone from the bar, but the wine glasses hanging over the bar and ev
en the cappuccino machine were gold. I thought of Baz moving us into the bedroom so his coffee machine wouldn’t get kluged up and smiled.
But the rose petals? There had been millions of them. I narrowed my eyes.
There. Caught in a crack between the counter door and the frame was a bit of deep red.
“Young lady,” Uncle Chester began, reaching for my arm.
I turned and looked at him.
It wasn’t much of a look, but I put a little bit, a tiny bit of the mana into it.
Uncle Chester drew his hand back.
I bent and picked up the bedraggled petal. “Where,” I said, showing it to him, “did you put all my rose petals?”
They shut up as if I’d turned off the sound on my life. Their mouths worked for a moment . . . then nothing.
I realized then how hard they’d been pretending that none of that was happening.
I’d had too many shocks tonight to feel this one.
Looking around, I estimated that it must have taken every minute of the time I’d been away with Baz for them to have the room vacuumed out. I turned in place, scanning the bar and living room carefully. There were still flecks of red petals visible here and there, if you knew what you were looking for. In twenty-four hours or so they’d be dry and blackened and they’d disintegrate and no one would notice.
I had wondered if my family would scold me for making the mess. Instead, they stood there with their mouths open.
Guess they’d been counting on me to pretend, too.
That gave me even more to think about.
Amid their stunned silence, I walked into my bedroom and shut and locked the door. It was three a.m. I had to get up in four hours to work out, eat, and get to the studio by nine.
Baz would be there.
I concentrated very hard on that thought while I showered and crawled into bed. Baz. As I dropped off, I thought I felt lynx fur under my cheek, but I was too sleepy to look.
SOPHIE
The vodou lady found me asleep on Jake’s floor. It was still dark outside. I checked my stalker watch. Three in the morning.
“I didn’t know you were back,” I said.
She had a big gym bag over her shoulder and the handle of a rolling suitcase in her other hand. She looked down at me.
Walking on Sunshine Page 14
