Poisoned Pearls

by Leah Cutter

  Didn’t take me long, though, to get my feet back under me. My stomach was sore to the touch and bruised—was going to have to lay off the crunches for a while. Not like I exercised regularly. Or at all. But it didn’t really hurt to breathe anymore, and as long as I was careful, I wouldn’t feel it at all.

  Of course, after standing all day at the shop I might be singing a different tune. For now, I told myself to suck it up.

  I wasn’t normally the cautious type. Jump in with both feet was generally my motto. However, that afternoon, I sent a text to Sam, with the single word, “Safe.” Then I promptly blocked her number so she couldn’t call or text back.

  What can I say? Sometimes I was a bitch like that.

  My luck continued, and I made it to work without being hassled by the cops, angry drug dealers, or crazy-ass vets. I knew it was going to run out sooner or later, I was just thankful for every minute that it seemed to stick with me.

  Amy was working the shift before mine. She wasn’t my favorite person, though she was generous with her smokes.

  I’d always wondered what her deal was. She seemed to be playing a part. She had a horsey laugh, round cheeks, freaky pale gray eyes, and if she’d dressed better, could have been mistaken for someone’s cool grandma.

  Instead, she wore leggings that were ten years too young for her, a red curly wig that would have fit well in a hooker’s closet, and always tried too hard to be hip.

  Customers loved her, though. The shy girls who came into the shop would ask her for advice, the tough guys would lose their bluster and laugh with her. Stupid jocks who tried to shock her (or me, for that matter) would generally find themselves blushing from her bluntness.

  “¿Que pasa, alamasa?” Amy said when she saw me come in.

  I mean, who said those kinds of things?

  The store hadn’t changed since the previous night: light classic rock played in the background instead of some stupid Christmas songs, the condoms waved from where they were tied to the table like floppy hands, the damned lights still buzzed overhead, and the linoleum floor was still that dingy gray.

  But I was feeling all kinds of sentimental that afternoon, and thought it looked kind of homey.

  I figured Amy would say something about the orders that had piled up from the previous night, but she scooted on out of the store pretty damned quickly.

  So I had the place to myself, some peace and quiet.

  Of course, it couldn’t last.

  Not ten minutes after Amy left, Sam came in, her heels clicking on the floor. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t happy to see her, though I sure as hell didn’t smile or light up or some stupid shit like that. I scowled, instead.

  Particularly when Ferguson came in directly after her.

  But at least it was only the pair of them, no uniforms with them. I figured that meant my civil liberties weren’t about to be violated, that they weren’t there to arrest me.

  Yet.

  “Ms. Lewis,” Ferguson said as he pushed past Sam and came up to the counter. “Good to see you’re safe.”

  “Thank you for your concern,” I told him brightly. “I was afraid for my life when that crazy vet grabbed me and forced me into that car,” I added.

  Might as well lay it on as thick as I could.

  “What happened?” Sam asked. She at least sounded concerned.

  “Ms. Lewis was evading questioning,” Ferguson supplied.

  I snorted. “Yeah, right. By being kidnapped by a strung-out junkie who I’d never met before.”

  “Are you all right?” Sam asked, looking at me, then glaring at Ferguson.

  “I’m fine, thank you for asking,” I added, also glaring at Ferguson.

  Two women could always naturally, automatically, form an alliance against a single male. Most men just never seemed to appreciate just how much shit they were actually in.

  Ferguson looked from Sam to myself, then proceeded to drill me. “So what were you doing last night in northern Minneapolis?”

  “Decided to go for a long walk,” I told him. “Clear my head. Grieve for my friend.”

  “Don’t start. We followed you. You were driving Kyle Magnusson’s car,” Ferguson growled.

  “Did you see me get in or out of his car?” I asked. “Or did you just have a tracker in Kyle’s car, that someone happened to drive up there?”

  Ferguson didn’t reply.

  “See, I just happened to be in the area. Circumstantial evidence,” I pointed out.

  “It was you,” Ferguson said.

  I shrugged. “What did you want to ask me about, Detective?”

  “Why were you in that neighborhood at that time of night? Were you warning Csaba the drug dealer?” Ferguson asked.

  “I was just taking a long walk, clearing my head, mourning for my friend,” I explained. “I didn’t know Csaba lived in that neighborhood.” I doubted my fingerprints would be found there—I hadn’t touched anything, mainly from fear of contamination, not because I was being smart or something.

  “Do you think I was there?” I asked, turning to ask Sam.

  She shook her perfect hair. She wore the same long mink coat, and her makeup was still immaculate. I really wanted to see what it would take to muss her, how she would look after a long night of fucking.

  “I didn’t go to the scene,” she said. “Just a raid.”

  “What were you looking for at this drug dealer’s house?” I asked Ferguson.

  Ferguson scowled at me. “Kyle probably died of an overdose of some new street drug,” he said. “We haven’t identified what it is yet.”

  Sam pressed her lips together. She obviously disagreed.

  “I don’t know about any new drug,” I told Ferguson. “I still think it’s a john who’s got it out for sex workers, who’s got his own private stash. You won’t find it at some random drug dealer’s house. Probably manufactures it on his own.”

  “Really,” Ferguson said. “What else do you know about this guy?”

  I held up my hands, leaning back from the edge of the counter. “Pure speculation on my part. But I think it’s a single guy.” I didn’t know why I felt that way, but I was sure of it.

  Call it intuition. Because I didn’t have any abilities. Pure mundane here.

  Sam nodded slowly. “What was your PADT score?”

  “Don’t remember,” I lied breezily.

  “You weren’t tested,” Sam said slowly.

  Damn it. She wasn’t supposed to be able to figure out those sorts of things. She was just a post-cog. I was a better liar than that. Or so I thought.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I told her.

  “It is every citizen’s duty to be tested,” Ferguson said seriously.

  Shit. Did he sleep at attention?

  “I’ll do it over the holidays,” I promised vaguely.

  Sam narrowed her eyes at me. “You regularly tell yourself that you have no abilities, don’t you? That you’re one-hundred-percent mundane.”

  I pulled back further from her. Those were the exact words I used, but I’d never said them out loud. And I wasn’t about to admit that to her as well.

  “Naw, I do wonder, sometimes. Think about how cool it would be.”

  “No, you don’t,” Sam said. “It’s a defense mechanism that all of the blessed have. The children always deny that they have any abilities. It’s a way of fitting in, of blending with the crowd. No one who has abilities ever admits to them at first.”

  “Even if I did have abilities, which I don’t, it’s too late for the training anyway,” I pointed out.

  “You’re only twenty-three years old,” Sam said seriously. “It isn’t too late.”

  How did she know how old I was? She was with the cops, so she did have access to my records. Still, that she knew my age so well unsettled me.

  “You know, if you got tested and had some proven abilities, your theory of a single john might hold more water,” Ferguson pointed out. “I’d be a lot more willing to listen to you.
”

  “Bullshit,” I told him. “You have your mind made up that it’s some random street drug. There isn’t anything I can say that would change your opinion.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Get yourself tested. Otherwise I will find a reason to arrest you, haul your ass down to the jail, and make you go through testing there.”

  Carrie and Jacob—two of the street kids I used to hang with—swore that they were given PA testing against their will at the holding center. Most of us didn’t believe them. The cops couldn’t do that.

  Could they?

  “Your mom always thought you had abilities,” Sam told me as she buttoned up her coat.

  “What?” I asked. How did she know that? It was why my mother had named me Cassandra, so that I’d have some sort of ability. Maybe it was just because of my name, that Sam had guessed that.

  “See you soon,” Ferguson said as he held open the door for Sam. A moment later, he was still there, still holding open the door. Letting another woman into the shop.

  I stared at the new figure. Goddamn it. Why had Sam overstepped her bounds that way?

  Either that, or maybe she had recognized me, back in that alley, when she’d first seen me.

  I couldn’t run away. No place in the shop I could hide.

  I’d rather face Csaba and Dusty in a fighting mood, take my punches from them.

  There was nothing I could do but greet her.

  “Hello, Mom.”

  ***

  Mom hadn’t changed much in the last seven years since I’d seen her. She was still tall, blond, with an upswept hairdo, looking like a Nordic ice queen. Her nose was naturally upturned; it didn’t come from her always looking down on people. Pale blue eyes glanced around the shop with obvious disdain. She’d been born to money. Had it been true love that had caused her to “slum it” with Dad? Or had he been yet another path to power?

  She wore a white fur, probably ermine. Her boots were at least appropriate, though they probably cost more than what I made in a month. Or two.

  “Cassandra,” Mom said after she’d wrinkled her nose at the display of condoms, the sexy elf costumes, and the holiday dongs. “Of course you’d work at a sex shop.”

  “Good to see you too, Mom,” I told her, stung. Did she really believe that because I was a lesbian I was also some kind of sex addict?

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said frostily. “How are you?” she added, determinedly chipper.

  “I’m fine, Mom. Thanks for asking. How are you?” I must admit, I was curious. I’d seen her on the news a couple of times, once for her charity work, another time for her failed Senate run. But that had also been four years ago.

  “Staying busy. I run three charities, now, and am on the board of several others.”

  I wondered if one or more of them was to “pray kids straight.” “That’s nice,” I told her. “Is there anything you’re looking for? Some kind of gift for your many charities?” We have the best lubes. Might help you remove that stick from your ass.

  “Cassandra,” Mom sighed. “I did not come here to listen to your abuse.”

  “Then why did you come, Mom?” I asked, curious. “If it wasn’t to wish your only child well and to have a Merry Christmas?”

  “Samantha contacted me,” Mom admitted.

  That bitch. I was glad I’d already blocked her number from my phone.

  “She said you were in trouble with the police.”

  I shrugged. “Not really. A friend of mine was killed behind the store.” Still felt weird to say it out loud. Wasn’t about to admit that to the ice queen, though.

  “Samantha said you were involved,” Mom pointed out.

  “I wasn’t,” I told her, crossing my arms over my chest. “I swear to you. I was here, in the shop, the whole time.”

  Why was I defending myself to her? I didn’t care what she thought. My mother had lost her right to judge me when she’d kicked me out of the house.

  “I believe you,” Mom said softly. “If you’d been there, you would have tried to stop it from happening. You were always too noble, too brave. More interested in helping your friends than yourself.”

  “I don’t think those are bad qualities,” I told her. It was all true. I’d always had my friends’ backs, whether they had mine or not.

  “I know, dear.” Mom gave me a sad smile.

  The silence grew between us, somewhere between comfortable and sticky.

  “Is there anything else?” I finally asked. We’d never really had that much to say to each other. Dad had been the go-between.

  Too bad he’d been killed in a car accident about the time I’d turned fifteen.

  “You know you can always call on me if you’re in real trouble,” Mom said.

  I nodded. I never, ever would use that escape hatch, but if I was honest with myself, I did know, somewhere in the back of my head, that I did have her as a kind of a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  “At least for a while,” Mom added.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Was Mom really going to completely cut me off? Again?

  “I’m moving,” she said bluntly. “The winters here are getting to be too much. It was your father who was born here, and who wanted to stay here. This was never my home.”

  That much I knew. But Dad’s parents had died soon after he had, his brother had moved away, and I had no other cousins in state.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Florida,” Mom said. “The heat in the summers is beastly, but I may have another chance at office there.”

  “Where they can’t easily get at your queer daughter who works in a sex & toy shop?” I asked bitterly. I didn’t know if she blamed me for her Senate defeat, but I had always assumed she had, that she believed that I was part of why she hadn’t been elected.

  “No,” Mom said, scowling. “That isn’t it at all. Though it would be better if you worked at a...less colorful establishment.”

  “Why is that, Mom?” I asked. “I’m a productive member of society. I pay my bills. And my taxes. Even the ‘poor tax’ that legislators keep adding to cigarettes.”

  Really, why the fuck did she think she could judge me?

  “You aren’t happy here, are you, Cassandra? Not in this shop, or with your life,” Mom insisted.

  “I’m happy enough,” I told her. And I was. “Life isn’t always a bed of rose petals and puppy dogs.” Sure, I’d like a better job. More pay. Less time on my feet. A girlfriend to keep me warm at night.

  No killer on the streets taking out my friends with some new crazy drug.

  “No, I don’t think that’s it,” Mom said, looking at me critically.

  “You think that I’m unhappy because I’m into girls,” I said. “That there must be something wrong with me, or my life.”

  Mom pressed her lips together tightly, pinching her whole face. “While I may not approve of your lifestyle, I’ve come to accept that it’s part of who you are.”

  I snorted at her. “Bullshit. You’d change me in a second if you thought you could. If you believed prayer or brainwashing or reprogramming or something would actually work.”

  “Please. Give me a little more credit than that,” Mom said. “It would take a whole series of operations and hormones and gene therapy. A Senate seat is much less expensive.”

  “What, so you can legislate me out of existence?” I asked, steamed.

  Mom sighed in exasperation. “No. You were always so serious. Never understood my humor.”

  Had Mom been trying to make a joke?

  “The Senate seat is so I can protect you better,” Mom said softly. She placed her nice silver and gold Coach clutch on the counter and pulled out a business card. “I’ve changed my private number. I’ve also listed my lawyer’s number on the back, and given him instructions to take your call, day or night.”

  She placed the card on the counter when I wouldn’t take it from her, then buttoned her coat and pulled on her black leather gl
oves. “You won’t see me again,” she stated. “Not before I leave.”

  “What, you aren’t inviting me out to the house for the traditional burning of the Yule log?” I asked.

  “Even if I did, you wouldn’t come,” Mom stated. “No, I’ll be leaving for Florida by then. We—I, plan on spending Christmas someplace warm.”

  “And what’s his name?” I asked. I’d known it was only a matter of time before my mother found herself another husband. I knew it was only reasonable. She didn’t have my dad around anymore.

  Still made me mad as hell.

  “Emanuel,” Mom admitted.

  “Really? You’re dating a spic?” I asked, digging at her.

  “Cassandra, that’s not a nice thing to say. He’s Cuban, not Hispanic.”

  “And I bet he looks great in your photo ops,” I said. Probably a tall, dark, Cuban lover, a nice match for my mother’s Nordic looks.

  “We’re in love,” Mom said. “Whether you believe me or not.”

  I didn’t. But what I thought didn’t matter.

  “Have a Merry Christmas,” Mom said softly, waiting.

  “Have a nice day,” I finally told her, as I would tell any customer.

  Because while she may have been my Mom, she wasn’t family. Hadn’t been for a long, long time.

  ***

  The first time after Kyle was killed that I had to take some cardboard boxes out to the recycling dumpster in the alley, I found myself unable to move, just inside the door, my hand not even able to reach for the doorknob.

  The bare sixty-watt bulb above my head flattened out all the shadows in the hallway. Three concrete steps led up to the door. A large, white sign written in red, with Chinese characters underneath, reminded employees not to lock themselves out, the language implying that you’d be an idiot if you did.

  Damn it. I wasn’t afraid of finding another body out there. Or of Kyle’s body still lying out back there. There wasn’t a damned thing I needed to be worried about.

  Still, I hesitated. That alley freaked me out. And I was angry I hadn’t even seen it coming.

  I made myself turn the freezing doorknob, push the door out against the arctic wind and cold.

  The alley looked the same as it had before Kyle’s death, narrow and dark, with only a little graffiti decorating the brick walls (not enough traffic to warrant too much tagging) and large dumpsters hulking along the edges.