Bad Idea

by Damon Suede

  “Got it.” Silas gestured at the bathroom. “Clothes first. I’ve got a smock.”

  Rina plucked the garment bag and swooped into the bathroom. She nudged the door so it swung partially closed. “The authors are all supposed to show up natural. So naturally, everyone pays like a thousand dollars to get their face did.” A zip and rustling from the bathroom. “With the Warden? Bullshit, says me.”

  Silas pulled his swiveling office chair in front of the full-length mirror in his little work alcove. He exhumed a clean smock from his duffel. It felt good to move and do and talk to someone sassy. After zombieville for the past couple of weeks, Rina’s energy left him little room for a pity party.

  “Jilly was gonna help, but she wanted to draw shit on my face with a puffy marker.” Her voice echoed against the bathroom tile.

  On a whim, Silas unearthed a pair of dental acrylic fangs he’d cast for the Scratch makeup. At least they’d get some use. Trip would never know.

  The bathroom door swung open. “I knew you did, like, creatures, but I figured you hadta do glamour too.” Rina came out in the black-purple pencil skirt and a gunmetal-gray corset.

  Instead of sitting, she chewed on her hair and continued to flutter. She studied the chair as though analyzing an alien life form. The silk suit paled her skin, and the sun brightened her hair.

  “News cameras shooting with overhead lighting? Okay. Okay.” Silas did some quick cosmetic calculation and pulled out a Kryolan palette.

  She let him snap the whispery smock over her. “But mainly I need you to turn me into a paranormal goddess for the face to face with the fans. Photos.” She spat the hair out in irritation. “That zombie bridal video? Seventy thousand views. It sold so many books, my publisher contracted two more in my series.”

  “Your throne awaits.”

  She plopped into the seat and closed her eyes. “My need is great, Mr. Goolsby.”

  Silas didn’t react to that. She must have heard Trip say it a thousand times and didn’t understand.

  As Silas smoothed translucent foundation onto her skin, part of him quailed. Please don’t let her talk about Trip. And the stubborn weakness in him countered, Please let me know he’s okay… if he is.

  “Publicity is life and death.” She speared him with her eyes.

  For starters, he needed to get her calmed down, STAT. First rule of makeup: Never underestimate the power of vanity. He’d just get her talking about herself. Fastest way to calm actors down—writers couldn’t be that different. “I knew you were a writer, but I never knew which books.”

  “Romance. But urban fantasy, so fangs and spells and all.” She squinted at him as if she expected him to scoff or scorn. “What does that look mean?”

  “What look?” His face hadn’t changed, but obviously this was a sore spot with her.

  “You don’t read romance.” She closed her eyes to let him paint. “I’m like a romance evangelist.”

  “Nuh-no.” He brushed the heavy weight of her dark hair and straightened the bandeau that held it off her forehead. “Well, no… I guess I haven’t.”

  “But you seen Underworld. You like comics.”

  “Duh.” He sniffed.

  “Romance is not all corsets and gangbangs.” Her eyes met his in the mirror. “Anybody who’s over like… thirty thinks romance novels are just rape-porn with mood lighting.” She quirked her mouth in irritation. “Fifty Shades of Fingered by Fabio’s Fuckery.”

  “I’m only twenty-nine. Jeez,” he joked back. “I figured romances meant fancy talk and lotsa copulating in moonlight.” He shrugged. “With Fabio.” A laugh. “Okay, yeah. Sorry.”

  “Y’don’t have to be a chick. Y’got a heart. Y’jerk off. Y’get bored with TV. You obviously grok imagination.” She perused the framed Hellraiser poster and the Nightcrawler statues and the piles of Spider-Man comics on the table. “Happy endings.”

  Was she talking about her own books or the comic or Trip? She stared into his eyes as if she expected him to read her mind. Paging Jean Grey!

  Silas ran the sable brush over his palm, pretending he understood.

  “But you steered clear of romance for no good reason.” Rina shook her head. “Dumb. You’d love ’em, I bet.”

  He feathered dusty rose onto her cheeks. As she turned back front, she touched her temple gingerly. And finally, she settled enough for him to keep painting.

  “So I had a crazy thought….” He held up the fake fangs as a silent question. “No presh.”

  “Yay! Yes, please.” She opened her mouth.

  “They won’t fit exactly, but they’ll last the afternoon.”

  She squealed. “See? My series heroine is a vampire archaeologist. Diana Prince meets Lara Croft. A little dusty, a little busty….” She sat back again. “Jillian thought you might try to give me a split skull or a bullet hole or something.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  She laughed. “No, hun. I just didn’t know you did glammypants too. Where’d you learn to put on lipstick?”

  Silas used cotton wadding to hold her lip back and dried her incisors. “I gotta be able to doll folks up too. When I moved into the city, I took classes at the Designory, MAC, pretty much anywhere they slapped paint that’d have me.”

  He leaned in to daub denture adhesive onto one canine and then pressed the acrylic fang down gently. “When I got out of high school, I blew off college for the FX course with Savini out in Pennsylvania. He did Friday the 13th…. Dawn of the Dead.”

  “Ungh.” Rina gave a tiny nod and kept her eyes closed.

  He pressed the other canine into place.

  “You’re good now.” After the adhesive set up, he removed the wadding.

  “Feels so freaky.” She closed her lips carefully and scrubbed them over the fangs. “Sharp!”

  “Just go easy with them for a bit. Head back.”

  He drabbled the wet maroon over her full lower lip, then tipped his head to gauge the result before smoothing it with a pinky.

  “That feels bizarre. Are you painting a clown mouth?” She smiled, and he had to wait until she stopped to continue.

  “A wet brush will give a better line. Always use a brush for your lips. Tube lipstick is for soaps and hookers.” He darkened the middle for effect. “There we go.”

  “Good to know.” Rina licked her white teeth, pausing on a pointed canine. “Pays to go to a professional. These days, I gotta lotta men reading me.”

  “I dunno. I’m not much of a reader. Comics, yeah, but I like movies.”

  “You might be surprised. Some stories don’t make movies. I mean superheroes, spies, serial killers… sure. But there’s some feelings you can’t put on a screen.” She balked and laughed. “Not that kinda movie.”

  He hadn’t watched porn since high school, but he liked her candor. “I know what you mean. Movies are never romance.”

  “Not unless it’s fancy costumes and olden times to snag an Oscar. Or comedies, where everyone acts like a jerk right up until they hook up.”

  He sponged some contouring along her cheekbones and under her jawline, exaggerating the perfect oval of her face and luminous eyes.

  “You’d think Hollywood might notice. They got all these millions of people lining up to see one type of movie, so they don’t bother with all the other people who got no interest in that. It’s like every flick has to be something that can be a game… until they just seem like video games, and the only people who go are the ones who wanna play ’em.”

  Silas tipped his head. A sift of powder to finish, a little more pencil on the lash line. “So what should I read? Of yours.”

  Rina evaluated him in the mirror. “Romance just means a relationship and a happily ever after. Scratch is a romance.”

  He held the sponge midstroke, and they did not look at each other. He breathed while she breathed, and the unspoken name wove the air around them.

  Silas lowered his hand and broke the spell. “Scratch is about sex demons. I mean, the hu
man sidekick has a crush on…. Oh.”

  “Obviously.” Rina watched his fingers twisting her hair into a coil as if they were solving something. “Sexy hero. Big complications. Makeover. And then he meets… his match.”

  “I see what you mean.” Maybe she had come here on a fact-finding mission for Trip after all? Maybe this was all a ploy to see what Silas wanted. “Scratch is a phenomenal book.” Maybe he could get her to spill a few coins in kind.

  “It is.” Rina’s new fangs peeked out from behind her lips.

  “Shame to just give up on it.”

  “Yeah.” Was she doing this on purpose? Why wouldn’t she bite? She probably thought he and Trip were a bad match as well? For all he knew, Rina had nothing but scorn for him and had warned Trip to cut bait.

  Her gaze rested on him for a long moment. “Never make a permanent mistake to solve a temporary problem.”

  He sensed she was waiting for him to confess something, anything. As much as he wanted to know what had happened, so did she.

  Home stretch.

  He took a moment to dab a dull taupe onto her temples. “We’re almost done.” Just for polish, he daubed a charcoal dot under each eye and smudged it up into the lashes, making her appear hungry and haunted.

  “You got quiet.” She’d closed her eyes, but she tipped her head toward him.

  Again, Silas had the sense she was trying to open a conversational door best left bolted shut. Again, he went for the vanity dodge. “Yeah. Your skin is unbelievable. I mean, you barely need foundation. You can wear almost any fabric, d’you know? Orange, even.”

  “No sir!“

  “Well, maybe. But I’m saying, if you wanted to get a little hipper on your maquillage for different events.” Silas shrugged.

  She blinked and opened her eyes. “You got nice skin too. One of the first things I noticed about you.”

  “I wish!” Silas chuckled. “Hardly. High school, I broke out constantly and nothing worked. Accutane, tetracycline, mudpacks. I used to pray for Halloween so I could cover my face up. Pockmarks and pudge.”

  “C’mon!”

  “Wasn’t till I graduated from college that I realized I wasn’t freakishly fat and ugly.”

  “Oh hun.” Rina clucked and shook her head. “Well, look at you now.”

  “Yeah. Beating ’em off with a two-by-four.”

  “The way you shine, people can’t get enough of you.” Her forehead creased. “My brother says …” She cautiously tasted the tip of each fang before talking up at the ceiling. “‘If you love life, life will love you back.’“

  He pressed his lips shut and nodded, but he didn’t reply. He couldn’t.

  “You beat yourself up before they get a chance.” Her mouth turned down.

  “Naw.” Silas shrugged. “Life still beats me up plenty.”

  Her eyes opened and caught his. They both waited, not saying Trip’s name but surely thinking it.

  Rina whispered up at him, “He loves you.” She held his gaze gently.

  Head shake. He didn’t want to rehash it. He’d only just managed to sleep an hour here and there in his empty bed. “Trip was wrong for me. I’m wrong for him. Completely.”

  “’S’none of my business. I mean, what the hell do I know except what he says and you say, but respectfully? I say you’re both wrong.” She exhaled. “Trip knows he fucked up.”

  “Great. Swell.” Silas put the brush down a little too hard.

  “He’s being stupid, Silas. Childish. Cowardly. You name it. But it’s just a bunch of old baggage he’s dragged around with him. The Unboyfriend and worse.” Rina shrugged. “You shouldn’t take it personally.”

  Silas turned to glare. “I am a person! How should I take it?” He wished he’d taken ninety seconds to shave and put on real clothes. How stupid would he feel if he melted down in a True Blood T-shirt and sweats, like they were old friends? She was Trip’s Girl Friday, and he was an asshole for forgetting that.

  Rina took a deep inhale. “He just hasn’t had all that much practice being a grown-up.”

  “And I have?” Silas pretended to put his kit back together.

  “You’re not hearing me.”

  “I am, though.” Silas leaned his butt against the edge of the table. “Honesty is a great place to start a relationship, but it doesn’t entitle you to one. Saying a bunch of mean shit that makes you feel superior doesn’t produce soul mates out of thin air.”

  “Trip has a bad habit of writing lines for people. He’s an….” She groped for the word. “Imperfectionist.”

  He snorted.

  “Seriously. For whatever sicko reason, he can’t stand things going too well, or he starts to panic and freezes up. He’s so used to shit going bad that he sometimes gives it a nudge to get it there quicker.”

  “Nothing personal. I’m sure.”

  Rina frowned, ready to make some case or other. “Well, like you say, you’re a person. But no.”

  To shut her up, Silas spun the chair so Rina saw herself in the mirror.

  “Cabron!”

  She looked like a silent movie vamp gone feral. Petal-pale color on her cheeks, contour softening the jawline, and her lower eye smudgy to the point of bruised.

  He crossed his arms proudly. “That’ll sell a book or two.”

  “With the suit?” Rina touched her face gingerly. “It’s… wow. Those bitches are gonna have a litter of pit bulls.” She licked her lower lip, and her mouth shone like a poison plum.

  “Good.” Silas laughed out loud, first time in over a week. “I could show you how to do most of it. ’S’not too complicated.”

  “Are you insane? Now I wanna come over here every morning.”

  “You bring coffee, I’m down.” Silas wiped his hands on his towel. “If you wanted, I could build retractable fangs that actually fit.”

  “Retractable?” She scowled comically from under the vampy makeup and then got distracted by her reflection again. “And like, could you do this for an author photo? Mine sucks platypus dick.”

  “Well….” Much as he admired her, he had to remind himself that this woman wasn’t his friend. In the parlance of Manhattan breakups, Trip got custody. Apparently she hadn’t gotten the memo.

  She crossed her arms over her ribs. “Purely professional, yo. I won’t make it weird for you. I like you and I want to hire you.”

  “Lemme think about it.” Silas pretended to put brushes away. “Things are hard.”

  Rina stared at him with the doe eyes. “I know, querido.” She tucked her feet into the black leather boots and zipped.

  “And seriously, the airbrush and the rigmarole just gilds the lily. Ninety percent of this you could’ve done in a moving taxi in ten minutes if I showed you how.” He wiped his hands on his sweats and plucked his cell phone off the table. “Scorcher out there. You want me to call a car service?”

  “Who am I, Charlaine Harris? Subway for me!” She took out her wallet and raised her impeccable eyebrows.

  He waved the notion of payment away. “No chance.”

  Rina quirked her bee-stung mouth. “Well, then, let me take you out sometime? Just for kicks.” She crammed her leggings and the empty garment bag into the little satchel.

  “Uh, sure.” He’d never let that happen in a million years.

  “Hell, if you wanted, you could wait an hour and come to the signing, and we could grab lunch after.”

  “I don’t think—”

  She floated the possibility with a hopeful vampire smile. “Trip’ll be there.”

  “Yeah.” It wasn’t a question. A wisp of regret tickled inside him. No way he’d say what she wanted him to say.

  “If… you wanted to come with me now, you’d see him.” She stood up, then stomped and shuffled in the black boots.

  “I would.” His regret lapped between them like water in a tub.

  “Ugh!” Rina shook her head. “Men are so fucking stubborn.”

  “Only when they’re right….” He shrugged. “Or
wrong.”

  “Okay.” She stopped swirling for a moment and took his hand. “You’re okay, baby.”

  “Okay.” He nodded, but the nod was a lie.

  Rina held the satchel of street clothes in one hand. The aubergine suit looked like some kind of slippery orchid. She glanced sideways at him. “Goddess?”

  “Amen.” He appraised and approved with a nod.

  “Wish me luck.”

  In a few minutes, on the other side of town, Trip would see her and kiss her and know who’d painted her face. Silas wished he’d thought this through. Or maybe not. Maybe Trip would see it and think Silas had coped while he’d made the worst mistake of both their lives.

  Silas picked a thread off her lapel. “You’re gonna kill ’em.”

  “Great.” A naughty smile. “As long as I get the photos first.”

  “Spoken like a best seller.” As she clicked to the door in her Givenchy boots, he double-checked to make sure she had everything. When he got there to unlock it, she was waiting for him. “I wish I knew your secret, Miss Apostara.”

  “Pfft. That’s nothing.” Rina inspected herself in the hall mirror and smoothed the jacket over her trim waist. “You just find something you would die for and live for it instead. Okay?”

  He unbolted the door for her and inclined his head as he stood aside. “I promise.”

  Without warning, she bussed his cheek and was gone, clacking toward the elevator and the blazing daylight outside.

  He threw the bolt and caught sight of his dim, swollen reflection. Scruffy and bedheaded, but on one rough cheek, a perfect kiss like a bruise.

  21

  TRIP was hiding in the Stones’ basement, losing a staring contest with a poster.

  Right now, on this particular sultry Saturday two and a half weeks after his nuclear implosion in Chicago, Rina had roped him into attending a signing at Barnes & Noble, but he couldn’t get his shit together. Jillian was waiting, ready to leave for ten minutes, but he’d made up some bullshit excuse that he needed something from downstairs. He came down to visit the boxes of swag he had stored down here in the cool, gritty dark.