Wicked Game

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  I wipe the sweat from the back of my neck and sigh at the dust covering my shirt. “Any restaurant we go to tonight better have a no-skank policy.”

  She gives me a sheepish smile. “I’ll buy you Chinese takeout, a six-pack, and any DVD you want to rent.” Her grin widens on the bottom, showing all her teeth. “Pal o’ mine?”

  I pick up a stack of hangers. “I needed to get out, anyway.”

  She hands me a long green-and-white dress. “So you don’t want to talk about Mystery Man. Tell me about your radio station. Sounds cool.”

  “In the same way autopsies are cool. My immediate boss is like Eeyore in a man-suit, and the station manager is a fanatic. The DJs are—” I cut myself off. How to describe them without using the word “vampire”?

  Lori folds a bonnet and stuffs it in a zippie bag. “They’re what, party animals?”

  “It’s not that.” I pin the bag to the dress. “Do you know any obsessive-compulsives?”

  Lori drops a box of medals, which go skittering across the floor. “Damn it!” She scrambles after them. “Why do you ask?”

  I kneel to help her scoop up the medals, biting my lip at the pain in my leg. “I think I know someone with it.”

  “Me, too. My mom.” She lays the medals carefully in the box without looking at me. “It started when I was six. She would go around the house at bedtime and make sure all the doors were locked.”

  “So?”

  “So then she started checking windows, even in the middle of the winter when they hadn’t been opened in weeks.” She sits cross-legged on the floor, oblivious to the layer of dust and dead bugs. “Then all the smoke detectors had to be tested.”

  “Every night?”

  Lori nods. “Over the years, she kept adding more, and she had to do everything in order. If you interrupted her, she’d start all over.” She wipes her wrist across her forehead. “By the time she got help, her bedtime routine would start at three in the afternoon.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Medicine, therapy. At first they told us just to play along with her ‘truth,’ as they called it. We were already good at that. Then little by little, we helped her find a new truth.” She smiles. “I know, it sounds all mystic and existential. But it worked, and we got her back. Mostly.”

  “I’m glad.” I squeeze her shoulder. “How come you never told me?”

  Lori tugs at the collar of her shirt. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.” When I don’t let her off the hook, she says, “I felt bad complaining about my mom when yours is, you know … ”

  “Yeah.” I look away, blinking hard. She probably thinks it’s tears, but really it’s just the dust.

  She clears her throat. “Have you heard from your foster parents lately?”

  “Just a few days ago.” I smile at the memory of the two normal years of my life. “They just got another new kid, which makes it eighteen total.”

  “Which one were you?”

  “Number thirteen.”

  She laughs. “But you weren’t unlucky to get them.”

  “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “You don’t believe in anything.”

  “Not true.” I angle my head. “I believe, for instance, that you’re sitting on a cockroach.”

  Lori squeals and leaps to her feet, frantically brushing her butt. She looks at the floor and sees nothing larger than a ladybug.

  “Just kidding.”

  She smacks my arm. “Just for that, you’re buying tonight.”

  “You’d make a poor little orphan girl buy her own dinner? Heartless wench.” We get back to work, laughing.

  Like all my friends, Lori thinks that when I was sixteen, my real parents died, when in fact they just took a ten- to fifteen-year hiatus from my life. I never thought I’d have friends long enough for Mom and Dad to inconveniently reappear, but the possibility looms.

  Because there’s always parole.

  It’s after sunset when Lori and I finally stumble from the sidewalk into my dark stairwell.

  “Sorry the light is still burned out.” I shift the Chinese takeout bag into the crook of my arm so I can hold the banister on my way up.

  At the top of the stairs I unlock the door and push it open. The light in my bedroom is on.

  I never leave it on.

  I freeze. Lori runs into me from behind. “Ciara, what the hell?”

  “Someone’s here,” I whisper, though it’s too late for stealth.

  “Oh my God, are you sure?”

  From my bedroom comes a familiar rattle of plastic, along with the faint thrum of a Liz Phair tune.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” I stalk down the hall.

  Shane sits cross-legged on my bedroom floor, an island in a sea of CDs. He brightens when he sees me. “Hey, Ciara.”

  I smack down my unwanted delight and try to replace it with indignation. “How did you get in here?”

  His innocent head-cock is almost convincing. “You invited me.”

  “No, I—” I stop, realizing he means I invited him in a general sense, in a vampire sense.

  I turn to Lori, who just crept up beside me. “Give us a minute.”

  She eyes Shane with surprise. “Hey, it’s the guy from the bar last night.” She scowls at him. “Why did you break into her apartment?”

  “Lori, it’s okay. It’s just a misunderstanding.” I hand her the food. “Chopsticks are in the silverware drawer.”

  She takes the hint. “Yell if you need anything.”

  I step into the bedroom and slam the door. “How did you really get in?”

  “I picked your lock.” Shane points to his head. “Sensitive ears hear the tumblers click.”

  “Fascinating. I don’t want you here.”

  A skeptical look flashes across his face, then he glances at my thigh. “How are you feeling?”

  “I had to get stitches and a tetanus shot. It hurts to walk.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “Why are you here?” I fight to keep my voice down to avoid alarming Lori. “You only came to the Pig last night because David sent you.”

  He nods. “Usually I hang out at O’Leary’s. Less pretentious, no students.”

  “You ran away from Jolene with me, came home with me, made out with me, just to prove that vampires exist.” Indignation masks the hurt in my voice. “You set me up.”

  “That’s not the only reason I came home with you.” He stands and takes a step toward me. “As for why I’m here now, I had to finish what I started last night.”

  A stab of fear makes me reach for the doorknob before I realize he’s talking about the CDs. “I can do it myself. I know the alphabet.”

  “What’s the fourth letter after M?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “It’s Q,” he says. “I don’t even have to sing the alphabet song to myself to figure it out. I know it the way I know the back of my own teeth.”

  “Is that supposed to impress me?”

  He takes another step. “I couldn’t sleep today, thinking about it.”

  “Oh, poor you. I’ll have nightmares the rest of my life, not to mention a scar that’ll be hard to explain to future visitors. But you lost a day’s sleep over some out-of-order CDs.”

  He gives me a steady look. “I wasn’t talking about the CDs.”

  My breath catches and quickens under his gaze, and he’s not even using his mesmer-eyes on me.

  I’m about to order him out of my apartment when I realize he might refuse. Then what? Lori and I together probably don’t match half his strength.

  “Wait here.” I back out of my room, shut the door, then dash for the kitchen.

  Lori’s on the sofa, trying to work the TV remote. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine, fine.” I rummage through the fridge’s vegetable bin, shoving aside a month-old bag of liquid scallions. Nope, not there. I open one of the cabinets and climb onto the counter to peer into the top shelf.

  �
��Sure you don’t need help?” Lori calls.

  “Yep. Set up the movie.”

  Finally I find what I’m looking for, behind an unopened container of fennel seed. I climb off the counter, clutching the little plastic jar.

  “Be right back,” I tell Lori as I blur past her.

  In my room I shut the door and advance on Shane, who’s sitting among the CDs again.

  “Get out!” I twist off the red cap and hurl the contents of the jar at him.

  He sputters and spits, then wipes his mouth. “What the—salt? I’m a vampire, not a slug.”

  “Keep your voice down. It’s garlic salt.”

  “It is?” He brushes the stuff out of his hair and sniffs his sleeve. “How old is that jar?”

  I glance at the bottom, which bears a faded price tag (89c) instead of a UPC code. “Maybe a decade, or two. It came with the apartment.”

  “I’d say it’s past its peak freshness.” Shane rubs his arm. “Although I am a little itchy.” He stands up, and I step back. He holds up his hands. “Relax, I won’t hurt you. If you wanted me to leave, all you had to do was ask.”

  “I’m pretty sure I did.”

  He points to a stack of CDs between us. “Here’s A through Bowie, in order. That was as far as I got before you started throwing condiments.”

  I put the empty garlic salt jar in my pocket. “I was afraid if I told you to leave, you might try to hurt Lori.”

  “No, you weren’t.” He smirks. “You were afraid I’d convince you to let me stay.”

  His cockiness provokes my foot to reach out and kick A through Bowie, scattering them across the rug. Shane blanches, a breath hissing through his teeth as if I’ve rammed a cross of pure sunlight into his temple. I remember what Lori said about her mother, and immediately I regret my action. A little.

  He heads for the stairs without looking back. I follow him down and out the front door.

  He turns and glances over my head as I stand in the doorway. “Hope I didn’t upset your friend.”

  “Please don’t break into my apartment again, even if I can’t stop you.”

  “I won’t, I swear. If you promise to do one thing for me.”

  “I’ll put the CDs in order tomorrow. You want me to take a picture to prove it?”

  He brightens. “That’d be great. Thank you.”

  Before I can react, he grasps my face in both hands and kisses me quickly, as if in gratitude.

  “Night.” He turns and saunters into the shadows.

  I double-lock the door, then climb the stairs to join Lori. She’ll convince me I’m an idiot for even considering the possibility of maybe not totally despising that monster.

  Hopefully before it’s too late.

  7

  Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

  “Heard you got bit.”

  Franklin wastes no time with Monday morning niceties.

  I refuse to glance down at my thigh as I cross the office to dump my purse on my desk. “Had nothing better to do on a Friday night.”

  “Tell me about it. This town is no place for the living.” He seems more relaxed now that we share the station’s Big Secret. “Ready to do actual work?”

  “When you put it that way, how can I resist?” I sit across from him, carefully, keeping my knees together, since crossing my legs would be agony.

  “Today’s prospect,” he says, “is a Sherwood boutique called Waxing Nostalgic.”

  “The candle place where people sniff the merchandise and never buy it?”

  Franklin nods and stuffs a pencil into his electric sharpener. When the buzzing fades, he says, “Bernita Johnson wants to cut back her ads from five thirty-second spots a week to two.” He gives me a level look. “This is bad.”

  “So we pay her a visit, threaten to flatten her kneecaps.”

  “Something like that.” He sharpens another pencil. “That’s just to get your feet wet dealing with clients. This afternoon we start baiting the hook for bigger fish. Now that our signal is reaching urban markets, we can get clients with deeper pockets.”

  “Cool.” I check out today’s Wilde quote: A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

  Franklin sharpens a third pencil, and I notice that he has a cupful of about two dozen on his desk.

  “What’s with all the pencils?”

  “Protection.” He drops another sharp one into the cup. “You should make your own cache.”

  “A cache? As in, a collection of weapons?”

  “I made a holster. See?” He stuffs a sharpened pencil into a receptacle hanging from his belt loop. “I’ve got boxes of them stashed in every room of this building, in case you need to defend yourself.”

  “Have the vampires ever threatened you?”

  “No, but it’s good to be prepared.”

  “If you don’t like them, why do you work here?”

  “Marketing jobs are scarce in Sherwood.”

  “Why not work in the city?”

  “I hate commuting.”

  “Then why not live in the city?”

  Franklin glares at me. “If you must know, my boyfriend teaches at Sherwood College.”

  “Oh.” I hide my surprise. Not that I don’t think Franklin’s boyfriendable. He’s actually fairly cute. He just seems awfully grumpy for someone in a steady relationship. “So where would I leave something for one of the DJs?”

  Franklin shakes his head slowly, as if he’s just heard of my tragic death.

  “If I’m going to market this station,” I remind him, “I have to get acquainted with its lifeblood. So to speak.”

  He sighs. “Mailboxes are in the lounge downstairs.”

  I go to my purse and grab a red greeting-card envelope. “If I’m not back in five, send the Salvation Army.”

  The lounge downstairs is empty, and silent except for the whine of a Rush Limbaugh wannabe bitching about illegal immigrants. The speaker sits mounted on the ceiling in the corner. When I turn to glare at it, I see the row of putty-colored metal mailbox slots. I make my delivery.

  On my way back to the stairs, I pass the door to the studio. The ON THE AIR light is off, so I quietly turn the knob.

  I find myself in a narrow hallway. The studio sits behind a thick glass window. It’s like a museum exhibit of twentieth-century-radio history: reel-to-reel decks and turntables sit beside CD players and a computer monitor with glowing green numbers.

  No one’s inside, since a syndicated show is playing, but I wonder why the vampires can’t broadcast during the day. They’d be protected from sunshine down here. Then again, this is their sleepy time. Asking them to work during the day would be worse than asking a human to work the night shift.

  At the end of the corridor to my right, a thick metal door reads DANGER: KEEP OUT in red block letters.

  I step up to it and place my palm on its surface, just below the sign. It’s cold and smooth, like a restaurant’s walk-in freezer. The handle is heavy, a lever rather than a knob. It would take some effort to open it, which, being smarter than your average horror movie victim, I decline to do. But I notice that the door’s bottom edge is made of rubber, creating a seal against the linoleum floor.

  My hand whips off the stainless steel surface.

  KEEP OUT is cold storage for the station’s most valuable assets.

  I back away, rubbing my hand against the rough fabric of my denim miniskirt. The chill takes a few moments to subside.

  As I stare at the door, an idea awakens, twisting and groping for freedom like a moth trying to pop out of a cocoon a few days early.

  I look at the studio.

  Nah.

  Then the door.

  Maybe.

  And back at the studio.

  Why the hell not?

  Waxing Nostalgic is the kind of store that makes you wish you’d been born without a nose.

  Franklin and I stop halfway through the door, slammed by ten thousand scents that don’t get along. Thick
pillar candles, grouped by color family, line the wall shelves of the claustrophobic shop.

  I urge my feet forward against their will, toward a front table Fourth of July display. Founding Fathers with wicks coming out of their heads seem to beg us to buy them, burn them, release them from their waxy hell.

  Franklin lets the door shut behind us, jangling a cowbell tied to the handle. A brown terrier lies on a mat near the register to our right. It blinks at us, and nothing more. No doubt its brain is fried from the olfactory assault.

  “Be right out!” A shrill voice emerges from behind the curtain of a back room.

  Franklin turns to me and says, “Don’t act surprised. Just play along.” He hastens to straighten his tie and his posture.

  I nod, more bemused than confused. I work at a radio station with vampire DJs. What could possibly surprise me?

  “Bernita!” Franklin swishes over to the woman who just came out from the back room. “Hey, girlfriend, it’s been a million years.” He gives her an expansive hug, complete with fluttery back-pat.

  She beams, then pinches his cheek like an aunt. “Frankie, how are you?”

  “I’m fabulous, thanks for asking.” His voice is an octave higher than I’ve ever heard it. I struggle not to gape. “And you—” He holds her at arm’s length, tilting his head. “—you look spectacular! Have you lost weight?”

  She preens at the attention and pats her formidable girth. “Two hundred pounds the moment I got divorced.”

  “You are too rotten!” Franklin squeezes her arm and stamps his foot. His breezy manner makes him look fifty pounds lighter himself. Suddenly his clothes appear perfectly tailored, no longer drooping over his body like wet washcloths on a towel rack.

  “Oh, just look at our little Reginald.” He leans over to koochie-koo the dog. “I tell you, I could eat him up with a spoon.”

  I think a little piece of Franklin died as he uttered the last word with a lisp.

  Bernita sweeps her arm toward the merchandise. “Need some candles? I have a few.” She’s smiling, but her eyes plead for business. Convincing her to give us more money won’t be easy.

  Franklin grins at me. “Ciara needs some for her bedroom.”

  “Ahhh … ” The nearly round woman sidles over. “Expecting an evening with a special young man?”