The Hinky Bearskin Rug
Page 27
“Jeebus holy freakin’ — did you see that?” Jewel exclaimed. She felt herself grinning madly.
Randy said in a repressive tone, “They lack decorum.”
“Excuse me?” Jewel took her eyes off the action long enough to catch him frowning at her, one of his lordly frowns that telegraphed his disappointment in her for yet another plebian lapse from social grace. She snapped, “Oh, get over it. You’re sporting the boner of the century. And you have the nerve to criticize them?”
“I don’t criticize them. My response is appropriate,” he said primly. “Yours is not.”
“My what is what?”
He half stood over her on the bleacher bench, as if he hoped to draw her attention away from the scrimmage. “I sense all your desires.”
This was true. It was really annoying of him.
She widened her eyes. “Number one, I never said I wanted to do this. And number two, if you disapprove, this would be the first desire I’ve had where you haven’t been hairy-all-over to help.”
He stiffened. “We should leave.”
Jewel’s mouth fell open. “No.”
“You cannot participate in this — this exhibition.”
“Watch me.” Shit, between him and Lena Velvita Fromage Sacker Tart, they were talking her into it. She probably couldn’t handle it anyway, damn him. But only because she’d let herself fall out of shape.
With training though....
Weak as her flesh felt, her spirit was willing. Hoo baby.
“Sit down,” she snapped. “We’re working, remember?”
She turned away from him and scooted a foot down the bleachers so she could see better.
Half an hour passed. Jewel forgot all about watching for pink stuff. She began to figure out how the game worked.
The teams changed over. The two teams who’d just been trying to kill each other threw off their black and white tops, divested their gear, lay down on the floor at the far end of the arena, and did yoga stretches. Out on the track, a new set of girls kitted out in black and white.
Lena Sacker Tart took off her skates and returned to the bleachers. “How’s it going? You following the play yet?”
“I think so. Uh, Lena, you remember Randy.” She ought to. In three days at Hot Pink Studios, they had made three dirty movies together.
“Yeah, hi, bro,” Lena said briefly, and sat on Jewel’s far side, ignoring Randy and his snooty bow. She leaned closer and said in Jewel’s ear, “Did you see the pink fog?”
“Yeah. It was after the first time you sacked Bichon Frizzy. She was on the floor on her ass — and then she wasn’t. And I saw pink stuff. Just a trace.”
“A trace,” Sacker Tart nodded. “Yup.” She pointed down at the track. “Okay, watch what’s happening. There goes Rapture Snatch, jamming against Stun Bunny. Stun is the fastest girl in the league, but she lacks strength. Rap isn’t bad. Rap is also bigger. If she can push past Stun, or if her blockers can keep Stun boxed in, she’ll make lead jammer and score before Stun gets clear of the pack.”
Jewel caught a glimpse of Randy looking offended, and stifled a laugh. He probably would never have imagined that Velvita Fromage would ignore his aristocratic hotness to talk to her.
If Lena could ignore Randy, Jewel could, too.
Rapture Snatch did indeed break free first. Bad things were happening to Stun Bunny back in the pack. Jewel missed Lena telling her the name of the block that Steamy Roller used, but she saw Stun Bunny go down on hands and knees. Irrita Belle fell over her, rolled onto her back, and spun like a starfish, her legs extended and her skates lethally close to passing blockers’ knees.
“Now that,” Sacker Tart said dispassionately, “is a dangerous move. See what comes of it?”
Even as she pointed, somebody must have got hit or tripped, because a massive pileup ensued, two, three, four skaters caroming into one another, stumbling, going down.
Stun Bunny and Irrita Belle should have been on the bottom of the pileup.
Instead, Stun was five feet away. Completely in the clear.
Stun got to her skates and rolled backwards away from the mayhem. Then she seemed to set her sights on Rapture Snatch and stroked determinedly around the curve, as fast going backward as she was skating forward. Jewel’s jaw dropped.
Rap pulled past the pack as it scrambled to its feet. Stun flipped from backwards to forwards in one smooth jump, angled across the short end of the track, and bodychecked Rap clean off the track.
A yell of triumph burst out of Jewel.
Lena nudged her. “Look. Pink stuff.”
There, hovering over the heads of the zooming pack, a pink haze hung high in the air, near the twenty-foot ceiling. Jewel squinted. A thread of pink actually hung over the whole oval. But over the skaters themselves, the pink seemed to boil up out of nothing and coalesce in a shimmery, faintly glittery cloud.
“Yeah, we saw some earlier,” Jewel said.
It was actually kind of pretty.
Then she realized what it could mean here.
Wherever pink stuff appeared, people disappeared.
Her stomach clenched.
Lena murmured, “It’ll stay like that until somebody gets hurt or practice ends. I think I actually saw it in the bar after last practice.” Lena added, her lips almost touching Jewel’s ear, “Although that may have been the margaritas.”
“Road rage?” Jewel whispered back. The current unofficial theory was that pink stuff on the highways was created by road rage.
Hairs lifted on the back of her neck as possibilities rose in her imagination, none of them good. And in a bar! Drunks and magic — bad combination, she thought, remembering the boozer genie she’d captured a few months ago.
Lena said, her eyes on the track, “We’ll talk about that later. I have to gear down. I can meet you in the parking lot in twenty.”
Intensely aware of Randy’s disapproving presence on her other side, Jewel said, “Twenty works for me. I got a fire to put out.” She flushed.
Six months ago she would have scorned to postpone good girltalk merely to argue with a man over something she fully intended to do anyway.
Lena’s glance went to Randy, then Jewel. Her smile seemed a little wistful. “’Kay.”
o0o
Acknowledgements
I have the following people to thank for their help in writing this book. If the book contains errors, it is my fault. If I got it right anywhere, it’s to their credit.
David Henry Sterry, for his moving memoir, Chicken; Candida Royalle for advice and for some terrific women’s erotic films (especially Stud Hunters); Betsy Mitchell for not fainting over the first draft; Sue Grimshaw, for wanting more; Rich Bynum, for infrastructure geekery; Ysa Wilce for patience and brainstorming; “Mr. Balantine” for inside dope; Nalo Hopkinson for such sexual diversity retraining as I’m capable of receiving; Eden Robins for patience and multiple reads; Leah Cutter for cover design, Julie Griffin for the smoking pigeon, Pooks Burroughs for copyedits, and Julianne Lee for ebook formatting; Martha Whitehead for clout; Kim Hughes for website design; Julie Griffin for the smoking pigeon; and my many, faithful, and ever-wise readers: Yvonne Yirka, Kate Early, Hiromi Goto, Pam & Bar Man Mordecai, Larissa Lai, David Findlay, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Sylvia Halkin, the Cherries, and the multi-talented critiquers at Chicago-North RWA.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.
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Copyright & Credits
The Hinky Bearskin Rug
Hinky Chicago Book Three
Jennifer Stevenson
Book View Café Edition September 17, 2013
ISBN: 978 1 61138 288 4
Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Stevenson
First published: 2008
Cover design by Leah Cutter
www.Kno
ttedRoadPress.com
Smoking pigeon design by Julie Griffin
Copyeditor, Patricia Burroughs
Formatter, Julianne Lee
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About the Author
Jennifer Stevenson loves dark chocolate, Chicago, and crows, and she would never buy cigarettes for pigeons. She thinks up new uses for old sex demons for money and lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two cats.
About Book View Café
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