by Willa Okati
The coffee reappeared, in the vendor’s hand. He narrowed his eyes to slits and took a long, deliberate chug from the cup.
Harper counted to ten, patiently, turned on his heel, and stalked away.
“Sorry about that, Harper.” Rory appeared at his side, slightly out of breath, cheeks tinged a faint pink. “It’s been a while.”
Harper stared at him through the copper twists of showered-but-uncombed hair falling over the rims of his glasses.
Rory’s hair, sleek and ashy-shiny as ever ‑‑ compelling, the near-silvery gloss of its not-quite-black ‑‑ didn’t move in the wind.
“A while since what?” Harper asked carefully.
“Since anything. Sorry mostly about not explaining before that I can’t inspire anyone else. Figured I’d give it a try, though.” Rory clapped Harper firmly between the shoulder blades. “Too bad they don’t trade on charm in the ‑‑ where are we? ‑‑ New York street marketplace. Manhattan or the Bronx? Nice. I like it. Anyway. Would’ve hooked you a free cup if I could have.”
Harper tried to unscramble the logic in there, failed, gritted his teeth, strode forward, and said nothing.
“That’s a fine way to say thank you,” Rory called after him, ripe with pique. “Would you wait up for me? I’m not chasing your bubble butt again.”
“Good!” Harper walked faster. “Great. That sounds fantastic.”
“Come on, I’m just trying to help.”
“Yeah? Then go away.”
Rory huffed. “Go screw yourself.”
Harper made tracks instead. Fast.
* * * * *
“Harper?” Clattering heels heralded Lisa’s rush to his side. “Harper, thank God. My phone went dead, screw me for ditching the landline, and yours went straight to voice mail.”
“Figures.” Harper grimaced at her in apology. “You got my message, though?”
Lisa balled up one fist and socked him in the arm. Hard. Ow. “That’s for giving me gray hair, you dick.”
Harper eyed Lisa’s spiked magenta ‘do. “Uh-huh. How would anyone ever be able to tell?”
“Up yours. If you ever scare me like that again, I’m hanging you out to dry.” Lisa shook herself terrier-style, visibly throwing off her aggravation, and offered him her paper cup of coffee, still half-full. “You look like you need this more than I do. I could pack for a trip to Europe with those bags under your eyes.”
Harper drank deeply and gratefully. “God, I love you.”
“Then marry me and make an honest woman out of both of us,” Lisa shot back. With both hands free, she was better able to juggle a sheaf of paper she’d previously been carrying stuffed under one arm. “You didn’t get here a minute too soon. Janie’s on the warpath.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. So far she’s taking her wrath out on wardrobe, but she’s carrying her cell around with her and glaring at it like it’s to blame for all the world’s ills.”
Waiting for that call from Rialto. As were they all. Schrödinger’s cat had nothing on yes-or-no TV and film “green lights.”
“She’s no crazier than you,” Lisa told him. “You know they’re going to pick up In Outré. This is the big time, Harper.” She almost bounced, stopping before any serious jiggling occurred and catching her lip between her teeth. “Harper…that stuff about losing all the scripts and storylines was a joke, right?”
Harper hesitated.
Lisa popped him in the chest. “Moron!” She tugged at a spike of her hair. “Okay, fine. I’ll keep the secret as long as I can. I’ve gotta go smoke. Just…just avoid Janie, okay? If you run into her, then lie. Lie through your teeth. If she knows you’re this far up shit creek ‑‑”
“Trust me, I’m not in a hurry to hurl myself on the gridiron.” Not that he’d be able to avoid it for long. The last swig of coffee, though gritty with sugary dregs, went down sour. Harper crumpled the cup and made a long shot into a nearby trash can. Huh. Nothing but net. Maybe that was a good omen.
He rubbed Lisa’s shoulder, careful not to muss anything. “I’ll take care of it. There’s got to be someone who’ll be able to pull the info off my hard drive.”
“Nuh-uh. No way. Confidentiality clauses for the Twilight Rising storylines alone ‑‑” Lisa started. “Harper, crap! The Twilight Rising plotlines we spent last weekend at your place working on. You didn’t lose those, too?”
“Um.”
“Harper,” Lisa wailed.
“I know. I know.” Harper rubbed his face. “We’re both idiots. Meet me in the writers’ room in half an hour. We’ll put our heads together and…”
Lisa shook her head, silver ladder of earrings jingling. “Forget it. I’ve got some rough drafts encrypted on my laptop. I’ll polish them up. You get your ass to work on In Outré because Janie’s going to want to know where you are on development and if you’ve got bubkes, we’ll all feel her wrath. We’re so screwed,” she muttered, brushing past him.
Harper watched her go. “Tell me about it,” he mumbled.
“What was that I heard?”
Harper stiffened. Oh, no. No no no ‑‑
Rory swaggered into his peripheral vision. “That sounded like the dulcet sounds of someone who’s…lookin’ for some inspiration, lookin’ for some inspiration,” he warbled to the tune of Talkin’ About My Generation.
The guy ‑‑ muse ‑‑ thing ‑‑ whatever ‑‑ did a passable impression of Roger Daltrey.
Harper shunted aside thoughts of guitar smashing, big blue eyes, and long twisty curls and rounded on Rory to look at, er, big dark eyes and tarnished-ebony tousles. Only the strength in Rory’s jaw saved him from being pretty instead of mouthwatering ‑‑ um.
Rory cocked an eyebrow. “Whatever you’re thinking, your aura says it’s plenty fun. Wanna share with the class?”
Harper shook his head in an attempt to dislodge the brain cobwebs. So Rory was tasty enough to throw down and lick. He’d deal with his libido on his own time.
Honest he would.
“What are you doing here?” he asked instead.
Rory frowned at him. “Seriously, Harper, I’m getting tired of answering the dumb questions.”
“Ha!” Harper couldn’t help himself, regardless of the odd looks he caught coming their way from burly men hauling props around. So they could see Rory too.
“You’re here to save the day, is that it?” he asked, teetering on the brink.
“Yeah,” Rory answered, so painfully earnest that something in Harper’s chest twisted a little. “Why do you have such a big problem with that?”
“I want his head on a plate!” a contralto bellowed behind them and to their left, the dulcet tones of Janie in a Bad Mood. “Where the hell are the writers? Anyone want to tell me if we’re gonna have an actual script to storyboard today?”
Rory caught Harper by the arm. “Can I inspire you to a decent hiding place while we work this out?”
Harper wanted to argue. He did. But would he rather face Rory, or Janie with smoke billowing from her ears before he’d come up with a solution to their new problems?
No contest. “Okay. Sure. As long as you hurry before ‑‑”
“Harper McClellan, I see you over there ‑‑”
“Race you?”
“You’re on. Move!”
Chapter Three
The trouble with an open-design set studio was that there weren’t many places to hide unless you wanted to get close and cozy with brooms and mops. In the end, Harper dragged Rory to the story room, a.k.a. his office, when he needed some quiet, and locked the door behind them. He tugged down the blinds, turned the lights off, and leaned on the door, watching Rory.
“You’ve got a face like a funeral,” Rory said, his good cheer at three-quarter wattage. “I caught some of what that foxy lady said. Lisa, wasn’t it?” Rory crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at Harper. “You really are in trouble, aren’t you?”
Harper looked away, his resolve wavering enough to bite off
a “Yes.”
“Huh.” Rory tapped his foot as if in deep thought. “Nothing to go on except what’s in your head, a few notes on a tape recorder ‑‑ which, by the way, you forgot along with your wallet ‑‑ stop groaning ‑‑ okay. Hmm.” He nodded decisively. “Not impossible. I’ve worked tougher cases.”
Hope surged in a rush, almost rocking Harper on his feet. “You’re serious?”
“I am. As for you, Mr. Skeptic, are you about ready to trust me and let me do my job already?”
With that question, spoken minus any note of pity that’d raise his hackles, Harper gave up. Nothing he did seemed to stop Rory in any way anyhow, and he’d already seen and heard enough to make subterfuge pointless. “Yes.”
Rory cupped a hand to his ear. “Sorry, I don’t think I caught that. What’d you say?”
“As long as you keep your clothes on. Yes.”
“Still didn’t quite hear you. There was more to that, wasn’t there?”
“You’re an incredible dick, Rory.”
“Yeah, you know it.” Rory groped his crotch. “Come on, Harper. I’ve earned this. Let me hear those dulcet magic words.”
He had Harper over a barrel and they both knew it. “Fine. You can help me. Please help me.”
“And…?”
Ah, jeez… “And ‘thank you.’” Harper tugged off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and pointed at Rory. “And, if you push it any further, we’re going to find out if muses splatter just like humans when they hit the pavement from this high up in the skyline.”
“Ouch. Points off for rudeness, points on for creativity. That’ll do for now.” Rory clapped his hands and rubbed them briskly together. “Where to start, where to start…” He snapped his fingers. “Got it. Sit tight here, okay?”
Before Harper could form a reply, Rory vanished.
Harper should have been used to it by now, but he still flinched. “How do you do that?” he marveled, crossing to the spot where Rory had made his stand. He tested the floor by bouncing on his heels.
Nothing wobbled or creaked. Considering that it was cement, he’d have worried more if there had been instability.
No traces of body warmth to be found in open air. No proof Rory had been there except for a faint, spicy hint of something like cloves and cardamom. Maybe aniseed.
Aniseed? A vague idea floated across the forefront of Harper’s mind. Spices? Spices. “That’s what we need on Fourteenth Street! Osborne could work there!”
He made a dash for the writing table, caught up a dry-erase marker, and rounded on the giant whiteboard that took up half the near wall. Uncapping the marker, he attacked, muttering to himself all the while. “Okay, spice merchant, fantastic, hand-carved mortars and pestles, dusty bottles…old medicine bottles, Fingerhut trinkets… Hey, wonder if he could carry tea leaves, too? Salomei might be into reading tea leaves as well. Why not?”
He tapped his chin with the ink end of the marker and winced at the cool sensation of purple streaks on his cheek ‑‑ those would take work to wash off ‑‑ but who cared about impromptu tattoos when the words were coming?
Half an hour later, Harper had plunged through the setup of Main Street that’d had him blocked for days, delved into backstory, and had just come to a sudden understanding of Osborne’s secretive past when his nose twitched. Puzzled at first, he wondered if he was going to sneeze.
“Now that’s a sight for sore eyes.” Rory opened the door to the script room like an ordinary human being, a cardboard tray balanced in one hand. “Look at you. See? Those writerly juices are flowing already.”
Harper capped the marker and tossed it in the whiteboard’s tray. He leaned against the wall, shaking out his tingling fingers. He found himself grinning at Rory. “You know, I bet if you’d thought for days, you couldn’t have come up with a less appealing way to put that.”
“Gripe, gripe, gripe. Here, I brought you actual coffee. Lots of cream.” Rory leered at him.
At least he didn’t strip down. Harper dropped the marker in the whiteboard’s tray, accepted the coffee, and took a long, grateful swig. Not too hot. Perfect temperature, going down smooth and milky.
“Gotta say I like the looks of that, too,” Rory murmured, his gaze fixed in the vicinity of Harper’s throat. “Hotcha, hotcha.”
“Classy.” Harper rolled his eyes, glad of the excuse to play off his body’s rapid reaction to the sensual growl of Rory’s delivery. He collapsed in the head writer’s chair, stretched out his legs and sighed. Relief was a sweet, sweet absence of weight on his shoulders. The caffeine surging through his bloodstream made him nigh giddy. He nudged out a second chair. “Want a seat?”
He groaned at his choice of words while Rory cracked up. “I so very do, but professionalism in the workplace and all.” He spun the chair around backward and plopped down, propping his chin on the high back. “See? I’m not all bad, am I?”
The traces of milky coffee lingering richly on his tongue inclined Harper to mellowness, and at the same time the clean, spicy fragrance that hovered around Rory imbued the air with something indefinable that kept his brain wide awake. “Don’t count your chickens. I might still come to my senses after the caffeine rush passes.”
“Uh-huh. Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt, my friend.” Rory trailed the pink tip of his tongue over his lips, definitely not addressing his comment to Harper’s face. “Now you’ve let me in, you and me, we’re a done deal.”
Harper coughed and tried, surreptitiously, to adjust himself under the table. “Dream on.”
“You adore me and you know it.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” A thought occurred to Harper. “Where’d you get the money for this?” He tipped his cup.
Rory’s ears turned red. Harper blinked. Was that… Was Rory embarrassed?
“Don’t tell me you stole it. Did you steal the ‑‑”
“No.” Rory sounded offended. “I’m not a thief. I don’t take; I give.”
“But you said you were broke, before.”
“Was. Am.” Rory reached to the whiteboard tray, hooked a marker, and twirled it between his fingers. “I knew the coffee would make you feel better, so I panhandled loose change until I had enough.” He made a face and waved off any reply before Harper could make one. “Shut up and drink it while it’s hot.”
Not for the first time in recent memory, Harper found himself with no idea of what to say. Rory showed up naked, harassed him in the shower, followed him to work, incurred the wrath of a coffee vendor who probably had an arsenal stashed in his closet and knew where to find him… and went out with cap in hand to earn enough to buy him a cup of quality coffee.
Two inches tall was roughly an inch and a half taller than Harper felt right then. He took a deep draught from his cup. “Um. Thanks.” He hesitated, offering lamely, “It’s good stuff.”
“And so am I, baby. Only the best.” The sparkle returned to Rory’s aura. Twisting the chair around, he propped his feet on the table, legs crossed at the ankle, and leaned back with his fingers laced behind his head. “Ready to get to work?”
In for a penny… “Ready if you are. Where do we start?”
Rory gave the question due thought. “Let me have a rundown. Quick précis. I get the gist that you’re developing a concept for a TV show ‑‑ not the one you work on now, so this is a pitch to another network, yeah? Something about tarot cards and” ‑‑ he scanned the whiteboard ‑‑ “a spice and tea shop, and I remember you babbling about someone named Salomei, but outside of that I got nothin’. So fill me in.” He wiggled his butt, getting comfortable, and waved at Harper. “Go.”
Harper’s BlackBerry vibrated in his pocket, far, far too close to his groin, oversensitized in Rory’s presence whether or not the man ‑‑ muse ‑‑ was naked. He slapped his hand over the device.
Rory cocked an eyebrow. “Ants in your pants?”
“Cute.” Harper checked the caller ID. He resisted the urge to a) groan and b) throw the pho
ne across the room. A new BlackBerry was out of his price range and if he didn’t take this, the person on the other end wouldn’t think twice about hitting redial multiple times. “Excuse me. I have to take this.”
“You sure look like you don’t want to. Who is it?” Rory dropped his legs and leaned on his arms on the table. “Tell ‘em to take a hike. We’re busy.”
“It won’t take long.” Compared to, say, the Spanish Inquisition.
Harper turned away from Rory, wondering if he could get up subtly enough to turn his back. He really didn’t want his muse picking up on a conversation with ‑‑ “Patrick. Hi.”
“He answers on the first attempt? The next thing you know, pigs will fly.” Patrick chuckled, working his deep, melodious tenor to its best advantage and well aware of it, too. “Harper! How’ve you been? I hear you’re walking down the street in mismatched Converses talking to yourself these days. How’s that going for you? Off the record, of course.”
“Good to hear from you again, Patrick.”
Rory whistled softly. “Muses can see auras, you know. I mentioned it before. Anyway, yours looks like I could play ‘hot lava’ on your head. Hang up on whoever that is. That kind of headache, you don’t need.”
“Do I hear a new voice over there, Harper?” Patrick asked, silky as the inside of a luxury coffin. “Is he an actor or a director? An ingénue on set of Twilight Rising? The target demographic of Glitz Nightly would love to get the inside scoop.”
Harper dug his hands through his hair and stood, forgoing discretion. “Cut the crap, Patrick. You know you’re not getting anything out of me.”
“That’s rude.” Patrick tsked at him. “I’m just calling to see how an old friend’s faring. Nothing harmful in that, is there? I have a right to be concerned about your losing your grip on reality, chatting to invisible people while trying to con an innocent vendor.”
“Not to mention it’d make the headline news segment.”
“There’s that, too,” Patrick agreed, almost purring.