She produced the golden figure, a little thing a couple of inches high, with a sticky base. The blissful smile and lofty eyebrows bobbed as his head nodded and kind of drifted from side to side, like a Bollywood dancer. His right hand was raised with his two middle fingers folded down and the outer two pointed heavenward.
“You need one of these for your car.” Aileen held the little ornament towards me.
“He’ll protect you in your car. He’ll protect your car, too. He’ll keep you from having crashes, help you find parking spaces, keep you safe and bring you good car karma.”
A big smile lit Aileen’s face. She said, “Car karma!” and she clapped her hands. “That’s really good. I’ll use that.” She fished in a bag for a notebook and a pen. “I have a little company.” She said, “We make things like this. Things that transform people’s lives and bring them peace and joy.”
As she said it she made a note. Her lips were pulled between her teeth as she wrote, ‘CarKarma,’ then she looked up, smiling, “But this is going to be the one that really transforms our world.”
She picked up the little Buddha and held it towards me again. “You gave me that inspiration.” She stopped a moment, “At least, your presence here was a part of me having the inspiration.” She smiled. “We really are going to get along.” I wasn’t so sure, but I had debts and they were a great motivator.
The little Buddha’s head rocked woozily round and around, from side to side. “Really,” Aileen nodded, too, holding it towards me. “You should have one.”
Fresh in my memory was the spreadsheet I made with my mounting college fees. Particularly the horribly long number in the bottom right hand corner.
~<>~
When Aileen finally stumbled into the kitchen around 10:00 to yawn over the breakfast I prepared for her, she’d shouted over her children’s hyperactive, over-tired shrieks, “Mommy’s delicate this morning, darlings,” which only drove them to run harder around the kitchen and in circles around me, yelling louder.
Aileen told me it was “lovely” that the children were so fond of me.
While I blitzed her curly kale, edamame, quinoa, and cress smoothie, Aileen moved to muss the children’s hair and hold them in front of her. They looked the perfect, idyllic family. For about a half a second.
Tarquin beamed as he pulled Wanetta’s hair. She screamed and chased him, squealing around the tiled kitchen.
“We’ll have to drop them at the party in about twenty minutes,” Aileen said, “and then I’ll need you to come with me. Just run a couple of quick little errands while I get my treatments. Then you can go back to the party and look after them from there.”
A few little errands. I knew that would involve visits to any number of stores, with lists of the most unbelievably specific demands. No, it wasn’t enough that I would have to provide crowd control, quite possibly unaided, to dozens of hyper-energetic, mood swinging mini athletes, but first I would have to be her surrogate customer from hell, with a mission to ruin the mornings of about a dozen perfectly nice business owners.
As Aileen’s demands rolled off her tongue, I pictured how the color would drain from the shop assistant’s faces as the corners of their mouths struggled to hold the expression of agreeable politeness that upmarket stores always strive to provide.
“A little table, with mother-of-pearl and Abilene inlays, and a glass top. Carved in the Islamic style, like the one in this painting,” she pointed at an old picture in an art book, “Only with a glass top, of course.” She smiled, serenely. All of Aileen’s requirements were like that. Unbelievably specific about things that were mostly unachievable, yet incredibly vague about the things that were essential.
About an hour later we drove up to the house of the pool party and Tarquin and Waynetta exploded out of the back of the car. Aileen said, with uncharacteristic sense,
“Haley, maybe it’s better if you stay with the children and I can take care of my little errands.” I couldn’t decide whether that was a blessing, a miracle, or a curse.
The front door of the house swung open and a thin, shell-shocked woman in her late twenties stood in front of a waist-high raging sea of mostly blonde, tousled heads. Plump little bodies dashed, writhed and flailed, through a crackling storm of little voices. The devil, or the deep blue sea? I thought.
Of course, the apparent outbreak of sense was just one of Aileen’s tricks. Pretending she could come to a reasonable conclusion, when a perfectly deranged one was just in reach.
“No,” She smiled at the hostess. “I’m sure they’ll be fine here.” The thin hostesses eyes seemed to float in her head. Aileen said, “You’ll take care of them for half an hour, won’t you?” The woman looked slowly around, and without waiting, Aileen thanked her and we left. When Aileen said, “half an hour” it always turned out to be four times that at the very least.
Aileen drove us to one of the ritzy little mini-malls that were her home away from home and on the way she recited her incomprehensible array of errands and tasks. Stores and businesses I was to visit with her requests. Her demands that would stretch the politeness of a Royal butler.
She left and I practically twitched as I curled up for just one, peaceful moment on the creamy, soft, leatherback bench seat of the massive BMW. If Aileen came out of the salon-spa and found me asleep, I would never hear the end of it. But I had been awake since Tarquin and Waynetta had run into my room at five-fifteen that morning.
I would take just a couple of moments peace for myself before I went to chase and hunt for all of her fastidious needs.
More than anything, I wanted a brief visit back to my dream in the sunlit study hall.
Chapter Three
THE DENNY’S SIGN BOUNCED in the windshield and made the sun flash in my eyes as I drove.
“We won’t always work for Gregor, will we, Ryan?” This had been Tynie’s theme almost all the way there. Any time he leveled up in the game or collected extra weapons, powers, or armor, he looked over to me and asked about Gregor.
I had tuned him out a little, let myself daydream about the slave girl. Why she played in my imagination the way that she did, I wasn’t too sure. All I knew was what a happy picture I got when I thought about her.
She wasn’t the leggy, athletic, primped up and pouting type that I was usually all over. One time I saw the Dragon Lady bustling out across the lot and the slave girl was running to keep up with about a dozen shopping bags from upmarket stores dangling from her arms. That picture of her—the slave girl, energetic, flustered, and bouncing—stayed fresh in my mind.
More than once when I was in the shower, I remembered her that way.
Her figure, I guess, was a lot more womanly than my usual type, and I wondered whether it meant that something in me was starting to change. Whether this was the time in my life that my needs would grow to be more for women and less for girls. People kept saying I would grow up one day. There still didn’t seem to me to be much chance of it happening.
But there was something else, something about the slave girl’s face, the look in her eyes, that kept coming back to me. Her face was soft like a teenager’s, but her eyes were steady like a woman in her late twenties. Like she had understanding. Experience. Even though I was sure that she didn’t. She was a puzzle.
Even if she was, it was a puzzle I wasn’t likely going to get to solve. I thought about it, though. For a moment there, I even thought, What if we take corporate Brad’s BMW, I drive it over to Gregor’s. Then, later maybe, I go back and grab Dragon Lady’s car. Maybe there’s a way that I can wind up meeting with the slave girl. Dumb, right?
Guess I hadn’t had enough coffee. Would there be time to get into the Denny’s and grab some, I wondered, and get back out for Corporate Brad’s BMW? I looked at the clock. Not now, obviously. And anyway, sauntering into the restaurant, getting a coffee while Corporate Brad was in there… what the fuck was I thinking?
Then, as we were approaching the parking lot and I had the turn sig
nal on to pull in, Corporate Brad pulled out right in front. Gave me a cheery wave as he cut across my path.
“Follow him, Ryan.”
“Tynie, we don’t do that. You know we don’t.”
“But his is going to be the better car.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I told him, “We have a plan. We stick to the plan.”
“It’s a bad sign, Ryan. We should follow Corporate Brad.” He was quiet for a moment. “Maybe we should come back. That’s it, Ryan, we should come back tomorrow. Take Corporate Brad’s car tomorrow.” Tynie was nodding rhythmically. Hugging his gamepad.
I grinned as I shook my head.
“We need the car today, Tynie. This morning. You know that.”
“What if Dragon Lady’s car isn’t there, Ryan? Then what?”
“Then we go get backup number two.”
It was hard to shake an idea out of Tynie’s head once he got a hold of it.
So all the way across town to the mall—the boutique-y upscale mall where the Dragon Lady practically lived—Tynie bitched about how hers wouldn’t be as good a car. How Corporate Brad was so fussy and neat, his BMW would be much better maintained than hers, with fresh oil and clean transmission fluids.
“I bet the jets of the Dragon Lady’s injectors are blocked and I won’t be able to get it into shape fast enough for Gregor.” Tynie stabbed irritably at the screen of his gamepad.
Thoughts of the Dragon Lady’s slave girl kept me happy. Thoughts of her hips, in particular, and a very shapely thigh that I’d caught a flash of when she was running to keep up with the Dragon Lady day before yesterday.
When we swung into the mall, I parked up near the exit. That way Tynie could leave real fast in the RAV4. I would follow him in the BMW. From there, it should have taken us twenty-five minutes, half an hour tops, to get to Gregor’s.
Nothing went the way it was supposed to that morning. It should have all turned out so differently.
Tynie and I walked in parallel paths between the parked cars to the BMW. It was parked nearer to the entrance doors than I would have liked. The Dragon Lady always parked as near to the door as she could. That was one thing that made her car the second choice, rather than the first, truth be told. Near to an entrance, you can get a surprise. The owner can show up.
We both passed around the car, making sure the hood wasn’t too hot. If somebody’s just got out of the car, especially somebody like the Dragon Lady, they can be halfway to where they’re going and remember they left something behind. Come running back out. You don’t want that. Not in this line of work.
I had a metal shim in the sleeve of my jacket, but Tynie made a couple of strokes on his gamepad and all the BMW’s orange lights flashed and it chirruped happily like we were its good old buddies.
As I opened the door to get in, Tynie worked his gamepad a little more. He handed it to me, and then reached under the BMW’s fender for a radio receiver he’d left there two days ago.
Sliding into the driver’s seat, I caught the scent. Straightaway it made me think of the slave girl. The Dragon Lady’s fragrance must have been in the mix too, and there was a sticky candy smell underneath it all. I figured she had kids, though I hadn’t ever seen them.
Tynie’s gamepad had a red button in the middle of the screen. I pressed it and the engine jumped to life. Just quickly enough, I reached for the stereo and turned it off. It’s always a hazard, that the driver has left a radio station or some music turned up loud. That’s a great way to draw attention to yourself.
Tynie was way ahead in the RAV4 as I pulled out. There were a couple of vehicles between us when I followed him out of the lot and we threaded our way back to the highway.
~<>~
Traffic was more snarled than a regular morning jam. The farther I got along the highway, the more bunched up the traffic got. Sirens and emergency whoops sounded every few seconds and from all around. A helicopter flew slow and low, just a couple of hundred feet above the road. Whatever it was they were all trying to get to looked like it could be somewhere about half a mile or so ahead where red and blue lights flashed and the vehicles looked like they were stationary.
That was about where the helicopter seemed to be lurching to.
There was a whoop whoop of another police cruiser from a few hundred feet behind.
Then a soft, female voice came from the back of the BMW. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”
What the fuck? What the actual fuck?! I looked in the mirror, didn’t say anything. Then I heard it again.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” A chill shot right down my spine. There was a girl in the car. She had been sleeping in the backseat. How did I not fucking see her there?
Gregor would kill her. He wouldn’t give it a second thought.
I looked in the mirror. I didn’t see anything. It was definitely a girl’s voice, though. Weary, drowsy and pretty confused. “I’m sorry, it was hot and I was so tired.”
Then in the mirror I saw her pretty face. Blearily, she rubbed her eyes and squinted as she pushed her face forward between the two seats. It was her. It was the slave girl. Oh, fuck! What the hell was I going to do now?
She had on a soft black dress, buttoned down the front. Her cheeks were bright and plump and her lips were bee-stung. From a distance, she was memorable. Up close, she was electrifying. There was a lot more about her than looks.
Playing for time, I said, “I’m really glad we ran into each other,” and my voice was as light and breezy as I could make it. “Can’t ever be bad news to meet a beautiful girl.” I thought about adding, I was really hoping I’d get to meet you, but I decided that could come off creepy. It was true, though.
Her eyes went wide. Her pretty mouth dropped open.
“Relax, sweetheart,” I said as calmly as I could. Like, Here we are, having a little ride. Isn’t that a nice surprise? I knew that it wasn’t going to do any good. Somebody tells you to calm down when you’re panicking, it only makes you panic more. Makes you trust them less. She shouted. Banged on the window.
A police siren whooped behind me.
“Who are you?!”
The cop flashed his red and blue lights. In the mirror, I saw him gesture with his arm. I didn’t know if he meant for me to pull over, or just to get out of the way.
There wasn’t much room for me to do either. Still, I raised a hand so he could see me acknowledge him and I shoved as far over to the right as I could. The guy in the Volvo beside me threw up his hands and made a face. I couldn’t hear him, but I thought I could guess what he was yelling. The cop was moving left.
“Who the fuck are you?” the slave girl shouted again. “Where are you taking me? Did Aileen give you her car?”
Now the look on her face was a kind of puzzled horror and the color was drained from her cheeks. It looked like shock could be setting in.
A rush of thoughts of what might happen to her if I let Gregor see her made me forget about the cop for a moment.
I didn’t know whether I should be more worried for her, or for myself. There was no way this was going to end well. For a minute there, I wondered if we might both be safest if I just got arrested. The situation was that bad.
The thought passed quickly, but with the slave girl shouting and banging and the cops all around me, I was feeling like the only cowboy left in a circle of burning wagons.
The only thing I might be able to influence right now was the girl.
“I know,” I told her with a smile, “you must hear a dozen of those every day.” With so much going on, it was hard to concentrate. It didn’t help that my mind was fixed on the buttons on the front of her dress.
Jack - Perfect Burn: Hot Crime Romance Page 2