“Don’t change the subject,” she said. “What did he do to you? Did he nag you to go into the family business? What was the family business?”
“Shipping,” I snapped. Against my will, after centuries of avoiding the memories, I thought of my father’s office, not very different from this one, him sitting there criticizing me. Me slouching because he’d told me to stand straight, mumbling because he’d told me to speak up, thinking about anything except work because he’d told me to pay attention. Gulls had screamed outside. Scents of sea air and rosemary bushes and my father’s angry sweat had filled the room.
Chloe watched me as if she could see all this on a movie screen on my forehead, which creeped me out. At the same time I felt weirdly relieved, as if I’d known all this time that my secrets wouldn’t stay secret, and now they were spilling out to Chloe, whom I could trust.
“Who was the black guy?” she said softly. “I know there had to be one.”
And there he was in the movie in my head, Arakles, my driver-slash-babysitter, standing behind me in Dad’s office, pretending to be deaf, dumb, and blind.
“My driver,” I mumbled.
“Did he hit you?”
“Only when my Dad said. He didn’t want to. Good guy. We practiced sparring sometimes when Dad wasn’t around, so I could get used to being hit,” I said, half in a trance.
I couldn’t believe I was telling her this. It had been so long since I thought about it, I could have sworn there was no memory left. A rush of warm feeling came as I recalled Arakles making my teeth rattle, calmly reminding me to keep my head down and my shoulder in.
She was silent for a minute. I sat there feeling weirder because that old scene was melting into this one, where I was the one sitting at the desk and Chloe stood over me, and the fear-soaked, sweat-rosemary-ocean odors became the homey smells of stale beer mixed with her woman scents, and the crying seagulls in my head turned into yowling stockbroker karaoke in the bar outside.
“Come to my place tomorrow night,” she said softly. “I’ll make you another chocolate mousse.”
I think I said yes. I have no idea.
When I came out of Archie’s office and reentered the bar, I looked for Blondie and her four new admirers. She’d said to check the back booth…ah. There she was, but so were the three older women who’d come into the restroom as I was leaving. It looked like they were playing a game.
And they were surrounded by men.
I went over to look.
As I came closer I saw Blondie’s fan club hovering and kibitzing. They seemed to have shaken out a bit. Blondie had a guy at her elbow, and each of the others, I realized, had a cheering section of one.
I peeped over Blondie’s shoulder.
They were playing hangman.
They passed the pen charm from one to the other, around the table.
It was a simple, organized way to make the charm work without swamping any one woman with decent guys. I wondered who had thought of it.
With that burden off my conscience, I went off to shop for chocolate mousse ingredients.
Chapter Twelve
TWENTY HOURS LATER, I wasn’t totally surprised when a hot redhead in shiny black leather came up to my station while I was demoing the Farmer Vlad fresh-squeezed cranberry ’tini at Meatball Fulton’s.
She slipped me a business card.
“I don’t do women,” I said automatically.
“I know,” the redhead said, “but you do do sex demons.”
The hairs stood up on my nape.
She just smiled.
I rolled my eyes and went on with my demo. “To order the Farmer Vlad fresh-squeezed cranberry ’tini is the most discreet way to tell a lady that you know what she needs and you’re prepared to provide it,” I told my mostly male audience. “There’s a compound in hand-pressed cranberries that offsets, uh, girl trouble that regular cranberry cocktail doesn’t. Everybody says this drink is so popular because the acid content blended with the high-palate fruit flavors mate so well with expensive vodka. But we know the real reason.”
A drunk in a two-hundred-dollar tie furrowed his brow. “What’s the real reason?”
“You order one of these, and the lady with you knows that you are prepared to offer the ultimate sexual service.”
The redhead in black leather calmly pushed the drunk off his stool and sat on it. He didn’t seem to notice.
My brain whirled while I stirred the mix and popped a cherry on a stick into the glass.
At least it’s not an angel this time.
“And for the lady,” I said, aiming this at the redhead, although I was pretty sure she had no trouble getting any service whatsoever, “nothing needs to be said at all. If a guy knows what you’re drinking, he knows how demanding you are. Forewarned is forearmed.”
I smiled my plastic smile and longed for death or three o’clock, whichever could come fastest.
At three on the dot, I packed up my stuff and scurried for the bookstore across the parking lot where I could get a latte and be stalked by the redhead.
“Heaven already sent a blonde,” I said as soon as the redhead sat down across from me with a venti caramel macchiato in the bookstore coffee shop. “So I’m guessing you’re with the other guys.” I took a peek at the card. Yup. Fancy special effects with real licking flames and smoke around one word: Delilah.
Delilah leaned forward. “Technically we don’t care if he’s doing you. That’s the Home Office’s little fetish. The whole virgin thing.”
“Oh, please. Me?”
“Exactly,” Delilah said, giving me a once-over that was entirely woman-to-woman and complimentary in the best kind of competitive way. “The fact is, we’re a little worried about Archie. He’s been going through a bad patch.”
I deadpanned. “What exactly constitutes a bad patch?”
Delilah eyed me and sighed. “It was after he started rooming with those losers. He burned down their apartment. The five of them moved. Baz, who is also on our payroll, never said anything about it. That alone was odd. Normally these sex worker guys will rat each other out, tout de suite. Of course we’ve learned to lower our expectations of Baz.”
“Archie did that?” I knew that the man lair had moved now and then. They’d all mentioned it. “Why?”
“We think it was about a woman.” Delilah waited for comment. I said nothing. “Forty years later they’re in another location, and that one burns. Again, Archie had been in a slump, turning in mediocre paperwork, showing signs of fixating on somebody specific instead of turning over the customer base.” Delilah’s hand rotated with “turning over.”
Yeah, that’s how his fuck life looks from where I sit, too.
“It’s a pattern, and it’s a little self-destructive. Last time it happened, the body burned. He had to get it overhauled. And if you knew what they go through for that, you’d know it was serious.” The redhead Delilah raised her eyes and wiggled her ten fingers. “The paperwork, oy.”
“B-Body? Burned?” A shiver ran over me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he set fire to the place he was living in and he didn’t bother to get out that time,” Delilah clarified flatly. “So yeah, we’re a little worried.”
“Because hell is such a caring employer.” Burned. I felt a whole-body cringe. Oh, Archie. What would make my Mister Cool bartender sex demon do such a thing?
“Because we have a considerable investment. Almost fourteen hundred years. If he was some fresh, young punk with the ink on his contract still wet,” Delilah shrugged, “eh.”
“Only fourteen hundred years? What was he doing before that?”
“Before that he, uh, resisted recruitment for a couple of centuries.”
I did arithmetic in my head. “What did he do before six hundred AD?”
“Before that, we didn’t have an active recruitment program,” Delilah said, as if life before hell was completely uninteresting.
“Company woman, are you?” I said, unabl
e to hold in my horrified fascination. “Good health plan? Dental?”
“Absolutely,” Delilah said, and grinned. Her dogteeth were long and sharp.
I sat back a little farther from her. “What did he do before six hundred?” I repeated.
“You had remnants of this and that all over the ancient world. The cult of Isis the Prostitute type of thing. He was better at covering his tracks back then.” There was a note in Delilah’s voice that made my eyes narrow. “The guy’s a born slacker.”
“But a suicidal born slacker,” I said sharply. “Lately.”
“Last forty, fifty years.”
“And you’re telling me because?”
“He screwed up. He screwed up twice. First, he got involved in this project with his roommates, what a bunch of losers, and because he has the political savvy of a mollusk, of course his timing sucked, and the project funding went south. Second, he fell for you. He’s never actually attempted anything organized before. We had such hopes. And then—”
Delilah gave me another once-over, a lot less friendly this time.
“We can’t tell if the project went south and he fell into the old self-destructive pattern, or if meeting you somehow bitched the project from the start. Unless the project is his new way of committing suicide.”
I felt my breath suck in with horror. “How—what—could that happen?”
“Normally,” Delilah said with obviously waning patience, “he has no trouble hiding out. This guy was born to slip into the cracks. With the current administration in the Regional Office, you have to work pretty hard to get noticed. Can you see Archie working hard? So if he’s putting out the effort, he’s up to something. And the only thing he’s been up to lately is trying to get killed. It is possible, if you really work at it, to get so in Dutch with the administration that they punish you. If they can find you.”
“I-I just don’t understand,” I said. I was close to weeping. “He’s trying to hurt himself? And I’m part of the pattern somehow?”
Delilah rolled her eyes and made a “finally!” gesture with both hands.
“What can I do?” I said.
“Keep your eyes and ears open. Listen to him. If you give a shit,” Delilah added speculatively.
Suddenly I remembered who I was talking to. A caseworker from hell. “What do you care?” I said defensively. “Not about my feelings, that’s for darned sure.”
Delilah looked at her manicure. It was a really nice French manicure, I noted. She said slowly, “I’m not allowed to care about anybody.”
She didn’t look up, and I realized the conversation was over. She stood and pulled up her shoulder bag strap.
“Aren’t you going to ask me to spy on him for you?” I said. God, this was creepy.
Delilah looked away. She shook her head without speaking. Then she walked off through Mystery and Suspense and was gone.
I knew it had been a mistake to wait those twenty-four hours. By the time evening rolled around and I was ready to make another chocolate mousse, Archie had called twice with excuses why he wouldn’t be showing up.
Four o’clock: “A connector went bad on the karaoke rig last night. I’ve got to stick around and fix it.” He sounded anxious.
I didn’t believe him. “Fix it tomorrow morning,” I said, “I’ll expect you at eight.” My heart was thumping as I hung up. I’d never flatly told a boyfriend to do anything before.
It was two hours before he called back. That’s how I knew the karaoke rig connector was only an excuse.
“Kama and Veek are moving the MJ plants to the south side of the building and they’ve been whining all day that I won’t be there to help. I think I’d better stick around, or they’ll mess it up.”
“Well, you won’t,” I said boldly. “We have a date.”
“You made the date. I didn’t say I’d come.”
“Oh, you’ll come,” I assured him, blushing at my own innuendo.
“They really need me.”
“Uh-huh. Tell me you don’t want my chocolate mousse.” I squeezed my eyes shut and crossed my fingers.
He didn’t say anything.
“See you at eight.” I was about to hang up. I should have hung up.
“Chloe—” I heard him take a long, deep breath. “I’m making you another charm.”
“I don’t want it,” I blurted. “I want you.”
“We need to talk,” he said in a tight voice.
Well, obviously he was determined to dump me, which was insane. I knew darned well how he felt. I knew he couldn’t resist me.
“Look,” I said, “you’re not getting out of this. Come over and tell me all your excuses, and I’ll unscrew your head, and then we’ll have fun.”
“When did you get so bossy?” he complained. “You’ve been a doormat with men for as long as I’ve known you.”
“I didn’t want them.”
There was a long silence. “Chloe.” There was real pain in his voice. “I can’t.”
“I had another visit from another caseworker today,” I said, throwing down my high card. “This one was from the, uh, Regional Office.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you all about it at eight.”
“I’ll be right over.”
Then I hung up, turned off my phone, and put four seconds into a frustrated scream. I grabbed my head and squeezed, trying to keep my brains in. Men!
I looked around my apartment, realizing suddenly how girlie it was. How had I ended up in my mother’s dream of what I should have wanted when I was in second grade?
Oh yeah. Eight brothers.
I didn’t have much time. I could make chocolate mousse. I could get a garbage bag and fill it with dolls and teddy bears and crocheted toilet paper roll covers. Or I could cover my head with a pillow and scream some more.
I compromised by cussing all men while I cleared away some bedroom and bathroom frou-frou.
I had put on a long Bulls jersey with a really low V-neck and sculpted sides and back, sort of a T-shirt dress pretending to be a boyfriend T-shirt. It hugged my butt and showed off my waist and boobs while at the same time looking like, “Oh, this old rag, my ex-boyfriend left it behind.” I took a minute to put on eyeliner but skipped perfume, remembering Archie’s extremely clever nose.
I also put out all the ingredients for chocolate mousse. I hoped we might not get around to making any.
My heart bounced from hard thumps to bird flutters as I thought of the fight that was coming. I couldn’t fathom Archie’s determination to dump me. Even hell wanted me to treat him right! I couldn’t be mistaken about his feelings. Of course, I’d thought that before about a guy, but Archie was different. Boy, was he.
I wondered if he would show up naked in my kitchen again. My heart thumped slower and harder.
The doorbell rang at seven twenty.
“All right, what about this caseworker?” he demanded as he stormed in. He had a big grocery bag with him.
“You took your time,” I said. “I redecorated.”
He did a double take. I put my hands on my hips so my Bulls shirtdress could do its stuff. He looked. “I don’t see anything special,” he said hoarsely.
I whispered, “Bluffer.”
There was a breathless moment while he stared. Then he stomped into the living room with his grocery bag.
I followed. “You won’t have to cook.”
“This,” he said, pulling a canister of baby powder out of the bag, “is your new charm. It will bring you your true love, no ups, no extras, no delays. Open it tomorrow around ten in the morning and use it.”
I didn’t touch it. “Who made it, you or Lido?”
“I did.” He frowned. “Okay, he told me how, and I did it.”
“Today?”
“Yes,” he said impatiently. That was a relief. If Lido had designed it, I knew it wouldn’t point any men at me personally. Archie narrowed his eyes. “It’s fresh. It will work. You’ll use it?”
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. I sat down on the couch and took his wrist and made him put down the charm and pulled him down next to me.
He didn’t resist, woo-hoo. I was feeling once again the utter bogusness of me having to seduce a sex demon.
“You sell an invention—any invention—you must have a sackful of them by now—and I’ll use the charm.”
I didn’t say how I’d use it. When you seduce a minion of hell, you cheat.
He looked pained. “How did we get onto this subject?”
“I started it. That karaoke monitor gizmo is brilliant. There’s six companies here in town who do big parties who’d love to have it. Don’t partner with them, if you’re too lazy for that. Just sell the darn thing to them. Get your feet wet in the adult world.”
His expression darkened. “You almost had me, until you started talking like my father.”
I had already decided that my biggest mistake was treating men like adults, and not using my sister mouth. “Your father has been dead longer than Shakespeare. Grow up, Archie. I want to bump the ceiling with you every night, forever.”
I hadn’t intended to say that.
“Who are you and what have you done with Chloe the doormat?”
He sounded half-quizzical, half cranky, but his hand got hot in mine. I could smell his man smell. I could practically feel him getting hard, just holding his hand. He looked at my hand suddenly and jumped back.
That’s how I knew I had him.
“You’re not very good at dumping girls, are you?” I realized aloud. “Is that your secret? Is that why Lido had to teach you the whammy?” I remembered what Delilah had said about him fixating on somebody specific. “Why can’t you afford to get to know me, or any woman?”
He was breathing hard now, his eyes wide with alarm. “What has Baz been telling you?”
“It wasn’t Baz. And don’t change the subject,” I said unfairly, since I’d changed the subject myself. “You’re not really a slacker. You work out like a maniac. You put in ten-hour shifts at a bar, which you manage, and you still find time to make capital improvements on it and on the lair, and, oh yeah, sleep with half a dozen women a week. You’re allergic to taking credit or something.”
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