"Father made me from one of your ribs, working under the assumption that we'd be closer if I were more a part of you. We'll see. So far it looks like he took a fair chunk of your brains with the rib, even though I'm pretty sure they don't share the same geography."
"Look, um... Eve?"
"Yes. Eve."
"Okay. Look, Eve, I'm sure you're nice enough, and I'm sure Father thinks that he knows best, but I just got out of a thing with this woman named Lilith, and I'm not really feeling the whole 'man and woman thing' right now. It's nothing personal, but..." I trailed off when I saw the look in her eyes. It was the look you get when you drop your kid off at kindergarten for the first time. There was hurt mixed with shock and loss all wrapped up in a big bundle of betrayal, like the whole world had suddenly turned topsy-turvy, and not in the good kind of roller-coaster going through a loop kind of way.
“You don’t love me?” Those eyes brimmed with tears, and a lock of her blond hair trailed out from behind her left ear. She started to turn away, shoulders slumped as if she’d just lost her only friend, which in retrospect I supposed she had, even though we’d just met.
“Wait.” Although I reached for her arm, it was my voice that drew her. “Why don’t we just sit here and get to know each other a little bit? Tell me something about yourself.”
“Well, there’s not a lot to tell since I’m about seven hours old, but I’ll sit with you, and you can tell me about yourself, and this place, and all these creatures that are all around.”
We sat on a rock on top of a hill, and I pointed to the giraffe, the lion, the dog, the horse, and the kiwi. She found the kiwi and platypus particularly amusing, and always used to giggle when the kiwi would waddle past.
We sat there for the rest of the day as I taught her the names of things, and she laughed at my silliness when I tried to ride a hippopotamus or climb a tree after a squirrel. I found her to be witty, open, and completely giving of herself. She laughed whenever she felt like laughing and was so moved at the beauty of the sunset that she wept, big tears rolling down her cheeks to nestle in the hollow of her throat and collarbone while she sported a grin that kept the sun up a couple extra minutes just to bask in her light.
Yeah, we fell in love. I guess we invented it, at least among mortals. The Seraphim had a whole different level of love working, what with their nigh-infinite intellect and capacity for emotion and all. But we fell in love, and we had babies, and then we had an unfortunate interaction with a certain ambitious Seraph who had managed to lose a celestial corporate takeover bid and develop a reputation as the most disgruntled of employees. You all know how that turned out. Then, with the whole Cain inventing murder episode, things spiraled out of control between Eve and me, and that all culminated in a certain number of butterflies in my stomach as I sat in a relatively disgusting bar in New Orleans watching my ultimate first wife take off her top for dollar bills.
I should have known there was going to be trouble. I mean, really, nothing had gone well for me since I sat down at the blackjack table in Vegas. Also, since I’d gone a whopping forty-eight hours without hitting anyone, I should have realized it was too good to last. But I’m not really that smart, so I was somewhat blindsided when everything went to crap.
It started in the middle of Eve’s second song, by which time she had shed her top and was teasing the removal of her oh-so-brief bottoms as she writhed on the edge of the stage for a passel of thick-necked frat-boys in cutoff Dockers and backward LSU caps. Eve’s first song had been some mind-numbingly fast rave thing that left her half-naked and the audience whipped into a frenzy, so when the music shifted to Chris Isaak’s “Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing,” they were at a fever pitch.
About halfway through the song, the first frat boy made his move. Eve was on her knees at the edge of the stage, shaking her boobs in his face while he stuck a dollar in her garter, when he reached up and grabbed a handful of breast. Eve slapped his hand, waved a playful “no-no” finger in his face, and spun away to work the other side of the runway. Unfortunately for so many of us, the frat boy decided he wasn’t done, and he grabbed her thong and yanked her back toward him. Eve whirled on the frat-boy, obviously ready to knock him senseless, but one of his buddies grabbed her fist in mid-swing.
The mood of the crowd turned ugly, and I looked over at Cain. “Keep Emily out of this.” Then, I flung myself into the fast-developing fray.
One of the bouncers had a frat boy in a headlock, but two of the other assholes still pawed at Eve. She couldn’t get free enough to get in a good swing. I caught one of them by the shoulder and spun him around, dropping under his roundhouse elbow and coming up with a shot to the groin.
What can I say? I’m a lover, not a fighter. So, I cheat.
The first idiot went down like two hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight, which at that moment he was, and I clocked the other one behind the ear with a beer bottle. Eve’s back was to me as the guy’s grip loosened, and I went for the dramatic pose, taking the beer I’d just clobbered the kid with and turning it up, bringing it down with a grin just as Eve made it back up on the stage. She looked down at me as I lowered the bottle, and her eyes went wide. I smiled my best saucy smile—and my best saucy smile is pretty good these days—and said nonchalantly, “Hi, Eve. Nice thong.”
I wasn’t sure what reaction I expected, but a crazed shriek wasn’t anywhere on the list. I saw a light in her eyes that I was not in any way happy about, and was just bringing my hands up when one of her four-inch platform shoes caught me square on the tip of my jaw, lifting me off my feet and depositing me, unconscious, in the center of a table occupied by three network equipment salesmen from Toledo.
The last thing I saw before I went completely out was a pocket protector and a convention badge reading “Stewart” in eighteen-point font.
Chapter 16
“Well, that went as well as I expected,” were the first words I heard upon waking.
I took a moment to examine my surroundings before I opened my eyes. Head still attached, check. Sensation in the extremities, check. Lying on some ludicrously hard surface, check. Loud wherever I was, check. I decided that since I was still alive, I might as well let everyone know it. I opened my eyes to see Cain and Emily standing over me, backlit by pink neon.
“Where am I?” I asked woozily.
“Really?” Emily cocked an eyebrow. “Isn’t that just a cliché? Do people really say that?”
“They do when they wake up someplace that’s different from the place where they were last conscious. When you take into account the last time Papa here was awake, he was learning to fly, though doing a crappy job of it, it makes a little more sense.” I lay there for a moment and just ached while I thought about how much less sarcasm there was in my life before my son came back into it.
“Shut your pie hole, smartass. Emily, where am I?” I repeated, somewhat less woozily as the pain in my head and jaw started to blossom.
“Bourbon Street. Or rather, the sidewalk in front of Big Daddy’s. You were thrown out. Literally.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” I groaned and weaved a little as I started to get up.
Cain caught my arm and kept me from falling off the sidewalk into the throngs of people tossing beads and flashing bits of flesh. “Whoa, tiger. Where do you think you’re going?”
“Back in there. We gotta get Eve.” I might have been concussed, but I was hanging on to that thought with a determination that made me a little proud. Even after getting impromptu flying lessons thanks to a kick in the gob, I still remembered my Prime Directive. Kirk would have been proud.
“Wow. I obviously kicked you harder than I thought. I’m right here, asshole. Now, before you try, and I do mean try, to go back in there and get the shit beat out of you by Clarence, who is a very nice man and doesn’t deserve any trouble from meddling immortals, why don’t you tell me exactly what the hell you want?”
I wish I could say that her voice sounded like a choir of ange
ls, but aside from the fact that I’d never been around angels in enough number to make up much more than a barbershop quartet, the sad fact is, it didn’t. It sounded more like really pissed-off fingernails running down a chalkboard. Only more shrill.
“Hello, Eve. Nice to see you. Good to see you still work out.” I allowed Cain to turn me around and face Eve, who was leaning against a window for a shop selling Father-knows-what. She had obviously taken the time to dress, such as it was. Her hair was tied back into a ponytail, and she wore cowboy boots even more garish than Emily’s. The boots led to black fishnets crisscrossing her legs up to a black leather miniskirt. Ever the ironic, she had on a “Got Christ?” tank top that I was pretty sure didn’t look like that in Clerks 2. At least Jason Mewes had never filled one out like that. Apparently, Eve only wore a bra when she intended to take it off soon, because nothing was evident under the tank top but Eve. Damn, she looked good. Trashy, but good.
“Thanks, I practiced for years just in case you decided to drop back into my life. Now, what do you want? Asshole,” she appended, just for good measure.
“It’s a long story. Could you just come back to Cain’s place with us and have a little coffee and Advil cocktail?”
“No. I don’t think I’m going anywhere but home. And you’re not invited. Tomorrow, I’m going to wake up, and I’m going to leave New Orleans, a city that I quite like, thank you very much, and I’m going to have to go looking for someplace else to live. Someplace with a few less assholes. Or really, just one less asshole.” She sounded as though she was starting to find her rhythm, and I knew that in about two and a half minutes she would reach deeper into her vocabulary than just “asshole” for descriptions of me.
Usually, when faced with a woman in the throes of this type of blind, unreasoning hatred, there are a few things I try to accomplish. The first is simply to keep her from killing me, or inflicting a fair amount of pain in the attempt. The second is to keep her out of the public eye enough to prevent the authorities from becoming involved. The third is to reach some type of amicable exit strategy that doesn’t involve me being chased by a large segment of the Roman Legion that just happens to be commanded by the father of a girl who you may have “despoiled,” to use the local vernacular. Yes, it happened. Yes, it was my fault. Yes, the Roman Legion can run very fast. Yes, being staked down over an anthill with honey spread over your genitalia is very uncomfortable. And most importantly, yes, everything grew back just fine. Sometimes, I think that Joss Whedon wrote more parts of my life than Moses did. In this case, I was going to have to make do with the first two.
I did something to Eve that I had never done before, and there wasn’t much left on that list that didn’t involve rendered animal fat and a blender. I used The Voice. “No, you will not. You will come with us. You will hear what we have to say. You will fulfill your duty to the Father and to all of these, our children.” It hurt my back a little to stand at my full height, and I was pretty sure a broken highball glass was wrapped around a rib somewhere, but I held myself upright and locked eyes with Eve.
For the first time in thousands of years of our running into each other and having our little confrontations, she blinked first. She looked down and away, and I thought I saw a glimmer of real surprise in her eyes.
She stood there for a moment, and then her eyes sparked back to life. She threw her head back, stuck out her jaw, and got ready to unleash an absolute torrent of bile in my direction.
Emily stepped in. “Please?” That was it. One word. All she did was look up into the face of her ultimate grandmother and say, in a very small and innocent voice, “Please?”
“Well… shit.” All the fight went out of Eve in the face of an innocent, just as it always did. She looked down at Emily and, in her face, I could see the remnants of the woman I’d loved for a thousand years or more. She touched Emily’s hair almost tenderly, then turned back to me with a glare. “All right, I’ll go hear you out, but don’t think we’re finished, asshole.” She picked up a bag that looked big enough to carry a sawed-off shotgun, and started off down the street.
“I’ve never thought we were finished, Eve. Never,” I murmured as we followed her, my arm around Cain’s shoulders as my balance slowly returned.
Chapter 17
“Oh, Hell no!” was the first thing I heard as Eve preceded me into Cain’s apartment. She whirled on her heel and ran smack into my chest in her attempt at a hasty exit. “I am not going to be in the same room as that self-righteous son of a bitch, and that’s all there is to it. I don’t know what kind of shit you thought you were gonna pull, Adam, but I will have nothing to do with that angelic motherfucker. Period.”
She continued to try to push past me as her diatribe bounced off the walls. Finally, I bent at the knees, put my shoulder into her gut, and carried her into the apartment like a bag of dog food. A kicking, cursing, spitting bag of dog food. I deposited her in an armchair across the room from Michael and stood between the two of them.
Eve quickly sprang out of the chair, and I just as quickly pushed her back into it.
“Sit,” I ordered, and when she looked around and took stock of the situation, she stayed where I had put her.
“Michael, maybe this would be a good time for you to take a walk,” I suggested.
“Yeah, like off a levee,” Eve spat.
“Behave. Now, like I was saying, this might go more smoothly if we just ease into things and bring you in at the end. Whattaya say?” I smiled at Michael with my best ‘Let’s all be buddies’ smile, and was honestly amazed when he looked at me and smirked a little.
“No. I think I’ll just sit here and watch the show.” He crossed his legs at knee and settled back into the sofa.
“What?” Once again with my eloquence.
“I don’t get to observe honest human interactions that often, and this promises to be quite enlightening. I’ll stay.” He leaned back and sipped a glass of white wine from a side table.
“You’re a dick, Michael. Did I ever mention that?” I turned back to Eve and tried to gather my thoughts. “Now, Eve. I’d like for you to just hear me out before you react, and especially before you do anything rash or particularly hard on the furnishings.”
Cain threw a couple of extra deadbolts. “Thanks, Pop. Some of this stuff is hard to replace.”
“All right. I’ll listen. But before we get going, can I ask a couple of questions? And I’d really like a beer,” Eve said sulkily.
Cain went to the fridge, a nice vintage number with magnets on the front from hundreds of different cities all around the world. I guessed he needed some way to track his travels.
“Sure, Eve. What would you like to know?” I asked, sitting on the bench in front of the upright piano Cain had along one wall. I wanted a position near the door in case Eve decided to bolt, and Michael and Cain had the French doors to the balcony covered, so she wasn’t getting out that way.
“First, who’s the kid?” She cracked open a Blackened Voodoo on the edge of an end table that had obviously seen such use on more than one occasion.
“My name is Emily. It’s nice to meet you.” Em crossed to her and held out her hand, but Eve just stared past her at me.
“Who’s the kid?” she repeated levelly.
“Emily is my youngest daughter. But I’m pretty sure you knew that already.” I looked Eve straight in the eyes. I figured it would come up, and we might as well get it out of the way.
“Well, it’s so good to see that I’m remembered. No offense, Emily, I’m sure you’re as nice a person as you could be, given your parentage.” She shook Em’s hand, and the shaken girl returned to sit next to her mother on a love seat.
“I never forgot you, no matter how hard you tried to make me,” I said.
“But you didn’t hesitate to knock up a floozy in every town where you spent more than fifteen minutes, did you? Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t your sole responsibility to propagate the species?” She was start
ing to get nasty, and I knew that the venom would really get flowing in a few minutes, so I made an effort to prevent as much bloodshed as possible.
“Emily, would you and your mother please excuse us for a few minutes? Eve, Cain, and I have some things we need to discuss, and you might not want to be around to hear them.” I knew the second the words left my mouth that I had made a tactical error, not my first of the evening.
“So, this is the latest floozy? And what is your name, dear?” Eve turned her attention to Myra, and all my senses went on red alert.
“I’m Myra. And while I might be the latest, I think the one in the sequined thong might think twice before she calls anyone a floozy.” Myra crossed the room to Eve and extended her hand. Eve stood to take it, then looked Myra up and down slowly as the two women evaluated each other like prizefighters at a weigh-in.
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