CardsNeverLie

by Heather Hiestand

  A job well done, she told herself after putting everything away and opening the door of the mixing room. She had accomplished her task and her project had kept her from thinking about Rob’s phone call. But he wasn’t the only man nominally in her life.

  Tommy Joe stood outside the mixing room door, as if lying in wait for her. His eyes blazed into hers for a moment then he tilted his head and grinned boyishly.

  “Hi there,” she said, blinking at the industrial lighting in the hall. The lights were fairly dim in the mixing room to lessen damage to the oils. She felt a little dizzy, not sure if it was from his strange gaze or the lighting. Melanie put her hands to her temples. “I’m going to get something to drink in the cafeteria.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Tommy Joe said, smiling as he accompanied her down the hall. “You look like you need a break.”

  “I wanted to ask you something,” Melanie said after gulping down half a bottle of Aquafina purified water.

  “Shoot,” he said promptly.

  “Do you speak to your brother very often?”

  Tommy Joe’s expression became guarded. “Sometimes.”

  “Did you say anything to him about LeatherWorks being for sale?”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret,” Melanie said, “but I mentioned it to you as inter-company gossip.”

  Tommy Joe leaned forward in his chair and looked like he was going to say something but didn’t.

  “I hope you keep anything I say about Professional Massage’s business confidential in the future.”

  Tommy Joe nodded. Melanie noticed that he hadn’t admitted anything, but he had obviously told his brother. What was the point of rehashing it further? Really, Rob was to blame.

  “That’s all I had to say,” Melanie said, rising.

  Tommy Joe put a hand on her arm.

  “What?”

  “Did you get in trouble?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” Melanie said, irritated.

  “I wouldn’t want that.” She could tell his remark was heartfelt. He alarmed her with the strength of his emotions. Though slight in body, his feelings were intense and often seemed out of sync with the occasion. But sometimes, she realized, they were enough to make you go along with him, as with that night in the LeatherWorks booth. Could she blame him for the craziness of that night? Was Rob correct in saying that Tommy Joe had been in his element?

  “Great,” Melanie said. “Neither would I. I’ve got to get back to my office.” She wished Gerald had been more exciting. Having only experienced one lover, she had no idea where the line was between imaginative and kinky.

  “Hold on for a minute.” Tommy Joe stood up. “I wanted to ask you something.”

  Melanie waited.

  Tommy Joe took a deep breath. “There’s a charity ball this weekend. For Children’s Orthopedic Hospital. My boss just gave me two tickets. I said I’d use them.”

  “You want me to go with you?” Melanie considered. Did he deserve another chance? He kind of weirded her out, but maybe she was just chicken. She felt good about her job again, so maybe it was time to take another ride on the wild side.

  “Yes, they’re company tickets,” Tommy Joe said. “There are sure to be execs there. It’s always good to socialize with them.”

  Melanie nodded. He had her at “company tickets”. She needed to do everything she could to raise her visibility above Al Plowman’s questionably supportive level. Not to mention her opinion of him had taken a nosedive after hearing the story of how he had broken up with Anita. She needed to find a new mentor. “You’re right. I’ll go. Do I need to pay for you for my ticket?”

  Tommy Joe’s anxious features relaxed. He had been afraid she would say no. Poor guy. How could you reject someone who liked you that much?

  “No,” he said with a radiant grin. “Just wear your best party dress.” He held out a hand. “Oh wait, it’s a costume ball.”

  “What are you going to wear?”

  He shrugged. “I have a couple of old costumes. My college fraternity was big into Halloween.”

  “No manacles this time, right?” she teased.

  Tommy Joe looked confused then grinned. “Not this time.”

  “Great,” Melanie nodded. Just great. “Email me the details.” From the corner of her eye she saw Jill enter the cafeteria and went over to her to check on the status of the meetings she had asked to be arranged.

  * * * * *

  On Saturday night, Melanie sat quietly on her bed as Brisa adjusted the iridescent costume wings on her back. Brisa’s son Ethan ran loudly down the wood floor of the corridor outside her bedroom making car noises.

  “Calm down, sweetie,” Brisa yelled around the safety pins in her mouth. “I don’t want you scraping up Cousin Melanie’s nice floor.”

  “It can take some abuse,” Melanie said, feeling her back cramping from the awkward position. “Are you done yet?”

  “Just about.” Melanie felt Brisa put in a couple more pins. “Voila.”

  Melanie stood up and looked at herself in the freestanding cherry mirror that stood in the corner of the room. “I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “Don’t you think it’s just a tad virginal?”

  Brisa laughed. “It ought to keep Tommy Joe’s mind on the straight and narrow.”

  Melanie rolled her eyes. With her blonde hair, white robe and incandescent wings, she looked like a Hallmark angel. Looking at herself would make her mind stay on the straight and narrow. Maybe that was for the best. Brisa had met with Stanley on Friday and LeatherWorks would receive a letter from him on Monday. Any sex with Rob Black would be purely of the late night fantasy kind from then on. She sighed. Of course, her date tonight was with Tommy Joe. But she had promised herself to make him get tested before she did anything with him, no matter how compelling he was. The way he behaved, she couldn’t trust him.

  But still. “You’re sure we don’t have any other costumes lying around?”

  Brisa nodded. “My Renaissance peasant costume didn’t fit you and you never took the time to go to the costume store, so this was it.”

  “I didn’t have time to do more than hit you up.” The week had been saturated with product reviews. Melanie could see from the specks on her mirror she hadn’t even dusted her bedroom in a couple of weeks. At least. Not that a man would care, but she was almost glad she wouldn’t have any company to bring home tonight.

  The doorbell rang. Brisa gave Melanie’s wings one last tug. “Showtime, cuz. You ready?”

  Melanie nodded and headed to the front door. She could hear Tommy Joe’s voice as he said hello to Ethan.

  “How come you’re going out with Melanie?” she heard his childish voice say. Her cheeks burned.

  “Because she’s the prettiest girl where I work,” Tommy Joe said, his voice closer now.

  “Don’t you mean prettiest woman?” Brisa said behind her.

  Tommy Joe’s mouth was open in response when Melanie reached the entryway, but that wasn’t the part of him she noticed. Every part of his body was covered in form-fitting red latex. He had huge red horns on his head and a forked red tail. She heard her cousin’s gasp.

  “You’re the devil,” she said. A silent scream rang in her head.

  Tommy Joe looked down at himself and grinned. “Hello, pretty woman.”

  “I’m an angel,” she said stupidly.

  “Yes, you are. Yes, indeed,” he leered.

  “Sweet Lord,” Brisa said. “Ethan, come here.” She tucked an arm around her son’s thin shoulders. “This is too funny.”

  Melanie shot her a death ray look.

  “The angel and the devil. Tommy Joe, honey, did you bring the manacles?” Brisa shook her head. “I guess you’d have no place to put them. That costume leaves nothing to the imagination.”

  Melanie sneaked a quick look at Tommy Joe’s nether region and gulped. He may have spidery limbs but the rest of him looked substantial enough. She hoped he wouldn�
�t embarrass himself during the course of the evening. Again.

  “You need to get your door fixed, Melanie,” Ethan said. “It totally stuck. I could hardly open it.”

  Maybe that would have been for the best. Melanie snuck another quick glance at Tommy Joe’s package.

  Tommy Joe grinned as if he knew what she was thinking and held out his free hand. “Come with me. You are only risking your immortal soul, angel.”

  Melanie smiled weakly. And her potential happiness with Rob, who seemed farther away from the realm of the possible than ever. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  He leered again. “This is great. I wonder if they’ll have an award for best costumes. I bet we’ll win if they do.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be mingling with upper management.” Keep it businesslike. It was a way to get through the evening. She just couldn’t see this man as a romantic partner, or even as a sexual one.

  “You think they’ll be dressed any more tastefully? No way. Donald Milton in Accounting comes as Barney Rubble every year, I’ve been told. Like that’s going to look classy.”

  Melanie giggled in spite of herself. “You’re right. We’re sure to have a colorful evening.” She waved to her relatives and walked down the steps in front of Tommy Joe, holding the hem of her robe off the ground.

  Chapter Eleven

  “You’re sure you don’t mind chauffeuring me to the ball?” Melanie asked, holding onto Tommy Joe’s hand as she carefully stepped out of the backseat of his shiny-new, luxury-model Lexus.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Your wings weren’t going to fit in the front.”

  Melanie handed him his pitchfork as she exited, wondering where a Product Development analyst had come up with the money to buy such an expensive car.

  “Thanks, angel.” Tommy Joe grinned.

  “Don’t forget your horns.” She took one last look at the sleek automobile. He must have family money.

  “Oh yeah.” He grabbed his red horn headband from the passenger seat, pushed it onto his head and slammed the door shut. “Have you been to the Experience Music Project before?”

  Melanie glanced sidelong at Tommy Joe and squeezed her eyes shut. Money didn’t buy stylish costumes, obviously. In his rubber suit, he looked like a bunch of red crayons glued together with Tom Cruise’s head pasted on top. “Several times. Ethan loves the Sound Lab.”

  “He’s a cute kid. Is his father around?” They crossed through the Seattle Center parking lot and walked down to Fifth Avenue North where the museum was located.

  “I don’t know who his father is, actually.” Now that Melanie knew some of her cousin’s past, she tried to compare the faces of people she had met in Las Vegas to Ethan’s features. None of them matched.

  “That’s too bad.” When they got up to the McDonald’s a horde of costumed people waited at the crosswalk. A knight, an emperor, a King’s fool, a pair of young lovers á la Romeo and Juliet, two peasants, a queen. Since this was Seattle the costumes weren’t very revealing but it still felt like a show, the way Vegas had and she had a sense of dejá vu. A French maid with an absurdly short Abraham Lincoln joined them from the left. Melanie caught Tommy Joe checking out the French maid’s abundant cleavage. She felt let down, her costume was all wrong for a date. She wished she had taken the time to go to a costume store. The walk light came on and Tommy Joe grabbed her elbow. She gently shook it off.

  “I’m not geriatric, you know.” Just a lame dresser.

  “I don’t want to lose you in the crowd.” They were jostled by a bar hall floozie and a cowboy as they crossed the street.

  “Like that’s going to happen,” Melanie muttered. Her costume would probably glow with a pure white light inside the EMP. Look at me, I’m as square as they come! No one over the age of eight and outside of a Nativity scene should dress like this.

  They reached the multi-colored metal blob that housed the EMP and entered by the Sky Church, where the ball was being held. Melanie immediately excused herself and went into the bathroom. She had to do something about this costume!

  In the mirror, she frowned at her Hallmark angel self. Determined to make a change, she tugged at her robe. That was the ticket. She loosened the criss-cross straps holding the wings on and rearranged her robe until she showed some cleavage. She played with her adjustable bra until she was satisfied. The wing straps now framed her breasts. Another glance in the mirror showed she looked anything but demure. She smiled at herself then, nearly satisfied with her transformation, opened her clutch bag. She withdrew a tube of bright red lipstick left over from the last time she had gone out—luckily, in a little black dress that went perfectly with marcelled hair and red lips. She applied it over her modest mauve lipstick and grinned in a distinctly unholy way at herself. Wild and loving it.

  Tommy Joe was nowhere to be seen as she made her way, more confidently this time, into the crowd. She spoke briefly to a sorceress who worked in the Operations department at Professional Massage then saw her date’s red latex behind between a clown and a gorilla.

  She had almost reached the Devil Tommy Joe when a monk barreling by stopped her. While she waited for his considerable bulk to pass, she heard a whisper in her ear.

  “Come to me, fallen angel.”

  As the room-length video screen in front of her lit up in a dizzying show of red, pink and yellow dots, Melanie whipped around, feeling a shiver go down her spine at the sound of that deep, smooth voice. Disoriented, she turned in a circle, looking for Tommy Joe. But it hadn’t been his voice. She wondered if it could possibly have been Rob, but before she could finish the thought, a voice boomed to her left, startling her even more than those whispered words.

  “Welcome to the Children’s Orthopedic Benefit, ladies and gentlemen. I’m thrilled to see so many of you here tonight…”

  Melanie found herself in front of the sound system as a hospital executive welcomed the crowd. She slunk away, resisting the urge to plug her ears, as he extolled the many programs for which the hospital needed funding.

  “Melanie!”

  At her elbow was a poor excuse for Barney Rubble with an anachronistic Lara Croft next to him.

  “Is that you, Donald?” Pudgy with a rather squeaky voice, it certainly hadn’t been him calling her.

  “It sure is. Are you here alone?”

  “No, my devil has gone missing.”

  Lara Croft laughed. “Cute idea. I take it you’re in the process of being converted to the dark side?” She indicated Melanie’s impure cleavage. “We’ve never met before. I’m Mary Milton, Donald’s wife.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Melanie said, putting a hand to her chest. Maybe she had gone a bit too far. She scanned the crowd for Tommy Joe. Any desire to mingle had left her when she heard that sexy voice. She wanted to fall, at least into his arms, if it really had been Rob. The light show started again, whipping gold and silver streaks around in a dizzying wave, then the screen washed down in red.

  “Fallen angel,” she heard the whisper again. She turned, but no one was there except the Miltons.

  “I’m sorry,” she smiled. “I thought I heard someone calling me.”

  “The acoustics in here are pretty wild,” Donald said.

  “You’re telling me,” Melanie said, looking around as much as she could without actually being rude and turning her head. Her peripheral vision noted Tommy Joe, stroking his forked red tail in the flashing light, coming their way. It was too late to escape and pursue the voice.

  “There you are!” he said loudly, dropping the tail and draping that same arm around her. Melanie repressed a shudder, remembering the intimate way he had touched her that night in Vegas.

  “Donald, Mary, it’s great to see you.” He held out his hand.

  Donald took it with some hesitation and leaned forward. “I’m sorry, you are again?”

  “Tommy Joe Harriman,” Tommy Joe said, his smooth forehead creasing.

  Donald’s brow cleared. “Oh yes
, of course. Sorry, I didn’t recognize you in that—” he waved a hand at the red vinyl covering Tommy Joe’s lean form like some demented sausage casing.

  “I love it,” Mary said, tucking her hand into Tommy Joe’s arm and rubbing her 36D breast along the edge of his back. Melanie realized Mary was quite drunk, despite the early hour.

  Tommy Joe, ignoring the fact that he was now sandwiched between two women, started talking to Donald about a management principles book he had just read. Typical Tommy Joe. He’d suck up to anyone to get ahead. Now where did that come from, Melanie wondered.

  “I’ll be back,” she said and slipped away. She shouldn’t have come. Tommy Joe in that red devil costume gave her a serious case of the creeps. Giddy with escape, she moved toward the light show with her back to her coworkers. Thunderous music started to play as another speaker finished thanking all of the partygoers for coming. The bass thrummed in Melanie’s ears as she passed too close to a loudspeaker.

  With her eardrums throbbing, she almost didn’t hear the whisper. “It’s been a long week, angel. Is it time to come out and play?”

  She could feel his breath on her ear and a dark form moved to stand in front of her. Not trusting her eyes, she closed them and put out her hand. His chest felt warm and she rubbed her hand across the masculine nipple underneath the fine cotton shirt. It pearled under her questing fingers.

  Startled by her body’s matching response, she opened her eyes. Adonis wore black, from his turtleneck to his gloved hands, to his black oxfords.

  “Rob,” she breathed. What kind of costume was this? When she looked into his face, she blinked. Was it really Rob? Even in the dim light, she could see the man had dark hair. She reached her hand up and felt tiny horns. Was he the devil too? Her breath caught in her throat. What could it mean?

  “I’ve come to take you home,” he whispered, bending over. He blew a stream of hot breath into her ear.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” she said, hearing her voice come out all shaky. “Your hair is so dark. And those horns.”