Kicking It

by Faith Hunter

  Banks. Hate ’em or hate ’em, they could smell illegal a mile away—when they weren’t the ones behind it. I gave respect where it was due.

  “You’re certain about this?” Elizabeth had opened the spigot on her charisma again, and it was flowing like Niagara. Hopeful eyes, skin paled anxiety white as her diamonds, shoulders braced against a no—she was a living, breathing plea. See? All those naughty things society frowned upon, sins that crawled out of her mouth with snapping jaws and a thousand poisonous legs to pull you in, they were tucked away again as if they’d never been. She was good as gold as ever she’d been. I knew she had it in her.

  “Sugar, I never break a promise.” I hugged her to see if I could get a peek at the label of that astounding dress, then patted her back and cheerfully shooed her out the door. “Don’t fret. It’s as good as done. Hand to God.”

  Whichever god she wanted.

  —

  The week went by faster than I planned. I caught two boys, runaways from the system, I thought, devouring half of a Big Mac out of my back alley Dumpster. Each tried to push the other behind him for protection, and wouldn’t that break any heart? I worked on convincing them to stop eating out of alleys and get to work cleaning the bar for me. They were stubborn and it took some serious talking, but finally they were sleeping in my storage room on inflatable mattresses and trying to stop twitching every time I picked up a phone. I wasn’t going to report them. They were running, and sometimes even the most wholesome of heart and naively caring of folk couldn’t imagine they might have good reason to do so. There were times when running was the only option, when going back to a system that was supposed to protect them could conceivably end up being worse than living on the street.

  Bad things happened. They happened everywhere, not just on the street. These boys had definitely seen the bad. Now I had them tucked away, safe and sound, collector of damaged goods that I was, and that was sorted for a while. Although the blond one—sixteen, or maybe younger—seemed to think I was a one-woman Mafia. He stared at me as if I were the Godmother of Las Vegas, impressed by my daily stream of clients wanting favors and information, wanting this and that, wanting the stars and the moon themselves. His friend, a younger redhead with the eyes of a feral wolf, didn’t care about my business. He ate the food I gave him and snarled when I patted his copper hair and called him Kit. He thought he was a wolf, but he was a baby fox deep down. I’d have to see about fixing him sooner or later.

  So much to do.

  Then came the health inspector, who wanted to shut me down for letting my pet raven help out at the bar. The bird was quick and clever when it came to pecking out a slice of lime and shoving it in the open mouth of a Corona. Lenny—short, naturally, for Lenore, as some clichés can be only good—was more likely to catch a disease from some of my more crusty regulars than the reverse. Health inspectors are stubborn, though. Some need a thorough talking-to in order to come around to a right way of thinking. This one, he was especially obstinate, his palm practically sweating for a bribe. I wasn’t averse to a good bribe now and again, but only when I was the one on the receiving end.

  We talked in my cramped little office, and when was all said and done, he saw it my way. After I gave him a handful of paper napkins, he was out the door and my little bar was safe until next time. Griffin, my newly adopted blond stray, came out of the office later holding something in the palm of his hand. Wise in the ways of the street, he didn’t often look puzzled, but he did now.

  “Trixa, I found this when I was cleaning your office.” Eyebrows in a confused V, he held out his hand like an offering. “I think it’s a tooth. Um . . . teeth.”

  Sure enough, it was. Two bright white teeth with the best porcelain veneers money could buy and stained only a little with dried blood lay cradled between the teenager’s life line and his heart line. That did not make for a good fortune. I swept them out of his hand and deposited them in the garbage can behind the bar. “Sorry about that, sugar. I was sure I’d gotten them all.” Because two were far fewer than had originally littered the floor of my office. “Do you know that holier-than-thou ass told me his daughter needed braces and he’d let me keep the bar open if I helped him out there, as he was a good and charitable father that way?” I snorted and rested my elbows on the bar and propped my chin in a cupped hand, a hand with scraped and raw knuckles. “Course he couldn’t explain how his smile was so fake and pearly white if he couldn’t afford braces for his baby girl. Hardly seemed fair a father should take what he should be giving his child. It should make him feel guilty as hell.” My lips curved, sly and satisfied. “I do believe he won’t need to feel guilty so much now, having no teeth in his smile at all.”

  Zeke, Griffin’s cohort and my little rabid fox, came up to us holding a mop. “Blood by the door,” he grunted, wholly unimpressed by the brightest red of bodily fluids. “Cleaned it up. Time for lunch?”

  I had given the man napkins, but I supposed napkins could soak up only so much blood when you’re abruptly missing all your upper teeth. Now I needed a new mop and lunch for the heathens—my minions in the making. I patted them both on the head. Griffin flinched automatically and Zeke growled.

  Again, so much to do.

  —

  Not that I forgot Elizabeth and how she wanted her life changed. It was a busy week, but just as work is work, a project is a project and a thing of grace and beauty. I talked to people and they talked back. As the song says, you can have friends in high places and you can have friends in low places. I have friends in all places, from good to bad and all flavors in between. I gathered my information and I threw my spare hours into fixing Elizabeth’s problem just as I promised.

  There were supplies I’d have to gather, unusual but not unheard of, a different kind of artist to find to shape certain materials—and I had less than four days to get that done. It would require some traveling and I asked my friend Leo to watch the bar for me . . . and my two new acquisitions. Leo would tell you he was a Native American and you’d have no reason to doubt him, given his waist-length black hair and copper skin. But Leo didn’t like to talk about the north and Leo didn’t like to talk about ice and Leo might be inclined to stab you with the tap to a beer keg if you brought up anything related to Vikings or mythology. And when the rare storm came over the city and it thundered, Leo would go out in the rain to flip off the lightning. I’d known Leo a long time. Leo had earned his issues, so I didn’t laugh at him scowling at the sky in the rain . . . not too much, anyway. Especially since he agreed to help me out, as he always did.

  He gave Griffin and Zeke a look both jaundiced and resigned when he showed up. “Are you going to clean them up and give them away to a good home on craigslist?”

  I gave him a swat on his ass, which was swattable in the best ways, and a kiss on his cheek. “Behave. You were once my stray, too.”

  There was an unimpressed lift of eyebrows. “If you mean that I saved your ass and your life and subsequently you began sending me a constant stream of requests for information and favors, then, yes, I was your stray. I don’t know how that evaded me so long.”

  “Fine, fine, fine.” I waved it away. “We were both each other’s strays. Now, don’t encourage the boys with your less tolerant ways. They don’t need you teaching them that the best way to get a tip is to pound a customer’s head against the bar. They’re good boys.”

  Griffin gave a guilty droop of his shoulders at that, while Zeke looked irate at the very thought that he was good, and Leo went with amused. “If they were that good, Trixa, you wouldn’t be so invested in them.” I’d learned a lot about lying from Leo, but he’d also taught me that the truth, at times, can be more inconvenient than any lie. Before I could get my panties in a bunch and work up a good outrage—I loved a good outrage—Leo smacked my ass this time. “Go. I’ve got it covered here. Enjoy your project.” His teeth gleamed with the last word, and brought a smile from t
he wolf within him. It was the same wolf whose growls Zeke imitated, but didn’t really have it in him to be. Not just yet.

  But puppies do grow up.

  With things in hand—I wouldn’t say stable or good or trustworthy, but in hand nonetheless—I left. I had a long way to go. Maybe I’d fly. I loved to fly . . . the world distant below, heaven just as distant above, and you had a chance to own everything between. I’d been in Vegas less than a year, but the roots were already cramping. I still had things to do, though, and at this moment . . .

  Elizabeth was first on my list.

  —

  When traveling is in your genes, you tend not to carry things with you. It was why I liked all the shinies of the world. I knew eventually I’d have to leave them behind and find new ones wherever I landed next. If I didn’t, I’d get so weighed down that one day I wouldn’t be able to take a single step, much less run or fly. So I treasured my trinkets and gewgaws, as Mama called them, as much as I possibly could. It made them all the more precious for the short time I had them. Sometimes, though, you come across something so perfect and special you can’t just leave it for strangers to find and loot. Those things you squirrel away, hide them from greedy eyes. Safe-deposit boxes would be nice, but as I’d noted, the banks don’t trust you, so why should you trust them?

  That’s how I ended up in an old rock cellar with the house a hundred years gone. I’d sealed this particular precious thing very carefully wrapped in a hundred layers of silk and tucked away in a stone box buried in that cellar where no one could find it or touch it or even see it.

  I do hear you, you know, judging me? No, I don’t have delusions of pirates, doubloons, and gaudy treasure chests.

  I’m not a peculiar strain of hoarder, either.

  Why are you making that doubty, pouty face?

  I am not a hoarder.

  I’m not.

  Truly.

  Pinkie swear.

  Ha! You caught me. I really, really am.

  I held the wondrous thing I hadn’t seen in ages in my hands, heard the river in the distance, heard the rustle of trees so green it made Vegas look like a boneyard. I felt the bite of the chilly air and watched a single ray of sun set my iridescent hands alight like a thousand burning rainbows.

  Yes . . .

  If this didn’t change Elizabeth’s life, nothing would.

  —

  Finding a bootmaker wasn’t difficult exactly, although these days when ninety-nine percent of footwear is made of the devil spawn of plastic and some sort of biohazard offspring from China, they are few and far between. To find one willing to do the work in two days, and with the material I was providing, would surely make these the most expensive boots Elizabeth had ever worn. Marie Antoinette had diamond-encrusted shoes that were less expensive, but it would be worth it. I’d made a client a promise, and while I broke promises if I had to, I, as I’d told Elizabeth, never broke one related to my work. I had standards . . . just ask my health inspector.

  I called home to make sure my boys, all three of them, hadn’t in fact set the bar on fire. Leo snorted, told me Zeke bit a customer but that he had it coming, get off his back already, and hung up on me. He was having a good time. I could tell. Sometimes Leo needed a distraction to keep him from returning to his bad old ways. It was why I poked and prodded him so much. Leo had been my first fixer-upper and he was still a bitch in upkeep, but he was worth it. He’d be good for Zeke and Griffin. There wasn’t anything they could do that would faze him, including burning down the bar.

  After that, I killed time on a beach in an only mildly scandalous scarlet bikini and watched as a man—with far less manscaping than needed for the Speedo he was wearing—strutted up and down, flirting (he would say flirting, anyone else would say sexually harassing) with anything female and/or remotely approaching legal age. Later I laughed in the water, tasting salt, as a horny dolphin humped the guy into a near drowning. All right, perhaps CPR was involved and it was a close call, but as concerned as the lifeguard was, I didn’t see any women on the beach crying tears for the pervert. In fact I saw a few waving and taking pictures of the dolphin-love in progress. That and a few banana daiquiris, and my day was finer than frog hair . . . which is something I say only when I have a few banana daiquiris in me. One doesn’t want to be too much like their mama.

  The next day I went to the zoo, where I saw a man climb into the lion enclosure shouting that like Daniel in the lion’s den, the Lord would send an angel to save him. I’d always personally been of the belief that those lions Daniel was tossed to simply weren’t hungry that night. But I might’ve been wrong, as the zoo lions looked well fed, almost plump, not hungry in the slightest, and they ate this faithful follower before a single employee could get inside.

  You live and you learn.

  Well, to be more accurate, I lived and I learned. Our Daniel was less fortunate.

  What if I bought a stuffed lion toy as a souvenir on my way out? It reminded me that there were seize-the-day moments all around. Cages, no matter the size, didn’t change that—not for us lions, anyway. Then it was time to pick up the boots, gift the maker with honey-drizzled chatter over the masterpiece they were—and that was an understatement—a kiss on each cheek for the artiste, a very large payment, promise of future business, and finally it was time to go home. I couldn’t wait to see Elizabeth’s face, for her to see what could’ve been a boring job turned into a work of art that I knew we’d both appreciate.

  —

  Or not.

  “This is it? These are supposed to be the answer to my problem? How exactly is this going to do anything, you stupid bitch?”

  Elizabeth wasn’t quite as lovely or the embodiment of grace when her face was splotched red with rage, her mouth twisted with derision, and her hand slapping the table hard enough to kill a spider—the bird-eating, plate-sized South American kind.

  “Bethy”—that’s what they’d called her before she’d married money, when she lived down in the trailer park where her mother worked two jobs and her father was in the wind—“if you call me a bitch again, I’ll solve your problem in an entirely different way. One that will involve prison and police, because I know all about you. Why, I had to know all there is to know to get you what you wanted, didn’t I? But while I said I made no judgments, sweetie, I never once said I tolerated disrespect.”

  Her mouth snapped shut, but the anger still boiled under her skin. I could almost see it, looking for a way, any way, out. Her eyes flickered to the full champagne bottle on the table, and for a second I could see her picturing how nicely it would splatter my brains on my favorite silk shirt. I wasn’t surprised by that. That’s who Bethy was. Who she’d always been. She’d told me what she wanted—a rich man to marry who would conveniently die with or without her help, made no difference on that score to her. I said happy to deliver and named my price. Her price. Semantics.

  What she hadn’t told me was her path to that want and desire. It was paved with the very same: four rich, older men who died not long after marrying Bethy Rose, the girl who’d polished up her accent, sanded away the trailer park from her skin, made herself into something a shallow person would want to own and pay to own it. Shallow or not, every one of those four men had been kind to her, as kind as they had it in them to be. They’d done their best to make her happy. Not everyone’s best is equal in all ways, but if you give your all, even if you have less to give than the more saintly, you still tried. It still counts. That made Bethy the murderer of four innocent, if not particularly bright, men.

  I sold information all the time. I know how to do my research.

  I’d found Bethy’s pattern and I found out the root of her problem. It was never enough. First a rich man and then a millionaire and then a multimillionaire, but, oh, times were hard and millions weren’t what they used to be when you’ve grown accustomed to maids and pool boys and drivers and
country clubs and Learjets. Bethy spent it all and had to find herself a new husband. Trouble was, best effort expended or not, the men she wanted were as shallow as I’d said and Bethy wasn’t twenty-two anymore. Or thirty-two. Or forty-two. Billionaires are a special breed, and an old horny billionaire is going to want a young thing with tits done by Dr. Double D and the only lines on her skin the ones shown by her Brazilian wax. Bethy couldn’t compete with that, not anymore.

  She asked me for a man who would see her as beautiful (which she was), to not be so shallow about the age yet stupid enough to be obsessed with her within a week and marry her within a month. It would be nice if he had a heart condition and died promptly on his own. One honeymoon had taken care of that for her before, but if that was too much to ask, she’d handle it. She’d handled it three other times and no one had ever caught her out.

  Save for me.

  “So, little Bethy Rose from the trailer park on Pike’s Hill,” I poured her a glass of the champagne, “keep your trash talk to yourself and let’s celebrate. I found you the perfect man, who matches all your qualifications save a minor one. He would love you instantly in all your ways and”—I laid the newly fashioned boots across her lap—“he has a highly documented fetish for women in boots. You are his ideal woman, Bethy, but every good con still needs a hook, and these boots are yours.”

  Her anger dissipated, leaving her as pink and flushed and dewy as her middle name. “Oh.” Now she ran a hand over them and basked in the sight. After all, this was a woman who loved her thousand-dollar black-and-white snakeskin shoes and these boots—they made those shoes look like Kmart ninety-nine-cent flip-flops. The scales lay so flat you could barely see them as anything that had ever been separate from one another except for the color. Every color that existed was there. It wasn’t the bright explosion I’d dug up in another country. No, now it was a subtle watercolor wash that shimmered in a milky opal cascade. The first mermaid rising on the waves of the sea to drown a sailor would’ve been made of this. It was mystery and magic and impossibility with the mists of an Eden morning keeping it safe.