The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes

by Jennifer Crusie

Dee tuned her out. Crash? Crash? Dee had to get herself over to the Value Video!! and find out what the hell was going on.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, interrupting some diatribe Maxine was giving on some wonderful guy named Jude. ‘Yeah. That.’

  ‘The betting’s at two to five she’ll say yes,’ Pauline informed her on the way by.

  Dee shook her head. Crash. ‘Well, put me in for a tenner’

  ‘For or against?’

  Italy. Dee grabbed her briefcase. ‘Either way. You should never think you can predict what Mare’s going to do.’ Pauline laughed and Dee slid across the seat. ‘Uh, I have to…’

  Danny James was already on his feet, sliding his wallet into his back pocket. ‘Come walking with me,’ he said, taking her by the hand. ‘You know you want to.’

  Dee damn near pulled him over on his head. Of all the things to whisper to her.

  You know you want to, Deirdre, Xan had whispered. You want to be like me. But you can’t without my help. Without me, you’ll create disaster.

  Dee’s stomach dropped. Hell, she was nauseous. ‘No, thank you. I need to talk to my sister.’

  But he was already dragging her to her feet. She barely hung on to her briefcase as she was summarily yanked from the booth, with not one patron of the Fork coming to her aid. No, they were smiling, as if they were extras in Love Story, or something. Before she could so much as protest, she was out the door onto the sidewalk.

  ‘Now,’ Danny said, making it a point to fill his lungs with air. ‘Isn’t this better?’

  ‘No,’ she said, even though it was a lie. ‘It’s just windier.’

  He tapped her on the nose. ‘Live a little.’

  Dee struggled to keep her skirt pulled low and her dudgeon high. How did he do it? She wanted to go with him. She wanted to run down the sidewalk hand in hand like a kid and whoop at the moon. And if anybody knew better, it was Deirdre Dolores Fortune.

  ‘Mr James…’

  ‘Danny.’ He took her hand and turned her toward the river. ‘If you want, we’ll walk over to ask your sister why she’d ever want to get married and move to Italy with somebody who sounds like he can’t drive. But on the way, there are still some questions I have.’

  ‘Lucky me.’

  ‘It’s painless, I promise,’ he said with that sly grin of his. ‘What’s up there?’ he suddenly asked, pointing toward the orange-tinted trees that crowned the bluffs across the river.

  Dee followed his gaze. ‘Salem’s Mountain.’

  ‘Can you see the sunset from up there?’

  ‘What’s left of it.’ The clocks had just turned the week before, and it was still a surprise to see the sun up at seven.

  ‘Let’s go see.’

  Dee just blinked at him. ‘Now?’

  He laughed and Dee wanted to smile right back. ‘It would be pointless to do it later. C’mon.’

  Her heart was stuttering again. Temptation whispered in her ear. Mare could wait. The rest of the world would continue to spin on its axis if she took just a little time and watched the sunset with a handsome man. Before she had a chance to really think about it, she let him pull on her hand, and she followed him down the street.

  They only made it as far as the corner when Dee dragged Danny to a stop. She’d just spotted his mode of transportation.

  ‘That’s a motorcycle,’ she accused.

  He straightened, insulted. ‘This is not just a motorcycle. This is a 1956 500 cc Triumph TR6.’

  It sat sleek and low and menacing against the curb. And, damn it, bloodred. Xan red.

  ‘I’m sure it must be very proud. But I’m not going anywhere on it. My sister was almost killed on one of those things.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Now I know where that guy’s name came from. And why you aren’t interested in letting your sister travel to Italy with him. But no one has ever called me “crash.”‘ He leaned close again. ‘Come on. You know you want to.’

  This time the words almost made her groan. He was light. She did want to. He was rubbing his thumb over the palm of her hand and setting up showers of heat all through her. ‘It’s… oh, I can’t do this in a dress.’

  And no underwear.

  ‘Of course you can,’ he said. ‘You probably don’t want to do it with your hair held hostage, though.’

  And before she could so much as protest, he managed to pluck out the one bobby pin that anchored every other bobby pin in her hair so that it all came tumbling down, pins flying everywhere.

  ‘How dare you?’ she demanded, grabbing her hair in an effort to corral it.

  It was too late, of course. Her hair exploded into curls.

  ‘Perfect,’ Danny crowed, ‘This would happen sooner or later on a motorcycle anyway. Come on.’

  She wanted to. She wanted to climb aboard that bloodred disaster machine and wrap her arms around his chest as he kicked the thing into action. She wanted to feel the engine in her chest. She wanted to feel the vibration of the bike in places that were dangerous, places she spent most of her time keeping under strict control. Places that would be pressed snug against his jeans. She wanted to just take off and find out where she went when she got there. And that scared her more than anything.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she demanded.

  Danny’s smile grew even larger. ‘Pure impulse.’

  She shook her head. ‘Pure impulse is what gets people into trouble.’

  ‘Pure impulse is what gets inventions invented and great thoughts thought.’

  ‘And young girls pregnant.’

  Danny stepped closer, crowding her against the bike, and laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘Haven’t you ever given in to impulse, Deirdre Dolores?’

  Dee found herself grinning against her will. ‘As seldom as possible, Danny James.’

  ‘Well, that’s where we differ. I do nothing that’s not spawned by a walloping dose of whimsy. And my whimsy right now is telling me I need to get up that mountain. With you.’

  He was so beautiful, so alive, a shock to her senses. He was magic and freedom, and she was suddenly drunk with him. And she didn’t even know what his secret was. Because he had at least one. She could smell it on him, just like that power he refused to believe he had.

  He lifted a finger to trace her lower lip. ‘You really are beautiful,’ he said, his eyes hooded and compelling. ‘I wasn’t lying about that. But especially with your hair down. You should wear it down more often.’

  She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Couldn’t so much as get a breath past the sudden fire in her chest.

  ‘Now,’ he said, fingering one of her curls like a silk ribbon, ‘I say we find out what my girl can do.’

  Dee took a breath of him and lost what sense she had. ‘Which one?’

  He dropped a kiss on her nose. ‘The one I named after another special lady.’ He still had hold of her hair, and was using it to draw her closer. ‘But not, I think, as special as you…’

  Dee wanted to ask. She thought she did, anyway. But when she looked up into his eyes she lost herself. Blue was the hottest fire, wasn’t it? She simply couldn’t look away from him, from his hot blue eyes. The gathering dusk settled in his hair and sharpened the lines of his face. The scent of power drifted off him, setting up a resonance in her, like a tuning fork. And he was stroking her face, his work roughened fingers trailing sparks. What did a researcher do to get hands like this? What could those hands do to her?

  ‘Xantippe said you looked like her,’ he murmured, bending closer. ‘She was wrong. You’re so much more beautiful.’

  Dee lurched back. ‘Who said I looked like her?’ He blinked, bemused. ‘What?’

  But Dee’s eyes were already closed in despair. ‘You named your motorcycle after my aunt, didn’t you?’

  By nine o’clock that night, Mare was depressed as all hell. Algy had not shown up for the six-thirty showing, thereby shaking Dreama’s faith in her as Queen of the Universe; William was reaching new depths in moroseness, looking so depressed
that she had to keep an eye on him at all times; and Jude repeatedly told her that the New York job was hers for the taking as long as she shaped up and gave up anything that wasn’t ‘normal,’ looking at her as if he expected her to do something in return, like fall into his arms or something. On the positive side, she’d made a noon appointment at Mother’s Tattoos the next day to get the tattoo she’d lied about to Crash so she’d have a new one to show him if he talked her into taking off her clothes before he went back to Italy. But the only really cheerful thing that happened all night was that Pauline from the Greasy Fork stopped in to rent My Dinner with Andre and told her that Lizzie’s incredibly dull boyfriend, Charles Conway, had left for Alaska that afternoon. ‘Why?’ Mare said. ‘Who cares?’ Pauline answered. Since Mare was pretty sure the answer would be ‘Not Lizzie,’ she said, ‘Good point,’ and went back to work.

  ‘So that man who was here earlier,’ Jude said from behind her. ‘You’re not supposed to entertain friends during working hours. Was he your boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes… he vas… my boyfriendt!’ Mare said.

  Jude looked confused.

  ‘Young Frankenstein,’ Mare said. ‘Cloris Leachman. It’s a classic.’

  Jude still looked confused.

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ Mare said.

  Jude looked relieved.

  ‘Mare!’ somebody whispered loudly, and Mare jerked to her feet and saw Dee over by the door, motioning for her.

  ‘Customer needs me,’ Mare said to Jude. ‘Back in a minute.’

  She went over to Dee and pulled her behind the game shelf. ‘Make it quick, that blond guy in the bad green tie is a VP from the head office, and he’s stalking me. Hey, what would you think about moving to Tuscany? Lizzie would like Tuscany and so would I-’

  ‘Can we talk about it later?’ Dee said, looking upset.

  ‘Sure,’ Mare said. ‘Or I just got offered a promotion if we move to New York…’ Her voice faded as she saw that Dee’s hair was loose, a riot of coppery curls, not like Dee at all. ‘What the hell have you been doing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Dee pushed her hair back and then stopped, as if she’d just realized what she must look like. ‘Do you have a rubber band?’

  ‘Nope, but I can fix it, although it’s a shame, it looks great like this.’ Mare tilted her head to concentrate as she began to pull the strands together at the top of Dee’s head, little blue sparks among the copper. It was like the sugar grains; the key was to think of the hairs individually and then to align them so that-

  ‘Stop it,’ Dee said, trying to shove her hair back into place, ‘it’s Xan.’

  Mare stopped and Dee’s curls dropped back to her shoulders. ‘You saw Xan?’

  ‘No. Danny did. Xan sent him.’ Dee’s voice was miserable. ‘He hasn’t said so, but it’s a fact.’

  ‘Oh, hell,’ Mare said, feeling lousy for her. ‘Damn, I’m sorry, Dee.’

  ‘I think she’s close by,’ Dee said. ‘I can feel it.’

  Close by, Mare thought, and her pulse kicked up a beat. Xan who really was Queen of the Universe and who could teach them how to control their powers and then… ‘Listen, she could set us free.’ And I could go to Italy. ‘She-’

  ‘No.’ Dee grabbed Mare’s arm. ‘She’s dangerous, Mare. She has real power, and she wants us. She’s unstoppable, so we can’t let her start.’

  ‘But she’s-’

  ‘And now I can’t find Lizzie.’ Dee sounded truly upset. ‘I left Danny as soon as I learned the truth and ran home to find her, but she wasn’t there. I’m going back out to find him and ask him where Xan is. If I can’t find out, we’ll have to run again. We’ll vote on it, but I just don’t think we have a choice. We’ll have to go.’

  Oh, hell. Forget ever seeing Italy or even New York, Dee was going to bury them in another nothing little town again.

  Unless something stopped her.

  What would make Dee stop running?

  Danny James.

  Mare surveyed her sister. ‘We can’t vote until we know more about what’s going on. So I’m thinking, with your hair down like that, if you unbuttoned a couple of buttons on your blouse, Danny would probably tell you anything you wanted to know.’ She tried to unbutton Dee’s top button with her mind, but the material just puckered as the button pulled on it.

  Dee slapped her hand over the button, her green eyes clouded with worry. ‘Stop it, this is serious. Xan’s tried to find us before, but this time feels different. I can feel it like that storm coming in. Can’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mare said. ‘You wouldn’t believe what’s already come in for me. Crash is back in town.’

  ‘I heard. You don’t think he-’ Dee’s face changed and she said, ‘Shhhh.’

  Mare turned and saw that Jude had come closer and was watching them, not even pretending to be doing something else. ‘That’s the vice president.’ She stopped, struck by a thought ‘You know, the VP turned up about the same time Danny did. You don’t suppose Xan sent him, too, do you?’

  Jude cleared his throat.

  Mare turned back to Dee. ‘Never mind. Xan’s a lot of things, but she’s not lame. Listen, I gotta go. The bottom line is, you have to seduce Danny to find out what’s going on. If he’s from Xan, he’s used to magic, so the whole mom-in-bed thing won’t faze him. And if it turns out that he’s just a pawn, he’ll leave and recover. Eventually.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ Dee said, her voice bleak. ‘Just keep your eyes open for Lizzie and stay away from Xan. You want an education, go to college, not to Xan.’

  She headed for the exit, as sure as ever that she was right, so just as she opened the door, Mare messed up her hair, ruffling her curls in all directions, and Dee snapped around, looked enraged and really, really beautiful.

  Go look like that at Danny, Mare thought, but she called, ‘Must have been the wind. Big storm brewing out there.’ Then she turned to see Jude right behind her, watching everything. ‘Yes, Jude?’

  ‘Was that your sister?’ he said as Mare heard the door slam behind her.

  ‘Yes, it was.’ Mare started to head for the counter and then stopped. ‘What makes you think that was my sister?’

  ‘You’re a lot alike,’ he said, meeting her eyes.

  No we’re not, Mare thought. We look nothing alike. So how did you know?

  Maybe Xan was that lame.

  Up on the big flat screen, Victor Quartermain fired at a little gray bunny that went hurtling backward toward a white light. I know how you feel, Mare thought, and then the bunny ended up in the Bun Vac 6000 floating in rabbity ecstasy, not dead after all.

  ‘I love the Bun Vac,’ she said. ‘What?’ Jude said.

  ‘The Bun Vac 6000,’ she said, nodding at the screen. ‘You’ re vice president of a video company and you don’t know the Bun Vac?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Jude polished his silver tie tack with his finger, almost a nervous twitch by now. ‘I don’t watch children’s movies.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Mare said, and turned back to the screen to watch Victor put a bunny on his head.

  ‘Have you thought about my New York offer, Mare?’ Jude said. ‘It would give you tremendous power. With your abilities you could go right to the top. Vice president in no time. President even.’

  ‘Queen,’ Mare said, her eyes on the bunny.

  ‘The sky’s the limit. No, not even that, no limit. Limitless power. You’d like that. Of course, you’d have to stop doing strange things…’

  ‘I’m thinking about all my offers, Jude,’ Mare said.

  The problem was, the offer she needed most, the one that might set her free, that one she hadn’t gotten yet.

  Maybe I need to talk to Xan, she thought, and turned speculative eyes on Jude.

  Dee was still futzing with her hair and waving off blue sparks as she stalked out of the video store. Every strand of her hair still shivered in outrage from Mare’s trick.

  Seduce him. Easy for Mare to say. She had the courage to try som
ething like that. Dee had spent so much effort trying not to have sex, she swore she’d forgotten how. She-

  ‘Need this yet?’

  Dee jumped a foot. There, leaning against a lightpost, was Danny himself. Smiling, rumpled, and holding out her briefcase like a Christmas present.

  Dee wondered if he knew how good he looked in that Marlon Brando pose or whether he just couldn’t stand up straight for long. It didn’t matter. Her brief dalliance with the illusion of mutual attraction was over. Fantasies survived only in the dust.

  ‘Are you stalking me?’ she demanded, snatching the briefcase and hugging it to herself.

  Danny looked around at the fairly deserted streets. ‘I must be. Here you are. Here am I. Waiting for an explanation for why you disappeared like The Runaway Bride.’

  Giving her hair one last agitated yank, Dee sighed. ‘Please. If you like me, don’t quote movies.’

  He didn’t like her. He was using her, just like the other men Xan had sent to smoke her out. Xan dealt in men the way a Crip sold crack.

  ‘You ran off so fast, I wasn’t sure what happened,’ he said, looking concerned. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  He stepped closer. Dee stepped back. The street by the store had emptied, and the wind had kicked up, catching a flyer for the Elks’ chicken dinner and plastering it against the Civic Pride trash container on the corner. At the horizon, a gathering of clouds showed purple. Portents of the storm to come.

  ‘You can explain about my Aunt Xan.’

  He offered a chagrined grin. ‘She said you’d be upset.’

  ‘And she’d be right.’ Dee shoved her hair off her forehead. ‘I’m not fond of liars. I’m even less fond of people who play games.’

  He held up his hands, the image of innocence. ‘No more games. No lies. I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, but this was important to Mr Delaney. And…’ He shrugged, looking faintly ashamed. ‘I didn’t know you then.’

  ‘Well, you know me now,’ she said. ‘So you can begin to make amends. And that begins with how you really found us.’

  ‘Will you tell me more about your parents?’

  Dee couldn’t help staring at him, presumptuous prick.