Wishing on a Blue Star

by Kris Jacen

  On another hand, if I have to do a bone marrow transplant, that’s an automatic acceptance of a claim, and once again, pay the dead guy, for a while at least. There’s a six month recovery period for that shit, assuming it’s successful, and I am so NOT looking forward to six more months of hell. Oh yeah. Keep most of whats n the coffers. (It’s a recurring theme.)

  The problem with all of these hands is that none of them will come in time to cover what I have extant, and the choice literally becomes “Get the transplant and pay bills, or declare bankruptcy.” (And that’s not even a choice I can make for myself. Someone OTHER than John does that, and I dont trust anyone but John.

  Honor and responsibility are at something of an impasse here because tomorrow, John will ask me how I’m feeling. I wont be able to say one way or another because of the possible affect on that damned claim. And I’ve run out of hands. Mutter.

  The whole process is so convoluted and geared toward the system rather than the individual that it’s no wonder at all the only ones who profit are the members of the administration, and the low life scum who cheat the system itself. (Probably one and the same. Administrators get paid regularly, right? Too bad they dont get paid exactly what the approved claimants do.)

  I really wish I was one of those low life scum. I wish I knew HOW to cheat the system, just so I can pay my damned bills. It’s not like I drive a Cadillac or have the latest in Home Stereo Theatre, etc. Never mind. More politics I don’t want to get into.

  Since I’m not a low life scum (usually) and choice always exists, there is another option for a guy who falls asleep at the drop of a hat.

  I write.

  Surely not fast enough, and definitely not prolific enough, but it’s something I can do and I do get a few bucks, eventually.

  There are detractors of my genre who say that writing Romance is little more than hooking on a street corner. (You knew we’d get back to that sooner or later.)

  I dont care. I like the work, LOVE the people I’ve met, and like those days twenty years ago, it’s an option. I’ll never get rich at it, probably wont even break even, truth to tell, but it’s a choice I make hoping to keep a little dignity by keeping busy (the keyboard doesnt give a shit if I doze off) and again, like those far off days, its fun.

  So I’ll hop on anther spoke, or maybe another axle entirely and keep writing; keep hustling on the street corner. I’ve done it before, right?

  I might even get lucky and one of the married bastards who makes up the rules for Soc.Sec. will drive by slowly and check me out. Shadows are handy things. They hide all manner of secrets. Including whether my grin is interested or predatory. Just dont let me anywhere near your balls mister, ‘cuz I’ll crush ‘em.

  And besides, a little sex on the side never hurt anyone. :)

  Patric (who is much calmer now)

  With This Flower

  Karenna Colcroft

  If the road didn’t go on forever, it came pretty darn close.

  By Zack’s lack-of-watch reckoning, at least fifteen minutes had passed since he’d turned off the blacktop side road onto this dirt track that was barely wide enough for his van. He’d seen no houses or any other signs that anyone lived up here, but the notes on the clipboard beside him insisted that he was supposed to install a satellite system in a house at the end of this road.

  If the road ever ended. Which it didn’t seem to.

  He had to have taken a wrong turn somewhere. He remembered the directions saying something about turning left at a blue mailbox, which he’d done, but it might have been the wrong blue mailbox. There had to be more than one. Otherwise, he was apparently driving down a dirt road that led to the next county, if not the next state. And he couldn’t even pull over to check the directions again, because there was no “over.” If he stopped the van, he’d block the entire road.

  He silently cursed his coworker, Pete, who should have been riding shotgun and helping with navigation. Pete had called in “sick,” which, from what Zack had learned about the man over the past few months, meant he’d been out partying the night before. Since Pete had waited until five minutes before Zack had to leave to make the call, there hadn’t been anyone else available to go with him on this job. He’d done installations alone before, but they were a bitch to do without a second set of hands to help with the equipment, and without someone reading the map for him, he’d clearly gotten himself lost.

  No one lives this far out in the middle of nowhere. I should call the office and find out where I’m supposed to be.

  He fumbled his cell phone out of its holster on his belt, only to find he had no reception. He shouldn’t have been surprised. After driving this long down a road on which all he could see were relentless lines of trees on either side, branches meeting above him barely allowing any sunlight through, he’d begun to wonder whether he was still on earth.

  Sure. I’ve gone through some fantasy portal into some magical land of trees and shadows.

  At the thought, he shuddered, then laughed at himself. Some people just didn’t like other people. He was installing a satellite system for a hermit, that was all. Assuming he ever reached the end of the road where the hermit’s house allegedly sat.

  Peering ahead, he saw what looked like a break in the trees. Finally!

  A moment later, he drove into a large clearing. Ahead of him sat a farmhouse that looked like something from a child’s storybook, complete with a brook meandering along the edge of the lawn. Patches of brightly colored flowers were scattered around the house at seemingly random spots. The grass was the greenest Zack had seen outside of Astroturfed stadiums, and lush weeping willows lined the brook.

  The house itself stood two stories high and was painted white with red shutters and a red front door. A long wooden swing hung from the ceiling of the front porch.

  In the swing sat a man. A skinny man, height indistinguishable when he was sitting, with hair so dark it seemed to have green highlights. His face was one of those that might fade into a crowd, but even from several yards away, Zack saw a light in the man’s eyes. That light made him reluctant to look away from the guy.

  Zack pulled up beside the porch, where the road ended, stopped the van and quickly got out. The man on the swing stayed seated. “Hello?” Zack said tentatively.

  “Hello.” The man’s voice was deep and melodious, and it tugged at parts of Zack’s body that really shouldn’t have responded that way to a customer.

  “I’m from the satellite company.” Flustered, Zack opened the back doors of the van to give himself something to do other than staring. “You have an appointment to have a satellite system installed?”

  “Yes.” The man rose and walked down the steps to stand beside Zack. “It’s a bit quiet out here. Most television doesn’t interest me, but I thought it might be a welcome distraction. Do you need any help unloading your equipment?”

  There was absolutely no double entendre in the man’s tone. But Zack heard one anyway, and his “equipment” responded by stiffening. He quickly turned away and said, “No, thanks, I can manage. I’m Zack, by the way.”

  “Robin. I’ll get out of your way, then.”

  Robin returned to the swing. Zack felt the other man’s eyes on him as he began unloading the van, though each time he glanced up, Robin’s gaze was elsewhere. For some reason, that disappointed Zack. He wanted the man to watch him.

  Because I’m being paid to pick up the guy, he thought sarcastically. He shook his head and returned to making sure he had all the right cables.

  When Zack climbed the front steps to bring things inside, Robin rose from his seat and held open the front door, then followed Zack into the living room and indicated the TV, a large flat-screen. “Just go ahead and set it up,” he said. “If you need to rearrange things, feel free.” Without waiting for a reply, he went back outside, and after a moment Zack glanced through the front window and saw him back in the swing.

  Later, when Zack had to climb the ladder to position the s
atellite dish, Robin held the ladder for him, standing silently at the bottom and staring at the brook. Otherwise, the man gave no sign of even remembering that another human being was on his property, and he spent most of the time in the porch swing.

  Usually, when Zack did installations, the homeowners buzzed around, chatting with him and asking questions that he would have answered when he was finished if they’d left him alone long enough to finish. Sometimes he had to restrain himself from yelling at them to shut up and let him do his job. If anyone had asked, he would have said he preferred not having anyone talk to him while he worked.

  He wanted Robin to talk to him.

  Of course, he pretended otherwise. He was here to do an installation, nothing more. The fact that he had such a strong reaction to Robin disturbed him a little, if he was honest with himself. None of the other men he’d been attracted to had caught his attention so completely right from the start.

  The installation took quite a while, and in the utter silence, it felt even longer. That scratchy feeling of being watched never quite left the spot between Zack’s shoulder blades, but he never caught Robin looking at him. In fact, much of the time, Robin wasn’t even in sight. Only the weight of his gaze indicated his presence, and kept Zack in a state of distraction.

  Finally, he connected the last wire to Robin’s TV, then went outside to find the other man. Robin knelt beside a small flower patch a short distance from the porch, and didn’t appear to notice Zack even when Zack walked over to stand behind him. After an awkward moment of waiting to be spoken to, Zack cleared his throat. “Everything’s hooked up, if you want to come inside and test it out before I leave.”

  “Thanks.” Robin pulled a flower from the ground, then swiftly stood and leaned toward Zack. Before Zack could respond, the other man blew a puff of something from the flower he held.

  Without thinking, Zack ducked and frantically waved his hand to push away the cloud of what looked far too thick to be pollen. Some of it blew back into Robin’s face. Robin coughed, and his eyes widened. “You!”

  “Me?” Zack scrambled backward. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Robin stepped forward, eyeing Zack with a lustful, predatory gaze. “You’re gorgeous, do you know that?”

  What the hell? Zack took another step back. “I’ve been here for hours, and you’re just now noticing that?” he quipped, hoping a joke would take some of the weirdness out of the situation. None of this added up. First he’d sensed Robin spying on him while he worked, even though he’d acted as if he didn’t even see him whenever Zack had tried to catch him watching. Then the thing with blowing a flower at him.

  “What was in that flower?” he asked.

  He didn’t really expect an answer. The whole idea of a flower having anything to do with Robin’s change in attitude was completely ludicrous.

  “Cupid.” Robin grinned. “An arrow from Cupid’s bow struck a patch of these flowers. Anoint the eyes of someone with the juice from one, and that person falls in love with the next living thing they see.”

  The explanation sounded dimly familiar, but Zack couldn’t place it. Not that it mattered. Cupid didn’t exist, and flowers didn’t act as love potions. Besides, there hadn’t been any juice. “You blew some kind of pollen at me,” he argued.

  “I’ve been raising these a while. I’ve made some modifications.” Robin came closer and sniffed. “You smell incredible.”

  “You’re freaking me out.” Zack whirled around and hurried toward the van. Robin followed close on his heels. Zack sped up and so did Robin, until they ran to the van door. Zack yanked the door open and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Leave me alone. I need to go back to work. Just call the office if your system doesn’t work right.”

  “Don’t go,” Robin pleaded. “Stay here for a while. You don’t know what you’ll be giving up. I can give you anything you want if you stay with me.”

  A chill ran up Zack’s spine, and he shuddered. While he’d been working, he’d wanted Robin’s attention. Now it gave him the creeps, and all he wanted was to speed down that dirt road back to the highway as fast as he could make the van go. “I just want to go back to work,” he said firmly.

  Professionalism took over for a moment, and he picked up the clipboard from the passenger seat. “You have to sign.”

  “I’ll do anything for you,” Robin said vehemently.

  “Yeah, great. Just sign the form.” Zack rummaged in the crack between the seat and seat back for the pen that never wanted to stay on the clipboard. He glanced at the clipboard at his customer’s name. “Robin Goodfellow. Interesting—”

  Then it clicked. The familiarity of the story about the flower. The recognition of the name.

  Robin Goodfellow. Another name for Puck, the fairy trickster best known as a character in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Unless this guy’s parents had had a very weird sense of humor about naming their child, Zack was talking to a member of the Fae.

  Chills ran up his spine. Fae didn’t exist any more than Cupid did. He couldn’t be talking to one. Yet he didn’t doubt it for a second.

  His grandmother had told him stories about the Fae, and he knew better than to mess with one. He had to get out of here before Robin—well, he had no idea what Robin might do. That was the frightening part. That, plus the fact that a corner of his mind didn’t want to leave at all.

  Robin nodded with a sheepish grin. “Yeah. That’s me. Robin Goodfellow. Thou speak’st aright, I am that merry wanderer of the night, and so on. Not that I ever really talked like that. Old Billy just had a thing for language.” He reached toward Zack, who shrank back. “Your hair is so beautiful. Let me touch it?”

  “No touching under the influence.” Zack held out the pen and clipboard. “Just sign, assuming Robin Goodfellow is even a legal name.”

  “It’s the closest I have.”

  Robin’s fingers brushed Zack’s when he took the clipboard, and something like a static jolt shot through Zack. His cock twitched, and he swallowed hard and thought about the liver and onions his mother had always made for Sunday dinner to try to calm his libido. “So, um, the whole fairy thing. Serving Oberon and stuff. How’d that end up with you living here in Oregon?”

  “I didn’t serve Oberon. We had an agreement.” Robin scrawled something at the bottom of the form on the clipboard and handed everything back to Zack, making sure to brush fingers again. This time, Zack was prepared enough that his body barely responded to the touch. “I worked for him,” Robin went on. “Did some errands, played some pranks, that kind of thing in exchange for him not killing me when I played pranks on him and Titania. They were kind of fun to mess with, though.”

  He leaned against the open door and studied Zack intently enough to make Zack squirm. I really need to get out of here.

  “I make you nervous,” Robin observed.

  “Given how you’re acting since that flower thing, yeah,” Zack admitted.

  “You were flustered before that.” Robin grinned. “You were turned on when you saw me. Admit it. You thought about asking me out. Or maybe asking me in.”

  “I didn’t go that far.” He swallowed again. He couldn’t deny that he’d been attracted to Robin. Even if he’d been a decent liar, he remembered his grandmother telling him that lying to the Fae was a really, really bad idea. “Yeah, I was. You’re good-looking, I won’t deny that. And there’s something about you.” He paused. “Fae something, right? Some kind of glamour?” Fae did that to people, from what he’d read.

  “No glamour.” Robin stepped back and spread his arms to his sides. “This is what I really look like. All those costumes showing me wearing leaves or all green or something are just figments of people’s imaginations.” The sun glinted off his hair, showing the same green highlights Zack had noticed when he’d arrived. “Okay, maybe a little green,” Robin said, as if agreeing with the sunlight. “I am, after all, a nature Fae. But this is my real face, Zack. My real body.” He yanked off his T-
shirt, revealing a chest that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a professional athlete. “You do like what you see, don’t you?”

  “Just stop.” Zack dropped the clipboard and pen onto the passenger seat and folded his arms over his chest, trying to pretend nothing below his waist stirred at the sight of Robin’s bare pecs. “You’re doing this because of that stupid flower. Didn’t you learn anything with that whole mess in the play?” He hesitated. “Wait. Did that even happen?”

  “Yeah. I used to hang out with old Billy once in a while.” Robin chuckled. “He was pretty fun to mess with too. And he wasn’t too hung up on the whole gender thing, if you know what I mean.”

  Zack really didn’t want to hear about Robin’s affair with William Shakespeare. “Okay. So you told him the story, and he wrote it. Made you look kind of foolish for putting the flower juice in the wrong person’s eyes.” He couldn’t resist the jab. “Kind of like right now. You were trying to send that crap into my eyes, and you got the dose instead.”

  “Yeah.” Robin rested his hand on Zack’s knee. “Can’t say I’m sorry about it, though.”

  The warmth from his touch spread through Zack, hardening his cock and sending images of a naked Robin racing into his brain. He shook his head. “So what was your plan, to make me fall for you so you could laugh your ass off at me?”

  Robin shrugged. “Maybe. I hadn’t really thought much beyond using the flower. I retired from pranking people once some of the things I used to do became illegal, but once in a while, I like to play a little trick or two, just to keep things interesting. Probably I would have made sure you didn’t look at me before you left. I can prevent humans from seeing me if I want to. You’d have driven back to wherever you came from, seen someone walking down the street, and fallen for him. Or her.”

  “I’m gay.” Zack didn’t usually blurt it out that bluntly, but given the current circumstances, he didn’t think Robin would be particularly judgmental.

  “Doesn’t matter. The flower makes you fall in love with the next living thing you see, regardless of gender.” He chuckled. “Or species. That whole Titania falling in love with an ass thing? Billy-boy changed it into a man dressed as a donkey. In reality, it was a donkey.”