Poisoned Pearls

by Leah Cutter

  “Hey, girl,” I called to her, waving her to the front of the store. “Whatcha doing?” I leaned against the cool glass of the display case, bringing my head closer to Angela’s height.

  She joined me at the counter, leaning her hip against it, rubbing her hands together, trying to force some warmth back into them.

  “Stupid cops chased away all the traffic tonight,” Angela replied. “You know what’s up with that?”

  Did Angela know Kyle? I didn’t think so, but then again, you never knew. “They found Kyle Magnusson’s body out back.”

  Damn it. Why did saying that out loud make my voice shake?

  Angela looked over her shoulder and blinked her wide black eyes at me a couple times. “Nope,” she said after a few more moments. “Can’t recall. Friend of yours though, I guess?”

  “Yeah,” I told her. My throat suddenly hurt. I wasn’t coming down with something, was I? ’Cause I wasn’t about to cry.

  I didn’t cry that way.

  “I’m sorry,” Angela said, her voice as soft as if she was trying to make nice with one of the feral cats out back.

  “You know Helen Eaton?” I asked, standing up straight, trying to shift the conversation away before I maybe embarrassed myself with tears or some such useless thing.

  “Helen of Troy?” Angela asked. “Cops think she’s in on it?”

  I shrugged. “Where’s Helen working these days?” I asked.

  Angela shook her head. “No one’s seen her for at least a week. Celine was wondering if maybe Helen had finally found that ride out of town, gone someplace warm.”

  Now I was worried. The street girls sometimes fought, and occasionally put each other in the hospital, particularly if they thought one of them was stepping into their territory. But they also looked out after each other, kept tabs on each other’s whereabouts.

  It wasn’t as if they’d get any sympathy from the cops if something happened to one of them.

  “Did she have a pimp?” I asked.

  “Naw, she was part of the association,” Angela said.

  More than one of the groups of hookers—excuse me, sex workers—in the downtown area had organized themselves when the shootings and gang violence had gotten real bad, before the cops had gotten involved and started cleaning up the place. They’d pooled their money and hired actual security, some muscle men who delighted in taking down any john or pimp who bothered their girls.

  The cops were right to be worried about vigilantes, particularly in this neighborhood.

  But what had happened to Helen? I figured it had to be something bad if that detective was asking about her.

  Before I could ask anything more, Angela said to me, “The streets are clean. The people are good. But be careful of what you see.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked. What the hell did that mean? She wasn’t on something, was she?

  Angela blinked her too-wide eyes at me again. “The streets are clean. The people are good. But be careful of what you see.”

  “What are you on?” I asked. I couldn’t tell if Angela’s pupils were dilated, but I assumed they were.

  “The streets are clean. The people are good. But be careful of what you see,” Angela repeated again, seemingly frustrated.

  “You’re not high, are you?” I asked.

  Angela shook her head. “The streets are clean. The people are good.”

  “Yeah, I have to be careful of what I see,” I told her. “Got that. Thanks.”

  So the TV did get some things right—there was such a thing as a pre-cog loop. I’d never seen one before. Angela hadn’t ever been trained, though. Had she taken the PADT? I would have thought that if she had any real ability, she wouldn’t be hooking.

  Angela had once told me that she’d taken a correspondence course in paranormal ability and that she’d scored the highest in her class.

  Tonight, I believed her, though most of the correspondence schools were a scam. Taking people’s money and giving them false hope.

  Still. She had to have some level of pre-cognition to get caught in a loop that way. The next time I saw her, I was going to be sure to ask about it. Maybe this had been the first time it had happened, though.

  I pulled a pack of cigarettes from below the counter and passed a smoke to Angela.

  She nodded her thanks, then hurried away, her boots clicking across the floor.

  Maybe getting out of my presence would shake Angela free. She wasn’t going to be good for any kind of conversation until she could get out of the loop.

  Then again, her clients didn’t pay her to talk.

  So the streets were clean, though that didn’t mean anything to me. Since the new mayor had decided to “Revitalize the Downtown Area,” garbage got picked up off the streets and out of the alleys every other day.

  I remembered Kyle’s body slumped in the alley behind the shop, how the EMTs had taken it away and swept everything clean. Was that what she’d meant? That though there was a body, maybe more, that they wouldn’t stay around for long?

  And that people were good? I couldn’t contain my snort. That sure as fuck wasn’t true. I’d learned that early, at my mom’s knee, when she’d found me making out with another girl on my sweet sixteenth and given me the option of turning straight or leaving.

  Fucking Republican Senator wannabe.

  I hadn’t seen her for years, except on the other side of a TV screen, and I still hated her guts.

  And how the fuck was I supposed to be careful about what I saw? Admittedly, that part fried my ass the most. I wasn’t about to stop looking, or look away, if I saw something.

  Particularly something bad happening in my neighborhood.

  Sure, most of my friends were junkies and whores. But this was still my patch of turf, and they were still my friends. I always had my friends’ backs, whether they reciprocated or not.

  Nope. I wasn’t about to look away.

  Chapter Two

  Of course, my night didn’t get any better. Not given my luck. No, it had started sliding down that sweet slope of sheer fucked when the cops had first shown up and demanded that I accompany them and identify the body of my friend Kyle in the cold alley out behind the store.

  Then, after the cops, and my friend Angela’s warning, who should show up at my store but Ms. Monroe, the post-cog who was working for the cops on Kyle’s case?

  She seemed perfectly at home in Chinaman Joe’s Good Luck Parlor, despite the fact that she was way overdressed for such a dive. Her mink looked like it was more expensive than all the toys in the store combined. I swear even the fluorescent lights overhead stopped hissing above her.

  The almost-tasteful display of condoms on the large table at the front drew her attention first. Black velvet covered the table and the display stands, with a sprinkling of white glitter in the center to suggest snow, or at least that was what Chinaman Joe had claimed.

  Every condom on the table had been filled with air. Each waved proudly on its stand like a party balloon. Instead of the standard colors, we’d done a group of red and green ones, with some gold and purple mixed in as well.

  After Ms. Monroe had circled the table, she wandered down the first aisle.

  I called out to her, “Let me know if you need any help.” I wasn’t about to go any closer to her than I needed to. I was already in enough trouble as it was, wondering how soft her hair really was, what it would feel like when I pulled it, if she’d moan or squeak when I pinched a nipple.

  Three times five is fifteen.

  Ms. Monroe poked her head out from the second aisle, holding up “Black Billy”—the supposedly realistic dong of some porn star that was almost as big as my fist and about as long as my forearm.

  And I don’t have small hands.

  The “real flesh tone” color was a corpse-like gray-brown, and I bet there wasn’t a man out there whose dick actually felt that smooth. Or who smelled like plastic and melted rubber.

  “Really?” Ms. Monroe asked, incredulous. “This
is the most popular dong in your store?”

  We had put up helpful, handwritten signs on some of the aisles, suggesting products to those too shy to come up to the counter and ask.

  I shrugged. “We sell a lot of them.” I didn’t know if many, or even any, of them got put to serious use, or if they were primarily gag gifts.

  “Huh,” was all she said before she disappeared back into the aisle again.

  Three times six is eighteen. Three times seven is twenty one. Three—

  “You know, whatever you’re doing won’t work.”

  Damn it. I hadn’t seen her sneak out of the aisle and approach the front. “What do you mean?” I asked. I knew my guilt was probably written all over my face—damn my Swedish mother and my fair skin.

  “I’m not a telepath,” Ms. Monroe said. “You can’t distract me from your thoughts. I’m a post-cog. That’s all.”

  “Sure,” I told her. Three times three is nine.

  She smiled and shook her head at me, as if she were dealing with a particularly endearing, if stubborn, child.

  “So how can I help you tonight, Ms. Monroe?” I asked.

  “Please, call me Sam. Short for Samantha,” she said, holding out a beautifully pampered hand for me to shake, the nails done in a perfect French manicure that probably cost more than I made in a month.

  “Cassie. Short for Cassandra,” I told her. I clasped her hand, then figured, what the hell, and brought it to my lips for a quick kiss. Her lotion smelled surprisingly of lemongrass, not anything girly. The skin was softer than silk and, I suspected, very addictive.

  “Sorry,” Sam said, pulling her hand back.

  “I’m not,” I told her cheekily. “Wrong team?” I asked.

  “Out of your league,” she said demurely.

  Wait a second. Did that mean that—

  “You are involved with your friend’s—Kyle’s—death,” Sam said, derailing any question I might have asked.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked. “I didn’t get him killed.” If she kept telling the police that, my life was sure to be hell. The cops would start coming after me. I’m sure they still considered me a person of interest in the case.

  “You’re tied up in it,” Sam said vehemently. “I don’t know how. I’ve never seen anything like it before. You weren’t there watching it, but you were still there, present, the whole time.”

  “I was working the entire time,” I told her hotly. “You can check the in-store cameras.”

  “I know you were here,” Sam replied, clearly as frustrated as I was. “I don’t know how you’re connected. Just that you are. And you need to be careful of what you see.”

  I rolled my eyes. Great. Was she about to go off into some pre-cog loop like Angela? Just what I fucking needed.

  Cops might haul me down to the station out of spite if I got their prize post-cog all in a twirl.

  When Sam didn’t add anything after that, I asked, “Any idea what I’m not supposed to see?”

  Sam shook her head. “Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. I’m not a pre-cog. Just whatever it is, it’s strong enough to break through to all the blessed in the area. I had a friend come down and check.”

  Figured she’d call herself that, and not the more secular term. If she even knew it.

  “Well, thank you for that news flash,” I told her.

  “I’m trying to help you here!” Sam insisted.

  “How?” I asked. “By giving me these half-assed warnings?” Seriously. What did she expect me to do? Keep my eyes shut for the rest of the night? The week? The year?

  Sam gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, I know this isn’t making any sense. But just—be aware! Hopefully it will make sense before it’s too late.”

  “Ain’t that the story of my life,” I told her. I was never fucking aware of anything: not of my ex, Natasha, double-dipping with that whore Frieda right here in the store; not of just how frigid my own mother was, how inflexible she would be when it came to her own daughter’s sexual preferences; and not even of that time at Kitty’s when that asshole I’d met for a first date had tried slip me a roofie and the bartender had saved me by “accidentally” knocking over my drink, then talking to me later when she’d gone to the bathroom.

  I never figured out anything until well after the fact. Never saw anything coming, despite my name. Might have just been irony, or the gods fucking with me.

  “Here,” Sam said. She opened up her mink and drew an embossed white and black business card out of an engraved silver case.

  I didn’t have to hold it up to my nose to catch the sweet scent of her lemongrass perfume.

  Great. Now Thai food was going to make me horny.

  “Text me,” Sam commanded. “If anything unusual starts happening to you. If you start to see things.”

  “What, do you think I’m suddenly going to start having hallucinations or something?” I’d never been into hallucinogenic drugs. That just always seemed like a straight line to the loony bin. I’d heard too many stories of losers who’d ended up taking a long walk off a short bridge after taking a few hits of windowpane.

  Plus, there were rumors that the right combination of hallucinogenic drugs would unlock your paranormal abilities.

  I liked being fully human, a mundane, thank you very much.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know,” Sam said. “But just—text me.”

  “For anything?” I asked. Might as well see if I could get a rise out of her. “Maybe just for coffee?”

  “Out of your league,” Sam rearticulated. “I don’t do mundanes.”

  “Maybe you just haven’t tried the right one,” I suggested flirtatiously.

  “Please,” she said, rolling her eyes as she refastened her coat. “And no, you won’t be having visions if you try to touch me. Just visitations from the cops.”

  “Hey, it’s okay. I know. You’re special,” I told her. “One of the blessed.”

  “You know why we call ourselves that, right?” Sam asked. “It’s the only way to get through the damned training. To believe that you’re better than everyone else, smarter, more capable. There’s a high flunk-out rate, and an even higher suicide rate. You have to tell yourself you’re special. Make yourself believe it. Otherwise, you won’t make it.”

  Like I was going to feel sorry for the poor little over-indulged rich girl.

  I’d been one, once. I knew all about being special.

  “Don’t let me spoil your evening, princess,” I told her. “I’ll just remember to be careful what I see.”

  “You do that,” Sam said. Her face froze in that air of superiority her kind had. That specialness wrapped itself around her as snugly as that fur coat.

  But now, I could tell that it was a mask. I knew her attitude would never keep her warm.

  Damn her for making me see even a little bit of her life.

  ***

  There wasn’t as much down time at the store that night as I would have liked. Idiots kept coming in, stumbling out of the cold, looking for smokes (which we sold, and the cause of my current nicotine habit) and for drugs (which I didn’t sell because I valued my skin too much) and for sex (which again, I didn’t sell, though I did direct a few of the less idiotic assholes down toward Angela’s corner).

  I kept calling people on the phone in between interruptions, standing in the empty sex & toy shop, the heat cranked up and soft rock ballads playing in the background. I talked into the phone like it was a mic, though I generally hated when people did that. I just couldn’t bear to hold the headset closer to my ear—that made everything seem too personal.

  The whole night turned cruel, regardless. First de’Angelo, then Tess, then Andre all assumed that I was calling about some party or another, wanting to get together over the holidays. It was nice to have so much support. More than one wanted to come over, hang out, make sure I’d be okay for the next couple of days.

  I didn’t want company, though. I needed…I don’t know. Maybe to process or some
such shit on my own, first. Then maybe in a few days we could all get together. Mourn. Curse. Bitch about how unfair life was.

  Sometimes I didn’t mind the idiots coming through the door just so I could get off the damned phone.

  No one had heard anything, though, about other prostitutes getting hurt, other people getting killed. I didn’t know if anything bad was going down, if that had been why the cops had asked about Kyle tricking, or had asked about Helen.

  But I’d grown up in Minnesota. I understood prepared. Winter taught you that, particularly when you first hit the streets.

  So I warned everyone I could, despite not knowing anything. On one hand, I felt like a drama queen. I really didn’t know anything concrete.

  On the other hand, better safe than sorry.

  I almost let Tommy come over, escort me from the shop to my place as he gallantly offered. I knew that I should be more concerned for my own safety. But I was more pissed than anything else. Heaven help the poor bastard who tried to take me on tonight.

  In addition to the idiots and the phone calls, Chinaman Joe’s list of online orders kept piling up. Besides being a penny-pinching bastard, he was a smart businessman. While the storefront was important, it didn’t cover all our bills, so he ran an internet shop as well.

  Every minute I wasn’t busy with the customers standing in front of me, I was supposed to be filling orders. Right behind the counter was a second table stocked with boxes, plain brown wrapping paper, tape, and enough bubble wrap to cover the North Pole, Santa, and all his reindeer. We had discreet stickers for the packages that all said, “CJ LLC.”

  Like every other business in the Western Hemisphere, we were running Christmas specials.

  Chinaman Joe had done a lot of experimenting. As I said, he was smart. Just a set of free condoms or a couple of packages of lube wouldn’t boost sales.

  Throw in a butt plug, though? You were golden. A lot of people were into that kind of shit but didn’t want to admit it. They’d never buy something like that for themselves. However, if they could say, “Oh, look, honey! It came for free! Let’s try it!” then it was okay.