I peered into one of the titmouse holes to see if I could spot the pupa inside. “You never mentioned which member of your family is into bugs.”
“That would be me. Oh, I know a little bit about everything, but insects are my main field of expertise. My bread and butter, so to speak.”
I personally wouldn’t use the term “bread-and-butter” to describe creepy crawlies…but, to each his own. “How do you make money with bugs?”
“I’m an entomologist, of course.” She gave me a meaningful look and added, “A traveling entomologist.”
14
YURI
Staying in the motel would have been fine by me, but Dixon had his heart set on this YourBNB. The room was in a remodeled coach house not much bigger than my off-season cabin. Judging by the property’s condition, very little of Harvey’s remodeling budget was spent on the main house. The rental coach house, in comparison, was brimming with upgrades.
So many upgrades.
“Ooh, look,” Dixon said. “A built in humidor. Too bad I don’t smoke.”
While Dixon explored the room—all three hundred square feet of it—I pondered the cargo weighing down the back of my truck. Not the carton of gluten free tortillas Olive had insisted we keep, but the bits of painted paper beneath it.
I was troubled. Spellcraft should not act this way…but that was not what bothered me.
Dixon came back outside once he realized I was still looking at the truck. He slipped his arms around me from behind, went up on tiptoe, and rested his chin on my shoulder. “Thinking about where we can bury the old Seens?”
I shook my head. “We don’t need to.”
Dixon gave me an extra squeeze, then caught my hand. “Perfect. Then stop worrying about it and come in out of the cold.”
It wasn’t the leftover Seens that disturbed me; it was the fact that, in the long run, Fonzo’s Craftings hadn’t sabotaged the town after all. True, they’d helped it only in the most painful and convoluted way. But the Spellcraft was not ultimately as malicious as I’d initially thought.
I should have been relieved.
Yet, I wasn’t.
I allowed Dixon to draw me inside where the bath was running and the air smelled like the pine-scented potpourri that decorated every flat surface, from the windowsill to the countertop to the nightstand. Dixon plundered the small refrigerator and dredged up a jar of peanut butter, and we dined on gluten free tortilla roll-ups and tap water. It was not the most elegant meal, but it was satisfying…and nearly impossible to speak around, for which I was profoundly grateful.
I had imagined I would confront Dixon and force him to see his uncle was a fraud, a greedy charlatan who went from town to town, bilking people of their money and bringing shame to the family. Who can say what Fonzo’s motives might be? I thought I knew, but I was no longer so sure. One thing I couldn’t deny: his volshebstvo held great power.
By the time we’d managed to swallow the gluey peanut-butter-laced tortillas, the bath was full. Whether it was full of water or simply foam was another matter. Bubbles mounded the oversized bathtub in dome of white froth, swelling halfway to the ceiling—the mirrored ceiling.
Dixon glanced up and quipped, “That’s certainly one way to double check that you’re clean.” He turned to me and unbuttoned my shirt while I stood like a stone, overwhelmed by the day’s events and unsure what anything even meant anymore. “Do they have mirrored ceilings in Russia? I’m sure someone does—Russia’s a huge country—but you never know, what’s porn-tastic in one culture might be nothing special in another.”
Dixon doesn’t seem to expect answers to these questions of his. I’d always thought it was because his mind had leapt to the next topic before I’d figured out the best way to explain. But now I saw there was something much deeper at play. Maybe he was curious, maybe not. Mostly, he was just acknowledging the fact that I was there with him—and our experience of whatever was going on might be vastly different.
He eased my shirt down to my elbows and followed with a brush of his lips over my bare shoulder, accentuated by the scrape of stubble. Emotions welled up inside me, so sharp it felt as if my insides must be shredded. For such a ridiculous man, he made me experience all the deep and complex feelings I’d thus far successfully managed to avoid. The raw hurt of self-awareness. The sting of knowing I always presumed the worst. The dull ache of knowledge that I was unlikely to shed my suspicious nature anytime soon. And the bittersweet throb of hoping that perhaps he knew all this, and accepted me in all my flaws.
No, Dixon more than accepted me. He cherished me.
He pulled off my clothes, then his, then led me toward the bath. I gestured to the foam, which smelled like a cheap confection. “What scent is this?”
Dixon thrust a hand through the cloud of foam and groped for the bubble bath. He blew a wad of froth off the bottle and read. “Always Almond. Say, Yuri, do you pronounce it ALL-mond or AHH-mond?” Before I could answer, he read, “Lose yourself in field of delicious sun-ripened almonds as our delectably creamy bath foam floats your troubles away.” He gave the bottle a sniff. “Smells more like pistachio ice cream to me.”
Better than smelling like tacos, I supposed. Dixon stepped back into the tub, then held out his hands for me. I took them and allowed him to draw me in beside him. The cloud of almond-scented bath foam was nearly up to my waist. It parted for us with a crackle.
“Don’t worry,” Dixon said. “You can never add too many bubbles. They always go flat before you know it.”
I would have to take his word for it. In the meantime, our elbows and knees took a beating as we groped our way around and settled in. Our bodies knocked holes in the foam, but the jets stirring up the water soon plumped them back up. The cloying cloud engulfed us, not in darkness, but in light.
A puff of breath tickled my nose as Dixon blew an air pocket between us. Foam clung to his long, dark eyelashes. He pressed his forehead to mine to give the bubbles less opportunity to fill in, and treated me to a slippery nuzzle.
It would have been perfect—as close to perfect as he and I ever got—if not for the fact that when things were all said and done, I still didn’t know what to make of the Craftings. Had our “silver lining” turned things around? Or had it simply kept us in place to witness the eventual outcome of the Spellcraft already in play?
“I don’t know what’s wrong with your uncle’s Spellcraft—why it would be so rough and strange. But it looks like the people here will end up getting what they want…eventually.” And it pained me to admit, “It seems as though he really might have been trying to help.”
Dixon smiled wide enough to displace the nearby bubbles with a gentle crackle. “I accept your apology.”
“I was not apologizing—”
“Shh….” He pressed a wet, almond-scented finger to my lips. “Don’t kill the mood.”
While I was tempted to insist, it was difficult to argue when his lips pressed against mine. We floundered together in the tub, which was squeaky in some places and slick in others. Dixon was convinced the water jets would help us reach new peaks, but the only thing peaking in that bathtub was the foamy white cloud. Regretfully, he conceded defeat once the water grew tepid, and we moved to the bed. And at least there, we could please each other without choking on the foam…which, since we’d left the jets running in our distraction, had only continued to expand and was now creeping steadily across the bathroom floor.
“We’ll deal with it in the morning,” Dixon mumbled into his pillow.
I turned off the jacuzzi so as not to suffer the most bizarre death in Taco Town history—suffocation by almond foam—but decided Dixon was right. I’d deal with the rest tomorrow.
I was drifting off when he spoke again. “All’s well that ends well, but I’m not sure exactly how proud of myself I should be. Genevieve was the deus ex machina after all, not us, and she was already in Taco Town before we made our Crafting—which only should have affected us, regardless. It’s confusi
ng, you know? What came first, the chicken or the egg—is that a saying in Russia? When Spellcraft makes a series of events come to a head—an outcome that has more moving parts than the Globe-O-Matic—I can’t help but wonder if the magic’s got anything to do with it, or if we Spellcrafters are just taking credit for something that would’ve happened anyhow.”
Knowing what I knew and feeling what I felt, being well acquainted with the volshebstvo flitting across the back of my scalp, I was fairly certain Spellcraft reached even deeper than we realized—even if the timing made it seem unlikely.
No matter that I couldn’t find the right words. Dixon didn’t seem to want an answer. He often doesn’t. Then his voice turned uncharacteristically fragile when he said, “If Uncle Fonzo had wrecked this town with his Crafting, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“You’re fine. So is the town.”
And before we rolled out of town, I’d bury the Crafting with the silver lining at the foot of Salsa Lane, just to be sure.
Dixon and I slept nestled together in a strange bed in an even stranger town, and woke ravenous to the smell of marzipan and the taste of peanut butter tortillas. We washed it down with coffee from mugs shaped like tacos which, once you got the hang of them, only dribbled a bit. The foam had settled overnight, and though the bathroom floor was now slippery, it wouldn’t be too much work for Harvey to mop up.
We moved through our morning routines more easily than we usually did in my cabin, where the furniture was all bolted to the walls and the bathroom was smaller than the closet. When I finished shaving my head, I found Dixon sitting cross-legged on the rumpled sheets, fully dressed. He was just getting off the phone. “The garage will take us just as soon as you’re ready.” He waggled his eyebrows and considered my scalp, which he claimed, newly shorn, felt like velvet when it brushed the insides of his thighs. “Too bad it’s almost checkout time.”
It was tempting to linger, particularly when he was giving me that smoldering look. But the room was already booked for the night, and not by Genevieve. We packed up our few belongings. While Dixon refilled his water bottle, I paused beside the door where a blank journal sat open with a pen in the crease between the pages. A log of some sort. Date, name, comments, filled out in the hands of dozens of different people. I flipped back through a year’s worth of entries. A few months ago, the couple Jason and Becky had put the word Newlyweds! in the comment field. And every guest thereafter had felt the need to follow suit in defining their relationship.
Clara and Ed - Just engaged.
Walter and Stella - Golden anniversary.
Kelsey and Peyton - Best Friends.
Dixon caught up with me as I scanned the entries, picked up the ballpoint pen and began to write. No surprise. Scriveners will scrawl their names on any blank surface, every chance they get. “Have you seen my signature? Not to brag, but it would give John Hancock a run for his…money.” Only then, when he paused to dot the “i”, did he take note of the running theme in the comment section. He carried on as if nothing had happened, but I’m well acquainted with the way that man handles a pen. Even the small hesitation was telling.
With an outlandish flourish of the capital Y, he inked my name beside his. And then he leveled a deliberately too-casual look at me. “Funny thing about setting something down in black and white. It makes it feel so official.”
His gaze turned challenging…and I tipped up my chin resolutely in return. “Then, write.”
“I will.” He grazed the paper with the ballpoint, then drew back and looked at me again, less sure. “Boyfriends?”
“We are grown men, not boys.”
“Grown-men-friends doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it? And partners seems kind of businesslike….”
Doubt cut a furrow between his brows as the possibility that he’d misread our relationship occurred to him. But before he made things more awkward by trying to back out of the situation gracefully, I took the pen from his grasp.
“It sounds better in Russian.” In my blocky left-handed Cyrillic, I added the word vozljublennyj. “Beloved.”
Translating a street sign into my native language was enough to give Dixon the shivers. The frisson of this new word coursed over him—and through me—like Spellcraft. And the tingle it left behind echoed between us as Dixon tipped his head up for a kiss.
I never cared much for kissing…until I met Dixon. I always thought the act too intimate. Too soft. But he showed me how kisses could range from tender to fierce—now, especially, as he clung to my lapels with both fists until the shoulder seams of my jacket made a sound of protest. His lips were bold but his tongue was gentle, almost teasing. And when I tasted him in return, he gave a breathy moan that left me calculating whether or not I could pin him to door well enough to keep anyone from disturbing us—though nothing we got up to would be any more scandalous than the scene we’d witnessed back at the greenhouse.
But while our kiss grew more heated, Dixon’s phone chimed the arrival of a new text. And then another. And another. He pushed off me gently with a rueful shake of his head, looking even more alluring than usual, breathless and rumpled, with lips flushed from kissing. I was tempted to grab the phone and toss it toward the bed, but figured it was best to first make sure no one had died.
“It’s my cousin.” He scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled some more. Then he put his phone back in his bag and added, “She says another postcard just showed up.” Dixon was still breathless…but his eagerness was no longer for me.
I said nothing.
He flung open the door, caught me by the wrist, and pulled. “It’s from a hot spring less than half a day’s drive from here, too. That’s the attraction, I mean—of course, the postcard is from Uncle Fonzo, not the water. Do they have hot springs in Russia? Do people soak in them totally naked, or do they leave on their underwear? Y’know, if the garage can take care of us right now, we’ll be there by dinner.” He gave my arm another enthusiastic yank. “Isn’t that exciting?”
Undoubtedly it was.
For him.
As I stood in the doorway while he scampered out to the truck, I paused for a moment and glanced down at the registry. Dixon’s signature truly was a work of art—as was the way he’d written my name. But my eyes were drawn to the word I’d penned in ungainly, utilitarian letters.
Beloved.
This was what happened when you grew attached to someone else—you set aside your own trepidations, and you did whatever it took to fend off their suffering, and if possible, bring them a glimmer of joy. I might have said I’d always feared this was how being half of a couple would be…if I’d ever entertained the notion at all.
I looked from the book to Dixon, who beamed at me from the passenger seat of the old truck, then gave me a delighted thumbs-up. Despite myself, I felt my frigid armor thaw, just a bit.
It didn’t sting quite as much as I thought it might.
***
We pulled out onto the road. When Dixon opened the window to brush a stray mudmucker casing from his jacket sleeve, a sudden gust of wind plucked our Crafting from the visor and sent it fluttering away into the pines. Most Handless would demand I pull over and hunt it down, but Dixon and I just exchanged a look and kept on going. Both of us understood that the volshebstvo can be harnessed for a time, but in the end, it belongs to no one.
Where will Dixon and Yuri’s next adventure lead them? Find out in The ABCs of Spellcraft 3: Something Stinks at the Spa!
Don’t miss Yuri meeting Dixon’s parents for the first time in the bonus story All that Glitters.
Sign up for Jordan Castillo Price’s newsletter at http://bit.ly/jcpglitters and download free.
THE ABCS OF SPELLCRAFT SERIES
1. Quill Me Now
1.5 All that Glitters
2. Trouble in Taco Town
3. Something Stinks at the Spa
4. Dead Man’s Quill (coming soon)
ABOUT THIS STORY
I’ve have a fas
cination with Rube Goldberg machines ever since I was a kid. I often tried to make my own, though they didn’t really do anything other than have a Superball drop through a series of toilet paper cardboard tubes I’d taped to the wall. Maybe my invention of the Globe-O-Matic is the fruition of a childhood ambition.
Structurally, I think of the Spellcraft stories themselves as Rube Goldberg machines. A candle burns a string that swings a boot that kicks over a chair that flips a pancake…you get the picture!
Trouble in Taco Town mashes together a bunch of unrelated inspirations. The pivotal pig’s blood scene from the movie Carrie. The time I had to pull over, get out of my car and chase a tailpipe down a hill. And Oprah Winfrey…who showed up as Genevieve for no particular reason, other than the fact that I think she’s the epitome of moxy.
Building a Rube Goldberg machine out of words is a lot easier than those toilet paper cores. I have a lot more space to let the story unfurl into something weird and wonderful.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jordan Castillo Price grew up near a car wash shaped like a giant whale. She is unlikely to turn down any taco she might be offered.
Connect with Jordan:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Jordan-Castillo-Price-257078438055
Twitter - https://twitter.com/jordancprice
Bookbub - https://www.bookbub.com/profile/jordan-castillo-price
Blog - http://jordancastilloprice.com
And explore her other stories at http://jcpbooks.com
Trouble in Taco Town Page 8