Someone Like You

by Timothy J Beck

  “Depends,” she said with another slow smile. “Can you sing?”

  He caught her meaning and returned an equally wistful smile, saying, “If only I could.”

  She placed one beautifully manicured hand on his arm and said, “There’s more than one way to make music, Buddy. You just need to find your voice.”

  Wondering if she’d noticed him the night he’d met Christian in the bar, Derek decided it might be prudent to change the subject and said, “Let’s play the guessing game.”

  Sometimes, if she was in the mood, she’d join him in picking out people from the crowd and making up stories about them. Although his own tales were improbably outrageous, he was willing to bet hers were almost always accurate. Not much got past Sheree.

  “Okay. But you pick,” she said.

  He looked at the crowd, spotted a face he’d seen in the newspaper, and said, “The woman with the curls.”

  “That wouldn’t be fair,” she said. “I know who she is.”

  He shrugged and said, “Tell me anyway.”

  “Emily-Anne Barrister. The people she’s with are from out of town. Maybe business associates of her husband. Or from one of the conglomerates that keep trying to buy him out. It’ll never happen. Cort’s got ink in his veins; he’ll die owning those newspapers.”

  “Which one is he?” Derek asked.

  “The stocky one with the unlit cigar. His doctor told him no more smoking, but he can’t give them up, so he just doesn’t light up. Cort thinks Emily-Anne hung the moon, but she’s a troubled soul. They never had the children they’d hoped for. And these days, many of their friends are on their second or third trophy wives. Emily-Anne’s solution is surgery. She’s got so much plastic in her, they should stamp ‘Mattel’ on her ass.” Derek let out a bark of laughter, and Sheree shook her head. “It’s sad, really. When a man falls in love with who you are, why keep trying to be someone else?”

  He met her eyes again, wondering if she was trying to convey advice.

  “Your public awaits,” the bartender said.

  Sheree patted Derek’s arm again and said, “Goodnight, Buddy.”

  “Goodnight, Sheree.”

  After Sheree took her spot next to the piano and began singing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” Derek saw Davii enter the Aurora. He was dressed in jeans and a fitted black T-shirt with Keith Haring drawings dancing over his chest. Derek waved to him and watched as Davii’s face lit up before he walked toward the bar.

  “I’ll have what I’m having,” Davii said to the bartender as he commandeered the stool next to Derek’s. “A cosmopolitan,” he clarified.

  “Where’s Vienna?” Derek asked. “I assumed you two were out together.”

  “I checked my vulva at the door,” Davii quipped. Derek winced, which made Davii laugh. “She and I were at Asteroid Arcade when you called. I was in the middle of defending my high score on Ms. Pac-Man; otherwise I would’ve answered. Vienna was complaining about a headache or something, so she went home. Ah, sweet nectar of the gods. Thank you.”

  When Davii reached for his wallet, Derek said, “It’s on me. Thanks for coming out tonight. I needed company.”

  “Tonight? I came out long before tonight.” Davii sipped at his drink before picking it up. “I was a young lad of twelve in Muncie when reality hit me.”

  “Reality or puberty?” Derek asked.

  “A little of both, actually. I was getting a haircut when I realized my barber was a hot stud. I had fantasies about locking the door and letting him have his way with me. But of course, fantasies rarely become reality. He was a married father of three and also went to our church.” Davii gulped at his drink, then continued. “Cut to the mall, six years later, when I finally acted on my feelings and picked up some guy at Pluto. It wasn’t great, but it was good to finally feel like I was…myself, I suppose. Does that make any sense?”

  “Completely,” Derek replied, thinking about how he’d felt the same way when he was in college. “Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

  “I guess it would depend on—hey! How do you keep doing this to me? I came here fully intending to get to know more about you. Whenever we get together, you somehow get me talking about myself. You hardly ever talk about yourself,” Davii complained good-naturedly. He playfully tapped Derek’s knee and prodded, “Go ahead. Talk about you.”

  “You want me to open up?” Derek asked.

  Davii looked over the rim of his glass and arched an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah. Open up for me, baby.”

  “I don’t open up for just anyone,” Derek said, matching Davii’s suggestive tone.

  “We’ll see about that,” Davii said. Neither one of them went any further, so Davii added, “I’ll just sit here and sip quietly until you’re more forthcoming. I can hold out all night if I have to.”

  “Check!” Derek exclaimed.

  10

  Don’t You Step on My Blue

  Swarovski Shoes

  Vienna checked out her reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator. She was on the verge of being late for work. She had an errand to complete and ten minutes before her shift. She left the elevator, ran down the Light Year Passage, and turned her heel when rounding the corner into the mall, losing her balance.

  “Jesus!” she exclaimed as she felt gravity being thwarted by a man’s arms.

  “Are you okay?” the man asked, still holding on to her waist. Vienna looked into concerned eyes as she gripped his shoulder and flexed her ankle.

  “I think so,” she said. She examined her ankle, which felt fine, then worried for her Gucci heels. They were intact, without a scratch, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Realizing that she was still in the man’s arms, she extricated herself from his grasp and took a step back. He seemed concerned, attractive, and oddly familiar, but she was a woman with places to go. “I’m fine, thank you. I’m sorry, but I’m about to be extremely late for work.”

  Before he could answer, Vienna headed toward Drayden’s, walking with the speed of Jackie Joyner-Kersee on a fashion runway. About halfway between the Galaxy Building and Drayden’s, she stepped nimbly onto an escalator and went up to the Moon level. Directly opposite the top of the escalator was a Krispy Kreme storefront, where Vienna ordered two large boxes of assorted donuts. “I don’t care what kind you put in there,” she said. “Just make sure none of them have powdered sugar on top. Powdered sugar plus couture equals disaster. Hurry, please!”

  Moments later, Vienna dashed into Drayden’s, carefully carrying her booty before her like an offering to the gods.

  “Hi, girls!” she called to the other Cosmetics associates as she wended her way to the Lillith Allure counter. Hungry eyes watched when she stashed the boxes under her counter, a Friday morning tradition that Vienna had started when she began working at Drayden’s. Food on the sales floor was prohibited, but the Cosmetics manager overlooked the rule, since she was addicted to maple-glazed Krispy Kremes. For the next three to four hours, the Cosmetics associates would create reasons to pass by Vienna’s counter and nip behind it for a sugar rush. Vienna loved being able to provide her co-workers with a guilty pleasure on an otherwise ordinary day. Nor could she deny the popularity and attention the donuts garnered her. Plus, as people stopped by to eat, they talked, and Vienna was more than happy to listen.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Vienna said to her counter mate, Bianca, a willowy redhead with an inferiority complex and a pale complexion. “Are you okay to watch the counter while I run to the time clock? If I pretend that I forgot to punch in one more time, HR is sure to bust me for it.”

  “It’s okay,” Bianca said, eyeing the donuts. “But if you leave me here with those fat pills, I can’t be held accountable if I eat them all.”

  “There’s no way you could eat thirty donuts on your own,” Vienna said, stashing her purse in a drawer.

  “Don’t be so sure. I’m no stranger to bingeing. That’s why I’m so fat,” Bianca moaned.

  Vienna looked at Bianca’s near-perfec
t figure and was ready to protest when she remembered the time. Instead, she said, “Honey, I’ve told you a hundred times that you’re gorgeous. You’re on your own. Be right back.”

  She raced across the store and into the shoe stockroom, where she keyed her employee number into the time clock. She was only five minutes late, an infraction that she knew her lenient department manager would overlook, but she mentally reprimanded herself anyway.

  Though retail wasn’t her career trajectory, Vienna liked her new job. It wasn’t so much the job itself, but the environment. She liked being in a larger store instead of a cramped boutique because it allowed her to observe people in larger numbers. Her immediate supervisors and co-workers all took their jobs with an easygoing attitude. They knew they weren’t moving mountains, and as long as everyone completed their tasks pleasantly and efficiently, there was no reason for stress and strife. Unfortunately, not everyone in Drayden’s shared that mentality. Vienna looked around for Natasha Deere and, not seeing her anywhere, quickly got a cup of water from the cooler next to the time clock, downed it, and hurried away.

  She checked the schedule at the Women’s Shoes cash wrap to see when Derek was working. He was closing and wouldn’t be there for another four hours. Vienna sighed and headed back to her counter. Although she didn’t mind her job, it was more tolerable when Derek was working, too. He would often crank call her when Natasha wasn’t around, pretending to be a customer.

  “Do you have any frosted blue eye shadow?” he’d ask in a hideously high-pitched voice. “I can’t get enough of the stuff. Tubs! I want tubs of blue eye shadow! Can you help me?”

  “No. All the shrinks in the world couldn’t help you,” Vienna would reply. “But let me ask you something. Do you have any pumps in a size fourteen narrow?”

  They’d also begun a routine of sometimes meeting for breakfast before work if they were both scheduled for the opening shift, kvetching about their jobs over Belgian waffles and coffee. If their shifts weren’t the same, they’d try to meet for lunch, often joining up with Davii. Vienna would watch her two favorite men talk, trying to make each other laugh and competing for her approval. She’d watch Derek carefully and covertly during lunch, observing his body language and looking for clues as to his interest in Davii.

  Even though she’d practically promised Davii that she would set him up with Derek, she wanted to be sure that Derek was attracted to Davii. Derek already had a boyfriend, and she didn’t want to disrespect their relationship, although she knew enough about Hunter Congreve to have already formed an unfavorable opinion. Vienna had encountered him many times in various stores in Mall of the Universe. She’d sold him a suit in Mercury Man, served him drinks in the Jupiter Lounge, offered advice about a stereo in Energy Electronics, and noticed Derek wearing several of the shirts she’d selected for Hunter during her stint at Gucci. Each time, Hunter had regarded her as if he’d never seen her before and barely spoke to her. Vienna had quickly diagnosed him as a pompous snob with a daddy complex and possible racial prejudices, and regarded him with equal indifference.

  Now she was looking for cracks in the veneer of Derek’s relationship with Hunter—the fact that Hunter had left Derek behind to go to Australia being a titanic hint that their ship might be sinking. But whenever she asked Derek about his lover, he’d become guarded and assure her that everything between them was fine. He’d told Vienna how he met Hunter and other facts, but when it came to emotions and how he felt about Hunter, Derek would shut down and change the subject.

  Vienna never pushed Derek when he got to that point, not wanting to offend him and risk their growing friendship. Which was another reason she was reticent to fix up her two friends. What if Derek and Davii didn’t click as a couple and things grew awkward between them? Vienna didn’t relish the thought of her only friends being at odds with each other, or of trying to protect the frail, histrionic egos of two gay men.

  Natasha moved from behind a column and blocked her path when Vienna was just steps away from the divide between Women’s Shoes and Cosmetics. She reminded Vienna of a villain in a Grimm’s fairy tale—a wolf blocking a forest path, hoping to gobble up innocent girls like Vienna for breakfast.

  “Can I help you with something?” Natasha growled.

  “I don’t think so,” Vienna said dismissively and walked around her to the safety of the Cosmetics floor.

  Vienna never liked to waste her time and energy on people who were beyond redemption. She tried to avoid Natasha as much as possible. Whenever Vienna’s department manager was tied up in a meeting upstairs or was off the floor for an extended period of time, Natasha would never hesitate to use her authority and make the lives of the Cosmetics employees a living hell. Vienna hurried back to the Lillith Allure counter, feeling like a child playing freeze tag who’d just reached the safety of home base.

  “I hate that woman,” Vienna said to Bianca, who was guiltily and hastily swallowing a donut.

  “Me, too,” Bianca replied, which surprised Vienna, who’d never known Bianca to hate anyone or anything. Hate required a spine.

  Just then, a drab and nerdy teenaged girl approached the counter, inquiring about Lillith Allure’s Zodiac products, and Vienna switched into work mode. She recommended Zodiac’s Sagittarius line, which was more subdued and might work with the girl’s Plain Jane appearance.

  “Let me apply some samples, if you’ve got time, so I can show you how they’ll work with your look,” Vienna said.

  “I’m going to a party and hoped to look like her,” the girl said, pointing to a picture of Sheila Meyers, Zodiac’s spokeswoman, who was decked out in red leather and festooned in glam and glitz in an ad for Zodiac’s Cancer line.

  Bianca stood behind Vienna and murmured, “Sure, Vienna. I’ll start the cauldron boiling. You get the eye of newt.”

  Vienna suppressed her laughter and walked around the counter to work some magic. Time flew by as she transformed the girl into Sheila Meyers’s mousy-haired Mini-Me. Several customers stopped by to observe her work, while Bianca reeled them in with her standard “I could never pull this off, but it would look fabulous on you” shtick. After a few hours, Vienna had unloaded sixty dollars worth of Zodiac on Mini-Me and made over five other women, as well.

  While she was contouring another customer’s cheekbones with pale pink Lillith Allure rouge, Vienna noticed Derek enter Drayden’s. He was wearing a charcoal suit, and his hair, which Davii had recently trimmed, was styled in a deliberately messy way that made him look like he’d stepped out of a magazine ad. Vienna was impressed and smiled. Derek saw her and waved. As she returned the gesture, she noticed the man walking behind him, who’d followed Derek’s gaze and was now staring at her. Recognizing him as the man who’d caught her earlier when she tripped, Vienna felt her face grow hot with embarrassment. He smiled and nodded briefly, but turned his attention to the woman next to him, much to Vienna’s relief.

  “I don’t think I like this color,” Vienna’s customer said. “Do you have anything else?”

  “You’re right,” Vienna said. “Let’s try something a little more natural.”

  Vienna’s curiosity took hold, and she stole glances at Derek and the couple with him while she worked, wondering how Derek knew them. They were obviously buying shoes for the woman. Even at fifty feet, Vienna could tell she was a “second draft,” her term for a woman who’d had plastic surgery. The man obviously had control issues, since he was the one picking out shoes for her and putting them on her feet. Derek was little more than a gofer, running back and forth to the stockroom for different sizes and styles. Natasha prowled nearby, which made Vienna wonder if the couple was of importance. It was difficult to tell, since Natasha often lurked, hovered, and circled like a vulture.

  When their counter was clear of customers, Vienna gestured to Women’s Shoes and asked Bianca, “Who’s that couple that Derek’s assisting?”

  Bianca squinted, then said, “Emily-Anne Barrister. God, I wish I had her breasts.”<
br />
  “You should ask her where she got them,” Vienna advised. “Maybe if she referred you, you could get a discount.”

  “You don’t think they’re real?” Bianca asked incredulously.

  “Oh, girl, please,” scoffed Vienna. “Who’s the guy? I know I’ve seen him before.”

  “Christian Mercer. Don’t you think he’s cute? He organizes people’s personal lives, or shops for them, or something.”

  With a little effort, Vienna began to remember other times she’d seen Christian and mused aloud, “I thought he was schizophrenic.”

  “What?” Bianca said with a shocked look.

  “He seemed to spend a lot of time talking to himself or hearing voices,” Vienna explained. “Then I realized he wears a headset connected to his cell phone. Those things have altered our entire way of diagnosing human behavior.”

  “Uh-huh.” Bianca seemed a little puzzled. “So then you do know him.”

  “When I worked at Mercury Man, I helped him and some of his clients. And I sold him a digital camera at the electronics store. I don’t really know him. We’ve made small talk, but that’s about it.” She paused and regarded Christian. He was an arresting man. But it was his smile and poise, the way he put himself together, that made him attractive. Vienna recalled the strong arms that had caught her earlier and studied him as if he were a painting on display. “I guess he’s cute. Whose bus do you think he’s riding?”

  “What?” Bianca asked.

  “On which side is his bread buttered?” she inquired. When Bianca still looked confused, she said bluntly, “Is he gay?”

  “Probably,” Bianca said. She flushed crimson and quickly busied herself by restocking a display with eyebrow pencils.

  Vienna was intrigued and said, “You know something you’re not telling me.”

  “No, I don’t,” Bianca said quickly. Too quickly. When Vienna stared hard at her, Bianca put down the box of eyebrow pencils with a defeated sigh. “My friend Kate? Who works at Comet Cleaners? She’s been trying to get a date with him forever. She got this brilliant idea. Kate’s really bold. I could never—”