King of Hearts

by Stevenson, Jennifer

  Nadine looked down at a stack of six-foot sunflowers in full bloom, piled like cordwood against a wall.

  “Shouldn’t they be in water?” she said, and then she realized the sunflowers were covered with dust. She bent over the pile. The stems were rough, and the leaves were big, sad, leathery, wrinkly, end-of-summer sunflower leaves—so real, like live sunflower leaves. Painted plastic, painted fabric, painted metal tube.

  “Eddie?” yelled King Dave.

  She heard shuffling somewhere in the back of the cavern. Hairs rose on the nape of her neck.

  “What the fuck, what the hell, you got a problem you can’t use the phone, Jesus Christ, I can’t believe the way people carry on around here,” a nasal voice muttered, growing closer. Nadine became aware of a powerful odor of cigars. The air went blue and smoke billowed out around a hanging human skeleton. Then the prop man appeared.

  He was short, fat, elderly, totally bald, and smoked an enormous cigar. “Whaddayawant, King Dave, goddammit, I’m busy.” He shook King Dave’s hand as if he hadn’t cursed at him.

  Then he saw Nadine and stepped back in shock. “Fuckdaluck! King Dave, you didn’t tell me you had a lady with you. Shit!”

  Eddie leaped forward and jammed his cigar end-first into a fake pot with a fake yew bush in it. That done, he stretched out his hand to Nadine. His bald dome only came up to her shoulder.

  “Excuse the shit outta me, Miss, I apologize to hell for smoking, din’t know you was here, King Dave here ain’t got no fuckin’ manners, pleased to meet ya.”

  “Nadine wanted to see the prop storage,” King Dave said.

  Nadine shook Eddie’s hand. To her relief, he let go quickly, as if her hand would bite. She shrank back against King Dave. “If it’s not too much trouble.” She looked pleadingly at King Dave but he only squeezed her arm and smiled reassuringly.

  “Ah, hell, what the fuck, I got nothing to do until the glue dries, yeah, sure, c’mon,” Eddie said, shuffling away, beckoning over his shoulder.

  King Dave gave Nadine a shove. She followed nervously.

  “Watch out overhead, Miss, this shit is dirty as hell, most of it,” Eddie said as she bonked her head on a chair leg and dust rained down into the already-close air. He showed her a large fake alligator lurking on the floor with its mouth open; any number of gilt-framed landscape paintings, portraits, and fake mirrors; chandeliers; piles of tables; stacks of sofas and loveseats; and a gallery-worth of bronze naked people in various sizes, many of them highlighted in all the naughty places with gold paint. Everything was, as Eddie had warned, dusty.

  Nadine forgot to blush at his language as she took in the trove of riches, fake and less fake, in this underground treasure house. King Dave murmured glossary notes into her ear to make up for the gaps in Eddie’s highly-colored descriptions, and eventually she stopped blushing at all the naked people. There were nude paintings, nude statues, even a whole shelf of nude body parts, arrayed by sex and part, many larger than life-size, some plaster, some gold-colored, some rubbery and painted to look as if they had been gruesomely severed from a corpse. Finally she was just curious to see how it had all been made.

  Fuckdaluck Eddie was delighted to explain.

  The whole time, King Dave held her right hand in his and curved his left arm around her waist, ostensibly to keep her from tripping over a plastic Greek column or a huge wicker basket full of model airplanes.

  Fuckdaluck Eddie lived up to his name. He must have said that phrase a dozen times in fifteen minutes. She was grateful for King Dave’s nearness. Though Eddie seemed far from violent, his language was like a constant slap over the ear, and she thought she would soon be tripping and tottering from the repeated impact of all those bad words.

  What saved her was a sneeze. Eddie shifted a snarling stuffed bear’s head, raising a cloud of dust.

  “Ah-ah-ah-CHOO!” she shrieked.

  Instantly, Eddie announced that she had to leave.

  “I can’t be responsible for nobody having no fucking allergy attack, know what I mean? One time we had a little dust onstage and the fucking soprano had a fucking allergy attack and she almost croaked, I mean, they hadda inject her with some shit, now that’s gotta hurt. So the hell with that. Git outta here now, go turn blue in somebody else’s department,” he growled.

  Nadine was only too glad to obey. She thanked Eddie for the tour between sneezes.

  King Dave hustled her back through the labyrinth to the brighter corridor outside. “We better get you some fresh air,” he said. “This way.”

  Instead of leading her up, however, he took them down one more flight and used a key to let them into yet another dark, cavernous room. But the air was fresh down here—even a little fishy, as if a Lake Michigan breeze had found its way into the bowels of the Opera House.

  He turned the lights on and she saw they were in a bare room full of huge round steel pillars. Near the door sat some junky-looking furniture. Gratefully, she let King Dave seat her on a broken-backed couch where she could catch her breath.

  “Okay, what’s this catacomb called?” she gasped.

  He settled beside her on the couch and grinned at her. “It doesn’t have a name. It leads to the underground lake and the, uh,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows, “mighty organ below.”

  She tried to scowl and blow her nose at the same time.

  “Okay, see these big columns?” His arm draped over the back of the couch, not touching her.

  The huge steel columns gleamed dully in the light of the ever-present “candlestick”—a single light bulb stuck on a waist-high metal stand. She ignored his arm.

  “So?”

  “Every floor we been at below deck, there’s a storeroom. Above this one, we got two more stories of storerooms. And on top of that is the orchestra pit. And above that is the stage.”

  She squinted, trying to picture it.

  “These here are the pistons for a big-ass hydraulic elevator. We can push a whole set onto it and take it up four stories to the stage floor. Or clear the chairs and music stands out of the orchestra pit. Or load tympani and chimes and pianos and other heavy instruments and bring ’em up to level.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It smells fishy.”

  “Fuckdaluck Eddie says it’s the hydraulics. He claims the system used to run on river water, but that’s not true. I don’t know why it smells lakey. The guys can smoke down here and not get yelled at.”

  “Huh,” she said. “Eddie smokes like a chimney.”

  “Nobody goes into Eddie’s kingdom. You must have figured that out by now.” He tickled her shoulder with his fingers.

  She rolled her eyes sidelong at him. “I get your point.”

  He leaned closer. “And what point is that?”

  Nadine realized that she was sitting beside the biggest womanizer in the Local on a big old couch behind closed doors, all alone together in the remotest room in the most mysterious building in the city. His leg was touching hers. And she was totally relaxed.

  “About all that swearing.”

  “C’mon.” He tickled her shoulder again. “I want to hear it.”

  “Grrr.”

  “What’s that?” He bent his head close to her lips. He scooted closer, if that were possible, and closed his arm over her back. “Beg your pardon, your highness? I didn’t hear that.”

  She ought to get up. She ought to slap his face and walk right out of here.

  She was good and sick of being her highness, the preacher’s daughter, who told everybody how to act.

  She turned her face to his and made her lips prim so they wouldn’t smile.

  “I get your point. You don’t swear all that much.” She gave him what the black waitresses at Liz Otter’s called the cut-eye, narrow and level.

  He leaned half an inch closer and kissed her.

  Something crazy must have got into her head with all that opera dust. Glamour dust. Naked people dust.

  She curled her arm around the back of his head and
pulled him clear into her lap, kissing him as deep as she knew how. His big warm body covered her nicely. He didn’t climb on top of her like her dopey high school boyfriend, or grab her breast. He kind-of perched over her on his knees on the couch, making her warm without making her feel trapped. The harder she pulled, the stronger he seemed, holding himself away from her. He didn’t even have his hands on her. Instead he held himself off from her, bracing against the couch behind her.

  “Nnn!” she said, because her tongue was busy thrashing around with his. Impatiently she yanked his head closer.

  He pulled away. “Slow down, your highness. This is supposed to be fun.”

  Her hands fell to her lap. “You’re always so bossy!” she complained.

  “I’m bossy. I like that,” he said. The laugh was back in his voice. “This ain’t the Olympics, babe. Go easy on an amateur like me.” He dipped his head and brushed her lips with his.

  Fireworks went off in her middle.

  Somewhere, way outside herself, anxiety was dancing rings around her. Or maybe it was Daddy, shaking his finger the whole length of his arm.

  This would go a whole lot better, she told the preacher, if you didn’t make me stop and think.

  She tugged at King Dave’s head.

  “What’s your hurry?” he said, lowering his mouth so that every word tickled her lips.

  Her eyes were starting to cross, so she shut them.

  He murmured, “Let me guess.” His lips vibrated against hers, making a sizzle that burned like a slow fuse clear down to her yin-yang. He said in that velvety voice that made a nerve tickle behind her ear, “You’re up for adventure but you’re chicken, too. Like on the loading rail up there.”

  She became aware that he was slowly lowering his body over hers, tantalizing her with his heat and muscle and the smell of his sweat, not quite touching.

  “You’re afraid that if we go too slow, you’ll chicken out.”

  Her body screamed to jump across those last three-quarters of an inch, grab him, and drag him down on top of her. She hesitated. Darn him, he was right. If things didn’t pick up here pretty soon she’d have to start listening to Daddy.

  He hunkered down over her, closer and lower and hotter and thicker, and she slid her arms around his waist, thrilling to the hardness of his body, arching her back to get there quicker, and when he finally covered her mouth with his again and sank heavy as a ton of bricks onto her she grabbed a double handful of his shoulder muscle and squeezed, while he chuckled down her throat.

  Slower was definitely better.

  She had time to think, This is bad boy King Dave Flaherty and I’ve got my tongue in his mouth and he fits like a glove right over me, over every inch of me, a man I’ve seen flirting with every waitress in the city of Chicago, a man I’ve seen with his dingaling hanging Day-Glo orange in the breeze and a sweet, startled, dumbfounded look on his angel face—at that thought her body took over and she threw a leg over him, dragging him down heavier on top of her with her calf, because she wanted to feel for very sure if he liked her as much as he liked that harlot Tammy with the spray paint.

  Blue jeans don’t lie. He liked her.

  His kiss got really hard suddenly.

  In theory, she knew, this would lead to something that would resemble, though not identically, the behavior of beasts in the field. As a small-town girl from cattle country she was familiar with the sight. The lady cows bellowed. Good thing this room was so far downstairs. But what if he didn’t fit? Somehow she figured King Dave would be prepared for such an eventuality. I mean, he must be, considering how big his dingaling gets, she thought, and he pulled himself completely off her, stood up, and put his hands on his hips.

  “Your highess? Hello? Are we on the same planet here?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Are you actually paying attention, or am I wasting my time here?” he demanded.

  A tinny, tinkly, beedly-beep noise sounded and, with a growl, he yanked his cell phone off his belt. “Flaherty,” he barked into it. “Oh. Yeah, I’m downtown. Uh,” he said, staring at Nadine and then looking at his watch, then returning his stare to her face. “Uh. Well. No, not tonight, but I’m due back at the Auditorium at eight tomorrow. How—how about you give the call to somebody else?” he said in an unfamiliar, small voice.

  Then he was practically crawling. “No, sure, I want to work. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Yeah, okay,” he said, and let the hand holding the phone fall to his side. “Shit.”

  Nadine had witnessed this one-sided conversation all too many times at Liz Otter’s. “You have to go to work.”

  “I’m only going upstairs. They lost a man to the flu and curtain’s in ten minutes.”

  She sat up. “You have a nerve—”

  “Now, Nadine, don’t get huffy with me. I tried to weasel out of it. When Corky says, ‘What’sa matta kid, don’t you wanna woik?’ you have to say yes. It’s the way it is.”

  “It is not.” She stood up and tried to brush past him.

  He tossed the phone on the couch, grabbed her with both hands, and kissed her until her knees buckled. She swayed.

  She said breathlessly, “You have to say no sometimes.”

  “Only for an hour. Probably half an hour. If Joey’s on the curtain, I can be back in fifteen minutes,” he pleaded.

  Her voice rose in outrage. “You want me to wait down here all by myself while you work, so you can come back here and—”

  “Why not? You were trying to do me through my jeans a minute ago. You haven’t changed your mind,” he said positively, and when she tried to destroy him with a look, he kissed her again, long, slow, and hard, pulling her into his arms, arching over her so that she bent backward and lost it, lost gravity, floated up and up into his kiss.

  Then he dumped her on the couch.

  And ran for the door.

  “I’ll be right back!” he called. “Keep your cool!”

  She flew up off the couch after him and hit the door just as it slammed in her face.

  The door was locked.

  Chapter Ten

  Nadine didn’t waste one minute hammering on the door, screaming, cussing, or telling the door what she thought of His Royal Majesty King Dave Flaherty.

  Instead she bounced back to the couch and sat.

  This was war. This called for dirty pool, the maximum sneakiness. Sadly, Nadine had spent the first nineteen years of her life as the biggest goodie-two-shoes in Texas, including those developmentally critical high school years when a normal girl picked up sneakiness.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed hard.

  The worst thing was that she still wanted him. Her body was sending her all kinds of dissatisfied messages. Thinking how she had thrown herself at him made her squirm. Thinking how he had grabbed her and squeezed her and made her hot all over and kissed her utterly brainless made her squirm worse.

  She’d like to do this to him. Work him up. Lock him in a room and leave him with his libido doing the do-si-do all over his insides. See how he liked it.

  Yes, that would do. Her eyes narrowed. Could she do it?

  She sucked in air across her clenched teeth.

  Not for nothing had she spent eight years in the receiving line on Sunday, wearing white gloves and pantyhose, while every other girl was smoking in the parking lot. Smiling at kids who poked fun, visiting shut-ins while her classmates learned to drink, telling backsliders when they had sinned against the Lord.

  Nadine had self-control.

  Not that she’d showed it today. She was shocked, how swiftly consorting with King Dave had brought her low.

  Three hours ago, she was a good woman. Since then King Dave Flaherty had looked up her dress. She’d looked at naked pictures and statues. She’d heard more cusswords than in her entire life before. She’d acted the harlot with a man of bad reputation. And now she was fixing to do something nasty right back to him.

  How long did he plan to leave her down here, anyway?

/>   Suddenly she heard a pop! and the screechy, squeaky sound of musical instruments tuning up, and a crowd of people slowly hushing from hubbub to the occasional cough. She looked around. On the wall above the couch was a speaker.

  Ah. If the boys came down here to smoke during the show, they’d want to hear what was happening on stage, so’s they could run upstairs when it was time to get back to work.

  The orchestra started up. Some kind of classical music, all right. It made her ears itch. If she had to listen to opera on top of everything else, this qualified as bona fide torture.

  The noise set her to worrying again.

  King Dave might not be the next person to open that door. It could be one of the other guys. Would they let her out? Or would they make her wait for him?

  Chilling thought. She didn’t feel defenseless, exactly—being six feet high kind of took the edge off the physical intimidation thing. But she didn’t like to imagine what Weasel Rooney or Rob the Snob Morton, Bobbyjay’s gossipy uncle, would say about her if they found her locked in their lair, awaiting King Dave Flaherty. Darnit, King Dave was trying to ruin her reputation in Chicago, too!

  Up on the wall, out of the speaker, the overture ended and the caterwauling began. She set her teeth.

  How could he do this to her? Why, why?

  She knew why. What’sa matter, kid, don’t you wanna woik? Of course he wanted to woik. Anyone who said, “Uh, not tonight, but thanks,” was liable to find himself informally laid off.

  Being FX’s kid only meant pressure to overwork even more. She imagined King Dave was expected to feel privileged—and when was he ever not privileged?—to get unexpected extra work like this. When he wasn’t busy seducing a waitress.

  Which led back to her, here, now, stuck in this drafty room with nothing to eat or drink, and no potty, behind a locked door.

  With opera music.

  The loud, wobbly singing coming out of that speaker really got on her nerves. She climbed up on the couch back and probed around until she found the place where the wire went into the speaker. Ah, just like a telephone. Carefully she pinched the little fastener dealie and pulled the wire out of the speaker.