Then she realized her hair didn’t look dyed anymore. Her hair looked exactly the way she had wanted it to look when she chose the color. Not the way it turned out, mind—the way she had wanted it to look. Richly streaky, mussable, even thicker somehow, which the salon always promised but never quite delivered no matter how expensive their products were. Her gray roots didn’t show anymore.
Beth realized she had been holding her breath. She let out a long, marveling sigh. “When did this happen?”
“Sometime after you signed up,” Jee said. She was grinning. “Take off the dress,” she suggested.
Beth quivered. She yanked the sheath over her head and flung it down at her feet.
She had a waist again!
She twisted this way and that, staring. No cellulite. No sag in the butt. No love handles. No scar from her laparotomy. No tan lines. No freckles.
She was perky behind. She filled out her mommy bra with firm, high breasts very unlike the tired mammaries she was used to pouring into it.
“Wow,” she breathed. “Hey, I’m tall!”
“No, you’re not,” Jee said from six-foot-three.
“Well, I’m not short any more,” Beth said. She stared.
“Want to see your room?” Jee packed the makeup case shut again and zipped it into Beth’s suitcase. “C’mon, Sleeping Beauty. You’re next door to me. I’m told I snore.”
Beth was following her down the hall in her underwear when footsteps came clanging up the metal stairs from the first floor.
Pog came into the hallway from the kitchen. “Amanda? Is that the contractors?”
It was a stringy twenty-something young white guy in Michael Kors sunglasses, blondish hair, red spandex exer-pants and tank, and a swagger.
“Hel-lo, beautiful,” he said, stripping off the sunglasses as if he’d seen it done that way in a movie. He ogled Beth. In her bra and panties, she felt conspicuous.
“Which one are you?” he said, casually taking hold of one of her breasts.
Beth sprang back and edged behind Jee.
“Who the fuck are you?” Jee said dangerously. “How did you get in?”
The young man grinned. “I’m your manager, sugar.” He jingled keys in the air. “Call me Reg. Or Master.”
“Back off, ladies,” Pog said behind Beth. She looked furious and resigned and crafty and smooth all at the same time. She put her hand out. “I’m Pog.”
Reg looked at her hand. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Who is this guy?” Amanda said as she crested the staircase behind him. “He walked right across my wet striping.” She had a black paint splotch on the knee of her sweats and a white streak on her forehead.
Pog shook her head, not as if she didn’t know, but as if she did.
“You’re a big one, ain’t you?” Reg said to Amanda. “That’s okay. Don’t matter who sucks my dick. Might want to hit the showers, though, honey. We got some major partying to do tonight.”
In the silence that followed this epic speech, Beth sucked in a horrified breath.
That brought her to Reg’s attention again. “C’mere, cutie. I got somethin’ for ya.” He grabbed his crotch and grinned.
Beth panicked. This was what she had let herself in for. He was going to maul her, and her new roommates would let him!
The others surged around Reg.
Pog looked at Beth. “See that door?” She nodded at a blank white door near the top of the stairs. “Open it?”
“What’s this, ladies?” Reg said, looking from one to another as they crowded against him, turning him toward the door. “My room?”
“This is the manager’s door,” Pog said.
Beth opened the door. It let out onto a balcony just big enough for the five of them, with a railing at waist height. When she looked over the railing, she could see the vast open space of the factory room below. Sure enough, twenty feet down on the wooden deck, footprints in white and black fresh paint tracked across the gray deck, marring Amanda’s basketball court lines. An open paint can and a brush sat tidily on the edge of the floor.
Pog pushed Beth to the corner of the tiny balcony. “Back when this was a factory,” she said, sliding behind Reg and running her hands down his arms, “the manager could stand here and look down at the factory floor.”
“Damn,” Reg said in an awed voice, bellying up to the balcony rail. “We could shoot an orgy from here.”
Beth caught a frighteningly eager look in Jee’s eye.
The dark girl bent over and grabbed Reg by one leg.
Amanda took him by the other leg at the same moment.
“That feels good,” Reg said uncertainly. “Wait—hey!”
Pog seized both his wrists, brought them up behind him in a hammer lock and nodded to her roommates. They lifted Reg clean off his feet. She snarled in his ear, “Struggle and I’ll break your arm, dislocate your shoulder, or crack your neck. Maybe all three. Do you feel lucky?”
“Hey!” Reg yelled again. “What are you—?” His rolling eyes caught Beth, shrinking back against the wall. “Make ’em put me down!”
“Want to punch him in the crotch?” Pog invited Beth. Beth shook her head violently. “No? Suit yourself.”
“One,” Jee said.
“Two,” Amanda said.
“Three!” Pog said, and they hurled their new manager off the balcony.
“Too much spin,” Amanda said.
Reg tumbled, flailing his arms and legs, yodeling in terror. He hit the deck messily, an arm and a leg first, then smacked back on his head.
Jee looked over the railing. “May not be much blood.”
Amanda shrugged. “I was gonna have to repaint the whole thing anyway.”
Her mind whirling, Beth shoved past them and ran down the cold metal stairs on bare feet, hurtled through the old locker room, burst through the door onto the factory floor, and ran to where Reg lay in a crumpled tangle of limbs.
Jee was right. There wasn’t any blood.
Reg moaned. Fresh white paint smeared his shoulder and his spandex tank.
The other three girls sauntered onto the basketball deck.
Pog walked right up to their fallen manager and kicked him in the leg. He folded up, whimpering. “Hey, asshole. Can you talk?”
“Oh God,” he moaned. “My leg. My leg’s broken.”
“Wrong deity, dumbfuck,” Jee said, kicking him in the head.
Reg yelped.
Beth cringed, full of mixed feelings.
Pog squatted in front of his head. “Can you hear me? Good. Now pay attention. Because you work with us, you will not die. You might not even be crippled. But you will adjust your attitude.” She smacked his head, and he began crying. “Open your eyes or I’ll break your other leg.”
Reg opened his eyes. Tears and snot ran off his face onto the deck.
“Do you see the mess you made of Amanda’s nice basketball court? You are going to repaint it for her. You will do it right. Or we will throw you off that balcony again. Are you paying attention?” She raised her hand.
“Don’t hit him again!” Beth burst out.
The others looked at her.
“Please,” Beth said. “I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.”
Pog raised her eyebrows. “Always nice to have one good cop on the team.” She stood. “We’re gonna leave you here overnight, Reg, because it’ll give you time to think about consequences. In the morning, we’ll get you on your feet and you’ll start work.”
“He might die of pain!” Beth exclaimed. “Or exposure!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jee said. “Explain it to her, Pog.”
Amanda yawned. “I’m hungry, guys.”
“Hell yeah. It’s way past food o’clock,” Jee said.
“C’mon,” Pog said, explaining nothing, linking elbows with Beth and pivoting her away from the wreck.
Beth looked back at Reg’s crumpled form, still horrified.
Amanda went to a grotty sink i
n the corner by the old round-shouldered fridge and started washing up her brushes and her painty arms.
At the door to the living quarters, Jee turned back, walked up to Reg, hauled her foot back, and kicked him hard in the butt. Then she followed Pog and Beth out.
Reg didn’t move.
Pog
I mixed Beth a drink at random out of bottles I found in the lower kitchen cabinets and explained the manager situation. I was stuttering with fury.
“Just like Ish to dump this little turd on us without warning. Damn his ass,” I ranted. “I’ll kill him. I’ll Skype his ass and then I’ll reach right through the screen and tear his miserable fucking dick right out of his pants!”
“Yeah, what the fuck?” Jee said. “Ish didn’t strike me as having the nerve to pull this.”
“I’m sure he didn’t think of it himself. He hasn’t got the balls.” I poured butterscotch schnapps on top of strawberry shortcake vodka into a huge plastic cup. “Should have known the Regional Office wouldn’t let women run around loose without a male in charge. He told me in English that I would be team leader,” I fumed. “He promised!”
Jee grunted.
“But Reg! He’s hurt! What will happen to him now?” Beth whimpered.
“Sheesh!” I threw my free hand in the air. “I’ll call Ish, and he’ll have the jackass dumped back wherever he lives, and he’ll wake up in bed tomorrow morning good as new, and he’ll think it’s his first day of work all over again, and he’ll come prancing back in here, and he won’t remember a thing. Let’s see, s’mores vodka, birthday cake vodka, cinnamon hot liqueur, chocolate liqueur, honey bourbon. Disgusting. Any requests?”
“Oh, he might remember,” Jee said, smiling. “I got him on the tailbone.”
“Ya think?” I said skeptically. Then I looked at the last bottle I’d fished out of the lower cabinet. “Creme de menthe, too? Really? Somebody on that old sex demon team was gay.”
I did feel a little guilty for mangling the guy. But it was him or us. And I was completely confident that Ish would never, ever have the balls to yell at me for it.
“Are you sure he’ll be all right?” Beth sat there in her underwear, shivering. Her eyes rolled like a scared filly’s.
“Why don’t you put some clothes on?” I suggested. “We’re going out for dinner.”
“I thought you were cooking Thai,” Jee said.
“Not with Junior Pimp liable to come crawling up the stairs while we’re eating.”
“How?” Beth looked even more appalled. “He’s got a broken leg. Maybe his arm, too—his shoulder—the way he was twisted—” She squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered.
“He’ll be good as new by tomorrow,” Amanda said.
“I thought you wanted to mess over the male of the species,” I said, capping the creme de menthe and adding Kahlua instead. The woman needed stimulation. I shoved the cup under the ice dispenser in the nearest refrigerator door.
“Well, yes,” she confessed. “But I was thinking of my ex-husband. More along lines of embarrassing him and making him give me the money he owes me.”
“We can do that, too,” Jee said, smirking.
“What you need to understand,” I said, putting twenty ounces of iced mixed alcoholic syrups in Beth’s hand, taking her other arm, and drawing her out of the kitchen, “is that you are with the big girls now. We do not fuck around.”
She sipped the drink and shuddered again. I wasn’t surprised. It was a disgusting mdss of corn syrup and artificial flavors. Her eyes turned to the doorway, and I saw Reg’s name hovering on her lips again.
With another headshake, I said, “Jee, get her dressed, will you?”
I pulled myself together for dinner out, and then got onto the crappy laptop we use to talk to our supervisor in the Regional Office.
As soon as he saw my scowl, he started whining and waving his hands. “I didn’t do it! I had to do it! They made me!”
“You little shitweasel,” I said, in part.
“It’s a fundamental rule of the pyramidal hierarchy down here!” he said, not getting all that out at once, because he was close to swallowing his tongue. “I can’t have more than three people under me without adding another layer of management!”
“Bullshit. You’re taking orders from D—”
“Don’t say it! Don’t say it!” He was practically in tears. “No, it wasn’t her idea either. I had to. I swear.”
“Well, I’m not taking any crap from this little pencil dick. Got me?”
More hand-waving. “I’m sure you’ll get along fine. I have every confidence in you. I’ll leave it all to you. Just carry on.”
“I will,” I snarled, and cut the connection. “Where the fuck is Beth?” I roared. “I’m starving to death here.”
Beth was in Jee’s room, getting kitted out. Forty long minutes later, we were ready to go. This would be the last time I let Jee decide when someone looked good enough to party.
“Wow,” Amanda said. “Nice.”
“Not my best work, but not bad,” Jee said.
“She doesn’t need the Sistine Chapel treatment before dinner,” I grumbled, blinking at how well Beth cleaned up.
Beth had on one of Jee’s simple little black dresses. It didn’t look like a designer original at all, until you realized how well it fit, and how it didn’t do anything stupid with bling, buttons, bows, or any other fashion touch that has a shelf-life of ten minutes. When you stay young and hot as long as we do, you don’t want your wardrobe going out of style every five minutes, because shopping is a pain. Well, most of us find shopping a pain. Jee probably wouldn’t mind replacing two-thirds of her closet every season.
Anyway, Beth fit this dress.
Her hair had obviously taken most of those forty minutes. It was mussy in an artfully trampy way. But the makeup was subdued and perfect, and Jee had lent her a single, short, virginal string of pearls. Also, the fuck-me Ferragamos. Any man who saw Beth in this get-up would be seriously confused. Which is how we like ’em.
“Okay, Beth,” I said. “It’s Friday night. Where does your ex-husband like to take his skank for a fancy dinner?”
“Barclay’s,” Beth said, slurring a little. She must have finished that drink. “It’s in Oak Park. Very nice.”
“I know it,” I said.
Jee whined, “We won’t eat for at least an hour and a half!”
“Humor the new girl,” Amanda said.
“I’m dying,” Jee moaned.
“We’ll hit Mickey D on the way south,” Amanda said.
“Popeye’s,” Jee said.
“Fine! Popeye’s for a snack, then Barclay’s,” I said hastily. “To the slutmobile!”
We clattered downstairs in our thousand-dollar shoes and piled into the van. Amanda drove, I called in a reservation, and Jee asked Beth pointed questions about how much money her ex-husband had got away with, how he had managed to get the house even though he was the one sleeping with the tart—stuff calculated to keep her riled up. With her fresh, twenty-something new face and a good dress, Beth looked energized. She couldn’t be dead drunk yet—it’s hard for us to get drunk unless we put it away fast—but she definitely had a pissed-off, pretty color in her cheeks.
Oak Park was miles away, and the Eisenhower Expressway was a mass of pink smog, plus the detour through the Popeye’s drive-through, so we had some time to learn more about her.
Beth seemed to have spent twenty-eight years as a doormat. This was not how she presented herself. But add it up: Husband has giant job in the city with real estate development firm. High six-figure income. House just a little too expensive. Two and a half vacation homes. Boat. Kids on their own for five or six years now, but happy to lean on Bank of Mom and Dad. Beth had done charity work, served on the right committees, and adorned hubby’s arm—his name was Blake—at business events, but she’d also felt the need to make the kids’ lunches, do all the household chores, and chauffeur them everywhere, as if she was some lower-middl
e-class hausfrau. Jee suggested that this might have been Blake being cheap, but Beth got huffy at that. She’d put all that on herself, apparently.
Then it came out that Blake was financially heavily overextended. The settlement he’d promised her wouldn’t happen, couldn’t happen. She was hyperventilating when we got to this part; the mortgage payments were still in five figures. I guess it hadn’t sunk in yet that all that stuff was now behind her.
Jee produced a flask from her clutch. Beth drained it without a murmur.
“What’s phase one?” Amanda said from the driver’s seat. “Chuck him off the balcony?”
Beth shuddered.
I raised my voice. “I think we let Beth assess the situation.”
Beth
Beth sat in the van with the succubi, feeling as if she was floating through someone else’s movie. Jee tried to keep her attention, but though she heard herself reciting the list of her grievances, she couldn’t stay focused.
She decided that this was because her body had changed. They say that memory resides in the body, not the brain. If that was true, then she ought to be experiencing some recently-prayed-for amnesia. Perhaps she had regressed back to twenty-two, when all her life was before her, not behind her. The memories seemed now like someone else’s past. She saw them, but she couldn’t feel them anymore. The shock and rage and searing pain floated nearby, like bad-faced balloons at a birthday party.
At length they pulled up at Barclay’s. Pog handed the keys to a valet. They pranced in—well, her companions pranced—causing a sensation. Until she saw the faces of the valet, the maitre d’, and the patrons waiting to be seated, Beth hadn’t considered what an impact they would make: four surreally beautiful women, dressed to kill, having a wonderful time.
Beth smelled steak searing on a grill. Her tummy rumbled. How could she be hungry again? The smell of the girls’ fast food in the van had been too much for her. She’d eaten a leg, a spicy wing, and a small order of dirty rice, unable to control herself, and decided to have just an appetizer when she got to Barclay’s. After all, this was a Blake hunt, not a meal.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 4