I came to rest behind the building, against a service fence. I sucked in fresh air.
Boom. Four guys in navy blue pants and shirts and work boots sat on the loading dock. They eyed my big hair and my sprayed-on dress and my tall shoes. One of them passed a cigarette to another, caught his buddy glancing at me, and snickered quietly. “Maybe she’s got a light for you,” he said in Spanish.
Today I was six feet tall, a good nine inches above the tallest of them. I strolled over and looked down at the guy gaping up at me with an unlit cigarette between his fingers.
“I have a fire for you,” I said in Spanish, “but I smoke in private.”
I reached down and took his cigarette. My fingers sparked against his. He turned red as my succubus mojo hit him. Then I turned and sauntered to the dumpsters twenty feet away, holding the cigarette out at my side like a doggy treat.
He was right behind me.
When we were out of sight behind the dumpsters, I tucked the unlit cigarette into the breast pocket of his shirt, under the lozenge that said Jimi, and reached for his belt buckle.
Three hours later I was back in the Lair, on the main deck of the big factory space, washing my hands with sharp-smelling petrochemical solvents at the barbecue sink. I’d been scrubbing the grill. Late-afternoon sunbeams fell through the chicken-wired windows, making slanting columns of dust dance over the basketball floor. The Metra train rattled by outside.
These were all stimulations I was familiar with. They comforted me. It felt good to get dirty by myself, after a day of crowds and being pretty.
The doorbell rang.
I tossed my scouring pad in the sink and went to the door.
When I opened it, flowering linden-tree perfume gushed in, making me blink.
“Hi. I’m down here. I’m new.” A dinky, shriveled old lady stood on the doorstep. She was loosely swaddled in a sweatsuit printed with widdle baby wabbits, and her tiny nursing-home shoes peeped out from under the sweat pants piled up over her feet. Her short white hair went all over, like the last day of a dandelion. She wasn’t even five feet tall. She grinned up at me.
It wouldn’t be the first time we’d had a new teammate sprung on us without warning.
She introduced herself, and I couldn’t help smiling back. She looked like somebody’s great-great-grandma. I’d never had even a grandma. Both of mine had died young, probably from being Army wives. This one was tiny, but she exuded enough perky, nosy affection for three people.
I thought about the bedroom situation upstairs. Jee would have a fit if she had to share her room with Reg, even if he was her boyfriend or slave or whatever. Pog wouldn’t take a roommate well. I couldn’t ask Beth to share, not so soon after she’d moved in. Melitta was off at college, but she'd be home in three weeks. It wouldn't be far to spring a roommate on her while she was away. Picturing their faces, I laughed, and let the new girl into the Lair.
She twinkled up at me. “You don’t say much, do you?” she said, and poked me in the tummy. “Show me the joint. I’ve been living in an old folks’ home for two years.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said sincerely.
“It’s a mighty fancy old folks’ home.” She stared at everything. “This better be good.”
I gave her a tour of the factory side: the plywood-surfaced basketball court, the barbecue corner with its gas grill and sink and ancient refrigerator and lawn chairs—we’d have to buy some more lawn chairs. I grinned to myself. I showed her the bike- and car-repair shop, the parking area by the big roll-up door in back, the overseer’s balcony twenty feet up the wall, the grotty old sauna.
Cricket was fascinated. She asked about a million questions. I didn’t try to answer them all. I was giving the team upstairs time to wonder who had rung the bell.
Cricket liked the downstairs locker room even better. Sparkling new sauna, separate steam room, a row of shiny new potty stalls equipped with bidets, and out in the middle of the room, that weird antique fixture that looked like a shallow chrome-and-tile fountain where, I explained to Cricket, in the old factory days, filthy dirty men had cleaned up before leaving work.
“Wish I’d seen them using it,” she said.
“Wish I’d used it myself,” I blurted.
Her eyes flashed toward me with a question that was gone in an instant.
“Time to meet the team,” I said. The woman didn’t even have a handbag. Had the recruiter kidnapped her out of that place? No matter what Cricket said, it must have sucked pretty bad. If I lived in an old folks’ home, I would want to be rescued.
“You’re so tall,” Cricket said now. “Are you Swedish? You look very Nordic. All blonde and broad-shouldered.”
“I play basketball,” I said.
And then the torrent began. “Wow. My great-grandsons and great-granddaughters play soccer. My grandsons played football when they were kids, but that’s out of style now. Now it’s all soccer and yoga and I don’t know what. These sure are noisy stairs. It’s because they’re steel. I suppose a factory has to have strong stairs, huh? What did they used to make here, do you know? Oh, you live in a flat upstairs. I get it. Where’s my room? Do we share a bathroom? I can go to the bathroom downstairs if I’m in the way. I won’t be in the way,” she said, pausing at the top of the stairs.
I turned and looked down at her. She only came up to my elbow. She shut up for four whole seconds.
She looked at me with big, anxious eyes. “I promise I won’t be in the way,” she repeated in a small voice.
In that moment, I realized that Cricket would be sharing my room. Because, basically, I was the one who wouldn’t make a stink.
In the longer silence that followed Cricket’s promise, I felt sorry for her. That was my first mistake.
I said, “It’s okay, Cricket. It’ll be fine.”
Then I led her back to the kitchen.
Pog was in there, cooking up something chickeny that smelled amazing and drove the drug-heavy scent of linden-tree blossom out of my head. I could hear Jee and Reg bickering in Jee’s room. Beth was cleaning up the kitchen, which was Reg’s job, but there’s no stopping Beth. She has to be somebody’s mom.
Maybe she’d take this talkative duckling under her wing, and I wouldn’t have to listen to her chatter.
Pog turned and saw us. She didn’t even blink at the newcomer. “Come in. Cricket, right? Take a load off. Don’t you have any stuff?”
I wasn’t surprised that Pog had been forewarned about Cricket’s arrival. She had been the one who got first word about Beth’s coming. Pog was kind of our team leader. If you could call a herd of cats a team.
“Stuff?” Cricket looked stunned. She was looking at the porn posters on the kitchen walls.
“Clothes?” Pog seemed savage. “Stereo, meth lab gear, car?”
“Do you even have a phone?” I said, looking at Cricket’s rabbit-printed sweatsuit, so big that her tiny body was swimming in it.
Cricket pulled a phone out of her sweatsuit pocket. “I’m electronificated now,” she said proudly.
“Hush, girls,” Beth said. She put down the Formula 409 spray and surged forward to take Cricket’s hands in hers. Yay, mom.
“Sit down, Cricket. I’m Beth. This is Pog, our team leader.” Beth faltered and I thought, Uh-huh, just realized about the bedroom situation, didn’t you? “We have a nice big van. We’ll go back and get your things whenever you like. Would you like some coffee? Beer? Tequila? Marijuana?”
“Sheesh, Beth, nobody calls it marijuana,” Pog said, but she handed a beer across the kitchen table to Cricket.
I steered Cricket into a chair. “I’ll go shift stuff around in my room.” I sent Pog a look that said, You owe me.
Pog’s answering look was grateful and wary.
Reg came into the kitchen as I was going out. Jee wore a tee shirt. Reg wore a towel. I could smell the sex on them.
“Who’s this?” I heard Jee say. I paused in the kitchen doorway to appreciate her reaction.
“New recruit. Meet Cricket, Jee,” Pog said. “And this is Reg, our houseboy.”
“Nice to meet you,” Cricket said to each of them.
“Hey, Cricket,” Reg said, sticking his head into Jee’s fridge and rummaging among microwbrew sixpacks.
“What?” Jee was less friendly. “I suppose you want her to sleep in my room?”
I rolled my eyes and headed for my own room, which I suspected would never, ever be quiet again.
CRICKET
Cricket had a bad moment there when Jee said that about sharing rooms. Then she realized Amanda had already decided to share with her. That made her feel warm. What a nice girl. Tall and strong and beautiful. And kind, too. How many people were that kind?
Pog had cooked a massive casserole of chicken thighs, rice, apricots, raisins, couscous, red wine, peas, and fennel seed. The girls and that boy Reg ate like stevedores. Cricket felt pretty hungry herself. There seemed to be no end to the food. After chicken and couscous, they shared a big pot of sliced cucumbers and fresh mint leaves, and after that, everyone got their own quart of ice cream. Amanda handed Cricket a tub of sea-salt caramel ice cream with chocolate truffles and a spoon, and to her own amazement, Cricket ate every bit. It was delicious. Then they ate cheese curls out of immense plastic bags, and drank beer or margaritas. Amanda sat beside Cricket, eating, saying nothing, handing her a fresh napkin whenever she looked for one. After three beers and all that good food, Cricket felt pretty sleepy.
Beth pointed out that she had no clothes or anything. She lent her some things to get her through the night. Pog made a remark about how Beth was always playing mother hen. Cricket watched Jee and her young man collect more beers and traipse out of the kitchen like nothing was up. Hoo boy. Lot of chemistry there, she thought wistfully.
She felt more than wistful, to tell the truth. She guessed Delilah wasn’t kidding that she had a new body now. It looked pretty much like her old body, but it sure didn’t feel like it. She felt as fresh as a teenager and twice as curious.
Beth put her to bed on an air mattress in Amanda’s room as if Cricket was her teenager, making sure she had a bathrobe and a toothbrush and a glass of water and all.
And like a teenager, Cricket suddenly didn’t feel sleepy. She lay awake with the unfamiliar orange streetlight coming in the window from the alley outside, thinking weird thoughts.
Delilah hadn’t explained much about what would happen next.
Funny, she’d never put any stock in an afterlife. Like she told Delilah, plenty of people had tried to buy her soul for their church. She’d listened to be polite, or because she was lonely. And here she was...maybe not dead...but not herself anymore.
And instead of being dead, she had new life, and a body she could design and redesign, according to Delilah. Oh, and all the sex she wanted.
That sounded interesting.
The room smelled faintly of sweat and chlorine. She wondered if Amanda was a swimmer. She wondered what Amanda looked like in a swimsuit. She wondered if they would be friends.
But when Amanda came to the bedroom, she seemed tired.
“I guess they were surprised when I showed up,” Cricket said tentatively.
Amanda said nothing. Cricket had the feeling she’d been putting off coming in here for quite a while.
That made her feel bad for moving in on the girl. “I’ll go to sleep now, I promise.”
Amanda smiled at Cricket, but she didn’t reply to that, either.
“You have a very nice smile,” Cricket said. She hesitated, then turned over.
However awkward it was here, it couldn’t be as bad as staying in the Loriston Home, waiting for the day she had to move to the second floor. She made a promise to herself right then that she would find ways to make it up to Amanda for losing her private room. She would be useful to this team. She’d make them love her.
AMANDA
In my room next morning, Beth and I spent the twenty minutes we always had to spend waiting for Jee to get ready to go out for breakfast, on trying to get Cricket’s head wrapped around the idea of “new body.” It was exhausting. We got as far as we could, and then brought her into the kitchen to show the others.
“Cricket?” Pog said.
She still looked exactly like herself, only about forty years younger. This made her appear, oh, sixty. She had on one of Beth’s club skank dresses, a tight, shirred, coral-pink spandex with chiffon ruffles. Cricket’s figure wasn’t too bad, but her face was wrinkle city. Plus, she was still only elbow-high to the rest of us. She also still wore the clunky, thick-soled shoes she’d showed up in.
Pog was openly dissatisfied. “Beth, I thought you explained to Cricket?”
“I did.” Beth seemed pleased with herself, considering Cricket looked like a senior citizen.
“She did,” I said.
“I think I look pretty hot,” Cricket said modestly, twirling for us. “Look, I made my hair dark again just by thinking about it!”
She had. Her hair was still kinky-fluffy, but definitely black.
Jee noticed the shoes. “Ew, I thought Beth was going to explain.” Jee was dressed to go out for breakfast at the Top of the Park, as always.
Cricket’s face fell. “Don’t you think I look nice?”
Instantly we all felt like shits.
“You look good enough to eat,” Reg assured her. He slid past the crowd, sidled up to her, wound an arm around her waist, and gave her a big swooping dip and a peck on the hand.
“Don’t you have to go back to your mom’s house this morning?” Jee said pointedly.
To forestall a Jee outburst I said, “Do you want to buy her some new clothes, or shall I?” Jee immediately began to explain that I had no taste in clothes, while everyone else tried to reassure Cricket that her new body looked great for a first try.
“I’m working up gradually to looking like one of you girls,” Cricket said more happily.
Reg let go of Cricket and went and bowed down and kissed Jee’s knee. She pulled him up for a hug. So that fire was put out.
Beth ran and got Cricket a pair of three-inch heels to go with the dress.
Cricket put them on.
Pog rolled her eyes and herded us downstairs to the van.
We took the van to Ann Sather’s restaurant for breakfast. While we were ordering, which always takes forever, that homicide detective came up to us, the one Beth had been having coffee with ever since she finished off her ex-husband. He smirked at her, and she blushed and tried to pretend she wasn’t glad to see him.
Cricket saw the whole thing. “Who’s that?” she whispered to me.
“Tell you later,” I whispered.
But it was too late. “Well, hello, ladies. I see you have company today.” Doyle looked straight at Cricket. Now what? Would he be on us forever, every time we had a new recruit?
Beth tilted her chin up at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said snottily. “This is my mother.”
“No it’s not,” Detective Doyle said, holding his hand out to Cricket. “Hi, I’m Doyle. I look for dead people.”
Cricket didn’t turn a hair. “Look somewhere else, sonny. I’m still alive.”
“I can see that. Frankly, I’m glad. You seem to be having fun.” He glanced around the table. “I’d hardly recognize you from your picture in the missing persons file.”
“Oh, poop,” Cricket said calmly. “Who squealed on me?”
“Your physical therapist, believe it or not. You didn’t show up for your session yesterday, and she got worried.” Doyle twinkled at Cricket and she twinkled back. Doyle’s a charming guy, for a cop. I can see why Beth likes him. “Your granddaughter Sharon gave us a photograph, Mrs. Immerzang.”
“Double poop,” Cricket said.
“If she was reported missing yesterday, why are you looking for her already?” Beth asked belligerently.
Doyle smiled at Beth. “Why do you think? The receptionist said there were live flames on Mi
ss Thing’s visitor’s business card. It’s hinky. Ergo, I get the call. I just thought,” he added, smiling wider and making Beth blush harder, “I’d kill two birds with one stone.”
“Smartypants,” Beth snapped.
“What does Sharon want?” Cricket said, her interruption helpful for once.
“Beats me.” Doyle shrugged, turning to her. “I just like knowing you’re not dead.”
“Me too. So what?” Cricket’s voice was getting an edge since Doyle brought up this Sharon person.
“Looky here, beautiful,” Doyle said, and Cricket simpered at him. “I realize you’re trying to get a new life started here, whatever that life is, and don’t tell me too much about it please, because as far as I know you don’t have a pimp, and you’re not breaking any laws that I know of, and I don’t want to know. Besides, I’m in Homicide, not Vice. But you need an exit strategy. Your family is going to worry.”
I felt Cricket go tense beside me. “They’ll be fine.”
“Come on,” Doyle urged. “Give them a little closure. Just enough to prevent them from phoning my office.”
“You think I’m too old for this dress,” she said wildly. “You just don’t want to have to see me.”
“Oh, I’ll be seeing you,” Doyle said, looking at Beth in a way that made Beth blush all the way down to her hands. “I’m just hoping not to mix business with personal.”
I stirred in my chair. None of us was happy when Doyle turned up like this, dropped in at our favorite restaurants while we were having a family meal or tearing off a little business in the restroom or whatever. I glanced at Beth. Doyle was her fault. Also, explaining family stuff was her job.
“He’s right, Cricket, honey,” she said, turning up her momness. “I’ve been through this myself. I didn’t do the closure thing right away, and it made a big mess.”
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 60