Lacey Luzzi Box Set

by Gina LaManna

  “Um,” I said, looking helplessly at Meg. “I will be right back.”

  Michael looked confused, while Meg looked quite livid. She grabbed me by the ear and dragged me around the bar, catching a few weird stares at my ouches and stop, that hurts!

  “He’s sexy, rich – probably – and super into you. What’s your deal?” She stared me down.

  “I – I don’t know.” I cringed. “I’m sorry, I just...”

  “You just what?” Meg put her thick hands on her hips. “I let my dreadlocked lover boy walk straight out of here in order to help you with this man. For both of us – I’m not letting you say ‘no.’”

  “Fine, fine.” I agreed. “Don’t you think it’s at all suspicious he just happened to run into us and happens to live on this side of town?”

  “No,” Meg said bluntly. “I don’t.”

  She turned and went back to the bar, shooting a sugary smile at Michael and leaving me rubbing my red, sore ear.

  “Hi, mayday behind the bar.” I rolled my eyes as I sat next to Michael. “I’d love to grab a drink with you.”

  “Great.” His eyes glinted with what I hoped was excitement. “I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll pick you up – your place, Thursday at six.”

  “Oh, no, that’s not necessary.” My thoughts drifted to the art on my front steps. “I can meet you somewhere.”

  “Don’t start. I’ll be there – Thursday at six.” He winked, finished the last swig from his glass. He leaned over and gave me a swift kiss on the cheek and strode out the door without looking back.

  “Damn.” Meg shook her head. “How do you do it?”

  Meanwhile I stared after him, my hand pressed to my cheek, the spot where his lips had touched still tingling pleasantly.

  “Thursday at six.” I shrugged. “How he’s going to find the place, I have no idea.”

  “I’M GETTING A TRAINER,” I announced to Clay the second I walked in the door. In my jacket pocket I’d found a couple hundred dollars from when I left the estate. Carlos may not believe in giving things away for free, but it didn’t stop Nora. And she wasn’t scared of him. Not that Carlos would come close to missing a few thousand, let alone a few hundred bucks. One of his shoes cost that much – and he had an impressive selection of footwear in his walk-in closet.

  “For your date?” Clay hadn’t moved from his glowing den consisting mostly of computer monitors.

  “Yeah. It was strange – I wouldn’t say he’s traditionally handsome, but there’s something about him...” I trailed off. “How did you know I have a date?”

  Clay’s cheeks glowed a faint pink, which was a stark contrast to his normally pale complexion. “You say you’re going to get a trainer every time someone asks you out.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “So? I mean it this time. I’m going tomorrow.”

  I stomped out of the room, my high heels crunching on the leftover glass from the morning’s light bulb debacle. “And I don’t believe you. I don’t know how you snooped, but I’ll find out.”

  I slipped out of my little black dress and stepped into my much comfier, much airier pair of old soccer shorts (bright purple) and an ex’s sweatshirt (neon yellow). Looking like a bag of skittles gone awry, I rejoined Clay in the living room and plopped into the bean bag that counted as a lazy boy.

  “Find anything more on our guy?”

  “Andrey?” Clay took a huge bite out of what looked like the carcass of a cow. “Yep. What do you wanna know?”

  “Do you have his address?” I wrinkled my nose and got up to put in a bag of popcorn.

  “’Course.”

  “Let’s stake it out.”

  “Nope. No way, I told you I stop at research. You wanna freeze your ass off all night – that’s your prerogative.”

  “Who says it’s gotta be cold? I’ll bring a blanket.”

  Clay rolled his eyes. “Because that’ll help when you have to sprint away from a gang of crazed Russians.”

  “Who says I’m going to get caught?”

  Clay looked at my neon outfit.

  “I didn’t say I’m wearing this,” I said. Even though it was so comfortable, and I really hated any pants. Jeans, yoga pants, tights – any variety of material meant to constrict my figure was the devil’s work.

  “Who’s your date with?” Clay looked up from his computer, indicating more interest in my love life than he had in years.

  “He’s some guy – probably Italian. Dark hair, dark skin,” I sighed. “Muscles, great lips.”

  Clay raised his eyebrows. “Is Michael picking you up?”

  “AHA!” I whirled around from where my bag of popcorn was exploding like crazy. “I knew it! How’d you find out? Talk to Meg? Install a camera?”

  Clay’s cheeks morphed from pink to streaks of red. “No. Just a lucky guess.”

  “Spill the beans, or...“

  “Fine, bring me your purse.”

  I grabbed my purse from my bedroom, its contents scattering everywhere as I yanked the wrong string. Tupac was in the most inconvenient place as usual, stepping all through my belongings as if looking for gold (aka cat nibble). Growling, I handed the lumpy material over to Clay.

  “See this?” He pointed to the fake gold button on my knockoff Wal-Mart purse. It was so knockoff I wasn’t even sure which brand it was knocking off. “Tiny camera. Transmits picture and sound right here.”

  He clicked a few buttons on his keyboard and up popped a beautiful, HD photo of Michael, who was looking much hunkier than I’d remembered.

  “So that’s why you want me to date him. You think he’s cute.” I nudged him.

  “No.” Red coloring streaked his ears. “He knows a lot about computers. He would be fun to talk to at family events if you were to get married.”

  “Right,” I said. “Fantasy guy for you – beautiful body and knows his way around a computer.”

  I poured the popcorn into a huge, maroon bowl and sprinkled on loads of white cheddar flavored salt. I took a huge handful, shoved a portion of it into my mouth, and plopped next to Clay. Giving him my best “sexy eyes,” I spoke in a low voice. “I’ll tell you what...”

  I choked, a popcorn kernel teasing me somewhere halfway down my throat. Tears squeezed from my eyes, and it took a few hearty thumps from Clay before I could properly speak.

  “Wrong pipe,” I squeaked, my voice cracking. “Michael’s picking me up Thursday night... if you do the stakeout with me tonight I’ll invite him in and pretend to be un-ready and you can talk to him about whatever computer lingo you want.”

  “It’s not called ‘computer lingo,’” he muttered, eyes locked on Michael’s picture.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “Fine, but put on something black for crying out loud.”

  I disappeared into my room and opened my closet.

  “Black, black, black,” I muttered, thumbing through my closet. I pulled out the black leggings I’d worn earlier to dinner with Carlos. My nose wrinkled as the “used” odor hit my nostrils. I tossed them into the hamper, silently lamenting that I’d have to do laundry. The laundry famine had gone on far too long, and today was the last straw. It was a sure deal, because the leggings were the last sign before it was time: they were black and stretchy and hard to make smell – when they were done for, I was out of options.

  I carefully looked through my backup leggings drawer, but nothing came close to cutting it. I had one pair of jeans – the same pair I’d worn in college. I refused to ever wear them because:

  1. The chance of them fitting was less likely than the chance of Carlos letting me off the hook for this assignment.

  2. I hate pants.

  3. If I’m forced to wear pants, they will be stretchy and fit to my legs, not the other way around. Skin is not meant to be compressed so tightly for extended periods of time.

  “Ah, you’ll do nicely,” I said, holding up an entirely black outfit.

  Chapter 10

  “I’M NOT GOING.�
� CLAY shook his head furiously. “Not if you’re wearing that matted ball of fluff.”

  “What? It’s all black. I’m sneaky!”

  “I’m not sure what you are...” Clay looked around, stopping as his eyes widened to the size of snow globes. He yelped as he noticed that his feet were planted firmly in the pile of light bulb glass. “Dammit! Where’d you set the broom?”

  “Closet,” I said.

  He ducked into the hall and snatched the broom from its normal resting place, a place it hadn’t moved from in years. I had the feeling he was trying to do something to keep far away from eye contact with me. My look must be pretty bad if Clay was doing something useful to avoid talking to me.

  “I hate pants, okay? I told you.”

  “There’s pants on that – thing.” Clay looked up from his pile of shards. “Pants – with feet attached.”

  “Yeah, but it’s loose. I feel free.” I did lunges around the living room showing off my all-black, one-piece, not-at-all sexy footie pajamas.

  “Freedom is bad. What happened to jeans?”

  “Look, I can run in these, jump, hide in the blackness of night. You’re coming with me if you ever want to see Mikey again.”

  “Poke my eyes out,” he moaned, dumping the light bulb glass into the trash.

  “Haha, I knew it!” I said in an evil voice, running around the living room and doing a terrible ballet leap with one foot on the couch. I slid wildly out of control and knocked into one of Clay’s monitors, which I just managed to grab before it hit the floor.

  Luckily, he didn’t notice as he swept the remainder of the glass under the garbage can.

  “You know it goes inside, not underneath, right?” I pointed out with a fuzzy sleeve.

  “I’m not taking instructions from a black blob. Let’s go.”

  We left the apartment and I walked towards the Kia. I unlocked the door, but when I turned to tell Clay not to open the back door due to the complex hanger wiring system, he was nowhere to be seen.

  “We’re not taking that thing,” he called from a few cars up.

  “You got something better?” I muttered. Last I knew, his car had been on as equally shitty a level as mine.

  “This puppy,” he said proudly. “Beautiful.”

  Clay ran his hand along the exterior of the sketchiest, largest white van I’ve ever seen. The same damn van taking up all of the good parking spaces.

  “No way. That is the car of ex-convicts and escaped pedophiles masquerading as ice cream men.” I backed away slowly. “The Kia will do just fine.”

  “Wait ’til you see the inside.” He looked slightly offended, but continued nonetheless.

  “But the outside...” I trailed off. “I nearly called the cops on this car earlier, just because.”

  “Don’t judge a van by its exterior.” He was now more than slightly miffed.

  “But...” The outside was scratched and dented, and a few kind-of-freaky spray painted designs decorated the rusting white paint.

  “Just give her a chance,” Clay pleaded.

  “Fine.” I sighed. “I’ll check her out. But if the inside is not better than the outside, I’m out of here.”

  Clay smiled. “This one – it’s all about the personality. The looks just help cover up her sheer awesomeness.”

  I widened my eyes and pursed my lips, preparing for the worst as I stepped inside.

  “Wow, Clay, this is...” I looked around, taking in the sights. “Amazing.”

  A smile lit his face, more emotion than I’d seen from him in ages.

  “This is, like, state of the art.” There were so many knobs and buttons, levers and monitors I found it nerve-wracking to be inside. I didn’t want to touch the wrong thing and have the whole van go ka-plooey.

  “Don’t worry, you won’t blow anything up. Take a seat. This car is explode-proof. And Lacey-proof.”

  I made a face, but took a seat on one of two chairs strapped to the back. The interior had been completely hollowed out and looked fancier than a CIA agent’s wildest dreams. The monitors were built into the sides, large and HD. There were microphones and whirring machines and graphs dancing before my eyes.

  “What does this all do?” I asked. “Fly?”

  “Do you want it to?”

  I looked at Clay, trying to judge if he was serious.

  “This is our stakeout van,” he said. “It can do anything.”

  I nodded, slipping my hands into my fuzzy one-piece. “Can we turn the heat on? It’s chilly.”

  Clay’s face fell slightly. “It doesn’t have heat.”

  “What? The most advanced van in the world doesn’t have a heating system?”

  He mumbled something about having had to take it out in order to install goobalet laseic maurerdeaur (or that’s what it sounded like to me).

  “Then we’re stopping at 7-11 on the way,” I said firmly.

  Clay gave a meek nod of his head, probably distraught that I’d found the single missing feature of his van. I softened a bit, feeling bad. “This is really great, Clay. It’ll be really helpful. I’m impressed.”

  He put the car into drive and I strapped myself into my airplane-style seat. I wasn’t sure, but I thought a shadow of a smile passed across his face as he pulled it out of the beautiful parking space.

  “Sit back, relax, enjoy the ride,” he announced on an intercom system that wasn’t entirely necessary, as I was sitting two feet behind him.

  “Oh, one second. I forgot something.” I popped open the back door and jumped out even before he could put the car in park.

  I rushed to the Kia, put her in gear and pulled her into that primo parking space, noticing that someone had painted the curb green recently.

  “What’d you do that for?” Clay asked as I resnapped my belt.

  “Just taking what’s mine.”

  “It’s not yours.”

  “Why’d you paint the curb green?” I asked. “Because people will be confused and not park there? Smart.”

  Clay’s ears reddened slightly and I fastened my seatbelt once more. After quickly sprinting from the van into 7-11 to obtain my diabetes drink, we were off on our first stakeout mission.

  CLAY’S VAN TRUNDLED conspicuously through the quiet, residential side streets of the Uptown area. It was a place where young twenty-something graduates settled post-college, the first whiff of real money in their grasp. Small homes were outfitted with school flags, large televisions, and the occasional impulse-buy, and flashy cars were scattered throughout the neighborhood. A few stragglers wishing they were back in college stumbled back from a late night at the always busy bar scene.

  “Crazy how all these people can just go about their daily business, while we’re here staking out a dangerous Russian mobster.”

  Clay raised an eyebrow. “Am I supposed to believe you’re a dangerous Italian mobster?”

  I flexed my sponge-like biceps in my fuzzy one-piece pajamas, but the zipper popped and the effect was ruined. I tried to reattach it and pull it up. It got stuck on an errant piece of fuzz.

  “Could you give a girl some help?” I turned to Clay, who yanked and pulled and stretched the outfit in every way possible.

  “It’s not going to happen,” he said.

  “But I can’t do a stakeout like this! I only have a bra and underwear on underneath. And not my sexy ones.”

  “Do you own sexy panties?” Clay asked.

  I shrugged. “Don’t call them panties. That’s weird.”

  “And even if you did own sexy underwear, why would that matter?” A note of exasperation crept into his voice.

  I pouted, toying with the zipper near my chest. “I’m just saying it would make a better first impression.”

  “On who?”

  “Oh, never mind,” I grumbled. I fished a paper clip out of my purse and clipped the outfit together so that it dangled by a thread. “Guess this will do.”

  Clay eyed the gaping hole between the paper clip at my neck and my chest, w
here the zipper had wedged itself into an impossible position.

  “So now we watch,” I said.

  “Oh – we do more than watch.” Clay fidgeted with a few gadgets. I moved to the front seat so I could have a better view of the house.

  “I’ll watch, then.” I sipped my sugar bomb and stared ahead at the blackened windows of the townhome. “Nice place.”

  “Shhh– ” he held something that looked like a knobby pen to his ear.

  I fiddled with the radio on the dash while Clay glared at me. He put on headphones larger than two dinner plates, and I suspected he wouldn’t hear a trumpet blasting in his ear.

  “Computers suck,” I said to him.

  He nodded.

  I smiled innocently and cranked up the radio. I did a happy dance as I remembered my favorite program was broadcasting. A messed-up, hilarious broadcast called Love Line where people called in with their sometimes laughable, sometimes heart-wrenching problems. Either way, it made for good programming.

  “...most awkward sex injury I’ve ever had...Well it was definitely when the dude I was hookin’ up with had kind of a jagged fingernail, and he...”

  “Listen,” Clay said.

  “I know! I love this segment. Open forum.”

  Clay looked at me funny, then handed me the headphones.

  I put them on, the elastic snapping around my head, feeling like my ears had been eaten by two large wads of cotton candy.

  “I DON’T HEAR ANYTHING!”

  Clay yanked them from my head. “Are you a ninety-year-old lady who lost her hearing aids? That’s the point. Nobody’s home, this transmits from the inside.”

  “You could have just said that,” I grumped, massaging my earring where it’d latched onto the headphone material. “I guess we’ll just have to wait until someone comes home.”

  “I’ll give you three hours. Then I’m going home and going to bed.”

  “That’s what else is missing here.” I gestured towards the back. “A bathroom and a bed.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, MY legs were stiff, fingers frigid and coffee mug empty. I was trying to scrape the last little marshmallow from the bottom, but my hand couldn’t fit inside quite far enough since my fingers were shaking so violently they kept bumping the sides. I gave up, my hands a sticky mess.