Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (4 page)

“So what’s the problem, sweetheart?” Ricardo’s deep vibrating bass swam in the air and skid across my skin like a skipping stone on a placid lake.

“And make it quick please,” Marithé added. “We have tickets for
Spinabifida the Musical
,
¹⁹
and we don’t want to miss curtain.”

“I hear there’s an awesome duet between a lobster-clawed boy and a pinhead,” I said, swizzling my drink.

“Absolutely. It’s supposed to be awesome.” Wendy nudged a sour-faced Gil. “Huh, Gil?”

“Sold out for months,” he said.

“Ricardo has connections.” Marithé winked at her beau.

Of course, Ricardo had connections. He was the biggest supernatural club-owner in the Seattle area. In fact, until recently, he held a near monopoly on the nightclub world. There were a few independents like Les Toilettes (gross), Garters (not nearly as sexy as you’d think) and Convent (a great willing victim market), but for the most part, Ricardo had the city by its dancing, cocktail-swigging balls.

Now, that said, and no matter how loyal I am—and I am—I was totally going to hit the Goblin Bar opening after all the Gil drama settled. I couldn’t very well miss a red-carpet paparazzi showdown, and my outfit was way too hot not to be fawned over and envied in the next issue of
Belle Morte.

“So what do we need to talk about?” Ricardo asked.

“Gil got himself in some trouble. We wanted to get your take on the situation.” I shoved an elbow at Gil. “Tell him.”

Gil recounted the evening from the funeral service through our flight from the scene of the pee. Ricardo rubbed his jaw.

“Well, you’ve messed with the wrong sicko, that’s for sure. Markham has been known to hold a grudge, too. You may have given him eternal life, and all, but if he sees it like your service did not meet his expectations, then … God. Piss? Jesus.”

“How was I supposed to know that derelict would do something like that?”

“It really was just bad timing,” I suggested. Gil stared straight ahead, his eyes drifting away.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve heard some really nasty stuff.” Ricardo tapped a cigarette on the table.

“Like what?” Wendy lingered on that last word like a secret.

“Well, a few years back, one of Markham’s ‘girls’ showed up to work fresh from a weekend meth-a-thon, tweaking like crazy. The boss man stripped her nude, shook a whole box of itching powder on her and pushed her onstage. By the end of her dance, she’d picked herself bloody and half the audience had either run out, puking and blood spattered, or … shot their wads, to put it crudely.”

Marithé added, “Well, I heard—”

“How do you know about Markham?” I asked.

“I get around,” she said.

I looked from her to Ricardo and back. “Yes … you do.”

She gave me her patented “fuck you” look and continued. “Like I was saying, I heard that he keeps a bag of ball bearings in his office and if a girl slips up and accidentally gives the crowd a peek at the girls”—she shook her chest to accentuate the point—“he hammers their tits like a mafia thug silencing a snitch.”

“Oh that’s lovely.” I glanced at Gil; his eyes were wide and dry. “Is that all, or does someone else want to toss a rock at Gil’s house of cards? Wendy?”

“I got nothin’,” Wendy slurred, between greedy swallows of rum.

“Well …” Ricardo ran his fingers across his lips.

“Yeah?” I eyed him.

“… there’s the …” He looked over each shoulder and then spat the words across the table. “The Oatmeal Scotchie.”

Gil gasped. “Oh my God, how do you know about that?”

“Uh—” Ricardo grimaced.

I glanced at Wendy. Her eyes caught fire—I imagined
mine had as well (this was too juicy)—as though a terrible family secret had been revealed. “So … you’re not referring to a delectable butterscotch cookie, I take it?”

Ricardo shrugged and let loose a sly smile. Marithé concealed a giggle behind a stiff hand.

“Just shut up, all of you!” Specks of blood clung to the air around the sound, curling and undulating between us like a living thing. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ooo.” I pointed to his face and drew an invisible circle. “What’s all this about?”

Pinpoints of crimson appeared on Gil’s pale cheeks like freckles—Rose McGowan’s blood was fresh in his system … and mobile—the effect was more Pippi Long-stocking than all-American boy. The closest thing to human I’ve seen from him in a while. Cute, kind of.

Wendy broke in, “I know, right? So testy.”

“There might be something that could play in your favor.” He leaned in and motioned for the rest of us to do the same. “Markham has a memory problem, ever since a car accident from his youth. Becoming a vampire doesn’t heal brain damage. He might forget the whole thing in a matter of days, so if you just lay low, got out of town maybe.” Ricardo held up a finger, his face turned deadly serious. “Do you think you can do that?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“I mean it, now. You’ll have to offer some sort of refund and an apology. But, I wouldn’t do it anytime soon. Let the man cool down and maybe he won’t kill you.” He said it like the situation actually
had
a bright side.

“Oh God.” Gil’s head lolled back on his shoulders.

Wendy jumped on the suggestion and slapped my
arm. “We could totally go see your mom! It’s like another sign.”

“Looks like you may get your way, girl,” I said.

Wendy bounced in the seat, clapped her hands and prodded Gil, like he wasn’t going through a crisis. He cringed.

“What’s this about?” Ricardo asked. “You were all planning a trip anyway?”

“Oh, my mother. She has cancer or something. Wendy’s telephone psychic predicted that we’d take a trip to see her.”

“Telephone psy—” he began.

“Madame Gloria has a 92 percent accuracy, people. I won’t have y’all maligning her.”

She had us there. The medium, or whatever, certainly predicted that we’d all be going on a trip, and as soon as we made an appearance at Goblin Bar, we’d be free of obligations. After all, Marithé would be perfectly capable of running the business in my absence. I guessed there was no avoiding my own issues.

Ethel Ellen Frazier.

I drained the pitcher and drank. The alcohol warmed my frame and I imagined the scene at my mother’s deathbed. She lying there, dried out like a mummy on display, crispy fingers beckoning me closer.

Amanda
, she’d say.
You’ve come to beg for my forgiveness, haven’t you?

Uh … nope. I’ve come to watch you croak.

Mother would completely ignore this crack and respond with something like:
Ah. Sweet girl, go ahead and make your apologies. I’m open to them.

Apologies my ass, bitch. It’s you that should be begging my forgiveness.

Rest your mind, child. I forgive you.

Can you hear me, old woman?
I’d yell.

I forgive your neglectful ways, your whoring, your—

I hate you.

I know, baby. I love you, too. Doesn’t it feel good to tell each other, after all these years?

Aaaaah!
I’d scream, right before I bashed her head in with her bedpan.

I returned to the present. Ricardo and Marithé were vacating the booth, saying their goodbyes and wandering off through the crowded masses on the dance floor.

“Yep,” I said.

“What was that?” Wendy asked.

The image of Ethel’s still corpse fresh in my mind, her normally smug face stretched into a grimace, I found myself beaming.
²⁰
“Let’s go see Mom.”

First off.

There was no valet at Goblin Bar. Do you have any idea how much I hate that?
²¹
We ended up parking across the street at a pay lot. Say it with me, “pay lot.” I had to park myself at a club opening, like regular people, and shell out funds to do it; that’s all kinds of wrong, no matter how you slice it. So you’ll forgive me for being irritable.

The other thing.

The Emerald City drizzle was plotting to ruin my new outfit, a tighter-than-tight, scoop-necked cashmere
sweater in a pale blue that made my eyes glow like dying stars, over a tan wool pencil skirt that tapered at the knee with such severity that with every step my hips swiveled with burlesque-like abandon. The heels were suicide high, and almost embarrassingly expensive.

Almost.

Wendy had a bit more room in whatever it was she was wearing, some loose fitting smock that may have been the talk of New York and Paris, but looked like a cinched-up nightgown, and was thin enough, had she been alive and susceptible to cold nipple syndrome, that it would have been split open at the tits. She twisted around and collected the umbrellas from the backseat.

And Gil—well, he was meeting us, said he wanted a second escape vehicle on the scene in case Markham showed up. His need for attention was going to get him killed one day, but he did look hot in formal wear and if anything’s worth the risk of death and dismemberment, it was a photo-op.

We were just about to cross the street when Wendy stopped me. She was gawping at the entrance of Goblin Bar, eyes wide in horror.

“Oh my God. Is it ugly day?”

There was a frightening scene unfolding in the club’s queue. Fashion victims, at least fifty of them. I’m talking bad weaves, atop poorly conceived cosmetic palettes, propped on cheap clothes, and in some cases flats, a parade of the grotesque, each one more hideous than the next.
²²
Dare I say, an average evening in Seattle? The fashion quotient had taken a real nosedive since the ′90s. Grunge may have been
très important
as a musical statement, but it really did a number on the whole aesthetic around these parts.

“Something,” I agreed, as we crossed the damp road arm in arm our umbrellas battling above.

“I mean, honestly, have you ever seen this many—” she stalled on the word.

“Skanks?”

“Yeah. It’s like a convention.”

A particularly scary and hirsute woman with the pointy face of a rodent curled her nose at us, whispering something to her friend, who sneered.

“Yeah, you.” Wendy pointed back at the woman, chuckling under her breath.

“Wendy, stop. Let’s just go in.”

“Oh shit. Look at that one!”

I followed her startled gaze to a woman picking at her hair with what looked like a chopstick. She was really digging in there, too. Chasing something. She had the pale-as-death skin of a vampire and arms striped in so many different colored pastes that it was obvious she was a cloudhead—a real frequent flyer from the look of it. She looked familiar, though.

“Hold up, that’s Giallo.”

“Who’s that?”

I pulled Wendy in close. “Giallo was that model. You know. The one that was famous for killing her photographer during a
Vogue
cover shoot. I thought she was dead, but didn’t realize she was … actively so.”

“From the looks of her she’s a little cloudy, just now.”

Giallo withdrew the chopstick from her ratted hair. She’d caught whatever it was she was hunting. The bug was still wiggling. She plopped it in her mouth.

“No kidding,” I said, pointing her toward the gauntlet of photographers at the front of the line. Her expression
brightened at the sight of flashbulbs. It shouldn’t have considering the outfit. I could see the headline in
ZWD
²³
now …

She’d be devastated. But I can’t save my friends from everything, least of all negative media attention.

We stood for a few carefully posed shots and then approached the gigantic trannie with the clipboard. She was seven foot if she was an inch, and the curly blonde weave added at least half a foot. She was a werewolf for sure and had her claws out to prove it. They would have been much more threatening, though, had they not been airbrushed pink and polka-dotted.

Wendy marched straight up to the beast. “Wendy Miller and Amanda Feral.”

A single pastel claw scraped through the names, up one column, down the next, slowing near the bottom of the third page. Her face scrunched at something she saw there. She snickered. “Sorry. Not on the list.” She craned her neck to look behind us. Her lupine face brightened. “Oh hey, girl. Long time no see. You go right on in.”

Two zombies in cheerleader outfits and pigtails bounded past, asses hanging out from under the too-short skirts.

“Are you serious with this shit?” Wendy tried to grab the list, but the werewolf snatched it away.