The Sexiest Man Alive (7 page)

Months had passed since then. The sexual chemistry was still there. But what about the emotional chemistry? It seemed to have fizzled out, reaching its lowest point the night of their date in the Moroccan restaurant.

He was gone from her life, but he still managed to be everywhere. Fastening her bra, Mazie could almost feel his hands on her breasts. Dusting cobwebs, she recalled the way Ben would put his hands around her waist and lift her up so she could reach the webs on the ceiling. Opening her refrigerator, she was treated to a view of the foods she stocked because he liked them—party guests who’d outstayed their welcome. She chucked them all into the garbage.

She missed the way Ben pulled her onto his lap while they were watching baseball games on television and instructed her on the finer points of the game until the instruction session became a make-out session and then—oh, God—she missed sex with him so much, she ached all over and wished she hadn’t burned her bridges with Sadie, the passion party lady, because that Jack Rabbit vibrator would have come in handy these days.

Keep busy—that was the ticket. Mazie sorted drawers, reorganized her kitchen, gnashed gnomes, put up blue and white tiles in her kitchen, and actually phoned her parents.

They lived in Florida. Several years ago Mazie’s dad had been injured in a farm accident. He’d recovered, but he’d been left with severe short-term memory loss that meant he couldn’t return to the farming life he’d loved. Mazie’s mother, Edie, had found a doctor in Tampa who specialized in amnesia cases, and they’d bought a condo in a retirement village down there.

Mazie’s dad answered the phone, his voice so strong that he seemed to be right there in the room with her. Mike Maguire was short and stocky, with the weathered skin and brawny arms of a farmer. He had an Irish face: ruddy and freckled, with high cheekbones and a strong jaw—people were always telling him he looked like Spencer Tracy. Mazie had inherited her bright blue eyes and tendency to freckle from him.

“Mazie!” He sounded delighted to hear her voice. “How’s my baby girl?”

“Fine, Dad.” Mazie swallowed down the lump in her throat, trying to sound upbeat. “It’s raining a lot here.” Her dad liked weather talk.

“Rain’s good for the corn, but not for the oats—makes the oats rot. How’s that young man of yours. Bill, isn’t it?”

“It’s Ben, Dad.” Dad had difficulty remembering new people, but he’d met Ben when they’d flown down to Florida for a few days in December, had taken a shine to him, and most of the time remembered his existence.

“He’s fine,” Mazie lied.

“Good. I’m puttin’ your mother on.”

“Mazie?” her mother said. “Why are you calling? Is everything all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine. I just thought I’d call, that’s all.”

“You never call. You’re not pregnant, are you?”

“Mom!”

Mazie loved her mother very much, but they tended to grate on each other’s nerves. Edith
Maguire had been Edith Carducci before she’d married Mazie’s dad. She was a fourth-generation Italian who’d passed on her heart-shaped face, her thick black lashes, and her musical aptitude to her daughter.

“How’s Ben?” her mom asked.

“Okay.”

“Just
okay
? You didn’t break up, did you?”

How did mothers always
know
?

“No! Well, sort of, yeah, we did.”

Might as well get it over with. She explained about the Sexiest Man Alive thing, about the fight she and Ben had had—slanting things heavily in her own favor—and how she was planning to get on with her life, a life that didn’t include Ben Labeck.

“Oh, Mazie!” Her mom managed to put a lot into those two words. “You’re so stiff-necked and stubborn. That boy is right for you. Even your brother likes him, and he never likes any of your boyfriends.”

Mazie’s brother, Scully, was a welcome change of subject, and Mazie was relieved when the talk turned to the newest addition to the Maguire family, Scully’s baby daughter, Annie Laurie, who was nearly two months old. Edie went into raves about the wonder baby, who was the most perfect child ever born, touching on everything from her first smile to her pooping habits, and all Mazie had to do was put in an occasional “Amazing!”

Mazie braced herself for what was coming next: When are
you
going to get married? You’re not getting any younger, your biological clock is ticking, the risk of birth defects rises once a woman is in her thirties—her mom’s usual litany—but today, Edith surprised her. “I suppose you’ve heard about those murders in Quail Hollow?”

Quail Hollow was Mazie’s hometown, a sleepy little burg nearly three hours from Milwaukee, so far southwest, it was nearly in Iowa. It was a farm town, where manure spreaders made an appearance in the high school homecoming parade and the suburbs were sunflower fields, but things had changed in the past few years. Drugs had crept in; there were home break-ins, kids overdosing—more crime of every type.

“The Tatum boy was murdered. I think his name was Ricky Lee—did you know him? He was a few years younger than you. It seems he was in a motorcycle gang—”

“You mean the Hell’s Angels kind of gang?”

“No, but it sounds as though this gang is just as bad. Let me think—what was their name again—the Skeletons? No—the Skulls. Horrible people—thugs and drug dealers. That’s why the Tatum boy was killed—something to do with drugs.”

“Seriously?” Quail Hollow was no Mayberry, but a cold-blooded gang shooting? Hard to believe.

“Yes, seriously.” Edie sighed heavily. “I don’t know what the world is coming to.”

Mazie decided it was a good time to end the conversation, before her mom worked up a head of steam and went into a tirade about the outrageous price of medical care these days. “I don’t know, either. Gotta go, Mom. Love you.”

The rain stopped, the sun came out, and Mazie’s emotional smog lifted. Anger took the place of grief. Magenta was right, Mazie decided. Ben Labeck
had
acted like a jerk. She’d allowed him to take her for granted and look what had happened—he’d lost all respect for her.

“He’s not even all that great,” Mazie grumped to Juju as they made microwave popcorn for their Thursday-night movie marathon at Juju’s apartment.

“Who, Ben?” Juju raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Yes,
him
. The Sexiest Man who ever left his sock balls strewn like turds all over the floor, waiting for the sock fairy to pick them up.”

“Oh, yeah—the good old sock fairy. The sister of the wet-underwear-on-the-bathroom-floor fairy.”

“I wonder how sexy all those women would find him if they knew he eats every nacho chip in a bag except for the last flake and then puts the bag in the cupboard, so the unsuspecting next person thinks the bag is still half full. Or how he stands in front of the open fridge and moans that there’s no mustard when the jar is two inches from his nose.”

“All guys do that,” Juju said. “It’s selective vision. It’s caused by the Y chromosome.”

“Plus he’s too vain to get reading glasses, he needs an instruction manual to load a dishwasher, and he’s absolutely incapable of admitting when he’s wrong.”

Thinking nasty thoughts was amazingly energizing; it was like eating a chocolate chip cupcake and washing it down with a triple espresso; it was a 5-Hour Energy Drink for the ego. And so on the sixth day after she’d told Ben Labeck she never wanted to see him again, Mazie marched into Magenta’s shop and announced, “I’m ready for that makeover.”

“Not too short,” Mazie ordered.

“Just three inches,” Magenta wheedled.
“Please?”

“Don’t you dare! One and a half at the most.”

“Two.”

Mazie took a deep breath and nodded, although it was a bit hard to move her head at the moment because her face was slathered in Dead Sea clay and her eyelids had cucumbers on them, which were giving her an overwhelming craving for a tossed salad.

Magenta picked up a strand of Mazie’s just-shampooed hair and made the first cut. He was a genius with scissors, although he didn’t have a cosmetologist’s license and only did hair for a few select clients. His salon was crammed into a small space at the back of his shop: a shampoo sink, styling chair, mirror, and cabinet.

Magenta’s shop looked as though Saks Fifth Avenue had collided with a garage sale. Gowns originally priced in the thousands were offered here for a fraction of their cost. Diors, Valentinos, and Balenciagas shared space with their gaudier showbiz relatives—Bob Mackeys, Jovanis, and Vera Wangs. Wigs of all colors and styles were allotted a sacred shrine, shoes had their own altar, and feather boas and sequined scarves were draped across every possible surface. The clothes were nearly all in larger sizes because most of Magenta’s customers were men—drag queens, female impersonators, and guys who just liked dressing up in women’s clothes.

Magenta snipped, concentrating fiercely, for an hour, before finally twirling Mazie around to check herself out in the mirror. She took off the cucumbers slices. Even with her hair damp, the shape of the cut was evident; short on the nape and longer in front, with strands of varying length splaying down to emphasize her cheekbones.

“I love it!” Mazie patted her head all over, enjoying the feeling of the crisp, shorter hair.

“Thank you.” Magenta looked pleased. “I cut off about five pounds of hair.”

He’d just begun blow-drying when the bells on the front door rattled and Juju whirled into the shop. “Congratulate me!” she said, breathless and beaming. “I just had my first dominatrix session.”

Her dark brown eyes sparkled. In her short white leather jacket, lacy camisole, and skimpy denim skirt, she looked more like a schoolgirl than a paid inflictor of pain.

Magenta turned off the dryer. “Sit down and tell us every single detail. Who did you have to whip? What did you wear?”

Juju collapsed into the shampoo chair. “I decided against the lady buccaneer thing and went with the catsuit. I practically had to use a shoehorn—that sucker fought me every inch of the way—the leather sticks to your skin, it chafes like crazy, and it’s hot as Satan’s armpit.”

Juju picked up a long blond wig, tried it on, and studied her reflection. “It took so long to get into the thing I was running twenty minutes late. But my mentor dominatrix, Natalie—she goes by the name Princess Payne—anyway, she said it’s okay being late for a session because it makes the submissive build up more fear.”

“What’s a submissive?” Mazie asked.

“The one that’s getting his butt whipped,” Juju explained, “but we just call them Scum or Toad or stuff like that. In real life, a lot of them are executives or high-powered businessmen who make decisions and run companies and chop off heads all day. They get a kick out of giving up control for a while and having someone tell them when they can breathe.”

Magenta fanned himself with a hair-coloring brochure. “I could get into that.”

Juju grinned. “So I slam into the room and stride up to the guy, start snarling at him, tell him that he’s a pathetic piece of garbage and I shouldn’t have to waste my time disciplining him, but someone needs to teach him a lesson and I’m the unfortunate mistress who has to do it.”

“Do you work from a script?” Mazie asked.

Juju giggled. “No—I was just channeling my aunt Popo yelling at my uncle Chi-Chi. Aunt Popo could blister paint off walls.”

“Did you have to spank the guy?” asked Magenta, looking extremely curious.

“No—he just wanted to have a dog collar strapped around his neck and to be jerked around on a leash. I made him go down on all fours and crawl into this little kennel. Then I banged on his cage and threatened to have him neutered.”

Mazie nodded. “A lot of guys need neutering.”

“I shocked his dog collar a couple of times,” Juju said, “but mostly I was bored out of my mind. The submissive must have gotten off on it, though; he tipped me fifty bucks.”

“You sound tired,” Mazie said.

“I am. And my throat hurts from yelling. Oh—I almost forgot—the reason I stopped in.” Juju fished a white T-shirt out of her handbag and flapped it in front of Mazie. “Get your pushup bra on, babes—we’re going to a pheromone party.”

“Oh, goodie. Because the last party you dragged me to went so well.”

“This one will be different. It’s called Phero-mates.” Juju brandished the T-shirt. “It’s a matchup event!”

“No matchups. No dating. I’m off men for the rest of my life.”

“But you want kids,” Juju pointed out. “How are you going to have kids?”

“Turkey baster.”

Magenta screwed up his face. “Eww. Is that what it sounds like?”

Juju grinned mischievously. “Women don’t really need guys anymore.”

Magenta groaned. “If only the same was true for gay guys.”

“You know about pheromones, right?” Juju said. “These chemicals people secrete that attract the opposite sex. It’s all very subconscious—”

“I know what pheromones are.” Mazie was convinced that it had been Ben Labeck’s pheromones that had originally attracted her to him. “And I’m not going to find a mate by sniffing his hairy armpit.”

“Nobody sniffs your pits. You just sleep in a T-shirt for three nights, then you stuff it in a baggie and bring it to the party. Which is tomorrow night at eight o’clock, by the way. You owe me ten bucks for the shirt and twenty-five for the admission fee.”

“Thirty-five dollars for some pseudo-scientific—”

“Come on, Maze—step out of your comfort zone.” Juju prodded the styling chair lever with her foot and spun Mazie in a circle. “Now that you’re unattached, you can try all kinds of new things. Show off that new haircut. Try different nail polish and makeup. Get a new outfit.”

Mazie’s clay masque cracked. “I think I’m about to hatch.”

“That’s right! You’re hatching out of your shell or cocoon or whatever those things are and emerging as this big, gorgeous, man-attracting butterfly.” Juju thrust the white T-shirt at her. “Wear this tonight. Let your pheromones rub off for a few hours.”

“I thought it took three nights.”

“So cheat. Everybody cheats. I’m dabbing a few drops of Chanel on mine.”

“No, no, no.” Magenta waved his arms. “Waste of perfume. You want to know what guys like?
Pumpkin pie spice. I read it in
Cosmo
. Pumpkin pie spice—it slays guys dead. It increases sexual arousal in the human male by forty percent. And vanilla’s in second place.”