It’s not just that everyone’s on edge, I observed, as I walked through our little town center. It’s like they don’t trust themselves.
It would be pretty weird, however, to discover yourself defacing public property when you’ve never so much as spat on the sidewalk. The whole point of why we were so up in each others’ business is that Rockabill wasn’t San Francisco or Seattle. Rockabill wasn’t known for attracting eccentrics, crazy geniuses, and the simply crazy. Yes, we had our fair share of oddities, but for the most part we were all pretty “normal” people. Every once and a while someone would do something like run off with a tourist, or invest in alpacas, or begin selling paintings of their own vagina on Etsy, but that was rare. Most of us were nice and bourgeois, so to have people in our community acting out like this (and with no memory of how or why) was really terrifying.
Which explains why everyone is walking on eggshells, I thought, watching as Marge Tanner—returning to her bakery after delivering pastries to Read and Weep for our bakery case—gave Gus Little—who bagged groceries at McKinley’s but was really a stone spirit—a nervous nod. The idea that someone might be nervous around Gus illustrated how badly Rockabill nerves were frayed.
I’d grown up thinking Gus was mentally a bit slow, when in reality he was sort of like a dryad, only instead of bound to a tree he was bound to a rock somewhere right outside town. Like their namesakes, stone spirits were often unflappable and a bit obtuse, meaning that Gus had never done anything to raise eyebrows in his life. Unless being someone who never raised eyebrows did, indeed, raise eyebrows.
Things are bad, I realized, grimly, as Marge gave me my own wary greeting, as if to assess whether I’d freak out on her, before stopping to chat. We exchanged some pleasantries about Belize and about the bakery, Giving Gus time to walk into McKinley’s. After I’d said good-bye to Mrs. Tanner, I walked past McKinley’s, glad Gus was inside so I didn’t have to force a conversation with him. Even my knowing his true nature and sharing his supernatural world with him didn’t make socializing with the stone spirit any easier.
I ducked into the bookstore and was immediately ambushed. “Oof,” was my awesomely articulate response to being shoved, face first, into Grizzie’s surgically enhanced bosoms the second I was through the door.
“My dahlink,” she purred. “Where have you been all my life? How could you abandon me for Belize?”
“Ahm thowwy,” I mumbled into her cleavage.
“Fickle bitch,” she replied, finally releasing me. “Now, tell me everything. And when did you start hanging around with Juan Besonegro?”
“Um… who?”
“Juan! The artist! Since when did you guys know each other?”
“Do you mean An… wan? The big guy?” I asked, finally putting together that Grizzie meant Anyan.
“Ooooh, is he big? I thought he would be.”
I blinked at her.
“Yes,” she said and sighed, disappointed. “The big guy, from the other night. The way you two were looking at each other, I figured you’d know each other’s names, at least. And maybe each other’s ticklish spots.”
“Yeah, sorry, I do know… Juan. I’m just out of it today…”
“So, where is his ticklish spot? And can I have a go?” Grizzie asked, raising her hands to scritch her fingernails in the air, a gesture that I found alarming, to say the least.
“His ticklish spot is right next to your pregnant girlfriend, you slattern,” I replied, backing away from her talons, painted a lurid shade of neon green to match her black wraparound dress with its neon-green-winged lapels, hem, and French cuffs.
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Grizzie sighed, mock seriously. “I’m totally ball-and-chained. I’ll be forced to start wearing housecoats. Actually, I would rock a house coat,” Grizzie said, as she struck a dramatic vamp pose with one arm in the air and one foot out to the side, toes pointed.
“You totally would,” I said, heading toward the back so I could drop off my stuff before starting work. I knew Griz would follow.
“Seriously, though, how do you know Juan?” she asked, her curiosity obviously very piqued.
“How do you know Juan?” I countered, trying to figure out what I needed to know of Anyan’s human persona before answering.
“Who doesn’t know Juan?” Grizzie asked, rolling her eyes and leaning against the doorframe as I set down my bag and jean jacket on the table in the back room. “He’s totally famous, totally mysterious, and a total all-in-one sausagefest.”
“Classy, Griz,” I said, giggling.
“What, it’s true!” she replied, poking a fingernail into the side of her long, black French braid to scratch her scalp. “He’s hotter than candy on a stick. Huckleberry, cherry, or lime.”
“He is definitely hot—” I started to say, before Grizzie interrupted me with some more Juan worship.
“I mean, he’s not pretty, by any means. Not like Ryu. Whatever happened to Ryu, anyway?” I started to reply, but she didn’t let me. Grizzie was on a roll. “Who cares, he was pretty, but too fancy. Who wants fancy? Our Jane needs someone stable… someone grounded… someone more domestic…”
I blushed, realizing that Anyan was all of these things. Yes, he was a dangerous-ninja-dog-man, but he was also everything Grizzie was describing.
“Someone who’ll throw you down on the bed and show you how it’s done… Someone who’ll tie you up and let you know what it is to be a woman… Someone who’ll spank that little—”
“Grizzie!” I barked, bringing her sexual tirade to a halt, and just in the nick of time. She’d gone all glassy-eyed and drooling.
“Oh, sorry. I get carried away.”
“Oh, do you, now?” was my sarcasm-laden response.
“Anyway, he’s hot and I’ll bet he’ll spank you.”
My only rejoinder was a throaty whimper, my mouth gone dry.
“So, you know him how?” Grizzie said, interrupting me before I could plunge too deeply into my own Anyan-spanking fantasy.
“Um… we met… hiking. He has a cabin in the woods.”
“You? Hiking?” It was Grizzie’s turn to make free and easy with the sarcasm. She had a point.
“It was more… strolling,” I clarified, lying my pants off. “By the beach. You know I like to walk by the beach.”
“But you’ve been in Belize.”
Shit! I thought, my brain shuffling away.
“We met a while ago, while I was strolling. Then we… uh… we saw each other on the plane.”
“To Belize?” Grizzie asked, clearly not believing me.
“No, that would be ridiculous, obviously,” I said, although that was totally what I’d been going to say. “On the connecting flight. Back to Eastport.”
“Ohhhh, okay. And you guys talked? Reconnected? Maybe joined the mile-high club?”
“We talked. There’s been no… joining, as of yet,” replied Jane True, Ms. Suddenly Shy.
“Awww, you’re blushing!” Grizzie cried out, excitedly. “You like him! You like Juan!”
I couldn’t deny it, so I just blushed redder.
Grizzie stopped giggling. “You really like him,” she said, suddenly serious. “You do, don’t you?”
I didn’t know it was possible, but I think I managed an even brighter shade of tomato. “Yeah, I like him. But, I mean, it is what it is,” I said. “He’s a lot older than me. And he’s really famous,” I said, knowing that Grizzie thought I meant Anyan was famous as the artist apparently known as Juan Besonegro.
“So?” Grizzie asked, all combative.
“So, he’s out of my league,” I started, stopping when Grizzie held up both hands, palms facing outward.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jane. I saw the way he looks at you. He was staring like he wanted to get right the hell in your league, in front of all of us, at the bar.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know we’re attracted to each other. And I know it’ll probably go a lot further, and soon. But it’s gotta be different for him. He’s been around, Griz. I’m some girl who fell in love with her high school sweetheart and hasn’t ever left home. I doubt we think the same way about stuff.”
“What do you mean, ‘think the same way about stuff’?”
“I mean…” Pausing to gather my thoughts, I turned around so I could half sit, half lean on our break table.
What did I mean? I realized that I wasn’t entirely sure, so I started talking: “I mean that he’s already lived a lot. He’s probably been in love dozens of times, gone on hundreds of first dates, gotten all dramatic about different people, and then realized he was silly. Eventually, it’s gotta stop, doesn’t it? It all has to get a bit… pointless?” Grizzie made a face, so I pulled back. “Okay, not pointless. But less big, right? I mean, how many times can you fall head over heels in love before you start to wonder if love really exists?”