“Trixa, I found this when I was cleaning your office.” Eyebrows in a confused V, he held out his hand like an offering. “I think it’s a tooth. Um . . . teeth.”
Sure enough, it was. Two bright white teeth with the best porcelain veneers money could buy and stained only a little with dried blood lay cradled between the teenager’s life line and his heart line. That did not make for a good fortune. I swept them out of his hand and deposited them in the garbage can behind the bar. “Sorry about that, sugar. I was sure I’d gotten them all.” Because two were far fewer than had originally littered the floor of my office. “Do you know that holier-than-thou ass told me his daughter needed braces and he’d let me keep the bar open if I helped him out there, as he was a good and charitable father that way?” I snorted and rested my elbows on the bar and propped my chin in a cupped hand, a hand with scraped and raw knuckles. “Course he couldn’t explain how his smile was so fake and pearly white if he couldn’t afford braces for his baby girl. Hardly seemed fair a father should take what he should be giving his child. It should make him feel guilty as hell.” My lips curved, sly and satisfied. “I do believe he won’t need to feel guilty so much now, having no teeth in his smile at all.”
Zeke, Griffin’s cohort and my little rabid fox, came up to us holding a mop. “Blood by the door,” he grunted, wholly unimpressed by the brightest red of bodily fluids. “Cleaned it up. Time for lunch?”
I had given the man napkins, but I supposed napkins could soak up only so much blood when you’re abruptly missing all your upper teeth. Now I needed a new mop and lunch for the heathens—my minions in the making. I patted them both on the head. Griffin flinched automatically and Zeke growled.
Again, so much to do.
—
Not that I forgot Elizabeth and how she wanted her life changed. It was a busy week, but just as work is work, a project is a project and a thing of grace and beauty. I talked to people and they talked back. As the song says, you can have friends in high places and you can have friends in low places. I have friends in all places, from good to bad and all flavors in between. I gathered my information and I threw my spare hours into fixing Elizabeth’s problem just as I promised.
There were supplies I’d have to gather, unusual but not unheard of, a different kind of artist to find to shape certain materials—and I had less than four days to get that done. It would require some traveling and I asked my friend Leo to watch the bar for me . . . and my two new acquisitions. Leo would tell you he was a Native American and you’d have no reason to doubt him, given his waist-length black hair and copper skin. But Leo didn’t like to talk about the north and Leo didn’t like to talk about ice and Leo might be inclined to stab you with the tap to a beer keg if you brought up anything related to Vikings or mythology. And when the rare storm came over the city and it thundered, Leo would go out in the rain to flip off the lightning. I’d known Leo a long time. Leo had earned his issues, so I didn’t laugh at him scowling at the sky in the rain . . . not too much, anyway. Especially since he agreed to help me out, as he always did.
He gave Griffin and Zeke a look both jaundiced and resigned when he showed up. “Are you going to clean them up and give them away to a good home on craigslist?”
I gave him a swat on his ass, which was swattable in the best ways, and a kiss on his cheek. “Behave. You were once my stray, too.”
There was an unimpressed lift of eyebrows. “If you mean that I saved your ass and your life and subsequently you began sending me a constant stream of requests for information and favors, then, yes, I was your stray. I don’t know how that evaded me so long.”
“Fine, fine, fine.” I waved it away. “We were both each other’s strays. Now, don’t encourage the boys with your less tolerant ways. They don’t need you teaching them that the best way to get a tip is to pound a customer’s head against the bar. They’re good boys.”
Griffin gave a guilty droop of his shoulders at that, while Zeke looked irate at the very thought that he was good, and Leo went with amused. “If they were that good, Trixa, you wouldn’t be so invested in them.” I’d learned a lot about lying from Leo, but he’d also taught me that the truth, at times, can be more inconvenient than any lie. Before I could get my panties in a bunch and work up a good outrage—I loved a good outrage—Leo smacked my ass this time. “Go. I’ve got it covered here. Enjoy your project.” His teeth gleamed with the last word, and brought a smile from the wolf within him. It was the same wolf whose growls Zeke imitated, but didn’t really have it in him to be. Not just yet.
But puppies do grow up.
With things in hand—I wouldn’t say stable or good or trustworthy, but in hand nonetheless—I left. I had a long way to go. Maybe I’d fly. I loved to fly . . . the world distant below, heaven just as distant above, and you had a chance to own everything between. I’d been in Vegas less than a year, but the roots were already cramping. I still had things to do, though, and at this moment . . .
Elizabeth was first on my list.
—
When traveling is in your genes, you tend not to carry things with you. It was why I liked all the shinies of the world. I knew eventually I’d have to leave them behind and find new ones wherever I landed next. If I didn’t, I’d get so weighed down that one day I wouldn’t be able to take a single step, much less run or fly. So I treasured my trinkets and gewgaws, as Mama called them, as much as I possibly could. It made them all the more precious for the short time I had them. Sometimes, though, you come across something so perfect and special you can’t just leave it for strangers to find and loot. Those things you squirrel away, hide them from greedy eyes. Safe-deposit boxes would be nice, but as I’d noted, the banks don’t trust you, so why should you trust them?
That’s how I ended up in an old rock cellar with the house a hundred years gone. I’d sealed this particular precious thing very carefully wrapped in a hundred layers of silk and tucked away in a stone box buried in that cellar where no one could find it or touch it or even see it.
I do hear you, you know, judging me? No, I don’t have delusions of pirates, doubloons, and gaudy treasure chests.
I’m not a peculiar strain of hoarder, either.
Why are you making that doubty, pouty face?
I am not a hoarder.
I’m not.
Truly.
Pinkie swear.
Ha! You caught me. I really, really am.
I held the wondrous thing I hadn’t seen in ages in my hands, heard the river in the distance, heard the rustle of trees so green it made Vegas look like a boneyard. I felt the bite of the chilly air and watched a single ray of sun set my iridescent hands alight like a thousand burning rainbows.
Yes . . .
If this didn’t change Elizabeth’s life, nothing would.
—
Finding a bootmaker wasn’t difficult exactly, although these days when ninety-nine percent of footwear is made of the devil spawn of plastic and some sort of biohazard offspring from China, they are few and far between. To find one willing to do the work in two days, and with the material I was providing, would surely make these the most expensive boots Elizabeth had ever worn. Marie Antoinette had diamond-encrusted shoes that were less expensive, but it would be worth it. I’d made a client a promise, and while I broke promises if I had to, I, as I’d told Elizabeth, never broke one related to my work. I had standards . . . just ask my health inspector.
I called home to make sure my boys, all three of them, hadn’t in fact set the bar on fire. Leo snorted, told me Zeke bit a customer but that he had it coming, get off his back already, and hung up on me. He was having a good time. I could tell. Sometimes Leo needed a distraction to keep him from returning to his bad old ways. It was why I poked and prodded him so much. Leo had been my first fixer-upper and he was still a bitch in upkeep, but he was worth it. He’d be good for Zeke and Griffin. There wasn’t anything they could do that would faze him, including burning down the bar.
After that, I killed time on a beach in an only mildly scandalous scarlet bikini and watched as a man—with far less manscaping than needed for the Speedo he was wearing—strutted up and down, flirting (he would say flirting, anyone else would say sexually harassing) with anything female and/or remotely approaching legal age. Later I laughed in the water, tasting salt, as a horny dolphin humped the guy into a near drowning. All right, perhaps CPR was involved and it was a close call, but as concerned as the lifeguard was, I didn’t see any women on the beach crying tears for the pervert. In fact I saw a few waving and taking pictures of the dolphin-love in progress. That and a few banana daiquiris, and my day was finer than frog hair . . . which is something I say only when I have a few banana daiquiris in me. One doesn’t want to be too much like their mama.
The next day I went to the zoo, where I saw a man climb into the lion enclosure shouting that like Daniel in the lion’s den, the Lord would send an angel to save him. I’d always personally been of the belief that those lions Daniel was tossed to simply weren’t hungry that night. But I might’ve been wrong, as the zoo lions looked well fed, almost plump, not hungry in the slightest, and they ate this faithful follower before a single employee could get inside.
You live and you learn.
Well, to be more accurate, I lived and I learned. Our Daniel was less fortunate.
What if I bought a stuffed lion toy as a souvenir on my way out? It reminded me that there were seize-the-day moments all around. Cages, no matter the size, didn’t change that—not for us lions, anyway. Then it was time to pick up the boots, gift the maker with honey-drizzled chatter over the masterpiece they were—and that was an understatement—a kiss on each cheek for the artiste, a very large payment, promise of future business, and finally it was time to go home. I couldn’t wait to see Elizabeth’s face, for her to see what could’ve been a boring job turned into a work of art that I knew we’d both appreciate.