Biting Oz: Biting Love, Book 5 (28 page)

“
What
?”

The limo’s horn cut me off. Before I could screech
What do you mean you won’t be seeing me anymore?
Glynn nudged me out the door and zipped with my sax to the limo. I dashed after, but by the time he stowed sax, shoveled me into the limo and slammed the door, he was the color of boiled lobster and his cryptic remark was the least of my concerns.

I laid a hand on his forehead, flinched at the unnatural heat. “Are you okay?”

“I…will be. In a moment.” He was panting.

“Damn it, why didn’t I notice this before?”

“Softer…day. And I…disguised it.”

“Glynn can’t shapeshift yet.” Mishela flashed brightly inquisitive eyes between the two of us. “But he can morph small things like his face. I can’t wait to do that. No more greasepaint for me. So what have you guys been up to all day? Alone. Together.”

Which explained the brightly inquisitive. “We did retail, and not alone.” Unfortunately. Except
he didn’t want to see me anymore
. I shook my head. “Vampires can shapeshift?”

“After we reach a thousand.”

“A thousand what?”

“Years.” Mishela ignored my gaping. “Glynn doesn’t have long to go.”

Nearly a thousand years old. And I’d thought we might have a chance at a real relationship?

No wonder he didn’t want to see me anymore. My heart ached. What could be worse?

Well, sure. Having only six people in the audience. Twyla, Nikos and Mayor Meier were joined by all three members of the Teapot Jihad, a radical sect of Meiers Corners teetotalers. (Really. They picketed the Alpine Retreat and Bar on Labor Day, bombed Nieman’s on Independence Day with red white and blue smoke balls, and every St. Patrick’s they took out an ad in the
Zietung
newspaper pushing green milk. If you think that’s yuck, they also distributed pamphlets with full-color close-ups of drunks and toilets, too gruesome to describe.)

Onstage the cast put out SRO energy, singing and dancing their little hearts out. But without audience feedback, without applause or laughs or even a chuckle, it was hard to keep up. Like a balloon in the freezer, the performance slowly deflated.

Oh, there were moments. Toto tried the golden leg-lift on the captain of the Winkies. The captain, wearing tall black rubber boots, just smiled—until Toto started humping black rubber. The captain tried to shake the dog off, but Toto grabbed boot with all four legs and rode it out. It looked like the dog was actually enjoying it.

I snorted into my sax. Which, since the part was half-note stings, was fine.

Aside from that, the show was awful with occasional squalls of horrendous. Which fit my mood.
I won’t be seeing you anymore
.

Now, too late, I wished I had processed, wished I’d confronted my feelings after our incredible night together, wished I’d confronted
him
. If we’d hammered out what was going on between us—a bout of sex, a short-term affair, or something more—then I wouldn’t feel so confused. So lost.
 

So why not confront him now, hammer it out now?

Immediately my confusion vanished and my mood improved. The moment our disaster of a show was over, I ran to the dressing rooms, where he’d be hovering over Mishela.

Empty.

Oh, yeah. The actors did a meet and greet in the lobby after performances. I had time, so I packed up my instruments. Then I went to the lobby.

Empty.

Except for the mayor, who looked a little lost. No tourists, and he’d know what that meant. I wondered how much he knew about the added-value issue, the vampire turf wars. No, this was only temporary. The show would be successful. Eventually.

The mayor saw me and brightened. “
Ach
, Gunter Marie. How are you?”

I could have run, but why? No Glynn. This would be the first time he hadn’t seen me home in…dammit, I wasn’t wistful. “Hey, Mayor Meier.”

“
Ach
, I didn’t tell you this morning, all my attention on the GLBT mayors, but how you have grown! You, who I have known since wearing diapers—”

“Wow, Mayor, thanks!” Rude, but I had to interrupt. The mayor has this thing about diapers—and whips. Not together, thank goodness. Any other city, it’d have been a scandal. Here, it was one of those small-town secrets, which everyone knows and nobody talks about. Because, come on. Santa in lederhosen with a whip and diaper fetish? So wrong. “What did you think of the show, Mayor?”

“I am dejected,
liebchen
. The attendance is in the toilet,
nein
?” Then he brightened. “But tomorrow is Sunday. The matinee will be better attended,
ja
?”

Well, who was I to burst his tiny beer bubbles?

Then I realized the matinee started at three in the afternoon, well before Fangs To You opened. There’d be no competition for the timeslot.

Rainbows and leprechauns and St. Murphy the Good filled my head. If people but experienced the joy of our show, they’d want to tell their friends. All we had to do was put butts in seats. “You betcha, Mayor! And I’m going to make sure of it.”

Hey, if Camille could market with flyers, why couldn’t a cute and totally competent sausage retailer?

Julian’s limo took me home. But before I made flyers, I had that little outstanding issue to deal with.
I won’t be seeing you anymore
.

I rushed to my bedroom to call Glynn, not as simple as it sounds. Before I called, I had to close my bedroom window, shut my door tight and stuff a sock into the crack underneath. Not that I thought the parents listened to my personal conversations. I
knew
they did. Hey, even paranoid people have parents.

When I was as private as possible, I touched my UK map for luck and called his cell phone. The line clicked open.
 

“Hello,
babi
.”

Glynn’s deep voice vibrated out of the phone and down my spine, echoed inside. Not hearing that voice ever again… Confused feelings fled. “What the hell did you mean, you won’t be seeing me?”

A breath of air came over the line, a sigh. “Junior. I think I love you.”

I sucked my heart into my throat, where it stuck.

“Perhaps we could have…ah, but we’ll never know. I’m aware of your duty to your parents, your dreams of New York. But when I’m near you, all I want is to make you mine. Even today, with the sun a check on my libido, I wanted you so badly I nearly tossed you on the counter to have you a dozen times, despite the crowd, despite your parents. So I must stay away.”

“But Glynn, what if I wanted to be yours? I don’t know what I’m feeling, but I do know you’re special. That we’ve got something special. While you’re here, couldn’t we at least see each other?”

“
Babi
. If you don’t know what you’re feeling, sex will only confuse matters. Can you honestly say you’d give up New York? That you’d choose me over your dreams?”
 

I swallowed. ”But…couldn’t we…”

“No, love.” His voice was soft and full of regret. “We can’t.” He hung up.

Today’s a matinee and our prospects are good.

Sunday morning I repeated that mantra as I stapled, taped and thumb-tacked flyers from Eisenhower to Cedar, from East Thirteenth to West. It took all morning (I skipped church and caught hell from Mrs. Gelb—that is, a stern finger-shake), but I papered the whole city.

It also took ten dollars’ worth of paper and forty dollars of ink, but saving the show would be worth it. Saving the show—and Meiers Corners, by keeping Mr. Woo-Hoo Ancient from unleashing his Ray o’ Vampire Deathiness. The show, Meiers Corners, Chicago—and maybe the world! Yes, I was one awesome woman, one big fish in this small pond, thank you, thank you.

Taking mental bows, I crossed Jefferson onto my block, saw the shreds of the Cheese Dudes’ worm, and grinned at the display of Glynn’s caring. Remembered he cared too much
I think I love you
and got depressed.

Wait. I’d saved the show. Was there a problem in the universe I couldn’t overcome? No! I was SuperSausageLady, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, catch bullets with my teeth and command the weather with a wave of my hand. Maybe not the last, but relationship troubles were easy-peasy. After I saved the show and the city and world, I’d just convince Glynn to come to New York with me.

Should have known when I started thinking words like easy-peasy that I was tripping, Yellow Submarining toward chicken buh-awking insane.

Totally oblivious, I headed into our shaded walkway, butchering the lyrics to “Singin’ In The Rain”. Felt the pound of a very different music.

Vague horror frosted my spine. I turned. Across the street, the sun glared off blisteringly shiny black marble. I squinted—what I’d taken for shadows resolved into a long line of black-garbed people.

The line was moving. Fangs To You was open.

Dad waited at our door. “
Ach
, Junior. That racket has been going on since eleven. Even Good Shepherd had trouble filling its pews today.”

Numb horror bloomed into actual ice. Good Shepherd, with its cosmic whip, had trouble getting people in the seats? What chance did my little paper and ink carrots have?

I found out that afternoon. Two people were in the audience, Mayor Meier and the PAC’s janitor.

We ran the show, but it was worse than the first rehearsal. The mayor was dejected, the pit was dejected, the actors were dejected. Dumas wasn’t even yakking about Method acting.

Toto was still humping everything in sight.

But we were losing money, losing audience, losing tourists. Losing to Camille and the Coterie. And unless Fangs To You’s novelty wore off damned soon, there was nothing we could do about it. Nothing
I
could do about it.

My entire morning felt like a lie. I wasn’t a big fish, I was a very small fish floating in my tiny pond—on my side.

Worse, when I looked for Glynn after the show (I know, I was weak), I only found Mishela, who told me with a pitying look that Emersons would give me a ride home.

At home I ran up to my attic hideaway and threw off my concert blacks. Stomped naked around my room until a
bam-bam
from below told me I’d stomped too hard. No growls came through the window (it was still light out but I’d been hoping), so I gave up and tugged on cutoff jeans and a baggy T-shirt over my naked skin and moped for a while. I tried visiting the places on my wall, first escaping to the Globe Theatre, then sticking my arms out like the Rio de Janeiro statue and shouting inanely, “I’m the king of the world!”

But running in my mental background were the facts, an acid eating away at my manufactured confidence. No audience meant no impressed Broadway backer, no fabulous job in New York. No asking Glynn to come to New York with me.

Phooey. I was catastrophizing. It had only been three days. Surely the good Corners folk would come to their senses soon. Surely by Thursday the novelty of free drinks until you puke would have worn off and we’d have an audience.

Surely they’d get tired of Camille’s before it was too late.

I had to believe that. Because, besides playing the very best reed two of my life, there was
nothing
I could do about it.

Sheesh. No wonder theater people were superstitious.

Although if our audience didn’t come to their senses… Even supposing we survived vampageddon, I’d never see Glynn again…oh, God. What was I going to do?

I crawled into my roof crenel, stared into the warm evening. Now would be a good time for that all-powerful Ancient One to show up with a plan, or the mayor to find a spare hundred thousand in the budget. Deus ex machina would be very handy right now.

Instead I got Dirkus ex Ruffles. He called to sheepishly let me know that, since the matinee was over, my flyers were classified as litter.

Some days are so shitty, they qualify as their own sewage district. And Murphy, the ass hat, was laughing.

Slamming out of our home, I walked the city, ripping down my useless flyers. Ruffles wouldn’t have called on his own. But who put him up to it?

Sure. The Cheese Dudes.

Maybe not, but they were the most likely. So when I got home, I stalked next door to “discuss” it with them. I don’t think the discussion would have involved tweaked noses, but I never found out because either they were gone or holed up. I beat my fists for five minutes against their door without an answer.

It left me worn out and deflated, with nothing to do—except see Glynn.

My mood immediately improved.

Bend me over and spank me with a Knackwurst—the single bright point in my life was a male I’d first met Monday? How pathetic was that?

I still had duty. I still had dreams. I was still confused about whether sex with Glynn was a really hot affair or something more. But it’s hard to argue with the tug for companionship when you’re so damned dejected you want to smack yourself in the foot with a meat cleaver because it’d at least be hurting about something real.

Except he might love me, and because of that didn’t want to see me. I should respect that.

The thudding music across the street was a painful counterpoint to the throbbing in my head. This was worse than Buridan’s ass. I wasn’t midway between two good things, I was sinking in a Bermuda Triangle of three bad. Which reminded me of Glynn’s triangle of tchotchkes, which started my feet south.