The Taste of Night (30 page)

Ian smelled like cotton and starch, and beneath that, strangely, like sand from the seashore. His cologne was soft and nutty, like a weakened almond extract, though I decided this guy was as vanilla as they came. Clashing sharply with all this was the tang of his anxiety—like a red wine gone bad—and the chalky streaks of his hope as he stared, unblinking, at me.

He was, unsurprisingly, sporting a red wristband, and I hid my green one behind my back as Suzanne introduced Ian to Troy, who greeted him curtly, and turned away to survey the rest of the room just as Ian stuck his hand out. Now I was determined to be nice to him. I beamed kindly when Suzanne said, “And this is Olivia.”

“Hello Ian. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. At least his babbling had been cured.

“Should we get a drink?” Suzanne asked, earning a grateful nod from Ian.

“This way,” Troy said, starting off without us. There were makeshift bars stationed in all four corners of the elongated ballroom, though Troy led us toward the farthest, a ploy I was sure was meant to draw us farther into the lion’s den. In doing so we had to pass the curtained stalls, which turned out to be vendors’ booths touting everything from sex toys to videos to brochures for a chicken ranch located just over the county line. This booth came complete with a menu of appetizers to choose from, and two of the ladies of the house available to answer any questions. I admit I lingered there, wondering what exactly a “Hot Shot” entailed, but hurried on when one of them knowingly caught my eye…and the color of my wristband.

I ordered a seven and seven at the bar, trusting Ian to take care of the details, then turned my back on the others so I could fully survey the room for the first time.

It was certainly a different crowd than had been present for the bachelorette auction, and a part of me would’ve liked to just park it against a wall, like a fly, and watch the interactions between strangers take place, knowing that each whispered hello, every meeting of eyes, all accidental touches were gestures hoping to score an invitation to the bedroom. Even I, a born and bred Vegas girl, found it fascinating, though I suppose every bar on a Friday night sported a similar, if more covert, scene to this. But blatant voyeurism was out. I was in search of someone who had a greater hunger for flesh than all these mortals combined, so I focused on the men in the room, and began to hunt.

“These swingers seem pretty tame,” Cher said, as Ian handed me my drink.

“I don’t think you can use
swinger
and
tame
in the same sentence,” I said.

“Says the woman in anything goes.”

I scowled at her and scanned the room. There was a steady stream of new arrivals, and you could feel anticipation mounting, even if—unlike me—you couldn’t scent it. But what I scented more than anything, was the increasingly familiar smell of infections, so the more I watched, the more baffled I became. This virus was being spread sexually. AIDS alone should be enough of a deterrent, but since the papers had even reported the burn marks around the mouths and private areas of the victims, you’d think that’d give people a bit of a clue. Stop swapping bodily fluids with strangers!

Yet here we all were, milling around like alley cats in heat, viruses be damned. Shaking my head, I followed the others to a booth where a woman was chained to the wall, realizing along the way that my mask idea had turned out to be a popular, and none-too-original, option. I hoped Joaquin wasn’t disguised as well.

“They look like pageant contestants,” I muttered, eyeing the name tags splayed like banners on clothing, but more often on bared flesh.

Suzanne, overhearing, said, “I don’t even want to guess what you need to do to win Best Personality.”

“Or Most Photogenic,” Cher put in. We all snorted. Troy turned around and glared at us. Someone was taking his sexual prowess a little too seriously.

We wandered a bit longer, the crowd thickening around us, until Cher halted abruptly. “Oh shit!”

“What?”

“Is that Lon?”

The rest of us looked in the direction she was pointing, easily spotting the man with shirtsleeves rolled high and a gold-tipped cane that he used ruthlessly to clear his path.

“Oh shit!” Suzanne and I said in unison.

“Duck! Duck your heads! If he sees us, we’re screwed.”

“I’m okay,” I said, as Lon expertly wove his way through the crowd. He was paying no attention whatsoever to the wristbands or the amount of leopard print and baby oil slicking the skin of those around him, but his eye caught on every face he passed, neck swiveling, mentally taking notes. “I have a mask on.”

“What the hell’s he doing here?” Suzanne asked, yanking Troy in front of her so he formed a solid, fleshy wall. Cher ducked behind him as well.

“Well, I don’t think he’s here for the edible body paint.” I sipped at my drink, watching as Lon jotted in a small spiral notebook before it disappeared beneath his coat jacket again. Lon—no last name, just like Cher—was the city’s gossip columnist. He could dig up dirt on the queen mother, and he was as ubiquitous as a cockroach, seemingly everywhere at once.

If Cher and Suzanne were caught trolling at a swingers’ ball tonight, the whole city would hear about it in the morning. Olivia had also made quite a few appearances in his daily column, though fewer since I’d taken over her identity. I wanted to keep it that way, so mask or not, I yanked Ian in front of me and told the others to keep moving. Between the horny mortals, supervillains, and gossip columnists, this place was getting really dangerous.

“Wow,” Cher said, stopping dead in her tracks in front of a booth where a woman hung from the ceiling, leather cords attached to a plastic bra right where her nipples should be. “I bet she wouldn’t fail the pencil test.”

“Honey, pencils are the least of her worries,” Suzanne replied, taking in the woman’s restraints.

“And that one over there,” Cher said, pointing. “What do you think she does to stay so thin?”

“Besides pole-dance for a living? Probably ephedrine and diuretics. Now come on.”

Weaving in and out of the crowd, I kept an eye out for Joaquin. Suzanne, noting my attentiveness, said, “Don’t worry. Lon’s on the other side of the room. I just saw him use his cane to crowbar a politician dressed as a street pimp.”

“Oh, it’s not him. I’m looking…” I paused, thinking,
Why not?
Why not enlist the others in my search for Joaquin? If anyone could spot a player it would be Suzanne and Cher. Of course, considering Suzanne’s taste I’d probably have to keep her from running over to hump his leg, but I’d cross that bridge when we came to it. “I’m looking for a man who looks like a real seducer. He’ll be good at it, too.”

“A real Casanova, huh?”

“Sort of. He’ll make you want to get to know him…but, you know, try not to have sex with anyone here,” I added quickly.

Suzanne eyed a man wearing Dockers shorts and a fanny pack, typical tourist wear if you didn’t count the body glitter. “I’ll do my best to control myself,” she replied dryly.

We continued our search for another quarter hour, with no luck. Lon spotted us once during that time, and as soon as he and I made eye contact, he started my way, barreling through the room like a Monday night halfback, cane swinging. Suzanne ducked, Cher squealed, but I turned to face him, smile on full blaze, green wristband aloft as I swirled my drink. He slowed but didn’t stop. I blew him a kiss, and fear flitted across his face. I took a step forward,
watched his eyes widen, then he pivoted on his heels and turned back the way he came. I’d like to think my brazen appearance was what had stopped him in his tracks…but the flash of steel at my thigh probably had a bit to do with it as well.

After that, we found some tables clustered in a dim corner, empty but for a couple necking in the corner, apparently unwilling to wait and see if better pickings came along. As we drew closer, they rose from their seats, holding hands, and headed toward a heavily draped area, curtained off by at least three layers of silver and black fabric. They disappeared inside.

“The common room,” Troy said, seeing me watch them, and moving to put his hand on the small of my back. “Where all sorts of private things can be viewed in public.”

I was going to puke if this guy didn’t stop touching me. Seriously.

I glanced over at Suzanne, who was staring into her drink but talking to Ian, who kept sneaking glances over at us. I shot him an apologetic smile—at least I thought that’s what it was; who knew what it looked like beneath this mask—and lowered myself to a chair closer to Cher than Troy.

I glanced with disgust at a threesome who disappeared behind the thick layers of curtains, all holding hands. Normally I was pretty open-minded. Whatever you wanted to do as long as it wasn’t hurting someone was fine with me. But I’d just watched all three people enter the ballroom at different times, and they’d had less than a five-minute chat before heading to that back room. If even one person behind those curtains was a carrier of the Valhalla virus, this place was going to erupt like Mount Saint Helens. I wanted to prevent that if I could, but more than that, I needed to find Joaquin before chaos swallowed the best lead I had.

“Any particularly naughty thoughts going through that pretty little head?”

I turned to find Troy again leaning close. I glanced down at his mouth, curled in what I assumed was supposed to
resemble a lascivious smile…and thought about punching the center of his face clear back to the base of his skull.

“One or two,” I answered truthfully, voice dripping with pseudo-sweetness.

“Care to share?” he prodded, wriggling waxed brows.

Love to
. I was thinking, when Suzanne’s voice cut in. “How about that guy, Olivia? He looks pretty sleazy.”

We all looked. I felt my heart drop, then quickly regulated my breathing before it could be sensed above the general lust. Even across the dim room I recognized Joaquin. The way he walked, the tilt of his head as he regarded the mortals surrounding him like vermin. Of course he was making no real attempt to disguise himself, and why should he? He was in no danger here. He thought himself immune to disease, untouchable by all, impervious even to death.

“He’s perfect,” I told her, and without taking my eyes from him, I put down my drink, picked up my handbag with my conduit still inside, and rose.

“Wait,” Troy said with sudden alarm. “Where are you—?”

The rest of his words were lost to me as I trailed Joaquin. As I walked, conversations flowed around me, and I bobbed on the ebb and weave of words, but stopped to address no one.

“I can heal people with my penis,” I heard a man say to more laughter than the comment warranted.

Then a woman; high voice, fluttering hands, thick thighs. Disease-laced breath. “When I was little I thought they meant ‘sea men.’ Little tiny sea men? I kept wondering how all these sea men got in the bed…”

Another man, talking above a group of stiff competitors—no pun intended—gathered around a woman so perfect, I’d bet a bill she was really a man in drag. “I like my women fuller, more curvy,” the suitor was saying, eyeing him/her up and down. “After all, who wants a bumpy ride?”

I kept Joaquin’s back in sight, unheeded and almost entirely unnoticed, until a man the size of a giant pit bull
stepped in front of me.

I sighed and stared down at him from my leather-booted height. He was shaven bald, with squinty eyes parked too close together on his round face. Tattoos coiled around his neck, disappearing beneath a chain-link vest, which had to be murder on his nipple hair. He greeted me, then waited for me to fall all over myself to fuck him. I just stared.

Women, I had once read, found unrelenting eye contact trustful and reassuring. Men, however, often deemed it as an act of aggression, thus the innovative ways they devised to communicate without having to look at one another. Sports. Cars. Games. No eye contact equals no aggression equals no confrontation. This was why women got together for lunch, and men got together in bars.

The man asked me a question—a simple yes or no would’ve sufficed—and without changing my expression, I allowed the silence, and the eye contact, to draw out between us.

His left eye twitched. “I said, are you here with someone?”

“Yes.” I moved to step around him. He planted himself in front of me again.

“Well, maybe your someone and you would like to come and play with me?” It didn’t sound like a question.

“You’re not his type,” I said, and searched over his shoulder for Joaquin, but he’d disappeared in the thickening crowd. Damn.

“Well, maybe I’m your type. You never know till you try.”

I shook my head, smelling the stubborn need oozing from his pores. Dammit. “Believe me, I know.”

“Oh, I see,” he said, and I glanced back over at him, wondering exactly what he saw. “You’re one of those squatters, a one-trick pony. A tease who comes in here pretending to be up for anything but really looking for an easy mark and a rich husband.”

Yes, that’s me. Superheroine by day, squatter by night. “No. I only look for rich husbands on Tuesdays and Thurs
days. Now excuse me.”

He stepped in front of me again. And this time he put his hand on me. “So what are you looking for tonight?”

I stared hard at where he’d grasped my arm until he released it. Then I angled my gaze back up, meeting his head on. “A tall man with a big dick. Sorry.”

He responded with the requisite “Bitch!,” I yawned, but was finally allowed to move on. Thank God. Throwing him into the teeming stack of porn mags to our right would have really blown my cover.

But Joaquin was gone. I knew it before I inhaled, but tried not to let it get me down. We’d all perfected the art of masking our natural scents. It’d flare only under stress or emotion, so I either had to find him again by sight, or wait until he got excited…which, considering the things that excited Joaquin, meant it’d be too late. Circling back the way I’d come, I moved faster, head swiveling without making eye contact…and nearly ran into Ian.

“Olivia,” he said, like he hadn’t known I was there.