He reached into his pocket and held up a pink Bic.
“Pink?” I said. “Seriously?”
A corner of his mouth twitched. As close as he was going to get to a smile at this point.
“Well, it’ll work. Start lighting those drapes on fire, okay?”
He nodded.
I took the whiskey and a couple of other bottles back to the master suite and lit the bodies on fire. Once I had it going, I came back to the living room and grabbed Isaac by the shoulder.
“Come on,” I told him. “Gotta stay on your feet until we get to the car.”
We passed his car in the driveway, and though the drugs I had slipped into his drink had made him so groggy he could barely walk, he was still able to point at his car and groan.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
At that very moment—and I mean it was cued like something out of a movie—the house behind us blew up.
And I’m not just talking a part of the house, either.
The whole fucking thing exploded.
The shockwave nearly knocked me down.
Isaac stared at me, stupidly. His mouth was hanging open, a thick rope of drool hanging from the corner of his lips. Some people don’t handle the GHB well at all.
“What did you do?” he managed to say, though it came out all as one syllable, slurred together.
“This is your big chance,” I said. I leaned him up against the front fender of the Suburban, reached into the driver’s side window, and turned up Janis Joplin’s “Take Another Little Piece of My Heart.”
One of Tommy’s favorite songs.
Then I helped Isaac Glassman to the back and balanced him on my hip as I opened the door.
Tommy was waiting inside, watching, his dead eyes locked on Isaac.
Isaac groaned and slapped at my hand in a futile show of resistance. Poor guy, he knew it was coming.
Janis was singing never never never hear me when I cry.
“She’s playing your song,” I said. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Isaac.”
Then I chucked him inside, closed the door, and drove out of there before the first sirens sounded in the distance.
I listened to the sounds of weak screams and tearing meat coming from the back seat, but didn’t look back.
Instead, I turned up the radio.
It ain’t easy being the manager for the biggest rock star on the planet. Sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty. But what the hell? I mean, the show must go on, right?
The Children’s Hour
Marge Simon
Delice
Holly Newstein
The grinding sound of stone on stone was low and muffled by the hot still air. Moments later a stench, so foul as to be almost visible, filled the night like an exhalation. A white-clad figure leaned into the partly opened tomb. A grunt, and the figure pulled something—a something bundled in a stained sheet—out into the heavy air. It slid to the brick pavement with a thud.
The white wraith closed the tomb with another groan of effort. It bent over the bundle and gently pulled a corner of the sheet to one side.
“Ah me, cette petite. Quelle dommage.” It picked up the bundle from the bricks. Clutching it closely, it moved away until they were both swallowed up in the inky shadows.
A sickly yellow flash of lightning illuminated the “dead houses” in the cemetery. Thunder sounded a rolling boom in the distance.
The first thing Delice heard was the storm. Fat raindrops thrummed on the tin roof, but it would bring no relief to the stifling August night. “Ce pauve, ce pauve,” crooned a strange, soft alto voice. Skirts rustled as the voice’s owner moved about the room.
The voice and the rain and the whisper of fabric were very soothing to her. She had not had many peaceful moments in her short life, so she lay quite still, taking small breaths. She did not want the spell broken and the moment lost.
A warm hand touched her cheek.
“Ma pauve, wake up now.” Delice opened her eyes.
A tall turbaned woman, slender, with café-au-lait skin and slanting black eyes smiled down at her. Deftly she slipped a necklace over Delice’s head, placing the cloth amulet on her chest.
“Some gris-gris for you. To help Ava Ani. Now we bathe you.”
Delice felt a strange energy begin to radiate out from her chest. She watched as the woman filled a basin with warm water. Then she took little ceramic jars from a shelf and began adding things to the water—powders and dried leaves. Fragrance filled the room—a sweet green smell, different from the earthy, mildewy, rotten-meat odor that clung to the inside of Delice’s nostrils. While Ava Ani steeped the leaves in the basin of water, she chanted softly, in a language Delice did not quite understand. It was French, to be sure, but it was from the islands—Hispaniola, perhaps. Not the dialect Delice was used to here in New Orleans. The one Madame and Monsieur spoke.
The woman found a clean white cloth and brought it and the basin over to where Delice lay motionless on the table. Ava Ani turned Delice over onto her belly. She gasped as she looked at Delice’s back. Delice had never seen her own back, but she knew it was crisscrossed with scars from the whippings Madame had administered over the fourteen years of Delice’s life. Madame had a temper, oh yes. Ava Ani traced each scar with a smooth fingertip.
“Each tells a story, no, ma pauve? But this one will have a happy ending. Oh yes, Ava Ani will help make it so. And you will help also.”
Ava Ani began washing Delice’s thin backside with the scented water. Such tenderness! Delice could not remember ever being touched like that. No, she had only been touched to hurt—or worse.
A tiny shudder went down her spine. Ava Ani must have felt it.
“Good, good,” she murmured. “The spirits fill you.”
When Ava Ani finished bathing Delice, she combed rose oil through her woolly hair, making her matted locks become smooth waves and ringlets. Then she helped Delice sit up and dressed her in a red silk dress that fit her perfectly, even over the chest where Delice’s woman-ness was beginning to show. Delice had never owned such a fine dress.
“Ne pas ce pauve. Maintenant, elle est belle!” Ava Ani grinned at Delice, showing straight, white teeth. “Now I need a ribbon, a red silk ribbon.” As Ava Ani looked for the ribbon, Delice looked around.
She was in a one-room cottage, sitting on a table. There was a bed in one corner and a fireplace in the other. Everything was clean and neat, down to the mysterious bottles and boxes arranged on a shelf over the bed. Hanging down from the shelf was a cloth, embroidered with an intricate, multicolored design. A veve.