E. Godz (5 page)

Peez smiled pleasantly and replied: "Ma'am, you are a dinosaur. I refuse to
accommodate your outdated prejudices by spending my life barefoot, pregnant and in the
kitchen, even if you could somehow guarantee me one that comes with its own Iron Chef.
I have no children, this teddy bear is possessed by the devil, I despise my baby brother
with an intensity that could liquefy diamonds, and my mother is dying."

"You don't say? Four of them, and all boys! My dear, I don't know whether to
congratulate you or pray for you." She smiled serenely, for as soon as Peez's words left
her lips, the A.R.S. had kicked in, causing the old lady's mind to do an immediate slash-
and-burn editorial job on every syllable. She only heard what her mind told her she ought
to be hearing.

It was a wonderful spell. It let the New York City office of E. Godz, Inc. exist
unmolested and it gave Peez the freedom to say anything that popped into her head to
anyone she wished. As long as she restricted uttering her rants to the confines of the
building proper, she could vent to her heart's content. Who needed a therapist when you
could unload all your peeves and problems on whoever happened to be sharing the
elevator, doing laundry, or getting the mail?

Unfortunately, there were times when you needed a therapist to do more than listen.
The Automatic Rationalization Spell wasn't equipped to make its subjects give Peez any
kind of feedback, and as for handling breakthrough moments of realization ...

"My mother ... is dying," Peez repeated dully as the full import of the fax from
Edwina sank in. She stared at the illuminated display above the closed elevator doors and
saw it not as simply the passing floors counting themselves off but as the passing days of
Edwina's final months of life falling inexorably away, one by one.

Peez dropped everything she was carrying except Teddy Tumtum and, hugging him
fiercely, burst into tears.

"There, there, dear," said the little old lady, solicitously patting Peez's shoulder. "I
know just how you feel. Men really are all sex-crazed pigs, but maybe this time you'll
have a girl."

Dov Godz was enjoying his daily massage-and-aromatherapy treatment when the fax
from Edwina arrived. His long, limber, beautifully bronzed torso was stretched out full
length on the masseuse's portable table, his muscles almost purring under the
ministrations of her gifted hands, his eyelids growing heavy, and his consciousness
drifting blissfully off to the edge of slumber.

Then that blasted watchdog amulet on the fax machine let out a Rebel yell shrill
enough to raise General Robert E. Lee himself from the grave and Dov's gilded barge to
dreamland was torpedoed by a single yeeeeehaaaaw amidships. He jumped straight up
off the towel-covered massage table so high that he nearly left an oily imprint of his body
on the white acoustic tiles overhead.

It was a mercy that Solange hadn't set up her table under the ceiling fan.

"Damn it, I'm going to have to fix that thing," Dov announced as he strode across the
room to retrieve the incoming message. With one hand he nabbed the fax, with the other
he tore the amulet from the front of the machine and held it at eye level. "Okay, sport," he
told it. "Either tone it down, change it entirely, or get ready for an unguided tour of the
Greater Miami sewer system."

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dov," the amulet replied in a level voice that reeked
of rationality. It was cast of the purest silver in the shape of a human face with the full,
pouting lips, curly hair, and classically beautiful features found on ancient statues of
Greek youths. There was, of course, one salient difference: The faces of the old, old
statues were as lifeless as the marble from which they were carved; the amulet's features
were animated.

"I don't think you understand the situation, friend," Dov said. "You're the one
working for me."

"I am not," the amulet replied. "I am working for the corporation."

This was true; Dov knew it. His mother had furnished his office and his bank account
with a liberal hand, but with enough strings attached for Dov to start his own marionette
theater. One such string was decked out with tags reading If Thou Touchest Any Item of
Thine Office Equipment, O Heedless Chump, Verily Thine Ass Belongeth Unto Me. The
tags were all in Edwina's handwriting and were attached to Dov's life by strings of solid
carborundum. Mom was very protective of the family business, and since she allowed
Dov the freedom and the money to do whatever he fancied in all other aspects of his life,
he found it convenient to bow to her inclinations in this small matter.

Unfortunately, her inclinations included a fax amulet that screamed like a horde of
Johnny Rebs on bad acid whenever a message came in. He'd spoken to her several times
before about changing it, but she'd always replied that as his mother she knew him better
than he knew himself.

"You're a good boy, Dov, and a good worker when you want to be, but as the old joke
about the camel goes, first I've got to get your attention."

Dov winced every time he recalled those words. The joke in question concerned the
best way to make a camel obey commands and involved two bricks and the beast's
testicles. He disagreed with his mother's assessment of his work ethic. Oh sure, when he
was a teenager he'd slacked off at boarding school and college on a regular basis. So did
lots of kids. It was all part of growing up, testing the limits, seeing how far you could go
before you wound up with egg on your face. He'd never actually flunked any courses;
he'd even managed to get some grades that were better than he deserved thanks to his
seemingly inborn talent for charming the pants off most people.

But that had been then. He knew better now. He was a grown man with an adult sense
of responsibility, though he still cultivated the roguish image of a devil-may-care
playboy. It tended to lull his rivals and opponents into a false sense of security, never
expecting the happy-go-lucky hedonist to be concealing a killer business instinct worthy
of his corporate lawyer grandpa. (He'd gotten the idea from reading Batman comics and
even had a T-shirt printed up with the question: What Would Bruce Wayne Do?)

Edwina had told him not to tamper with the office equipment, but there was no
maternal ruling to prevent him from trying to persuade the office equipment to tamper
with itself.

"You know, I'm not asking for the world," he told the amulet.

He was wearing Smile #297-A, the one he reserved for uncooperative clients who
hunkered down behind barricades of blind, stubborn resistance. Logical arguments and
all the tools of rational persuasion couldn't reach them there and Dov knew better than to
waste his time trying. That was when he whipped out Smile #297-A, which offered its
unsuspecting targets a devastating combination of fifty percent charm, fifty percent
intimacy, and one hundred thirty-eight percent good old American bullshit.

The amulet wrinkled up its perfect Greek nose and uttered words of dread: "And what
if you were? It wouldn't matter any more than you do."

The verbal barb flew true and speared Dov straight through the heart. He felt a stab of
pain as vivid and agonizing as if the amulet's words had really taken the form of a
physical weapon. But this exchange between Edwina Godz's pampered baby boy and his
least-favorite piece of office equipment was nothing new. He had been on the receiving
end of the amulet's sniping countless times before, whenever he'd expressed a desire to
change the way things were run in the Miami office. Somehow the little lump of
exquisitely crafted metal always knew just the right thing to say to leave Dov's
monolithic ego shattered into rubble and dust. There was only one way for Dov to come
out of these clashes with some shred of self-esteem intact, and that was to act as if the
inevitable surrender had been all his own idea from the start.

"Attaboy," he told the amulet, switching to Smile #15, one of the basic models
employed when buttering up maitre d's prior to wheedling his way around the waiting list
at exclusive restaurants. "Just testing. You know how most office equipment starts to
show wear and tear, doesn't work up to snuff, inches its way towards becoming obsolete
and needing to be replaced?" He stressed that last word just enough to zing the amulet. (It
worked: He saw the perfect lips contract just a hair and mentally high-fived himself for
scoring hurt points on the tiny silver tyrant.) "That's why I like to run these periodic
checks, make sure that you're still functioning in top form. I'll be telling Mother that you
passed with flying colors."

"How kind," the amulet said coldly. "Will that be before or after the funeral?"

"What funeral?"

The silver lips grinned. "You know, most people read the faxes they receive."

Dov stared at the ensorcelled trinket, his smooth brow momentarily creasing with
uncharacteristic worry wrinkles. He read the fax as he replaced the amulet on the
machine. It was a simple task, one he'd done so many times before that he could do it
blindfolded, by touch alone.

This time was different.

This time he dropped the amulet into the little wastepaper basket next to the fax
machine. It was sheer luck that the trash receptacle's automatic shredding spell was
temporarily disabled.

"HEY! What the hell do you think you're trying to pull?" the enraged amulet
demanded from the depths.

Dov acted as though he had heard nothing. This was more or less true. The news from
Edwina was so stunning, so shocking, so earthshaking that it threw Dov for a loop the
size of Halley's comet's trajectory. He didn't notice that he'd dropped the amulet, and the
only reason he finally snapped out of his daze was the reaction he got when the towel
around his waist slipped its moorings and fell in a terry cloth puddle at his feet.

Solange squealed like a teenybopper at a Generic Boy Band concert.

"Wha—?" Dov looked up suddenly at the mortified masseuse, then down at his
nakedness. "Oops." He retrieved the towel. "Uh, why don't you come back later, honey?"
he told Solange.

She didn't wait for a second invitation: She fled the premises, leaving her portable
massage table and other equipment behind. The amulet in the wastepaper basket was still
snickering when he fished it out.

"Not very professional, is she?" it remarked.

"She's new to the business," Dov muttered. "Plus, she went to Yale—not the best
place to learn what a naked man's really supposed to look like."

Still somewhat distracted, he paced across the floor to the panoramic windows of his
office and gazed down at the street scene of Miami's smart South Beach section.
Buildings that were all the colors of Easter eggs stood like graveyard monuments to the
Art Deco movement. Palm trees swayed like topless waitresses with overloaded trays.
Swarms of people at least as bronzed, blond, and beautiful as Dov Godz went sailing
along their carefree life-paths. Their gleaming golden tresses streamed out behind them
as they were whisked along via every form of transportation known to man—from
rollerblades to red convertibles—so long as that form of transportation was guaranteed to
show off their perfect bodies to the max.

"Bubble-heads," Dov growled.

"Wow," the amulet said. "You want to be them so bad it hurts, doesn't it?"

"Like an abscessed tooth." Dov saw no point in denying it.

"Well, I've got news for you, fella: You are them," the amulet stated. "Or hadn't you
noticed?"

"I used to be," Dov said. He sounded world-weary enough for a whole platoon of
French novelists. "Once. But not any more."

The amulet raised one silver eyebrow and looked truly concerned. "Uh-oh. You're
thinking again, aren't you? I warned you not to try that. You're not used to the strain.
What's the matter, fella? You need help? You want me to fax your guru, your personal
trainer, your dietician, your feng shui consultant, what?"

"My mother is dying."

Dov dropped the words without prelude or fanfare, like a stick of bombs from the
belly of an old warplane. He turned away from the window, leaned his spine against the
cool glass, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes.

"Oh." The amulet was abashed. "Gosh. I—I—I'm real sorry to hear that."

"What do you mean, you're sorry to hear that?" Dov snapped, his eyes wide open
again and shooting sparks at the amulet. "You knew about this before I did, the minute
the fax came in! You're the one who was talking about funerals!"

"Yeah, but—but—" The amulet groped for the right thing to say. "Look, when the
messages come in, they're just words to me, okay? What do I know about any power they
might contain until I see how they affect you? What do I look like, a human being?"

"Hardly." Dov's lips curled as he studied the amulet. "Although you're obnoxious
enough to join the club. Maybe that's what makes me forget, sometimes, that you're
nothing more than a glorified interactive gewgaw."

"Maybe you wouldn't forget that so much if you spent as much time talking to other
human beings as you spend talking to me."

Dov stared at the amulet, stunned. "What did you say?"

"You heard me." The amulet was smug, knowing it had scored another hit off its
master. "And you know it's true."

That was the worst of it: The trinket was right. Dov frowned, trying to drum up some
evidence to the contrary, but he was a truthful man at heart and he couldn't honestly say
that there was any mortal soul with whom he'd traded as many words as he had with
Ammi.

He blushed to realize that he'd actually given the thing a name.

"This is all her fault," he snarled under his breath. His bitter words did not escape
Ammi's silvery ears.

"Oh, come on, now! You can't blame your mother for dying!"

"I'm not talking about her: I'm talking about my sister, Peez." The look in Dov's eyes
was grim and brimming with years' worth of anger.

Peez, his dowdy, depressing, hangdog big sister. Peez, who didn't have the
socialization skills of a squashed spider; Peez, who couldn't make a friend if Dr.
Frankenstein himself gave her the raw materials, the how-to instructions, and a spare
needle and thread; Peez, who lacked the affable, easygoing charm that seemed to have
come to Dov naturally.

Peez, who had envied Dov's personal magnetism from the day that they were both
placed in the same class at school, and who decided that if she couldn't have her baby
brother's boundless charisma and all the good things it brought him, at least she could
enjoy playing the harpy and tainting everything before he had a hope of enjoying it
himself.

Friends? Dov could still hear her dry, mocking laughter in his head. It was
Valentine's Day and while his construction paper mailbox was stuffed full to bursting
with flocks of little white envelopes from their classmates, hers was almost as flat as
when she'd finished making it. You think they're your friends? Why? Just because they
gave you valentines? Stupid! They only did it because their parents forced them to! And
you know why? Because the only reason anyone ever does anything nice for us is because
they want something from Mother!

He remembered fighting back against the ugly words, arguing that if what she said
were true, then wouldn't the kids have given her a bunch of valentines too?

She only laughed again. She didn't even try to answer his question, she just gave him
the same look she'd given him when he'd found out the truth about Santa Claus. It was a
horribly knowing look that said: Have it your way. They're all your dear, dear friends.
Sure they are. Trust them. Only when they make a fool of you, don't come crying to me. I
tried to warn you. I tried to tell you the truth.

"It's all her fault," Dov repeated. "She's the reason I never let anyone get too close, the
reason I've got hundreds of acquaintances, associates, social contacts, but not one single,
solitary friend. She's why I've got no one I can really talk to except—except a refugee
from a charm bracelet!"