Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (2 page)

“That’s what he said!” Lars told him.

“I can’t, I need it,” JoJo whined.

“I can’t, I need it,” Carl imitated, which made Lars laugh.

Ward didn’t laugh, but instead drew back his fist and popped the little silky runt
in the face.  JoJo cried out as blood flung from his nose and splattered across a
graffiti-covered train car.  Ward let him stagger away a few steps, and then he pounced.

He punched JoJo in the stomach, doubling him over, then shoved him down to the gravel
again.  He kicked at JoJo’s ribs while the kid squirmed on the rocks.  Lars and Carl
joined in, slamming their heavy black boots into JoJo’s face and arms.

Ward dropped to his knees, straddling the bleeding, mewling little glam brat.  He
turned JoJo onto his stomach and laid his face across the nearest rotten chunk of
old railroad track.  JoJo struggled and squirmed, but Ward held him in place.

“I could have Carl bring his boot down, smash out all your teeth,” Ward whispered
into JoJo’s ear, where a shiny blob of gold dangled from his pierced lobe. “Ever seen
that happen before?  They spray out like popcorn, pieces of tongue, blood all over. 
Is that what you want, kid?”

JoJo whimpered a “no.”

“So, tomorrow, you bring the cash to school.  Eighteen dollars, seventy-three cents.”
He petted JoJo’s pretty blond head. “And if you whine about it, we’ll break your fingers,
one by one.” Ward had heard these threats in cheap gangster movies. “Do you understand
me, JoJo?”

JoJo nodded, his eyes regarding Ward with naked fear.  Ward winked at him and stood
up.  Carl and Lars both had fear in their eyes, too, after his calm, matter-of-fact
threats to JoJo.  Good.  Let everyone fear him.  Fear meant respect.

Ward turned and walked away without another word.

“See ya, glitter girl!” Lars shouted.  He gave JoJo an extra kick in the stomach before
following Ward and Carl out of the train yard.

Ward smiled to himself.  Tomorrow, he and his buddies would each be six dollars richer. 
Ward believed in dividing the spoils evenly, because he wasn’t interested in spoils. 
He was interested in respect, loyalty, and fear.  Even in this dirt-poor, rat-infested
hell of a city, money was nothing compared to such things.

Esmeralda Medina Rios rode the bus home to their studio apartment on South Boyle Avenue,
where they could hear traffic from Interstate 5 all night long.  Their building was
old, with some exposed wiring and gaping holes in the plaster walls.  Esmeralda stepped
over an unconscious, tequila-drenched heap of an old man on the stairs and continued
up to their second floor apartment.

She was exhausted.  Ashleigh’s spirit had possessed her only for a matter of weeks,
but in that time, Ashleigh had managed to wreck Esmeralda's life.

First, her mother had kicked her out, or rather not allowed her to move back in, when
Esmeralda had returned home to Los Angeles on the back of Tommy’s bike.  Ashleigh
had been a terror who never showed Esmeralda's mother the least amount of respect,
and of course Esmeralda's mother had always hated Tommy, the dirty blond gringo she’d
brought home.  Her mother had much preferred her previous boyfriend, Pedro, who worked
construction while studying law at night.  Esmeralda hadn’t spoken to Pedro in over
a year.

Esmeralda had also lost her mortuary cosmetics job at Garcia y Garcia Funeral Home. 
The only job she could find was part-time at the much larger and cheaper Hernandez
place, where the pay was poor and the jobs were all rushed.  She’d been spoiled by
the quiet, leisurely speed of work at Garcia y Garcia.  Hernandez was more like a
factory, a fast-paced corpse processing plant.

She had finally saved up enough for tuition, though, and she was about to start her
final classes toward her Associate of Applied Science in Funeral Service degree. 
Then she would find better work while continuing her education, and in time, all would
be well.

That was what she told herself as she walked down the crumbling second-floor hallway,
sore and miserable, worrying about which utility she would have to pay next, and whether
it would be easier to live without water or power. 

She slid the key into the rusty lock and opened the door.

Tommy sat on the bed, smoking a Basic cigarette and watching their small TV set. 
The ashtray on the windowsill was overflowing with cigarette butts, and the entire
place reeked of cheap tobacco.  The only light came from the open window behind him,
sunlight that turned fuzzy and nicotine-yellow inside the cramped one-room apartment.

“I told you to stop smoking in here,” Esmeralda said.  She closed the door behind
her and hung her purse on a nail in the wall. “It’s so bad for our health.”

“Well, hey, nice to see you, too,” Tommy replied.

“I mean it.” Esmeralda sank to the bed next to him.  Tommy was watching a rerun of
an old Christopher Reeve
Superman
movie.  He smelled like cheap whiskey, probably Ten High. “Are you working tonight?”

“It’s Thursday, right?”

“Thursday.”

“Then I’m working.” He glanced at the rumpled blanket heaped beside him, then gave
a little shrug, reached under it, and slid out a bottle of Ten High. He gave her a
little defiant look as he lifted it to his lips.  It was a fight waiting to happen,
and he knew it.

Tommy had trouble getting good work because he couldn’t even use his real name or
identification.  Esmeralda had a cousin who was good at finding jobs for illegals,
so he’d set Tommy up on a job unloading produce trucks.  He’d gotten fired for being
late and missing work, so her cousin then found him a job washing dishes in a Taiwanese
restaurant in Monterey Park.  He’d gotten fired for the same reasons.

Now, he worked a few nights a week as a bouncer at a seedy North Hollywood bar.  Tommy
wasn’t an especially big and muscular guy, but his touch spread fear into anyone. 
He could seize a troublemaker, fill him with his own worse nightmares, and then shove
him out the door as easily as a crying child.

“I still don’t like you at this job,” Esmeralda said. “Using the fear.  It troubles
you so much.”

“It doesn’t trouble me.” Tommy snorted at her and swigged his whiskey.

“The more you use it, the worst your own nightmares become.  You’re screaming and
crying in your sleep.”

“Who wouldn’t, living in a shithole like this?” Tommy waved his bottle at the small,
rank room around them.

“I understand about all your bad dreams from childhood,” Esmeralda said. “That’s why
you must let the fear rest.  It stirs up these things.”

“You don’t understand anything.  What else can I do?  Your cousin won’t even talk
to me anymore. He calls me an embarrassment to his reputation, whatever that means.”

“It means he can’t vouch for you as a good worker.  You’re always late and hung over.”

“Nobody at the bar cares if I’m hung over,” Tommy said. “It’s a good job for me.”

“It’s too dangerous.  And it doesn’t pay enough...” Esmeralda bit her lip.

“You want more money, is that it?” Tommy snarled, leaning towards her.  His breath
was full of smoke and bad whiskey. “I can get more money.  Anyone out there on the
street, I can walk right up, grab them—” Tommy seized her arm, and shivers of fear
shot through her body, terrifying and deliciously exciting at the same time. “They’ll
give me anything I want.  That’s how I always made my living before.  Now I have to
stick with your stupid rules.”

“They’re not stupid,” Esmeralda said, her voice shivering with the intense feelings
he stirred up inside her. “I just don’t want to see you burn in Hell.”

“Come on, you don’t believe in that.” His face loomed closer through the shadowy smoke.

“I believe we can burn in Hell while we are still alive.  We build the fire around
ourselves, and we damn ourselves.  If we are not careful.”

“You won’t see me in Hell unless you’re there with me.” He seized her other arm and
pulled her closer.  Esmeralda trembled.  His paranormal touch filled her with conflicting
desires to run away screaming and to wrap her legs around him and fuck him until dawn. 
He drove her crazy, and she hated him for it.  Deep down, she knew her mother was
right about this boy.

“I’m already there with you,” Esmeralda whispered, and he kissed her.  It felt like
an electrical jolt, filling her body with dark energy.  Her fingers clawed into his
back, nails digging into his muscles through his stained, flimsy t-shirt.

Tommy reached for his bottle again, but she caught his hand and stopped him.  He snarled
again, threw her back on the bed and climbed on top of her.

Esmeralda couldn’t get her blouse off fast enough.  Tommy ripped open her bra and
sank his teeth into her left breast, and she cried out in pain and pleasure.  She
couldn’t get enough of him, and he couldn’t move fast enough to satisfy her.  She
shoved down her slacks and her panties together. 

When he was inside her, the fear and the pleasure swept her away on the most powerful
wave of feelings she’d ever known.  His long, unwashed hair hung in her face, and
she couldn’t get enough of his foul reek.  Nothing else in the world mattered, just
the glorious sweaty, heat igniting her body. 

Later, he slept beside her, and she watched the smog-tinted orange sunlight burn away
out the window.  The boy was pure poison, she knew.  Addictive poison.

She entertained her daily urge to leave the apartment and never look back, never tell
Tommy where to come and find her, but that was a useless fantasy.

She closed her eyes.

Jenny and Seth drank coffee in a small indoor garden on the
Rue de l'Hôtel de ville
, on the Right Bank of the Seine.  It was a short walk from Notre Dame cathedral,
but hidden enough that tourists were rare.  Currently, the only other customers were
a few elderly pensioners.  The place had gourmet fair-trade coffee from all over Africa,
and the price of one cup would have given Jenny’s father sticker shock.  Even after
a year of living in Paris, with a plentiful stash of money from Seth’s family, Jenny
hadn’t fully adjusted to her new life.  Happily, the city was so full of eccentrics
and artists that the sight of Jenny wearing gloves and scarves in the summertime attracted
no particular attention.

Now it was fall, and she had plenty of coats and hats.  The colder the weather, the
more fully she could wrap herself against the constant danger of touching others.  

“What are we in for today?” Seth asked. “Another art gallery?  Another play?  Touring
another old palace?”

“You sound burned out, Seth.” Jenny sipped her organic coffee from Sierra Leone. 
It was so delicious she couldn’t help sighing.

“Maybe if I had a better idea of what was happening at those things.” Seth said. 
His French was still shaky...and that was a generous description.  Jenny was fluent,
owing more to her past lives than her high school French lessons, though sometimes
people would give her an odd look if she used an archaic word or expression.

“You should listen harder when I try to teach you,” she told him.

“I do try.  But you’re so sexy when you speak French, how am I supposed to learn anything? 
My teacher’s too hot, that’s the problem.”

Jenny blushed slightly.  Their French lessons did have a way of straying to other
activities that, while still quite French in nature, weren’t entirely focused on building
vocabulary.

“Only you could get tired of French wine, truffles, and palaces,” Jenny said.

“And the electro-techno-whatever music,” Seth added. “Please, God, make it stop.”

“Come on, we’ve seen some great shows.  We just saw Pink at the Bercy.”

“Want to get cheesecake?” Seth glanced over the dessert menu.

“For breakfast?”

“How many times are we going to have this conversation?”

Jenny had a second coffee while Seth ordered his cake.  He had a great system for
burning off calories.  He could eat cake for breakfast, then find an excuse to brush
past an elderly or handicapped person on the crowded sidewalk, offloading the extra
energy as a touch of healing.  Jenny couldn’t touch anyone, but her appetite was usually
small and her metabolism left her scrawny, as if she suffered from a deadly wasting
disease.

They stepped out into the mid-morning sun and strolled along the Seine.  The trees
had turned their autumn colors, tender reds and golds softening the regal but austere
Second Empire architecture.  Jenny had mixed feelings about the magnificent and symmetrical
look of the city.  On the one hand, it was breathtaking to see an entire city remade
as a single work of art.  On the other, she missed the chaotic, twisting streets of
the Paris she’d known centuries earlier.  There was something disturbing about the
idea of smashing and rebuilding a city where people lived, of a single vision imposed
on so many individuals, thousands of whom had their homes razed to make way for Napoleon
III’s dream city.

Jenny slowed as they entered the
Musée de la Sculpture en Plein Air
, a vast outdoor sculpture garden tucked alongside the river.  She loved this park. 
Jenny had plenty of time to work on her pottery and clay sculpting, and even intended
to take some informal classes, but she was rethinking her ideas about what sculpture
could be.