Love Game (15 page)

Lucy put out a spread of chips, dip, and nuts. I scooped up some guacamole with a tortilla chip.

“Check this out.” Lucy clicked a button. “Who does that look like?”

A half-naked man, muscled and covered in tattoos, shook a fist at the screen. “That’s Detective Cumberbatch,” I said.

“Bald,” Bridget added. “I like him better without hair.”

“You’re both wrong,” Lucy said. “That’s not Remington Cumberbatch. That’s Junior Clay.”

Bridget scooted closer to the television. “He looks just like him—a twin.”

“That’s because Junior Clay is Remington Cumberbatch, darlin’,” Lucy said, smiling. “I looked him up after he told Gladie he was a cage fighter. Junior Clay is his fighting name.”

I’d forgotten that Remington had been a cage fighter. What had he called it? UFC. He certainly looked the part. On the television he bounced in place, shaking out his arms as if to relax them. Another man—scarier than Remington, with a flat nose, a scar down one cheek, and just as muscly—slapped
his fists together. The two men were focused on each other with what looked like murder on their minds.

I caught myself biting my fingernails and grabbed the bowl of chips.

“I’m not much for violence,” I said, munching on the chips.

“Me, either,” Bridget said. “Although it is an interesting look at the evolutionary process.”

“This is violence
plus
. Keep watching,” Lucy ordered.

The two men went after each other, punching and kicking. Then, in a blur, Remington got the other guy down on the floor and wrapped his legs around his torso. They ground into each other, sweating and grunting.

“What is this? What are we watching?” Bridget asked. She fanned herself with a magazine. I was feeling overheated, too. Remington and the other man writhed on the floor in a compromising situation.

“Why didn’t I know about this before?” I asked.

“Don’t turn it off,” Bridget ordered.

“Oh, honey,” Lucy said, “I’ve got three hours recorded. Sit back and enjoy the afternoon.”

“Sounds good,” I said, but I wasn’t listening. I was transfixed by the action on the television. “What are they doing now?”

“I looked it up,” Lucy told me. “It’s called the bare-naked choke hold. Isn’t that perfect?”

I nodded.

Lucy sat next to me and put her feet up on the coffee table. “I bought us tickets for Junior Clay’s next bout, tomorrow night,” she said. “You know, so we can study it closer up.”

* * *

IT WAS
a good way to spend the day after a kidnapping. I was thoroughly rested by the evening and thoroughly filled with empty calories. Lucy insisted on dressing me for Luanda’s meeting.

Bridget decided to field calls from perverts instead of going to the fake psychic’s singles’ group.

“Tea-bagging? I’m more a coffee drinker myself,” Bridget said. She lowered the phone. “I can’t make out what these men are talking about most of the time,” she told Lucy and me, and put the phone back up to her ear. “Can we get back to our talk about three-ways after I tell you about the Equal Rights Amendment?” she asked into the phone.

I walked up to the third floor with Lucy. “Do you think she’ll be all right?” I asked her.

“If she converts even one man, darlin’, she’ll be over the moon. I think it’s good therapy for her.”

Bridget was at her best when she was crusading, but I had my doubts she could convert any of her callers to her feminist beliefs.

Lucy’s closet was bigger than my bedroom and looked like the inside of Saks Fifth Avenue. It almost brought tears to my eyes, especially when I caught a glimpse of my sweatshirt-wearing self in one of the mirrors.

“This,” Lucy said, handing me an ice-blue strapless dress.

“Isn’t it a little dressy for the occasion?”

“This,” she insisted. I put on the dress and one of a pair of sling-backs. I didn’t look half bad, even with
the nylon boot on my other foot. “Lord, Gladie,” Lucy said. “No wonder all the lookers want you.”

“They don’t want me,” I countered. I got a lot of flirting but not a lot more than that.

“They will if you wear this.” She put a diamond necklace around my neck and pinned up my hair.

“Isn’t this a bit much for a chat with Luanda?” I asked.

“Oh, that reminds me.”

Lucy opened a drawer and took out a Taser.

“What’s that for?” I asked, but I had a sneaking suspicion.

“That’s plan B, in case that woman refuses to get her hooks out of Uncle Harry.”

“How about we leave that at home? I have a good plan A,” I said, taking a step out of range. Actually, I had no plan at all. I had no idea what to say to Luanda to get her to back off, and I had even less of a plan to prove she was a fraud.

Lucy didn’t care about the existence or inexistence of my plan. She put the Taser in her purse, dabbed on some lipstick, and turned off the closet light.

Tonight it seemed like the whole town was armed and I couldn’t convince anyone to put down their weapons. I hoped Luanda wasn’t packing heat.

LUCY BROUGHT
me down to her garage. Inside was a brand-new Mercedes, an even newer and fancier model than the one she had crashed into Tea Time.

“Lambskin-leather seats, Gladie,” Lucy told me, her eyes gleaming. “Cherrywood dashboard. It was supposed to go to Justin Timberlake, but I pulled strings.”

I sat in the passenger seat, settling into the ultrasoft leather. “I might have had an orgasm just now,” I said.

“It’s nice, right? I swear, I’m glad I crashed my old car. Justin Timberlake sure has good taste.”

She started up the car, and the gorgeous Southern twang of Garth Brooks oozed out of the stereo speakers.

“Hold on,” I said, remembering. “Grandma said I have to drive.”

“My new Mercedes?”

“No, I think she meant I had to drive my car.”

Lucy turned off the engine, and Garth Brooks went quiet. “Did she say why?” Lucy asked.

I shrugged. Grandma never said why, but it was usually wiser to take her advice.

“Damn, I left my screwdriver upstairs,” I said. “Do you have one?”

Lucy gave me a screwdriver from her garage wall. It was shiny, pink, and new. Even Lucy’s tools were nicer than mine, I thought, as I started up my old rusted-out Cutlass Supreme. No lambskin, cherry-wood, or Garth Brooks, but I couldn’t complain. It still got us where we were going.

Luanda had set up shop in an abandoned warehouse near the old gold mine in the northwest corner of the historic district. The parking lot attached to the building was almost filled with cars, but we found a place in the back.

We were fifteen minutes late for the meeting, and everyone was inside. The warehouse was lit with candles and Christmas tree lights. Men and women stood around in uncomfortable silence.

“Lord, she sure knows how to bring them in,” Lucy noted.

“Where are the snacks?” I asked. Grandma had stressed the importance of keeping potential matches fed. She always said that love couldn’t bloom on an
empty stomach. Munching would have helped ease the tension in this room. Nobody mingled—not a peep from anyone. You could hear teeth grinding and stomachs growling.

“No wonder Grandma is apoplectic,” I told Lucy. “Luanda is breaking all the matchmaking rules.”

Lucy scanned the room. “Where is the Amazing Kreskin? Let’s get up front.”

We pushed our way to the front of the room, where a raised platform was draped in a batik cloth. As if we had summoned her by our presence, Luanda floated up onto the makeshift stage. She was wearing layer over layer of flouncy black material. Her teased hair hung down to her waist and was topped with a whole selection of multicolored feathers. She had rings on every finger and strings of beads around her neck.

She stuck one hand out straight in front of her, as if she were going to sing opera, and covered her eyes with her other hand.

“I see! I see!” she cried—ironically, since her eyes were covered. “I see love! I see happiness for each and every one of you.”

The room erupted in applause.

“Well, kiss my go-to-hell,” Lucy muttered.

Luanda raised her hands above her head. “What’s that? What’s that?” she asked the air. “I hear you, but I can’t make you out. What is that you are trying to convey to your servant from the cosmos?”

“I’m going to Tase her,” Lucy said.

I put my hand on Lucy’s arm. “Can you wait until I’m nowhere around? With my luck, you’ll get me instead of her.”

“Destruction!” Luanda screeched. “Despair! Depression! Detritus!”

“A lot of ‘D’s,” I said to Lucy.

Luanda dropped her arms and gave me a pointed look. “Shh!” she hissed.

All eyes turned to me. I slouched down behind Lucy.

“Your love matches have eluded you,” Luanda told the crowd, her voice booming in a singsong. “You have paired with the wrong person, but all that is going to change tonight. After tonight you will search no further, because tonight you find your soul mate. Your other half is in this very room.”

I looked around, and everyone else was doing the same thing, trying to make out who could possibly be their other half. I caught a sixtysomething man with a paunch and comb-over giving me an appreciative smile.

“Harold Chow’s got you in his line of sight,” Lucy said.

“That’s Harold Chow? My grandmother is worried about him.”

“I’m worried about him, too,” said Lucy. “His shoelaces are untied, and his fly is open. He looks like ten miles of bad road and open for all kinds of unfortunate happenings.”

Luanda sat cross-legged on her stage and motioned for the crowd to sit, as well. There wasn’t a chair to be had, just cold hard floor.

“Darlin’, if that witch thinks I’m going to sit my Chanel ass down on the filthy industrial linoleum, she’s been talking to the wrong dead people.”

I pulled Lucy to the side, close to the wall, away
from the crowd. They all dutifully sat down, although few could make it into the cross-legged position. It was more of a middle-aged, metabolically challenged group than a youthful, vegan yoga set.

“Talk to me,” Luanda commanded her audience. “Tell me your needs.”

“I need love fast,” one man shouted back. “I’ve got blue balls something awful. You can’t imagine the suffering. It’s like someone is driving a truck through my gonads. I’d like to cut the damned things off, but if you got someone in mind for me”—he paused and scanned the crowd—“then I’ll keep them a while longer and hopefully my soul mate can fix the problem.”

Luanda looked a little shaken, and there was snickering throughout the room.

“Your other half is here, Blue-Ball Man!” she announced after a moment. The women squirmed in unison, probably hoping she wasn’t talking about them and that they weren’t Blue-Ball Man’s other half.

“Tell me your fears, oh, lovelorn among us,” Luanda continued to the rest of the group. I thought it was pretty obvious what their fears were after the whole blue-balls conversation, but a little voice piped up out of the quiet.

“I have a fear, Luanda,” a tiny woman in gabardine and gloves squeaked from the center of the room.

Luanda put her hand up, palm forward. “Hold on, little bird, I’m getting a message from the other side.” Luanda’s eyes rolled around in their sockets.

“I really wish there were snacks,” I whispered to Lucy.

“Luanda calling spirits. Luanda calling spirits,” Luanda said to the air above her head. She nodded
like she agreed with whatever the spirits were telling her. “Okay, continue on, little bird,” she said after a minute. “The spirits have told me about your fears, but you need to tell me yourself, to purify the toxicity in your heart.”

“Okay,” the little woman squeaked. “When I feel an erect penis, I lose all rational thought.”

Again, Luanda looked a little shaken. I wondered how the spirits would deal with the erect-penis problem.

“Oh, little bird,” Luanda said finally, after regaining her composure, “it’s like those wise words from the philosopher—I don’t know his name: ‘We don’t swim in your toilet. Please don’t pee in our pool.’ ”

I didn’t think Grandma had to worry about Luanda. Her advice was pretty lackluster compared to Grandma’s. Still, the heads in the crowd nodded as if Luanda had said something really wise and on topic.

“And now comes the moment you have all been waiting for,” Luanda announced. “You’ve paid the nominal fee through your PayPal account with the iPad that was passed around, haven’t you? Good. Then here it is. Your conjugal happiness is a matter of seconds away.”

Luanda closed her eyes and pointed her index finger at the audience. She made a big circle, as if her finger were a divining rod.