I exited to the wings for the last time and slumped onto Baz. I was a wet noodle. Still, I did my routine, thanking the stagehands and house dressers and house security and shaking hands with everybody. My last concert. For now. I refused to think about a tour for the new CD, not tonight.
Baz stood by while I handed out presents to everybody who’d worked the show.
“Get me home,” I begged him.
But it couldn’t happen that fast. The dressing room was chaos. My band was still high on show energy. They were ready to pile into a limo and go party.
“Coming?” Max said, dangling a champagne bottle in front of me.
I laughed in his face. “Go. There’d better not be anything else tonight. I’m toast.”
They piled out together, howling and chattering.
Now I saw Uncle Chester and Aunt Maybellyne. They stood uneasily by the bathroom door.
Right. This. My stomach turned over.
Joe barreled in, yapping, “The press wants a statement about the special effects—oh.” It took him a good thirty seconds to catch up with his parents.
I cut him some slack. It had been a long night.
The photo they had taken with their secret camera still lay on my dressing table. I picked it up and showed it to them.
“This will never happen again,” I said.
Joe sent a look at Baz.
I shook my head. “You’ll have to make your peace with Baz separately. Let’s just talk about us. This family.” A lump blocked my throat. “Me first,” I croaked, as Aunt Maybellyne opened her mouth. “I’m—I’m so hurt.” My big boss front crumbled. Tears spilled out. My mouth went wiggly. “Why couldn’t you just say you didn’t like him? Or ask me if I’m gonna quit working? Or ask what I’ve done to protect your—” I swallowed hard. “Your income.”
“Now, honey, wait a minute!” Uncle Chester said. “You know it ain’t about—”
I shook my head. “It’s protected. There’s a big old trust in a New York bank. You’ll be hearing from them.” Aunt Maybellyne gasped. I raised my voice. “Because I’m taking a vacation.”
Once that was out, I felt better. I watched them. They weren’t passing out or screaming. That was a good sign.
Tears ran down my face. “You’re my family and I’ll always love you. But you di—did me a lot of harm. I need a bub-break.” I covered my face with my hands to hide a sniffle, and a sob, and more sobs.
My back began to feel warm. Baz. He’s right here.
When I took my hands away, he shoved a hot wet towel into them. I stood there, sniffling, hiccuping, and sobbing, wiping off my makeup, watching them.
Uncle Chester spoke finally. “We did it for the best, baby.”
I pulled myself together. “I’m sure you did.” I made myself hug each of them. I was surprised at how hard they hugged me back. “You can go on back to the hotel. I’m not sure when I’ll be there.”
Aunt Maybellyne was in tears. Uncle Chester put his arm around her. They went out, holding hands. That gave me an idea.
“So no interviews?” Joe said.
I turned on him and he shrank back. “You. You’re extra dumb. You get extra punishment. I know that camera was your idea.” He didn’t say anything. “So I want you to go out onstage and help them clear away all those rose petals. Have the head carpenter text me when it’s done.”
“Aw, he hates me,” Joe complained.
“You mean he won’t take twenty bucks to let you out of it.” I smiled. “That’s why he’s the one who has to text me. Go along now. Sooner started, sooner done.”
Joe mooched out, grumbling.
“Yoni,” Baz murmured. “Those rose petals!”
“I know. I’m hoping they’ll give his so-called mind another direction.” With luck, Joe would walk out of here so covered in mana that he’d never make it back to the hotel. God forbid, maybe he’d fall in love. Love wasn’t a cure-all, but it was sure saving my butt tonight.
The dressing room was now empty of people except for my dresser, who was packing up costumes and wigs.
I turned to Baz. “Could I—?” I couldn’t ask.
“Would you like to stay at my place?” he said.
I sniffled and wiped my face again with the towel. “Thanks, buddy.” I looked around at the trashed dressing room. “I need a shower. Do you want one?” I added hopefully.
“Already had one,” he said, flicking a glance at my dresser. He walked away to the catering table and started building a sandwich.
I watched, feeling wrecked and forlorn, while Londa stripped the costume off me and wrapped me in a fluffy towel. I cleaned off the last of my stage makeup. I wished I had the energy to cry some more. Tonight had squeezed all the jelly out of me. “Thanks, hon,” I told her.
She gave me a hug and went back to her packing.
Baz came over with his sandwich. “Corned beef, horseradish, Swiss, and romaine on pumpernickel. Eat.”
I ate, while Londa finished packing, and Baz methodically hoovered up the rest of the food on the catering table. Then he opened the last bottle of champagne and served Londa and me.
That was the first time he beamed at me since we were onstage. “To vacation,” he said, and raised his glass.
“To a vacation,” I croaked.
It was like I’d burned down my safety net and then jumped.
o0o
I woke up in Baz’s ratty old BMW when he said, “Here we are, babe. You can sleep down here in the car, or you can walk upstairs to a real bed.”
I groaned. “Where’d you park?”
“Indoors.” He shut his door. A moment later my door opened. “Legs working?”
“Kind of not.” I was a cheap champagne date. One glass after a show, and bam!
He sighed. “We’re going to cheat here, so don’t be too impressed.”
Then he reached in, unsnapped my seatbelt, lifted me out of the car, and carried me, nestled against his chest, all the way through the indoor garage and the workshop, across the wooden basketball floor, up the noisy metal stairs, down the hall, and into his bedroom. His arms were rock solid and his chest burned through my cold, tired body, warming me and giving me ideas.
“I’m impressed,” I said, and then he dumped me on the bed. I snuggled my back into the lynx-fur coverlet and smiled up at him. “We need to work on your chivalry.”
He eyed me. “You’re not asleep.”
I shook my head, looking him over.
He lit the table lamp by the bed and stood watching me watch him.
He was built like a fighter and dressed like a slacker, but his dumb skimpy white dreadlocks said artsy, possibly pretentious and smart guy, and his crinkly humorous eyes said kind and sweet, but don’t ever accuse me of that in front of anybody. Did anyone else see those things in him? Oh, no. Right. Not for long. Because of the fuck ’em and record their stats with the Regional Office thing.
“Can you take a leave from your job?” I said. “Because I’ll super need your anti-charisma on this vacation.”
“It’s almost the end of summer. The Crown isn’t busy after September first. I have a number two rigger who can handle it.”
“I mean your other job.” His sex demon job.
Then he smiled and took my breath away. “I’m considering quitting.”
“Baz, I feel weird tonight. It’s been a crazy week, and I feel so much—so many things. About you. My aunt and uncle. And you.”
“Then don’t think about it tonight,” he said quickly. “Sleep on it all.”
“You don’t understand. I just jumped off a skyscraper and I’m afraid to fly. I set that trust up six years ago, when I took over the company.”
He came and sat on the end of the bed, too far from me. “Wait, you what? How long ago?”
“It seemed prudent. If I was taking control of my business away from my family, I needed to cover contingencies where I might not be available to run it. It wouldn’t be fair to take power away from them on the grounds that they couldn’t handle it, and then hand it back over to them because I had an emergency. My tax attorney has been my backup all the time—pretty invisibly, since I never take a day off,” I added, smiling painfully.
He stared at me. “You are by far the scariest, most organized person I have ever met. And I meet stage managers.”
I didn’t see any point in arguing that. I was the scariest, most organized person I knew, too. “The thing is, when I set up the trust, I was thinking, what if I killed myself like—like they did? Janis and Whitney and Amy and Marilyn. What if I couldn’t do my job anymore? I refused to consider the possibility that, if I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t have to die.”
“Okay, so you’re not that organized.”
“Baz—can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“When you walked away from the king thing, how did it feel? History doesn’t say how you supposedly died, or even when. Did you fake it? What did you do with yourself afterward?” Panic at what I’d just done made my voice rise. “How did it feel?”
He looked solemn. I recognized his thinking-about-the-past face. “Yeah, I faked it. I cut a goat in my chambers, middle of the day. Then I walked out of the palace dragging the dead goat dribbling blood, right out the front door—almost the first power Aphrodite taught me was the anti-charisma thing—and not a soul saw me. I screwed it up, of course. Two days later I realized I had to see my son again before I disappeared.” He paused. “That was hard. I was spotted, and the rumor got around that I wasn’t all that dead, and in the end, I really don’t know how they explained it to people. The answer you’re looking for is, I walked away and I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to watch my heirs fuck up all my hard work.”
I groaned in sympathy. “Yeah. I mean, I love my family so much—but—”
“Yeah,” he said, and grinned. “But, Yoni, it was time for me to go. I didn’t have the grace to pull it off forever.”
I shivered. “Big word, forever.”
“Especially when you’re looking down both barrels,” he agreed. His arms fell to his knees and he said resignedly, “Yoni, I’m lonely. I hate it that everybody dies. Those slack fuckers I’ve been living with, I love them more than I ever loved anyone when I was just a man. They’re more like me than any king or god, and they’re graceless and chickenshit and slack. Now it’s just me and this poor kid who just outlived his last friend.”
“This is . . . Veek?” Sophie’s Veek.
Baz shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell him. Fuck, I flunked ‘god’ long before he did. I was only in my fifties. Assyrian kings were gods. The truth is, I was inhuman for much of my life as Ashurbanipal. I was larger than life and proud of it. I was inhuman already, Yoni.”
He put a hand on my knee. “That’s where you’re passing what I failed. You’re astonishing. You—you have grace. You could actually pull off this immortality thing without turning into a monster.”
I was melting. “Baz, you’re my hero,” I blurted. I realized I had another question and I couldn’t ask it. I’d never got this far in a relationship with a man before. How do you say, Do you still love her? when She is the goddess of love?
But I couldn’t leave it alone.
“What if—if someday Aphrodite decides you’re old enough for Her?”
He brushed that off. “She never intended to marry me. She led me on. I’ve realized that. On some level I’ve understood it for a long time, but last time we talked, She gave me the final piece of the puzzle. I was free to give up on her at last.”
I pushed. “Didn’t you ever fall for an ordinary person? I mean, Baz, I’m only twenty-seven and I’ve had plenty of crushes.”
His face changed. “I’m not surprised.” He hesitated, then said warily, “It didn’t come to anything though, did it?”
“No. My family wouldn’t let me see the guy, once they realized how much I liked him. Every time,” I added bitterly. Just as they had done with Baz. It would be a while before I forgave them for that. “But how come no other woman ever came along to displace Her?”
I was pathetic. Fishing for three little words.
“Sure, I fell for women. But unlike every other poor fool who ever suffered falling in love, I knew who was behind it. I’d met Her in person. I’d fucked love Herself. I could transfer it to where it belonged,” he said, making a transfer gesture with both hands. “To the one who was to blame.”
“Oh,” I said. He’d fucked Aphrodite? Wow. My virgin panties felt pretty small-time.
“Besides, She wouldn’t let me love anybody else. She made sure to drop in on me every month or so. Then every couple of years. Then every twenty years. Then every century.” His tone turned cynical. “That was smart of Her. If I’d broken my heart over a mortal woman, that might have broken Her spell over me. She made sure I stayed stuck on Her. No matter how long since last time She visited me, it never got any easier. No matter how tired I was, sick or angry or happy or drunk or busy or anything, being with Her wiped all that out of me. I felt what She wanted me to feel.”
I got bad goosebumps. This was not going the way I’d hoped. My throat was tight. He still hadn’t said those three words.
As if he noticed my goosebumps, he snorted. “Whoa. Way to talk sexy, Baz. Yammer on and on about your twenty-seven-hundred-year failed affair with an ex-girlfriend.” Clever Baz.
“I did that to you, too,” I said through the knot in my throat. “What She did. I tried to make you feel something. I wanted to give you—” My eyes stung and my throat stopped up completely.
He leaned over and stroked my hands, up to my shoulders. “Hey, hey. Don’t worry so much. You did not fuck with my head, babe. You’re not that good at it.”
That wasn’t funny, but I caught my breath and tried to smile. If Aphrodite was his ex-girlfriend, did that make me his girlfriend?
Pathetic.
I turned my face away, ashamed of my tears.
“She’s not a person, Yoni, not like we are. Maybe Hers is the right way to be a god, and we’re idiots to try to stay human. Look at me.” I met his wise eyes, feeling horribly vulnerable. “She’s dumped me, and She wants me to be with you.”
I tried to pull away. “Oh, that makes it all okay!”
He shook my shoulders. “Conveniently enough, I want to be with you.”
A huge breath whooshed out of me.
It wasn’t three words, but it was a start. I wanted so much more from him. It would kill me if I had to squeeze it all out at this rate.
I said in a small voice, “That’s—that’s good.”
I sounded too small.
I had learned the hard way that you had to tell Baz what to do. I took a fresh breath.
“I can’t get by on once a month,” I said firmly. “Keeping me out of work will be a full time job.”
He smiled. “You? Out of work?” He shook his head. “There’s a reason She tagged you.” That was so not the right answer. Before my heart could fall all the way into my shoes, he scooted closer. “What?” he said. “I’m here. Talk to me.” His hands were warm on my shoulders.
I took a bigger risk. “You have to come with me.”
“I can take it.” He smiled.
“And you’ll have to move out of here. I’ve seen your bathroom.”
He dipped his head and winced, but he didn’t argue.
I rushed out, “And we’re getting married.”
“What?” he squeaked. His big face changed ludicrously. He dropped his hands from my shoulders. “Why would you want to do that?” he said in a pained voice. “My God. Man you hardly know.”
I said in baby talk, “Yes, Uncle Chester.”
Baz’s expression changed five times in ten seconds. I didn’t laugh. I wanted him so badly. I held my breath.
He said, “Are you sure? ‘Death do us part’ is serious shit if you’re talking about me.”
“I might die before you. In fact, it’s very likely, if I can’t hack this goddess thing.”
He stiffened and drew his head back in a frightening way. His gaze ran over me as if searching me for weapons. He slid away on the bed.
I shrank inside. Oh shit, what have I done? “Baz?”
He stood up and backed away from the bed. “Why would you say that?” he said in an unfriendly voice.
Icy fear clutched me. “I only meant—”
“Everybody I know dies, Yoni. Everybody.” He wasn’t calming down at all. He was getting more wound up. “You can’t know what that means to me. Friends may become enemies, or forget you. I learned to live with that before I was fifty. But if you’re already planning to check out—”
He looked all soldier. He bunched up his fists. I saw his chest shiver, and I realized he had leaped outside of my edges, because the warm, safe place where I’d been sitting turned to winter. Chilled, I retreated from his scowl.
The longer I looked at him, though, the more that scowl looked like fear. And grief.
He swallowed. “Three months ago I had four friends, all immortal, all sex demons like me. Assholes, maybe, but they were somebody to talk to. They knew about immortality. I can’t expect you to know about it yet, even if it’s happening to you. They knew. Now? They’ve all paired off like lemmings. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Aphrodite was behind it—cleaning house, getting us off Her docket so She can fuck up somebody else’s life.” He snorted. “What am I saying? She fucks up everybody’s life.”
I blurted, “If you feel like that, why do you want to be with me?” I narrowed my eyes at him in a way that added, Asshole.
He retorted, “If you feel like you might die on me, why do you want to marry me?”
“I just told you!” I began. But had I?
He shook his head and gave an ugly laugh. “Fuck a one-legged donkey, girl, this is one of Her jokes, isn’t it? She wouldn’t marry me for twenty-seven hundred years, and now She saddles me with someone who wants to die on me.”
I yelled, “I’m not saying I want to die on you.” I pulled off a shoe and threw it at him. “And stop talking so much! How am I supposed to say all this, when I’m scared out of my mind? Do you realize I just took a vacation from a thirty million dollar a year job? I’m turning that over to a trust manager! Me! I don’t trust anybody!” I screamed, slamming my fists into the bed.
“Yeah, you do,” he said, suddenly calm. “That’s why you’re still human. You’re hanging onto your family for dear life.”
“And how long does that last?” I panted. “When do I stop giving a shit about other people and start sucking bong, twenty-four-seven?”
He said calmly, “If you’re alone? At about sixty years.”
“You are being so annoying!”
“C’mon, Yoni.” He came over and sat on the bed again, quite close to me this time. He picked up my fist off the coverlet and uncurled my clawed fingers, flattening them out. “Why do you want to marry me?” He swung my hand slowly against his face. Slap.
“You jerk!” I snatched my hand away and smacked him for real. “Because I’m pregnant!”
That stopped him absolutely cold.
He stopped looking patient and condescending and kind. His eyes googled out. His jaw dropped.
“Wh—?” No further sound came out of him.
In spite of myself, I settled down, too. “Gosh, that was hard to say. Yeah. I think so.”
“How—?” His mouth wouldn’t close.
“You were the one who kept bragging how sex demons don’t take anything but pictures or leave anything but footprints.”
I loved it that he was so flabbergasted. His head kept shaking. “Buh—buh—”
“Okay, I admit it. I poked a hole in that condom with my fingernails. And—” Oh boy, this was hard. “I used my power, the mana. I thought really hard about getting pregnant when I was with you. I made it happen. Just like any dumb girl forcing some guy into fatherhood who—who maybe doesn’t want it.” I heaved a giant sigh. “I really need to know how you feel about this. I know I rushed the marriage thing, but—I want my baby to be legitimate. You don’t know what it’s like being a celebrity child in this culture.”
“Oh, don’t I?” He scooted around until we sat side by side. “Try being the second son of a holy emperor who has sixty wives and ninety-one concubines and your grandmother is only one of the concubines.”
“All right!” I threw up my hands. “You win! You’ll always top me! I admit it! Are you happy?”
He cracked a smile, and I felt a whole lot better.
I held his hand. That was nice.
I said more calmly, “Now, what about this baby thing?” That word ripped my skin off, but the words were coming easier now. “You know I’m wild to have a baby. And I know you probably aren’t, or you would have some.”
He looked at me, like, Do I have to explain this again? and I held up my free hand.
“I know, I know,” I said. “They might die before you do.”
He said tightly, “They always do. They all did.”
I didn’t dare suggest that because we were both immortal, it might make a difference, that maybe we could fix that for our kids somehow. I had a feeling eternal life wasn’t that easy to get. Besides, according to him, eternal life was probably not necessarily the nicest gift to give your kid.
Instead I said, “I’m taking a chance, too. What if we can’t stand each other? Aphrodite or no Aphrodite, you don’t have to stay if we make each other crazy.”
He turned his big hand palm-up. “So why get married in the first place?”
I said in a hard voice, “So the press won’t make my baby a bastard. Divorce blows over. ‘Love child’ is harder to live down.” I joggled his elbow. “C’mon. If I can take a chance on you being a pain in the ass to live with, can you take a chance on me?” I swallowed. “What if I don’t pass all my goddess tests?”
His eyes turned dark.
“You know me, Baz. Miss Two-hundred-and-twenty-five Beats Per Minute Heart Rate? I really don’t want to die. I’m begging you to help me hold on to that thought.” I pulled out my last big gun, hoping it wasn’t going to blow up in my face. “She thought you could work it.”
He was silent a while. “Now She’s a pain in the ass.”
“I’m not Her.”
He stared in front of himself for a long, long minute.
Then he said, deadpan, “I’ve gotten used to brand new socks every day.”
I made an air-checkmark with a forefinger. “We’ll put a line item in the budget. I’m still gonna work out four times a week.”
He waved a paw. “Knock yourself out. Uh, only don’t.” He gave me a nice smile, but he turned away, as if he didn’t want me to see him thinking.
I peered at his face through his veil of dreadlocks.
“A baby, huh?” He stared down at his knees. I saw his face soften.
I hoped he could keep it together, because if he cried, I was going to fall apart like day-old corn bread.
He turned back to me. A big, short sigh huffed out of him. “That was a pretty good fight. I’d give it an eight.”
I felt for my edges. He was inside, and everything was good.
“Only an eight?” I said.
“Yeah, ’bout that. I think we sound married already.”
I sniffled and leaned over to wipe a tear off his chin. “Didn’t you promise me some R&R?”
He reached for me then, and I finally, finally relaxed.