New Orleans Rush, page 3
The corner of his mouth kicked up. “Not sure about that, but I am Huxley Marlow, and you’re in my theater. You passed out last night, so I brought you here.”
Passed out? Bea shot to a sitting position and regretted it instantly. Her head felt slushy and her cozy blanket slipped to her lap. She took stock of her clothes, pleased her polka dot top and pedal pushers were still on. At least sex didn’t happen. Then she noticed the blanket on her lap wasn’t a blanket at all. It was a cape, midnight blue, embroidered with gold stars. She remembered this cape. Specifically, wanting to nuzzle it.
Snippets of her night floated back: mixing cold medicine with alcohol. Cape. Nuzzle. Carrie Underwood. Keys. Car. Holy hell. “I keyed your car,” she croaked.
“That you did. Which means you now work for me.”
He wasn’t wearing the top hat she remembered, or any fanciful clothing. He was in dark jeans and a fitted thermal shirt. Ordinary by all accounts. That didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous, and she didn’t remember accepting a job from him. She smoothed her hands over the cape. Only vampires wore capes, or superheroes, or seedy characters. “Are you a pimp?”
“We established my non-pimping last night.”
“Do you sleep in a coffin?”
“I prefer beds.”
She massaged her temples. “Last night is hazy.”
“I imagine it is. I brought you coffee and beignets.”
There were a barrage of questions she should have launched, but her brain snagged on the word beignet. She rolled her tongue around her stale mouth, salivating at the thought. “I’ve never had a beignet.” The longing in her voice was almost embarrassing.
“That, Honeybee, is a travesty in need of reform.” Huxley jerked his chin toward a table by the far wall.
Ignoring the Honeybee chide, she approached his offered gifts. The coffee and beignets sat on what looked like a makeup table—a mirror filled the wall behind it, bright lights framing the rectangle. Tucked in the corner was a pretty cage that housed three doves. Its inhabitants regarded her sternly. On the opposite wall, a closet overflowed with glitzy, shiny, velvety clothes.
Her hazy mind, still seeing the world in slow-mo snippets, connected the surrounding dots: Top hat. The cape. The theater. The birds. Extravagant clothes. Dressing room. “Am I being sold to the circus?” As she spoke, she snagged a still-warm beignet and shoved it into her mouth. She moaned and sank onto a chair.
She’d been dying to try a beignet. It had been one of Nick the Prick’s selling features when pitching their runaway adventure. They were going to try every beignet New Orleans had to offer. Her anger from yesterday returned, but there was no sadness. No desire for the man who’d dumped her on a whim. Only frustration with her own naiveté, always assuming the best in people.
Pollyanna, her history teacher had labeled her as a teen. Idealistic. Too trusting. Too nice. The woman had claimed Bea was a dormant volcano packed with unaired grievances that would one day erupt and bury her friends under suppressed anger.
The volcano imagery may have been overkill, but Bea probably shouldn’t have thanked her teenage nemesis, Tanya Fry, for trying to dye her hair orange for a football game. The offer had seemed genuine, even if Tanya had recently scratched “loser” into Bea’s locker. Bea had wound up with green strands that had fallen out in clumps.
Most people would turn cynical after enough setbacks, but Bea wanted to live life in full color, face adversity with a smile. Give people the chance to change. Unless she was drunk.
Drunk Bea was the definition of bitter and sullen.
Now she was sober(ish) and she had a beignet in her mouth. It was everything she’d hoped it would be, crispy and chewy, rich and light. She couldn’t control her throaty sounds as she nibbled on the dough and sucked powdered sugar from her fingers. This was heaven wrapped in a deep-fried package.
“I think I’m in love,” she murmured.
One of the doves cooed.
Huxley cleared his throat, drawing her attention from the pastry in her hand to his unhandsome-handsome face. He was watching her eat, staring with abandon, as though she was his to stare at. Warmth unfurled in her belly, mingling with the decadent beignet.
“Wait until you try the cream-filled ones,” he said in a rumbling baritone, his gaze locked on her lips.
Was that a hint of innuendo in his voice? He had called her beautiful last night. Something else she remembered. His eyes darkened slightly as she studied him, and their colors, plural, took her aback. The left was a sky blue with brighter flecks. The right was brown, darker and more serious. “Heterochromia,” she said.
She’d learned the term from researching the world’s ugliest dogs. That Google search had produced an onslaught of Mexican hairless dogs, oddly followed by Siberian husky puppies with two-toned eyes, fluffy fur, and a whole lot of adorableness. She’d also gotten a face full of horse-on-horse porn.
Huxley blinked. “Most people don’t know the name of the condition. They also don’t know what a kerivoula kachinensis is.”
She licked more sugar from her fingers, ignoring the paint caked under her nails. His two-toned eyes followed the movement. “With a name like Bea, I had to defend myself against insect insults. Calling someone a kerivoula kachinensis or banana slug or mole rat, or anything to throw them off, proved helpful.”
“Why not go by your full name?”
“Beatrice?” She wrinkled her nose. “Beatrice is a ninety-year-old woman who removes her teeth at night, wears massive sunglasses, and drinks Metamucil instead of martinis. No thank you.”
Huxley’s half-eyebrow twitched and his light blue eye sparked with…mirth? “Or maybe Beatrice is a feisty redhead who moans when she eats fried dough, can’t handle her liquor, and likes to scratch misspelled insults into strangers’ cars.”
That hit below her high-waisted belt. Shame turned her voice into a whisper. “I’m sorry about your car. I can’t believe I did that.”
He stepped closer. “I’ll make sure to work you extra hard, Beatrice.”
Again with the possible innuendos, but he didn’t smile. He studied her as if waiting for some kind of reaction. She couldn’t tell if he was teasing or angry. It was hard to focus with the fuzziness in her head. The sugar melting on her tongue distracted her further, as did the way he’d said her name: Beatrice. Slowly, with a sensual roll to the syllables. No one in the history of ever had made “Beatrice” sound sexy. Until one Huxley Marlow tried her name on for size.
Unsure how to process her strange circumstances, she popped the last bite of beignet into her mouth. She moaned again while cataloguing the framed pictures adorning the walls, all featuring the title: The Marvelous Max Marlow. They seemed dated, a series of older posters. Huxley’s father, maybe? She wiped her sticky fingers on her pants, only to realize Huxley’s cape was still scrunched on her lap. A cape now covered with her sugary fingerprints.
She cringed and held out the defiled garment. “I’m sorry about this, too.”
Brow furrowed, he took his cape. He didn’t accept her apology or offer an understanding nod. He simply folded the garment delicately over his forearm, like it was a precious thing. “Do you need to get home? Let anyone know where you are?”
“No.” The harshness of her reality swiftly sank in. There was no home to go to, no one who would miss her. Just as quickly, she realized sharing this fact with a virtual stranger wasn’t in keeping with any stranger-danger rules. “Actually, I’ll send a text to my friend. She’ll be wondering where I am. I’ll tell her I’m at the…” She waited for Huxley to fill in the blank as she moved to the bed and found her purse. Her wallet and EpiPen were still safely inside.
“The Marlow Theater. On Decatur Street.”
She tried to power up her phone, but the screen remained dark. The more she charged the battery these days, the fewer hours it functioned. Another fact Huxley didn’t need to know. Keeping the device angled away from him, she typed nonsense and pretended to hit Send. Spying a charger on the makeup table, she made a mental note to use it once he left.
She returned her defunct cell to her purse and fixed him with a pointed stare. “My friend knows where I am now.”
Translation: if she went missing, her invisible friend would raise hell.
Unconcerned by her proclamation, he said, “Good. We’ll start right away.” He walked to the glitzy, shiny, velvety closet and pulled out a garment. “This should fit. You’ll wear it tonight.”
The miniscule outfit looked like an ice-skating costume. “So you’re not a pimp, but you did sell me to an ice show to cover the cost of your car and the cape dry-cleaning? Now I’ll be forced to skate as an extra in the ice performance of Pretty Woman. Am I close?” Bea may owe this man money and would avoid his calling-the-cops threat like the plague, but a woman of the street she was not.
He lay the sequined bodysuit and micro-skirt on the bed beside her. “I didn’t sell you to a circus or an ice show. No prostitution is required. You’re now a member of the Marvelous Marlow Boys magic ensemble, along with me and two of my brothers. Five nights a week, you’ll perform on stage as our assistant.”
“Whoa there, magic man.” She would have laughed, but the beignet in her belly was searching for an eject button. “You must be mistaken.”
She hadn’t performed in public since the sixth grade Chrismukkah assembly where she’d frozen so badly someone had physically carried her off stage.
Panicked, she sneezed. Twice. Her nervous tic.
Huxley paid her freak-out no mind, but he did bless her, so quickly she didn’t have time to thank him. “There’s Advil in the drawer,” he went on, a bit more irritation in his tone. “I suggest you take a couple. There’s a shower and bathroom across the hall. I left a toothbrush in there for you, and my former assistant stocked it with womanly essentials. In your few coherent moments last night, you mentioned something about a car parked near Club Crimson. If you give me your keys and tell me what make it is, I’ll drive it over.”
“I can’t perform,” she squeaked again, twitching her nose to keep from sneezing. “I have stage fright.”
Exasperation pulled his features tight, especially his scars. She wanted to ask about them, touch them, paint them. Imperfections made people unique, each story and flaw mixing the colors that mapped their lives. She wondered what colors had shaped Huxley’s past. Until he said, “If you want me to call the cops, just say the word.”
Now she wanted to flick his funny bone. Blackmail, that’s what this was. He was blackmailing her to stand on stage in front of a crowd, where she would no doubt turn into a petrified statue. He had her number, and he knew it. That was okay. She’d agree for now, then she’d find a way to out-blackmail his blackmailing.
He took her silence as an agreement. “I need your keys.”
She stuck her hand back in her purse, delaying as she reassessed her situation.
She was doing it again, assuming the best in someone. Trusting her father had been unequivocal proof her intuition often failed her. Even worse was dealing directly with his loan shark, suggesting he allow her to cover Franklyn Baker’s debt. On layaway. Over ten years. All to save her father from his own bad decisions. The goateed criminal had given her a much shorter deadline, one that came with bodily harm if missed. She had smiled and thanked him. And fled to New Orleans.
Which brought her to the here and now, and another man testing her instincts. She would never again let her father, or any hint of gambling, back into her life. But Huxley could have made a much bigger deal about the damage to his car. He seemed genuinely nice, had put her to bed, fully clothed, under his precious cape. He’d bought her food and coffee. She also had nowhere to live and couldn’t afford rent.
If she asked to sleep in this scarlet dressing room, Huxley would likely request money upfront. Working in the theater, however, might allow her to sneak in and crash in a corner. Not ideal, but better than sleeping in her car.
Decision made, she tossed her keys toward him. “I drive a yellow Beetle.”
He caught them one-handed and smirked. “A bee driving a Beetle. You could make that into a picture book.”
Maybe he wasn’t so harmless. “Or I could use your magic wand and turn you into a blobfish.”
Her threat didn’t keep him from ordering her around. “Rehearsal starts in twenty minutes. Meet me on stage. Don’t be late.”
Her fuzzy head may have been crippling her ability to focus, but she still couldn’t fathom why he’d concocted this arrangement. Who would want a girl with stage fright and no experience working with them? Thoughts of capes and vampires plagued her once more.
As Huxley turned to leave, she asked, “What happened to your last assistant?”
A pirate smile shifted his features into another startling masterpiece. “I sawed her in half.”
4
Huxley’s trip to move his new assistant’s car took longer than intended. Beatrice Baker was a conundrum, one he intended to solve. It didn’t take a genius to know she’d typed gibberish into her phone, when supposedly texting a friend, and her agreement to work for him instead of facing the cops was suspect. Still, he didn’t snoop through her belongings. It wasn’t the civilized thing to do. He did, however, lose track of time once inside her yellow Beetle.
The first thing to hit him was the smell of watermelon. He’d noticed the sweet, fruity aroma last night, whiffs of it curling past his nose when she’d cuddled his arm.
As enticing as the watermelon in the car was, it was the interior of the old Beetle that distracted him most. Small paintings adorned the dashboard and doors, detailed sections of faces, whimsical in nature: a nose and lips here, eyes and eyebrows there, almost like slivers of people lived in the vehicle. Paint splattered the floor. A rainbow dangled from her rear-view mirror. But her steering wheel gave him the most pause.
One word was written on the rim in block letters: SMILE.
He did just that—he smiled. Huxley couldn’t help himself. Like he couldn’t help hitting on her the night they’d met. If the paint caked under his new assistant’s fingernails was any indication, this artwork was hers. An eccentric honeybee.
He wondered what she saw when looking at his face, how she would paint the burn on his eyebrow, the fibrous tissue of his scars. The ugly marks on his chest and abdomen. It made sense now, the way she’d studied him earlier, calling him a Monet as though fascinated. Not the flicker of interest he’d hoped he’d seen. It was how Huxley watched a fellow illusionist, picking apart each movement instead of enjoying the show. He was a curiosity to her. A subject.
The notion disappointed him.
He got lost studying her miniature paintings, picturing Beatrice, brush in hand, bringing these peculiar portraits to life. The corners of his lips lifted again, muscles that had atrophied over the years, until this firecracker had asked to nuzzle his cape. There was just something about her quirky paintings and watermelon smell that affected him while he sat in this unusual car that swelled with her uniqueness.
By the time he parked and walked toward the theater, he was late. Huxley hated being late. Lateness was a sign of irresponsible laziness and disorganization. His brother, Axel, was the poster child for that affliction. Strides quickening, he went to cross the street but stopped halfway. A man in a green Polo-style shirt and khakis was taking photos of his theater. The man dropped the camera around his neck and scribbled on a clipboard. Not a good sign.
A car honked. Huxley finished crossing the street, halting a foot behind the stranger. “Can I help you?”
The man kept scribbling. When he turned, Huxley bit his tongue to keep from cursing. On the right side of the man’s shirt, the name Evans was stitched. On his left side were words that had Huxley running a mental tally of his bank account and every City of New Orleans housing code his theater might have breached: Code Enforcement Inspector.
“The name’s Larry Evans.” The enforcer thrust his hand forward. Huxley returned the handshake robotically as his mind ran a mile a minute. Evans went on, “We had a blight complaint lodged a month ago against this building. I’m documenting the infractions. A hearing will be set afterward, usually thirty days from when we complete a title search on the property. Gotta say”—he shook his head at the deteriorating façade—“you have your work cut out for you.”
“The place is a dump.” Edna Lisowsky shuffled past them with her usual sunny demeanor. His two-hundred-year-old employee had worked the Marlow ticket booth since opening day. Her glasses were twice the size of her face. None of her teeth were her own. But her snake-headed cane doubled as a bludgeoning tool when pesky teens came sniffing around. The brats didn’t give them trouble.
Huxley was scared of the woman, too. “You can work from home anytime you like,” he told her, as he often did. “I’ll reroute calls there. We’ll open the booth in the afternoon instead.”
She shriveled her already shrunken mouth and tapped her cane on the cement. “My husband is at home. All day. Every day. Working in that stuffy booth, in this rundown theater, is a vacation. Come to think of it, you should open seven days a week. Lord knows you need the cash.”
She meandered off, and Huxley dragged a hand down his face. He didn’t need to be told how strapped he was for cash or that the theater was rundown. The shortcomings haunted him daily. The red-and-gold paint job was peeling in sections. The cornices and lintels were chipped, as were the bases of a few decorative columns. Two second-story windows were cracked, the exterior lights had rusted, and the fissures running through the foundation were probably why rats inhabited the building. There was also the broken fire escape and warped gutters.
After trying and failing to upgrade the property over the years, Huxley had studied the ins and outs of code enforcement, researching his worst-case scenarios. If this was a blight complaint, only the exterior would be analyzed, but it would hit hard. Without the cash to fix every violation, he’d be slapped with a Notice of Judgement. The City would put a lien on his theater, and they’d auction off his father’s pride and joy in a sheriff’s sale. If they somehow discovered his electrical wiring and plumbing weren’t up to code, they could shut him down now until it was fixed. Thank God it was only a blight issue.
