SEVERAL DEVILS
PART 17
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Disclaimers
: See Chapter 1.
Chapter 17
Mid-October
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So St. Devlin,
well-known celibate monster, had a date for the Halloween party. That was the word around J/J/G, and the word was the topic du jour for way too many jours. Rather than deny the rumors, I did my best at first to avoid people who would ask about them. That being everyone, though, I finally had to fall back on my old defense.What date? You know I don't date. No, I don't do THAT either. Where do you get this stuff? Have you been on the Internet again? On the moon? Under a rock, with all your relatives?
Cassie tried to help the cause by telling people that this date business had to be a Halloween prank, because nothing in the same species would go out with me. She reported that everyone agreed with her, but no one believed her. There was just too much story out there, and it was just too much fun to tell. The fact that the party would be at the Gold Club--a so-called show club that owed J/J/G money--was all bonus. What better place for scandal? Kurt had to love this.
True, Kurt had been unusually quiet so far--in the manner of a crocodile, waiting--but I knew that the quiet wouldn't last. Besides, everyone else had more than made up for his lack of collaboration on the stories. Jack alone had been doing the most creative directing of his life.
What had I been thinking, trying to blow him off with a lame line like "If there's anything to find out, you'll find out at the party"? How had I expected him to take that? The man was a writer...sort of. He had imagination, however diseased, and a great big mouth. By the time the story snaked its way back to me a few days later, I was going to the party with a man, a woman, and a Shetland pony--and Heather said she'd heard talk that the pony had a prison record.
"Maybe you'd better stay home," she told me. "It could get ugly if you don't bring the horse."
It could get ugly, could it? Really? When? I began to wonder whether Heather had any social antennae at all. I began to wonder whether I shouldn't just get out of town for a while. Fly down to a beach somewhere, maybe. Marinate in Coppertone and piņa coladas for a couple of weeks, and come back only when it was safe: the day after Halloween.
"You can't go to the beach alone," Cassie said when I told her the plan. "That would look desperate. Besides, I can't go with you. I have too many meetings."
"A vacation? Now?" Jack laughed uproariously. "Forget it, Kerry. No chance. You're going to the party if I have to spend good money to have you arrested and brought there. So what's your costume? What are you going as? A pony trainer?"
Jenner didn't laugh. "You can't take a vacation now, Miss Devlin. Harper said you'd ask. Didn't you just have a vacation a couple of years ago?"
"No Valium," said Dr. Shapiro. "No Xanax. Absolutely no morphine. Have you considered therapy, Devlin?"
That night, I wrote a message on the medicine-cabinet mirror with soap:
YOU WIN. I'M RUINED. NOW COME HOME.
The next morning, I found the answer on the same mirror, written in what might have been blood:
YOU'RE NOT RUINED YET. SEE YOU AT THE PARTY.
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(c) 1999, ROCFanKat