The Flavors of Life, Chapters 1 and 2
by M0rr1gan
Ben Ferrin and Joe Mancuso were trying to watch football when Rachael Myers moved in. As was the usual way of things, they sat upon Joe's aged but elegant sofa - the same one he had fetched from a dumpster behind Macy's and spent a month lovingly restoring - with bottles of beer clutched in sweaty hands, collars loosened and a litter of assorted fast food containers competing with joe's XBOX on the dinged coffee table which his fiancee, lovely blonde Leah Morgan, was always complaining about. Joe was secretly keeping his eyes open for a replacement, and had instructed his larcenous friend John Rearden to be similarly watchful whenever burglary put him in someone's living room.
Part of the order of their universe also mandated that Joe's apartment door stand open, so their fellow residents of an innocuous apartment building in Chelsea, on the Avenue of the Americas, could enjoy the testosterone conjured spectacle of a pair of expatriate Canadian males enmeshed in simian sporting adulation. Except that, on this day, with the hockey season just canceled, and only the unique brand of athletic chess that was the American football code available to watch, their enthusiasm was blunted. The beer seemed flat, the room too cold, and the television's sound irritatingly tinny.
They just weren't into it.
The parade of blue-jumpsuited deliverymen swiftly replaced the Eagles or the Chiefs or the Jets or the Ravens or whatever the teams playing were as their afternoon's interesting thing.
"There goes a nice sectional," Joe muttered. He had abandoned all pretense of trying to enjoy or understand football, and reclined against the arm of his chesterfield to watch furniture parade past.
"D'you know whose stuff that is?"
Ben, a slightly - slightly - smaller man than Joe, with uncanny powers of observation that his job required and kept in good practice, maintained the pretense of watching the football game. His closest friends, Joe, John, Leah, and the rest, weren't sure if he was genuinely interested in all the obscure topics he could hold forth on, or if he simply noticed so many things that there wasn't room for all that information in his brain, and part of it exited his nervous system via his larynx.
Joe shrugged in an avalanche sort of way that shook the sofa, "Ida know. Who moves in on a Saturday?"
"People who work on Friday and Monday, who want Sunday to organize their belongings?"
Joe glanced at the man closer to him than a brother, "Is that what you do all day, down at the office? Make such curious observations about people?"
Ben shrugged, for lesser seismic effect, and remarked, "It's a woman movin' in there."
Joe's eyes flashed from ben to the parade of furniture, "What's that? How d'ya know?"
"Didja see that guy just go by with a stuffed pink elephant the size of a dishwasher?"
"No...yeah...yes I did. So?"
"D'you know any men who have stuffed animals that big as major items of decoration in their places?"
Joe subsided into moody silence. He didn't know any male humans with stuffed animals that big, but Ben was a little too smug, so the big red head refused to give him the satisfaction.
A pretty brunette ambled by, weighed down by a suitcase in either hand, and numerous bags thrown over both shoulders. She was an athletically built, well-scrubbed brunette, like Courtney Cox or Neve Campbell or someone similar.
"Hi," she chirped on her way by.
Football and beer forgotten, Ben and Joe leapt to their feet and bounced off one another dashing into the hall, cutting off a pair of sweating workmen with the pedestal of a captain's bed in their hands.
Blithely enduring their scalding stares, the two bulls proceeded to chat up the new arrival.
"Hello there ma'am. I'm Ben Ferrin," Ben oozed in his matinee idol best, offering a strong hand.
The woman, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket like a character from a 1980s rock video, replete with her long hair tied up with a length of white lace and innumerable silver bangles around her wrists, offered a hand of her own, mid-length nails painted a gleaming burgundy.
"Hi," she repeated, "I'm Rachael Myers. It's a pleasure."
"Hey," one of the movers groaned beneath the weight of the pedestal. He was a spherical African American who reminded all he met of a cannonball, an impression which his big bald head and sloping shoulders didn't help to dispel, "Can we get by?"
"Oh, shit, sorry guys," Joe mumbled absently, taking the bed pedestal from them. He hunched it up over his right shoulder and offered his right hand to Rachael, "Joseph Allan Mancuso, ma'am. Pleased ta make yer acquiantance."
Rachael eyed the bed pedestal, which Joe had effortlessly taken from two panting powerhouses, then gave his spade hand a single, ginger pump.
"Charmed, I'm sure.
She looked from one to the other, then asked, "Are the two of you the welcoming committee?"
"No, we're your neighbors. I live down the hall," Ben explained.
Joe slapped the door frame to his apartment, "This's my place right here."
Rachel peered inside, "Just you? That's twice the space I've got."
"No, my fiancee Leah lives here, too."
"In there?"
Joe looked in. The HQ, as his apartment was often called, because everyone he knew always seemed to be there, had taken on the trappings of a fraternity house.
"Well," he explained, "It needs some tidying up, but its home."
"That's your home?!"
Joe laughed, deep and throaty, like frozen turkeys going around in a cement mixer, "Shit, no. Home's Canada."
"Canada? Then what're you doing here? Are you a student?"
"No. Leah is, though. She's goin' ta Columbia Law School."
"Work?"
"Hmm?"
"Do you work here in New York?"
"Joey," Ben teased, "He doesn't work."
"I went logging last week," Joe shot back indignantly.
"Logging," Rachael wondered, "Where?"
"Joe occasionally makes some beer money cutting down the Pine Barrens. That's where he was logging," Ben explained.
His eyes were a particularly scintillant shade of blue, and he raked these across the line of moving men that stood sweating and waiting with various bulky possessions of Rachael Myers in their brawny arms.
"Uh, I think we should get outta these guys' way," he opined.
The trio led a Martha Stewart parade into Rachael's apartment. Joe reappeared beaming from dropping off the bed pedestal.
"So you're from Canada," Rachael asked, shrugging out of her various bags and her jacket. Her breasts weren't notable, but her bare arms were surprisingly muscular, reminding both men of a farm boy just entering puberty.
"Yep. British Columbia," Joe gushed.
"Me too," Ben chirped, "How about you?"
"Providence, Rhode Island," Rachael muttered, hanging up an assortment of coats, "I work at Parabola Animation Studios, over on First Avenue."
"I've seen that place," Joe laughed, "It's a block up from Coyote Ugly. Same building as Canal Street."
Rachael glanced at them, "Yu get over to First Ave much?"
"Our friend Priscilla tends bar at Coyote Ugly," Joe offered.
Ben nodded and turned to Rachael, "Animation, hey? Sounds interesting."
She shrugged and started unpacking shoes: Mary Janes, motorcycle boots, chunky-heeled Italian pumps, stiletto heels, thick-soled walking boots, sandals, Oxfords, running shoes with pink laces, an even a pair of lime green gum rubber boots with garish cartoon daisies that has smiley faces in their centers on the sides.
"How about you boys?"
Ben sighed, "Well, Kid Kong here is an illegal alien that the Department of Justice keeps in the Witness Protection Program so he won't get deported."
Rachael's head jerked up with a shocked expression on her face, "How come?"
"It's a long story," Ben said.
At the same time, Joe grunted, "I saw some stuff."
Recovering herself, Rachael looked at Ben, "What about you?"
"Aw, I do top secret work for the government. National security stuff."
Rachael rolled her eyes and kicked the duffle bag that had held her shoes into the back of the closet, grumbling, "What have I gotten myself into?"
Over the following weeks, Rachael settled into the building's community, meeting Leah and John and the rest of the motley crew that Joe and Ben hung around with. To them, Rachael seemed like a bright and happy young woman, which was why it was so surprising when she and yet another member of Ben and Joe's coterie, so-pretty-that-she-made-your-eyes-hurt Priscilla Clarke, wobbled home with Rachael one dark and stormy night. They were both spectacularly drunk, but, while Rachael had lost all motor function as well as the capacity for higher thought, Priscilla was merely deep in the throes of a jolly buzz. She was one of Coyote Ugly's able, Amazonian bartenders, and the Saloon was a place where it was good business to go drink for drink with your customers. Priscilla had to have a greater tolerance than Rachael, and she also knew plenty of tricks to seem like she had drank, and was more inebriated, than she actually was.
Or, at least, that was the idea.
That only one of Priscilla's eyes was focusing on her surroundings called the entire idea into no small doubt.
On this storm-lashed night, Joe had decided to sample the visceral pleasures of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but even the wet, hard packing sounds of skilled martial artists hurting each other failed to hide the Three Stooges racket of the pair of women staggering home.
"Da heck's that," he growled, leaping up from the couch.
He poked his head out into the hallway, which evidently wasn't wide enough for the two.
"I've been there before," he muttered to himself. Then he called, "How're we doin', ladies?"
Like two tops winding down, they slowly turned and wobbled over to him.
"Joe," Priscilla sort of screech-laughed, "Look Rache, its Joe!"
Priscilla sort of shrugged, so that Rachael flopped against him. The awful alcoholic aura wafting off the pair was so strong and noxious that Joe was sure he could identify what they'd been drinking, right down to the brand, by smell alone, if he tried.
Joe held Rachael up and asked, "Is there a reason you two are so drunk?"
Priscilla made a gallant effort to compose herself and managed to stammer out an explanation, "'Bout five tirddy, Rache come into the Saloon...eyes all red an' swollen, so I coul' see she was 'set 'bout somethin'.
Priscilla leaned against Joe's doorframe and pressed loopily on, "She...she sat down at th' bar, inna corner...a dark corner, far 'way from the door. I finnished po'rin' Bill the Nazi a shot - 'e drinks burbbin wit a little lime - an' went ovva t'Rache, an' she's blowin' 'er node an' stuff an' I say t'her 'Rache, what's 'rong wiv ya, an' at first, she - she's like she don - don't wanna talk, jest drink. She jest ordderz a burbbin of 'er own."
Joe sort of juggled Rachael upright. She was mewling softly, inarticulately, tiny little words that didn't seem to mean anything. Joe swept her up and bore her inside his apartment, laying her to rest on that redoubtable sofa.
"A bourbon, Pris, "Joe muttered, "She'd hafta have more than a bourbon t'wind up like this."
Priscilla nodded so spasmodically that Joe feared that her head might wobble off, "Right...poured 'er half a duzzin."
"That's still not enough, even for a girl. Did she have anything mixed with the bourbon?"
"Nope," Priscilla chirped stupidly, "Not even after she moved on to beer."
"Beer?!"
Priscilla bobbed her head some more, "Dat's right."
Priscilla dopily pantomimed two fisted drinking, "Drank some beer, drank a shot, drank more beer den a shot. Nevva mixed either."
"Outside her body," Joe muttered. He slumped back onto the couch by Rachael's feet. Priscilla took a chair near the door.
"Pris, I have been unfortunate enough t'learn first hand that drinkin' like this ain't a little bender. Its serious pain that makes a person obliterate themselves like this. Did she say anythin' 'bout why she was doin' this to herself?"
Priscilla squirmed uncomfortably, "Uhh..."
"C'mon Pris. She did this to you, too.
He patted his broad chest, "If it was me, I'd want to know why I was in such bad shape."
Priscilla tugged off her Stetson and scrubbed her scalp, "She kep coin' on 'bout bad news from home. You gotta unnerstan that she wassnt makin' much sense when d'whole exercise started."
Joe stared fixedly at her. His eyes lacked the penetrating, laser-bean quality of Ben's, but they could still...discomfort. Priscilla's further squirming attested to that.
"Is that all she said?"
"All that made sense."
"Now what's that mean?"
Drunk people - seriously drunk people - became hostile and irritated when pressed too much, and Priscilla started to get that angry. Her pretty face wrinkled into a frown and her dark eyes flashed, boring into Joe like gimlets.
Now, Joe himself tended to become hostile in just such a fashion when he was under the influence, so he applied himself to calming her in the manner that he had been calmed in the past. He sat down. He spoke slowly and calmly. He folded his hands in his lap.
"Priscilla," he began, "Did Rachael say anything - anything specific - about why she was drinking so much?"
Luckily for Joe, Priscilla was not a person prone to extreme, or, at least, dramatic emotions, and without Joe to prop her bad mood up, her anger died before it had been really born, and she swiftly calmed. Unfortunately, calmness, when a person was as drunk as she was, brought sleep.
Sleep meant waiting until morning for a solution to the mystery.
Joe wasn't sure why it mattered so much to him to find that solution, especially when he didn't know Rachael that well, but the incident simply didn't fit. It felt too odd to just write off. Rachael seemed, outwardly, at least, like most of the other young women he knew, and certainly like the ones he wanted to know: bubbly, happy, vivacious, and full of a zest for life that made Joe himself feel more alive. Rachael didn't seem to have a care in the world.
Joe glowered out his apartment's windows while thinking the evening's affairs over. As he watched the searing skeletal fingers of lightning tickle along Jamaica Bay, he thought over what little he knew about Rachael, which wasn't much. In the few weeks she'd lived in the apartment building, he'd never known her to drink at all.
"After a drunk like that, she's not gonna want to get up very early tomorrow mornin'," he thought out loud.
He glanced at Rachael, laying asleep on the couch, and Priscilla drowsing in a chair, then padded over to his bedroom. Poking his butcher block head inside, he stage whispered, "Leah? Honey?"
"Mmm...Joe, I told you I have court tomorrow morning..."
He made patting gestures, "I know, I know. Lissen, Rachael an' Priscilla're sleepin' one off out here. I gotta step out fer a moment, 'kay?"
Leah rolled over groggily, so she could see their clock radio, "Joe, its one o'clock in the morning..."
"I know, I know. I'll be right back."
He ducked out and hustled down the hall.
"John," he rasped, thumping on Rearden's apartment door, "Hey John, ya up?"
The door opened like a drowning man slipping beneath the waves for the last time to reveal tall, gaunt, and hangdog John Rearden. Now, Joe Mancuso was a big man, but while he lacked the brawn of his red-haired visitor, the pride of Oxbow Mississippi loomed at least a head taller than Joe. He looked down with watery night-owl's eyes.
"What?"
Joe beckoned him further down the hall, "C'mon, John, I need ya t'let me inta Rachael's apartment."
John leaned on his doorframe, "No."
Joe jerked to a halt, "No?
He turned to face his friend, "Why not? You're a burglar, aincha?"
John nodded his long head, "I am."
"So what's the problem?"
For emphasis, John ticked off his points on long, spidery fingers, "First, Rachael seems like a nice girl, an' you know as well as I do that the first rule a' th' trade is that ya don't rob yer friends...or potential friends."
Joe rolled his eyes, "Did I ask ya ta rob 'er?"
John tut-tutted and carried on, "Another thing's this. Rachael seems cool, but if she ain't, an' she finds out we dropped in on 'er, then I'm off back upstate, ta Sing Sing. Illegal entry'd be my third strike, an' I didn't enjoy prison that much either a' the first two times...
John folded his arms across his bony chest, "'Sides, ya haven't even told me what this's all about."
Joe led him down the hall and pushed his own apartment door open. He gestured at Rachael and Priscilla's slumbering forms, hissing, "Does Rache seem like a drinker t'you?
John shook his head.
"Well, her an Pris came home in that kinda shape. Seems a little outta character, hunh?
John nodded.
Joe continued, "So much outta character that I'd like ta know why."
They stepped out into the hall.
"So what's that got ta do with goin' inta Rache's apartment?"
As they trundled down the hallway towards that very place, Joe continued explaining, "All Priscilla told me as to why they got so drunk was that Rache got some bad news from hom, an' that was why."
"And," John prompted.
"Maybe we'll find somethin' in 'er apartment that'll tell us why."
They stopped outside Rachael's apartment door. John, very much surprising himself, played the voice of reason.
"Look Joe, its very kind a' ya t'wanna find out why Rachael's in such bad shape, but maybe it's a private thing that she don't wanna talk about."
Ah, the eternal question: to intrude or not to intrude.
"Jeez, Mary'd love this place," John commented, looking around Rachael's apartment while very carefully keeping both feet in the hall. For someone just moving in, Rachael was painfully tidy, while John's commonlaw wife, Mary Sparks, was compulsively clean.
"Yeah," Joe rumbled, prowling about.
He hadn't clicked on Rachael's lights, instead counting on the glare from the street and the hall to allow him to see. Joe seemed to see very well in the dark, anyway.
Because Rachael's apartment was so neat, he quickly zeroed in on the anomaly, a small pile of papers laying on the kitchen counter, among them an envelop angrily torn open, then thrown down. Joe scooped this up and examined it closely.
To the surprise of all, Rachael managed to drag herself to work the next day. Timing things so they would arrive about the same time she got off work, Joe and John collected Priscilla from Coyote Ugly and walked the block north, to the multi-story brownstone that housed Parabola Studios and Canal Street.
"Afternoon, Rache," Joe rumbled, somewhere way down below sea level, where he spoke from when trying to be serious.
Rachael gave a little start and squinted up at him. The next day, no one would have given a second thought to why Rachael had to look so short a distance up at him.
"Oh! Hello, Joe...everyone," she answered, "Hey, thanks for letting me sleep the demon rum off at your place last night..."
"Yeah, no problem.
Joe squinted all about in his best "Clint Eastwood, Man-With-No-Name" gunfighter's stare, "There somewhere 'round here we'n talk?"
"Why?"
"It's to do with yer little alcohol abetted suicide attempt last night."
Rachael gulped, "Really? Why?"
"Can we talk some place?"
The building in which a person could find Parabola Studios, as well as the Canal Street restaurant, was on First Avenue, on the corner of First Avenue and 12th Street. Between it and the building immediately east on Avenue A could be found a garage that someone had made fro a 19th century livery stables. Although it was used mostly for storage space, Rachael had pushed aside Canal Street's unused banquet tables to make a work space where she could restore her pride and joy, a 1940 Indian motorcycle as big as a steer. She led Joe and friends through Parabola Studios, into this cool, shadowed space.
As they went, a peculiar change had come over her. It was subtle but unmistakable. Her gait changed. No longer did she seem to float in space, or drift like cotton on the breeze. Instead, she seemed to shuttle about, balanced, like she was mounted on a well-oiled caster. Her shoulders rolled inwards slightly, and she was continually flexing her elegant hands.
Actually, she looked like she was ready to fight.
As soon as she had shot the garage door behind them, she wheeled on Joe and snapped, "Just what's this all about?"
"Who's Bernard Horowitz," he grunted back.
Rachael retreated like Joe had kicked her in the stomach, "Ah, no...no, no, no, no."
"What is it?"
Rachael was white as a sheet when she met his eyes, "I have no idea who that..."
"I saw a letter to Bernard Horowitz laying on the kitchen counter in your apartment."
"What were you doing in my apartment," she snapped.
"I let him in," John drawled.
"You did?! How?"
Priscilla made a sour face, "John's one of the Big Apple's better second story men. There aren't many place he can't get into."
"That's still breaking and entering."
Priscilla shook her head, "John doesn't break in anywhere."
Joe interrupted, "We found a letter from Edward Saltonsall Solicitors, in Providence, Rhode Island. It was addressed to Bernard Horowitz, and contained the revised last will and testament of Leon Horowitz. Who are these people?"
"Look, I don't have to tell you anything," Rachael snapped, a desperate edge to her voice.
"No, you don't," Priscilla answered, "But I am curious about that bender you took me with you on last night."
Joe nodded and explained, "Rache, we're a family. To one extent or another, we look out for each other. That binge a' yours last night coulda only had one purpose..."
"To try to kill a serious pain," Priscilla shot.
Joe glared at her, then continued, "Now, we...or at least I will look out fer ya, but I need somethin' t'go on...an explanation."
Joe was starting to feel rather Perry Mason-esque.
He rather liked it.
Rachael hitched her purse up her shoulder, turned on her heel, and thudded toward the door, "I don't have to tell you or anyone else a good god damn about anything.!
She stopped and shook her finger at Joe, "I don't care how much you care about your 'associates', or how much of a family you think you all are...nothing gives you the right to break into my home."
"I didn't break in," Joe dissembled.
"Well how the fuck did you get in, then?"
"I stood in the hallway and told him what to do," John explained, so quietly he'd later doubt that anyone, especially Rachael, heard him.
"It's a conspiracy," Rachael growled, storming out of the garage.
Her mood had not improved by the time she'd walked across the island, back to the apartment building. At least the thunderstorm had hung around so everyone else knew how bad a mood she was in.
As Rachael was entering the building, a battered pick-up truck pulled away. It had just disgorged a burly man in dusty work clothes. He had close-cut hair and a long, puckered scar running from his eye down into the collar of his shirt. They entered the building at the same time, making the exchange of pleasantries necessary.
"Good day, ma'am. How does the day find you?"
Rachael smiled and nodded automatically, "Just fine, thanks. And you?"
She frowned at the sound of his voice. It had the oddest machine-like quality, as though the man spoke not with a real voice, but with what he thought a real voice should sound like. After a beat, like an actor selling a line, he squinted skyward and groaned, "Thunderstorms are no friends of the construction worker."
"Is that what you do? Construction?"
The man nodded - crisply, sharply - and offered his calloused hand, "Nathan Hobbs, Taggert Construction."
Rachael took his hand and gave it a single pump, "Rachael Myers. I work over at Parabola Studios."
Hobbs studies her intently, "What is 'Parabola Studios'?"
"We do animation. We're over in the East Village, not far from Coyote Ugly."
"Animation?"
Rachael nodded, warming to her topic, "You know...cartoons? We don't like the term in the industry though. Most people think cartoons are for kids."
Nathan shook his durable-seeming cranium as he gestured her into the elevator, "Animated films are a legitimate form of artistic expression. Anyone who says that they are only for children is believing the bourgeois fantasy that entertainment for the masses must be simple.
He thumbed the button for the tenth floor, one above Rachael's.
"Animated films are honest with the audience. What you see is what they are.
He studied her some more, "It speaks well of you to be involved with something so pure.
He looked away, "Oftentimes, we are too willing to participate in harmful falsehood."
"We are?"
He folded his arms across his chest and nodded like a genie, "Indeed. We think it will make our lives better - easier - but living a lie is never good."
Rachael sighed, "I know. It can drive you so crazy all you can think to do is run away from the lie. Why I..."
"Are you living your lie now, or have you stopped," Nathan asked in his flat simulation of a voice.
Nervously, Rachael brushed some strands of hair behind her ears, "I don't...what do you mean?"
His eyes were like polished ball bearings, hard and glittering, "Yes, you do. Who you are now is as different from who you were as I am."
"What?"
Nathan jabbed his chin at her. It seemed almost painfully clean-shaven.
"You've obviously worked very hard, but there are still pieces that do not fit. Your hands, for example."
"What about them?"
Nathan smiled thinly, a swirl on the surface of swamp water, "Your grip is notable.
Rachael turned her hands over and over.
His eyes flickered higher, "Your voice has a husky quality.
Nathan glanced at the ceiling of the elevator car, "You are slightly taller than I.
The elevator doors opened.
"Taken separately, these things have little meaning. Taken together, they indicate the most dramatic change of all..."
And Rachael heard no more. Nathan's word that weren't words, but simply what he thought words sounded like dwindled to nothing behind her as she fled weeping down the hall.
When Joe and John and Priscilla made it home, with rain thudding down like sheets of lead and thunder almost a continuous din, the sounds of body blows thrown by mad gods, they found Joe's fiancee seated on that storied sofa, with rugged Ben Ferrin seated kitty corner to it, and Rachael Myers pacing all around.
She looked up when they entered and snapped, "Good. You're finally all here."
Leah looked up at her some-day husband, "Rachael says she has something to tell us."
Rachael nodded nervously, "My big secret."
"A big secret," Joe wondered, sitting on the couch next to Leah. He turned bemused eyes on Ben, "An' you thought you'd come home from work."
"Your work involves secrets," Rachael asked Ben absently, rifling through a stack of cards.
Ben nodded unseen, "State secrets."
"How's that work," she continued absently, finding the card she wanted.
"Secrets are what the CIA's all about," Ben answered evilly.
Rachael had been handing the card she had delved out to Leah, but it fell from her slack fingers as she stared at Ben, "The CIA?"
Joe reached over Leah and dug Rachael's card out of the sofa cushions, "Yeah, Spooky runs their office here in New York. What's so special about this card?"
Rachael rubbed her hips with the palms of her hands, "That's the first driver's license I ever got."
Joe snorted, "Bullshit. This belongs t'that guy Bernard Horowitz."
Rachael nodded. Joe and John gaped at her.
With her eyes shining like a convict's on his way to the gallows, Rachael cleared her throat in a complex and dramatic way.
She handed Leah an 8" X 11" photograph, but it was a harsh - perhaps gruff - voice that bubbled up her throat to explain what it was, "That's my high school grad photo."
Joe flapped the driver's license against his leg and frowned powerfully. In fact all eight eyes that didn't belong to Rachael fairly bored into her.
"So Rachael...Bernie...what d'we call you?"
"Rachael," Leah muttered.
"Hey?"
Leah glared up at him, "You call her Rachael."
"How long's this been going on," Ben asked, handling the driver's license.
"I went active eight years ago," Rachael answered in her normal 'Rachael' voice.
"'Went active'? What's that supposed ta mean," Joe barked.
"That's when she started making changes," Leah explained.
"What're you the expert on these people now," Joe yelled.
"Don't you yell at me," she thundered back.
Joe grit his teeth and fumed.
Ben handed back the driver's license, "Well, it is a little interesting, Rache. Your legend's very convincing."
"'Legend'?"
Ben waved dismissively, "Sorry. Shop talk. A legend's a spy's false identity...his disguise.
He studied her blandly, "Although I don't suppose it's a disguise, is it? Not any more, hey?"
"So whaddaya expect ta get from this big revelation," Joe raved some more, "Are we supposed ta treat ya like some kinda hothouse flower...a 'delicate flower'?"
"Joe," Leah cautioned.
"No, I mean, what's this supposed ta mean? Is this supposed ta be cool? Ta be 'sexually non-standard'?"
"I didn't change my whole life just to be cool," Rachael shot back, "Besides, you started all this."
Joe's eyes went big and round as saucers and he thumped his wide chest, "I started all this? Tell me how that works?!"
"You broke into my apartment!"
"No way," John shot, "Breakin' in is fer amateurs. I am a professional..."
"Thief," Ben added with a grin, "Why'd ya break inta her apartment, Joey?"
"I didn't...Rachael and Pris came home inna wee small couple a' nights back, drunk t'the gills...the kinda drunk that makes ya obliterated..."
"Like you were the night Calgary lost the Stanley Cup," Leah offered sweetly.
"They'd a' finally won it if fuckin' Bettman'd let there be a season," Joe growled, distracted for a moment. Whoever 'Bettman' was, Rachael had no doubts that, if the big red head ever caught him, he'd twist this Bettman person in half.
"But that's the point," Joe roared anew, "Ya only get that drunk if there's a painful reality yer tryin' t'escape."
"So what if they got that fucked up," Ben offered, "Who cares?"
"Yeah," Rachael shot.
Joe held up a finger the size of a kielbasa sausage, "Far be it fer me ta criticize the relationships which others have wit the demon rum, but she brought Pris home just as drunk."
All eyes swept to Priscilla, who suddenly found her shoes very interesting.
"You, Pris," Leah teased.
"The professional drinker," Ben teased.
"Well, I was coming off shift when Rache came in," Priscilla offered as an explanation.
"Pris's my friend, an' I'm curious as Hell when my friends get hurt," Joe said quickly.
Ben rolled his eyes and squeezed his temples, "Oh give that a rest. I'm still in hot water with the Mexican government because a' the last time ya got noble like this. Ya gotta mind yer own business."
To forestall further protests from Joe, he stood and crossed over to Rachael. He swept her hand up to his lips and kissed the back of it like a medieval troubadour, "Welcome to the building, Miss Myers. I'm in apartment 42G down the hall. I'll see you around."
And like that, he was gone.
John shook her hand, "I didn't break inta yer place, ma'am. I wouldn't do that to ya."
Then John left.
Joe goggled, "Just like that?! What...what..."
Leah stood and padded into the kitchen, "Nobody cares, Joe. Let it go."
She peered back out, "I'm going to cook some fajitas, Rachael. Do you want any?"
"Well, I don't want to impose..."
"Pris's staying for dinner, too, aren't you," Leah commented, peering at her friend.
Priscilla grinned, "Sure."
She looked at Rachael, "Now, Miss Myers, those fingernails are a disgrace, and Joe's logging boots are more feminine than those shoes. I should have the day off tomorrow, so what do you say I collect you from Parabola 'round noon, and we hit the salon?"
"I've only got classes tomorrow morning," Leah called from the kitchen, "So I'll meet you guys there, then we'll do lunch. Maybe some shopping afterwards?"
"Sure," Priscilla chirped, "Well Rachael, what d'you think?"
"Uhm, sure..."
"Oh come on," Joe roared, "At least tell me why ya got so fuckin' drunk!"
Rachael waited a beat, then replied, "I'd just heard from my dad's lawyer that I'd been written out of the will because I was transsexual. Wouldn't you tie one on too?"
Chapter 2
It had rained heavily that morning, so, as the sun slanted through the shreds of clouds, the city was swathed in scarlet streamers, solar swirls that made the heart soar. Rachael Myers stood sipping a Starbucks outside Parabola Animation Studios, the job that had allowed her to move from Providence, Rhode Island, to the Big Apple. She swept her dark eyes up and down First Avenue, waiting for her new friend, Priscilla Clarke, to arrive. The night before, when Rachael had shared her secret, had been so surreal that Rachael didn't want to believe that she was sharing in one of the day-on-the-town, just-us-girls adventures that had kept her eyes glued to her television whenever "Sex In The City" was on.
That was the magic of New York, she decided. Here, she got to do the things she had always only dreamed about.
A taxi squeaked to a halt at the curb and Priscilla peeked out the rear window, "Rachael, dahling, hurry along now."
With a grin, Rachael finished her coffee and climbed in the cab. Priscilla scooted across the seat to make room for her.
With great gravity, Priscilla took her hands, "Now Rachael, I know that you're new to the club, and that the last thing you're interested in doing is being what someone else tells you to be, but we simply must do something about your walk."
"We must?"
Priscilla grinned devilishly, "I haven't seen a walk like that since 'Jurassic Park'.
She patted Rachael's hand, "But don't worry...if my coaches could help me, they should only have but a minute's work with you."
"Your coaches had a lot of work to do with you? You had people coach you to walk?"
Priscilla winked, "You mean you haven't had coaches of your own yet?"
"Well, voice coach. That's sort of a standard thing, but no one else."
Priscilla smiled a little more warmly, "I worked for my dad until I graduated from high school. Now, a brick-layer's daughter doesn't have fashion model poise, does she?"
"I guess not..."
"So, I had to stop looking like I was carrying a hod of bricks all the time and...glide."
"Where to ladies," the Pakistani driving the cab asked.
"The Maybelline New York spa, on Madison Avenue and 51st Street," Priscilla instructed.
They sat back as the cab pulled into traffic.
"Uhm, thanks, Priscilla. I don't know what to say."
The taller woman - Rachael was fit and strong, but Priscilla still the better part of a head taller - waved dismissively, "Don't give it another thought. We used to do this all the time, so we're a little over due."
"Why the lapse?"
Priscilla paused in touching up her lipstick, "Well, Leah's been so busy at work, and I've been preoccupied with the spring shows, so we haven't found the time."
"Leah works and goes to school?"
"Uhm-hm. She wants to be a lawyer, right?"
"Sure."
"Well, she's articling at Donald Tarrington and Associates. Apparently, she's so good they have her working on trials, too."
Rachael bobbed her head, "Cool."
"Now I've got some questions for you, Rachael."
"Oh," Rachael asked suspiciously.
Priscilla glanced at the cabbie, who seemed very intent on that particular brand of hand to hand combat called driving in Manhattan. The two lofty beauties in the back seat couldn't have been further from his mind.
"First, boys."
Rachael couldn't help smiling, "What about them?"
"What's your position on them?"
"I think all sorts of positions will be fun."
"'Will be fun'?"
Rachael glanced at the emaciated-looking Central Asian behind the wheel, "I'm not to that stage yet."
Most people frowned when thinking hard, but Priscilla's face grew smoother and more serene, "So you haven't had your surgery yet?"
Rachael shook her head, "I've met with Dr. Brassard in Montreal, and I e-mailed a fellow named Suporn in Thailand, but that's it."
"Thailand," Priscilla goggled, "That's a long way to go."
Rachael giggled and nodded, "It is, but the surgery costs about half the money in Thailand that it does in Montreal."
Priscilla's face became as the surface of a mill pond, so she must have been thinking very hard, "Isn't there a gender clinic at John's Hopkins? What about it?"
Rachael snorted, "I don't have twenty thousand dollars to spend, even on something as important as this. The United States is the most expensive place I could go."
The cab stopped before a bustling multi-level storefront.
"Here you go ladies," the cab driver called cheerfully.
Priscilla thrust some bills at him and issued elegantly from the hack.
Rachael was amazed at the transformation wrought in the taller woman. Priscilla worked at the Coyote Ugly Saloon, where all the bartenders dressed like biker chicks or white trash Southern bombshells, the Coyote Ugly look
Today, Priscilla looked like Katherine Hepburn in "Breakfast At Tiffany's".
Gone were her painted on jeans, cowboy boots, and bra top, with a little black A-line dress and spectator heels in their place. A string of innocent pearls hung lazily about Priscilla's slender neck. Her Stetson had been replaced by a virginal white satin bow that kept her purple hair away from her face. A white sweater knotted loosely around her shoulders and round-lensed Jackie-O sunglasses completed such a feminine look that Rachael could scarcely believe it was the same woman.
She had never felt so gawky and boyish in her whole life.
Priscilla held out her hand, "Come along now, Miss Myers."
Rachael bit her lip, took her friend's hand, and popped out of the cab. Priscilla threaded her arm through Rachael's and strolled into the salon.
"Now, Miss Myers, must I list all the luxuries a girl is entitled to," she laughed.
Rachael halted, brining her new friend to a halt just as quickly.
"What is it," Priscilla asked, adjusting her sunglasses.
Rachael chewed her lip and flicked her eyes all about.
"Rachael?"
Rachael sighed, "Miss Clarke...Priscilla...I...I don't know what to say. I mean, none of you know me, but you all...well, you arranged this trip to the spa..."
"Don't forget shopping."
"And shopping, and none of you know me. You do all this for me...me..."
Priscilla took her hands and looked into Rachael's dark eyes, "Rachael, where we start out from isn't as important as the sort of person we are. You're probably the only person I know who has such a golden opportunity as this."
"What d'you mean?"
Priscilla smiled and looked around, "Because you have so much control over your fate. The rest of us have been shaped by our lives. Our experiences have made us who we are. They have molded us, shaped us, changed us.
Priscilla pointed at Rachael and winked, "You get to choose who you'll be.
Priscilla stepped in close, "If we can help you make the most of the choice, well, its good mojo, don't you think?"
Rachael smiled and they hurried, giggling, inside Maybelline's new Manhattan salon.
The public spaces of the salon comprised three floors, with an opulent day spa on the uppermost, fourth floor. Rachael grew more excited with each stair she climbed.
The top floor, drenched in amber sunlight pouring in the four walls of floor-to-ceiling windows, was a cheerful bustle of chairs and cubicles and tables, with spa attendants in mauve smocks flitting like butterflies through the scene. An African-American woman whose smile went from one ear to the other met them at the top of the stairs.
"Priscilla, darling," she gushed, touching her cheeks to either of Priscilla's in turn, "It has simply been too long."
Priscilla laughed, "Oh, hasn't it Miranda."
The two parted, and Miranda's eyes flickered to Rachael, "Who's this?"
Priscilla took Rachael's hand, "Miranda, this is Rachael Myers. Rachael very much needs a day at the spa."
Miranda consulted the clear Lucite clip-board she carried, "Well, looking at all the things you've signed up for, we'll have to get started if we're going to finish today. Miss Morgan and Miss Ambrose are already here. Just put these on and you can join them."
Miranda handed each of them a mauve smock of their own and issued the pair into an idyllic locker room on the side of the building furthest from the street. Once within its cozy confines, Priscilla turned to Rachael and gestured at the place below the belt where men and women differed.
"Is he well behaved," she asked, kicking off her shoes.
Rachael shucked off her jacket, "Is who well behaved?"
Priscilla wiggled her fingers at Rachael's crotch, "Your...guy, there."
Rachael looked down, "My penis?"
Priscilla's cheeks colored, "Yes."
"Why?"
Priscilla undid her bra but held it over herself, "Because you don't wear anything under these smocks."
Rachael smiled, "Don't worry. He hasn't had a thought of his own in almost a year."
"Came to his senses, did he," Priscilla laughed.
"It was about bloody time," Rachael growled.
They were still giggling as they padded to the area of reclining chairs where Leah and Laura waited, fussed over by a corps of aetheticians each. Bubbly blonde Leah and buxom, youthful Laura lay back like a pair of Walt Disney feminist Frankensteins, their every extremity ministered to in the cause of beauty and comfort.
Just before they took seats of their own, Priscilla whispered in Rachael's ear, "Now, I don't care what hormones did to you, dear, nothing will make you feel more like a woman than this."
Rachael lost track of all the different things that were done to her that day. Various pungent oils and fluids were worked into, across, and over her skin, until she...oozed. Rachael's chair was next to the one Laura Ambrose lay in. A salon attendant had just wiped a mint green paste from the younger woman's face when she reached over and squeezed Rachael's hand.
"I'm Laura," she chirped.
Rachael squeezed back, "Rachael Myers."
Later, as technicians fussed over their toes, a stylist name Muriel fretted over Rachael's waist-length hair, muttering, "Your hair is so thick, Miss Myers."
Rachael grinned, "I eat my jello and have a protein shake every day."
Leah peered at her, "D'you get it from Ben?"
"Who?"
"Ben. He has nothing to eat in his place except protein powder," Leah laughed.
"Don't forget the cans of soup," Priscilla laughed. She reached over and stroked Rachael's tresses, "Do you dye your hair, Rachael?"
Rachael studied her soaking toes, "Sure. I like having black hair."
Priscilla rolled her eyes, "Well, it's a pretty severe look."
"I like severe," Rachael insisted.
Priscilla glanced at Muriel, "Can we soften things a bit?"
"Of course."
"Now wait a minute...," Rachael began.
"We could put some crimson streaks here, around her face," Muriel offered.
Priscilla nodded, "That would look lovely."
"Now come on," Rachael complained.
Muriel leaned over her shoulder, "I have to put a fixative in to make the color last. Before I do, you can see if you like it, and if you don't, we'll just wash it out, no problem."
"Really?"
"Sure."
"See Rachael? You can try it out."
Laura patted her arm, "Hey Rachael."
Rachael glanced down at her. Laura was unusual. She had matured in interesting ways. She was scarcely five feet tall, but as top heavy as Marilyn Monroe. One moment - like now - she sounded like a gushy schoolgirl, but the next, she could - and often did - hold forth like a Supreme Court Justice on one or another of her "hot button" topics.
"What's that," Rachael answered, trying not to turn too much an upset the sheen of ointments she had been covered with.
Laura had assembled a few small mounds of powders and salves on the counter before her, "These new salons are the best. All their stuff is pure and natural. Watch this."
She began combining the materia in a glass of spring water, murmuring under her breath.
"What are you doing?
Laura glanced out the window, shifted her position slightly, and swirled the contents of the glass around a final two times. She barked a phrase that sounded like a knuckle cracking and tossed her mixture up in the air over a pedestal hair dryer. As the shimmering misty mixture settled to the floor, the hair dryer vanished from sight.
Rachael felt like someone had plucked her spinal cord like a guitar string.
"What did you do," she gasped.
One of Muriel's co-workers bustled by, passing through the space where the dryer had been. Evidently, something remained, for whatever unseen thing occupied that space neatly cut the poor girl's feet out from under her and dumped her on her head.
"Oh my God," chorused a dozen voices.
Rachael and Leah leapt to their feet, shrieking, "Are you alright?"
Rachael turned to Laura, who was trying to somehow look smug and sympathetic at the same time, demanding, "What did you do?"
Laura shrugged, "Turned the hair dryer invisible."
"What?! How?"
Laura waggled her fingers and gasped, "Magic."
Laura replaced Rachael in ministering to the stricken aesthetician. Rachael was too busy gaping and gasping, "Magic? Come on."
Leah glanced at Rachael, "No, she's telling you the truth.
The blonde woman glared at Laura, "I thought you learned your lesson when you turned the tap water blue?!"
"Well, I just learned how to do it..."
"You don't try out spells for the first time in the beauty parlor, Laura," Priscilla bawled.
"But they have all the ingredients right here!"
"So go to their store. Have John steal some more for you!"
"But it was just a quick little spell."
Rachael was having comprehension problems, "You can cast spells?"
Laura nodded and guided the involuntary aerialist to a chair, "Sure."
"There's no such thing as magic."
"You just saw the hair dryer turn invisible."
"But...but that can't be."
"Then we're all having the same hallucination," Laura snapped, offering the aesthetician some water.
Rachael couldn't really relax the rest of the day, despite innumerable treatments intended to do just that. Laura's parlor trick gnawed at her.
As they dressed to leave, she leaned over to Laura, "You really know sorcery?"
Laura shrugged and continued buttoning up her blouse, "Sure."
"How did you learn it?"
Laura frowned, "I read too many of the wrong books."
"You did?
Laura nodded.
"How?"
"For an after school job, I worked at my friend Hugo's used book shop. He dealt in a lot of old, occult books, and whenever things got slow, I read whatever came to hand. I read all the old masters: Crowley, Eliphas Levi, John Dee, Ludwig Prinn, and so on."
Rachael tied up her shoes, although she felt awful about covering up her pedicured toes, "And you learned how to turn hair dryers invisible from those?"
Laura flipped her hair out of her collar, "We practiced casting spells, too. We searched all over Los Angeles for ritual sites and placed where the powers pooled."
They joined Priscilla and Leah in the lobby.
"That was heavenly," Rachael gushed.
Priscilla adopted a cryptic expression and led them into the boutique on the ground floor. Rachael caught Laura and Leah's eyes with a questioning look.
Leah grinned and held up her finger.
Rachael noticed that Priscilla held four slips of paper, and watched as she handed one out to each of her companions, keeping one for herself.
"What am I supposed to do with this," Rachael asked, trying to decipher Muriel's handwriting.
Laura and Leah circled around behind Priscilla and took up mauve shopping baskets.
Priscilla frowned and answered her, "You buy them."
"I do?
Rachael goggled at her as though tentacles had just sprouted from Priscilla's skin, "Why?"
Priscilla rolled her eyes, "You just got a make-over. Don't you want the things you need to keep looking and feeling that good?"
"I guess," Rachael offered dubiously. She began half-heartedly picking out cosmetics.
Leah grinned and sidled up to her, "How'r you doing?"
Rachael turned a box of skin cream over, spied the price, and courted a heart attack, "Forty four dollars?! For cold cream!?"
"Shh," Leah hissed, "She'll hear you!"
Rachael glared at Priscilla, "What's the problem?"
Leah smiled, "She's a little obsessed."
Rachael wrinkled her nose, "I bought some cold cream at the drug store and it only cost five dollars."
Leah impersonated Priscilla's Queens accent, "But this has the best ingredients."
Rachael read some off, "Aloe, jojoba, ground vanilla husks? Isn't that what killed Curly?
The blonde woman smiled as Rachael glanced down at her, remarking quietly, "I know I didn't do my skin any favors when I still had to shave, but are any of these things any better?
She turned her dark eyes on Laura, "Besides, I got a pretty good look at what some of these ingredients do when you mix them earlier."
Leah studied their young friend herself, "Sometimes, dear Laura likes to show off."
"Show off," Rachael goggled, "When I want to show off, I'll wear a tight top or grapple with you. I still don't want to believe what I saw her do!"
"What do you mean grapple with someone," Leah asked.
"Hm? Oh, I practice a martial art called vale tudo. Brazilian jiu jitsu."
"Oh. Don't tell Ben. He want to go a few falls with you."
"He grapples?"
"Kick boxing, I think."
Rachael shrugged, "Well, I'm not that good. So...Laura can actually cast spells? Sorcery and stuff?"
Leah looked thoughtful, "I'll put it this way. Laura has done some strange things, and the only explanation that we've been able to come up with is that she can cast spells.
Leah shrugged, "So..."
Rachael frowned, "I guess, but spells...I think I'd have an easier time believing that Ed McMahon shot Kennedy."
Leah grinned, "You definitely have to stay away from Ben."
Later, as they strolled down Madison Avenue, laden with the 'bag and box' plunder of a day's productive shopping, Rachael sidled up to Laura and looked way down at her, "So...you can cast spells?"
Laura adjusted her mirrorshades, "Oh, I don't know..."
"Well, what about what you did to that hair dryer today."
"Oh that was just a little glamor."
"Glamor? The magazine?"
"No, no, no. Small, simple spells that affect how things looks are called glamors."
"So you can cast spells."
"Well, I guess, but just simple stuff."
"Like what? What else?"
Laura's purse was a huge, cumbersome affair that looked like someone had made a newspaper bag from a set of sofa cushions. After much shifting of shopping, she rummaged around inside its depths until she produced a shard of glass like the bottom of an antique wine bottle.
"Here."
Rachael shifted her own shopping before taking it, "What's this?"
"The Glass From Leng."
"Okay...
Rachael turned it over in her hands, "This doesn't look like a glass."
"It's not a glass," Laura scoffed, "It's the glass."
"You mean this is the only one of its kind?"
"There could be more."
"You don't know? Where did you get this one from? What do you do with it?"
Laura smirked saucily, "Now that would be telling.
She gestured at Rachael and the violet fragment, "Look through it."
Rachael lifted the Glass to her face and studied the world around her. She saw everything with a purple tint, but there was more. Almost every surface writhed as though covered in slime, or were blurred by the heat on a summer's day. All the people she saw seemed blurry, at least, when they moved. So long as someone was still, their features were clear and precise, but when they moved, those details shimmered and blurred into a purple haze.
And what features were those?
Spotted throughout the throng, never many but enough, were the oddest people Rachael had ever seen. They were lanky and sinuous, gliding along with a sense of defeated forbearance. Their bodies might have been human, ones owned by drunken ballerinas, but their faces...not their faces...never their faces, of green reptilian flesh and many shining yellow eyes, and those voices...
"Watch it lady," came the hoarse, lizard croak of the one she almost walked into.
Rachael almost fell as she wrenched the Glass From Leng away from her eyes. Laura caught her while Leah and Priscilla looked on. Rachael flailed about, dropping the accursed fragment as she righted herself.
"What...what's...what in Hell is going on?! Those things...the things with the shining eyes. What are they?"
Leah pursed her lips and snapped at Laura, "What are you doing?"
Laura scooped up the Glass From Leng and dropped it in her bag, "She wanted to know about magic, and the Glass From Leng is a good place to start."
"Sure it is, but on Madison Avenue," Priscilla rejoined, "It's the same thing as drinking and driving."
"Those things," Rachael gasped, "What are they?"
People...were they actually people?...stared at her as they passed.
"...and now she's seen the Fascinators," Leah sighed.
Priscilla glanced at the nearby building, "They've got a cafeteria in here."
The four of them swept inside the NBA Store.
"Geez, Laura, what were you thinking?"
"I didn't think..."
"Exactly."
Laura glared at Leah, "I couldn't see any harm in a little look!"
Rachael threw down her shopping bags, "If someone doesn't tell me what the fuck is going on here, I swear to God there will be fucking murders!"
They bustled Rachael into the NBA Store's cafeteria and tried to explain.
"Those people...the creatures you saw..."
"You called them 'the Fascinators'."
"Fascinators, Serpent People, Serpent Lords, Reptilians, Reptoids...they've got thousands of names, but they've been the same for millions of years..."
"Laura, shut up," Leah snapped, not seeming so much like Marilyn Monroe now.
"Do you know what a polarizing lens is, Rachael," Priscilla asked.
"I...think so. Its like the lenses of a pair of sunglasses, right? They only let certain rays of light through?"
"Right."
Laura explained, "Now imagine that reality is like polarized light."
"Okay..."
"The Glass From Leng lets you see all reality, not just the polarized part that usually reaches your eye."
"You mean that's all around us...that they're all around us?"
Laura seemed to sober, "Some stories say the Fascinators have been here, on Earth, longer than humanity has.
She glanced all around, "Most of the time, they just live peacefully alongside us. They have jobs, kids. They go to school, to the movies."
"If they're all around us, why haven't we noticed them yet?"
"Magic...psychic powers...some power they have hides them, that's all we know."
"This is unbelievable," Rachael gasped.
Priscilla took her hand. Laura crossed her arms across her ample chest, "No.
Rachael looked up.
"This is the truth. It isn't out there, its right here in our faces. This is what you can believe."
*********************************************
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