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“I don’t…that isn’t…it wouldn’t be appropriate,” I said, very aware of Augustine listening avidly.
“Mais, you are his petite amie, non?”
“Non! I mean no, no I’m not.” The frown widened, then Françoise shrugged in a way that suggested she knew denial when she saw it. “Send the bill to Casanova,” I told Augustine. If he complained, I’d tell him to take it out of my overdue paycheck.
“Casanova,” Augustine repeated, with an evil glint in his eye. “You know he actually expects me to pay for the damage to the conference room? He presented me with a ridiculous bill just this morning.”
“Then present him one right back. A big one.” I eyed Françoise’s pile of assorted oddities. “And tack those on.”
Augustine’s smile took on an almost Cheshire cat quality. “Cinderella, I do believe you’re going to the ball.”
That evening, after I finished another shift in Hell, Françoise and I slipped out of Dante’s in a shiny black Jeep. While I waited for Alphonse and my backup to arrive, I had a few errands to do, and she had volunteered to help. Neither of us had a car, but I’d managed to find us a ride.
The tag on the front of the Jeep read 4U2DZYR. It belonged to Randy, one of the boys who worked in Casanova’s version of a spa. He would have been a perfect California beach bum, complete with deep tan, sun-bleached hair and toothy white smile, except that his voice still had a Midwest twang. He was possessed by an incubus, of course, but so far he’d been on his best behavior.
“You’re serious?” Randy asked me for the third time, as we pulled into the giant Wal-Mart parking lot. “You want to shop here?”
“Yes, I want to shop here!” I said, exasperated. There’d been a time when Wal-Mart had been pretty upscale for me, in comparison to the 25-cent bin at Goodwill or the Salvation Army. But I got the impression that there weren’t a lot of Randy’s clients who felt the same way. He’d had to ask one of the waitresses for directions.
He pulled into the closest available parking space, tires squealing, and stopped on a dime. He looked at me seriously over the tops of his Ray-Bans. “As long as you make sure Lord Mircea knows that I had nothing to do with this. I’m only following orders. If the boss’s lady wants to go slumming—”
“You sound like I’m going to a strip club or something!” I said irritably, getting out. “And I’m not the boss’s lady!”
“Oookay.” Randy pried Françoise, who had the backseat in a death grip, off the upholstery. I’d forgotten to ask if she’d actually been in a car before, and judging by the wide eyes and dead white complexion, I was betting the answer was no.
“I nevair want to do zat again.”
“I’m not that bad a driver,” Randy said, offended.
“Yes, you are,” she said fervently.
“Well the wheels have stopped rolling, sweet thing,” he told her, getting an arm around her waist. He deposited her on the concrete. “You know, I’ve done some of my best work in backseats.” This was accompanied by a huge how-could-anyone-not-think-I’m-cute? grin. Which is probably the only thing that saved him.
I hauled the extensive shopping list out of my purse and waved it at them before Randy said anything else. “Can we get going? Because we don’t have all day.”
Eight kids plus a baby, I had discovered, need a lot of things, especially when their entire existing wardrobe was literally the clothes on their backs. And except for a few T-shirts for the tourists, Augustine’s establishment didn’t specialize in children’s anything. He preferred his customers to be adult and very well-heeled. Hence the list.
An hour later, I was leaning against a shelf stacked with Fruit of the Loom T-shirts while Françoise terrorized various underpaid store employees. She had commandeered no fewer than four, whom she had racing back and forth, trying to find all the needed sizes. She looked a little out of place, as she was wearing one of Augustine’s sophisticated creations: a long, basic black dress with a chic jacket covered in a newspaper print. I hoped no one noticed that all the headlines were today’s.
&nbs
p; Randy was standing in front of a mirrored column, admiring the flex of his bicep. “What do you think?” The muscle shirt he’d poured himself into was bright blue and perfectly matched his eyes. He knew damn well what I thought, what half the women in the store did. Either that, or we just happened to go shopping the same day every young mother in the state needed to restock her son’s closet.
“I thought you didn’t shop at places like this.”
“A T-shirt’s a T-shirt.” He shrugged, causing a ripple of muscle that prompted a squeak from a nearby customer. “So, listen. You got a lot of kids.”
“Yeah. So?”
For a minute, he just stood there, looking at me awkwardly, like a big kid himself. A big kid with a lot of muscles and a see-through mesh tee. “So you’re putting them up in the casino, right? In a couple free rooms?”
“How do you know that?” The kitchen staff hadn’t had space in the minuscule quarters that Casanova had allotted them for another nine people, so I’d had to get creative. It helped that I worked the front desk occasionally.
“Everybody knows. The staff have been working to keep the boss from finding out. But he does check the books sometimes, you know?”
“What’s your point, Randy?”
“I just wanted to say that, if you need, well, any money or anything…” He trailed off, while I looked at him incredulously. I had no idea what his incubus was teaching him. Apparently, they hadn’t gotten to the part where women were supposed to pay him.
