Accounting for Cole (Natural Beauty) (3 page)

Even with my tunnel vision activated, I could feel the stares from the club-goers, and my cheeks and neck burned from the attention. “God.” I lowered my eyes to the floor and continued my maneuvering through the tightly packed tables. Mumbling apologies as I went, I brushed against the backs of peoples’ chairs, as they didn’t bother to slide in and make way. I had cleared the last few chair legs at the edge when I looked up, but it was too late to dodge the collision.

I slammed front-first into something far too malleable to be a wall, and walls don’t smell like citrus and vanilla with an undercurrent of aftershave.

Aftershave? My gazed tracked up from the men’s size twelve or so strappy sandals planted in front of my feet to find sheer black hose on very muscular legs, a leather miniskirt slung across narrow hips, a slinky one-shoulder top, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a whole lot of stage make-up.

“Dear lord, you’re big,” I mumbled. It was true. He/She was even taller than Freda, but wore it way better. I guess. I mean…is that weird?

He/She cocked up a well-plucked eyebrow. “Whoa, there,” came the baritone voice, and its smiling owner took a step back. “You’re a bit sticky, sweetheart.”

Blood suffused my cheeks yet again, and I returned my stare to the floor. “Sorry. I was headed to clean it up when we collided. Someone flung a drink at me.”

“Did you punch her?” he asked with a chuckle.

My head snapped up at that odd question and I finally made eye contact with the rogue impersonator. When I actually took in the full wonder of his face, my breath caught in my chest.

It wasn’t his lips painted bright red that were so distracting, nor the long feather earrings that grazed his muscular shoulders. Not even the shiny black hair waving past his shoulders gave me pause. What froze me to that sticky cement floor and entranced me like a hypnowheel were his eyes. In the flickering club light with his pupils dilating and shrinking, they shifted between yellowish amber to the green of new grass. I’d never seen anything like them before.

Those red lips quirked up in my lower peripheral vision and I looked down again at my sensible shoes again. Looking at them, I could focus.

“No, I didn’t punch her.”

“Pity,” the baritone said. “The cast loves a good fight. We’re overdue for one.”

“Well, the evening isn’t over yet,” I mumbled. I looked back at the table to find Beth and Gretchen doubled over with belly laughs. Some friends.

“That it isn’t.” He laughed a deep, rumbling sound that hinted at what thunder would sound like if thunder had arms and legs and eyes the color of turning leaves. He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Well, good luck.”

“Uh…thanks.”

He nodded, and then slipped into the hallway leading to the stage as discreetly as a six-foot four man wearing four-inch heels could manage.

I stood there for another moment collecting my wits—recovering, really. I felt like I’d just learned Santa Claus was real and he liked to dress up like a girl. “Jesus.” I swallowed hard and shook myself before pushing my way into the bathroom, which was blessedly empty.

After using scads of paper towels to clean up my jacket and blouse, I sat in a locked toilet stall idling away time by checking my email on my phone.

Twenty minutes passed, and I knew I was being unsociable, even if Beth and Gretchen hadn’t risked abandoning the table to come find me. I left the bathroom and edged my way back to our table, the long way around to avoid Freda, just in time to see some sort of burlesque act making its way off the stage. The house lights came up and Beth turned around in her seat and looked at me, her eyes wide and voice excited. “What did you think of the guy with the hula hoops? I can’t believe he managed to keep that hoop moving around
there
. Imagine how much control of his muscles he must have.” She giggled and bit down into her bottom lip.

I blinked at her a few beats and finally responded, “Yeah, he was just super.”

Didn’t seem worth arguing about.

While the revue crew reconfigured some props on the stage, the house staff made their way around the room and delivered orders of food that had been put in before the show started. A waitress placed a tray of cheese fries on our table along with three small plates.

“Wait,” Gretchen said, finally coming out of her daze at the sight of hot melted cheddar and greasy crinkle fries. “We wouldn’t order that.” She pointed to the tray emphatically as if the waitress couldn’t surmise on her own the object of offense. “Do you think we get bodies like
these
,” she swept her hand down her person for emphasis, “By eating shit like
that
?”

Personally, I had no real problem with “shit like that” but I hadn’t ordered it, either.

The waitress shrugged. “That table over there sent it.” She hooked her thumb in the direction of Freda and crew who were all watching us with rapt attention.

Freda gave us a little finger wave when we turned to look at her.

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“That’s…that’s so
sweet
of her,” Beth said, reaching out to pluck out a fry.

I slapped Beth’s hand away. “Are you nuts?”

“Ow!” She pressed her injured had against her bosom and cast a withering glower at me.

I tapped my forehead in a “Duh!” gesture and handed the plates back to the waitress. “Sorry to make your job more difficult, but we don’t want this. Please return them to the woman who ordered them.”

The waitress gave me a look of incredulity and took the items back with a sigh. “Never had anyone send back free food.”

“They probably never noticed the giant roach that got sent with it.” I pointed to a dark spot beneath the top layer of potatoes.

“Ew!” Gretchen shrieked, waving her arms around as if the aforementioned critter had been dropped down her shirt and not just onto her plate.

“Wow! Okay. Sorry,” the waitress squeaked, quickly moving the offending items away.

“That
bitch
,” Beth hissed. She narrowed her eyes at the other table and rolled up her nonexistent sleeves, raring for a fight. “Where did she even get a roach in here?”

Gretchen repeated, “Yuck, yuck, yuck” and had dug a little tube of hand sanitizer out of her purse. She hadn’t even touched the plate and was still rubbing the stuff up to her elbows.

I rubbed my palms against my tired eyes and sighed. “Read in one of those weird-but-true news stories that some people order feeder roaches from online vendors and carry a few around in containers in their purses. They’ll go to a restaurant, eat most of their meal, and then suddenly
find
…” I made air quotes with my fingers. “…that there’s a roach in their food. Bingo—free meal.”

Gretchen and Beth both opened their mouths to say something, but before they could spit out whatever retorts they had the lights in the club went down and fake RuPaul made his way back to the stage.

“Thanks for your patience while we freshened up, sweethearts,” he said, making a big show of straightening his bust. He’d changed into a metallic gold sarong-type thing that was accompanied by an outlandish fascinator propped atop his feathered wig. “We’re pleased to treat you with a delicious medley from our headline act. I know you bitches will just eat them up! Led by our own nationally-known superstar Nicole
Not
Herzinger, here are the Blowup Dolls!”

The noise level in the room suddenly shot up about three hundred percent, and even Gretchen and Beth forgot their roach angst for the time being. They stood and clapped for the five-some led, to my surprise, by the black-haired miniskirt-wearing column I’d plowed into on my way to the bathroom.

He moved with graceful ease to the center mic stand, locked his gaze in my direction, and when my eyes widened at his attention, he winked.

I squeaked.

CHAPTER THREE

The fake Nicole Scherzinger stared right at me and smirked as if he was letting me in on a damned good secret. When the music queued up, he lip-synced to “Buttons” and gyrated in a surprisingly sensual fashion.

I was rendered mesmerized by the sway of his narrow hips, entranced by how easily he bent his body. I loosened the top button on my ruffled blouse, almost exactly in time to the music, and slumped a bit in my seat before realizing what I’d done.

Obviously keen to my discomfort, he smiled around his lip-synched words and glided to the other end of the stage, finally turning his attention to someone else.

I slammed back the soda I’d nabbed at the bar on my way back from the bathroom and pulled my water bottle close to me. “I’m going to go wait in the car,” I said, leaning toward Beth and whispering as loud as I could.

“Okay, bring me back a gin and tonic,” she said without turning around.

I didn’t bother correcting her. I scanned the room for the nearest exit, found it near stage left, and made a beeline for it.

Even in the midst of a humid North Carolina summer, the air outside was still more refreshing than the stagnant, sweat-tinged miasma inside the club. I took a deep cleansing breath and my shoulders finally inched down from my ears. I peeled off my sodden, stained suit jacket and made a brisk walk toward my sedan, noticing then the cola stain had seeped further into my blouse’s ruffles.

“Great. Beth will say
toss it
,” I muttered while draping my suit jacket over the back of the driver’s seat.

I settled behind the steering wheel, and must have dozed off because one moment I was digging in my center console for napkins, and the next I was studying the back of my eyelids. A banging racket at my right startled my eyes open, and I looked across the passenger seat and through the window to discover Beth frantically yanking on the door handle.

“Unlock the fuckin’ door!” she shouted, and turned to make a quick glance over her shoulder.

I hit the switch. “What’s going on?”

She folded herself into the seat and pounded the dashboard, shouting, “Let’s go, go, go!”

“Um…” I pulled my seatbelt across my torso and turned to her for explanation.

“Go faster!” she screamed.

“But what about—”

Before I could get her name out of my mouth, Gretchen threw herself into the backseat, her fingers locked around a roll of lavender-colored papers.

She slammed the door, Beth hit the locks again, and Gretchen giggled and bounced in her seat. “Yay!”

Turning the key in the ignition, I eyed Gretchen in the backseat through the rearview mirror. “What the hell is going on?”

“Drive, drive!” Beth shouted, voice now at fever pitch. She reached across the console, smacked my hand away, and gave the key a hard twist in the ignition. “Greenville Inn!
Go!
”

I put my hands up in a calming gesture while Gretchen in the back erupted with another volley of giggles. “I’m not going any-damn-where without an explanation. What’s the hurry? And what’s at the Greenville Inn?”

Beth, teeth bared and eyes wild, pounded the dashboard again. “Go, goddammit!”

A flash of soft yellow tore cut through two cars a couple of rows up. The cause of Beth’s agitation suddenly became clear. “Dammit,” I said while letting down the parking brake.

Freda the Brick Shithouse was on the warpath and headed straight toward my car.

“What the hell did you two do?”

They didn’t answer.

Beth tested the locks, and I floored the accelerator right as Freda’s heavy palm made contact with the front passenger window.

Beth yipped, and fortunately, the window didn’t crack. If it had broken, how the hell was I going to explain that claim to my insurance agent? “Um, you see, what happened was there was a roach and then a soda and then my two friends poked at a rattlesnake who decided to kill us with her bare hands. Yes, sir, it was all very innocent. Completely unpreventable.”

“What the
hell
did you do?” I shrieked as soon as we had put the club a few blocks behind us. “And you’d better answer this time!”

Beth straightened up in her seat and crossed her long right leg over her left, clearing her throat. She folded down the mirror and smeared a fresh slick of lipstick on before responding. When she’d snapped the visor back up, she started. “Okay, well…wait a minute. Where’d you go, by the way? We looked up and you were just gone.”

I ground my teeth and stared ahead at the road.

“Fine, be that way. Anyhow, after the Blowup Dolls finished their song, there was another comedy act, and then that Nicole woman…er…man…er…
whatever
, came out with this stack of flyers, right? He headed straight for our table. Seemed confused when you weren’t there for some reason.”

I stole a glance away from the road and looked at her. “Really?”

She pointed at me. “Don’t get distracted. “The troupe had a limited number of invitations to their special after party and the flyers were sort of first-come, first-served. Well, since you weren’t there, Gretch had to get
two
and she sort of kind of took one out of someone else’s hands.”

I gripped the steering wheel a little harder and let up off the accelerator pedal. I was going nearly seventy in a business district, I’d become so distracted. Wouldn’t do to get a ticket requiring a court appearance. “So, what you’re saying is not only did we steal that woman’s table, we took her party flyer, too.”

Beth shrugged. “Yup. Sucks to be
her
.”

I sighed.

We rode in silence until Beth pointed out the Greenville Inn sign in the distance.

I parked near the main entrance, just in case anyone got any crazy ideas about doing harm to my car—which the bank still owned—and followed the rabble-rousers to the front desk, grumbling all the while.

Gretchen held a flyer up three inches from the clerk’s nose. “Where is it?”

The clerk pushed her hand down. “Says in the courtyard, don’t it?”

“You little snot, I ought to…”

I grabbed Gretchen’s arm and yanked her back from the counter right as she started climbing up onto it.

The clerk was unfazed.

“Why don’t we go to the bar and top off your tank, hon?” I suggested and looped my other arm around Beth’s. I craned my head around and mouthed, “Sorry” to the night clerk.