Annie of the Undead (31 page)

“Annie! Annie! I need your help,” came a harried
whisper from the other end of the line. “I’m scared. A man followed
me home. I thought I gave him the slip, but…”

The voice trailed off.

“Yoki, is that you? Yoki?”

“I have to be quiet. I think he’s still out
there…”

It sounded like her mouth was full.

“…He’s awfully big, and not very attractive.
It’s probably nothing, but could you come over? …Quiet, Jesus!”

I heard her muffle his growling. I also heard
her chewing.

“Yoki, are you eating?”

“I eat when I’m nervous. I’d call the police,
but there’s so much alcohol in my room, and it’s against the rules
–I just can’t have them come here…Oh, I see him! He’s still out
there,” she said, munching between sentences.

“Yoki. Lock your door and stay inside. Keep your
phone on. I’ll be there as fast as I can. Don’t go outside. Do you
hear me?”

“Yes, yes…”

“I’ll be right there. Stay on the line.”

“Annie,” munch, munch, “do hurry.”

I leaped out of the salon chair. Shit. I was in
a bathrobe. My clothes had been kidnapped. Should I go look for
them? What if I ran into Mark? Were these guys instructed to keep
me here? Would Miguel do that? Would Andy? Shit.

I couldn’t risk it. I headed straight for the
back door. Who knew what devils of security I’d run into if I went
any other way, but I knew where that remote was.

I slunk through the white halls of the white
house as fast and as stealthily as I could. I checked for movement
around every corner. I made it to the living room without running
into Mark, which was some kind of miracle, considering he had just
been to the kitchen to get us drinks, unless he had gone to some
hidden bar to get them.

I crossed the living room and snatched up the
remote Mark had loosely concealed beneath the Manly Health
magazine. Twenty-three. I keyed it and hoped.

The locks shifted to their open state, and the
door released. I shoved it open and slipped into the back yard. I
glanced around. There had to be a gate back here someplace. But
would I be able to open it? I followed the path around the side of
the house to discover a gate. It was tall, iron, and locked.

I couldn’t climb it. It wasn’t that kind of
gate. I looked around frantically. By now, Mark would have
discovered my absence from the salon. He would be walking through
the house looking for me. I didn’t have much time.

If a half-starved guy looking for lawnmowers
could make it over this wall, I could. There had to be something,
somewhere –unless he had used a ladder…A ladder! There was
something else I could use for that purpose.

I ran back to the patio. My trusty friend the
pool skimmer was lying beside the pool. I picked it up and toted it
back to the gate. I wedged the top end beneath the high crossbar on
the gate and the bottom end of it with a big landscape rock at what
I hoped would be the right incline, and used the skimmer the way
any good hoodlum uses a drain pipe. I clambered onto the wall,
searching for soft ground to land on rather than the pavement of
the drive. I teetered at the top, seeing the camera eye staring out
at me from under the eave of the house, then I hung by my hands and
dropped the remaining twelve feet to the plantings below.

I landed in sago palms. The stickers got me,
stuck in my palms and my legs and my butt, but the stiff leaves
broke my fall. I struggled out of the mess and headed down the
long, winding drive to the street.

It struck me then that I didn’t have a car, and
maybe I would have been better off trying to find the garage and
steal one of Andy’s, but it did not occur to me to ask for
help.

So I stood in the street. Girl in bathrobe.
Helpless. Harmless. It was a wide avenue with fancy houses on both
sides. There’d be a car along soon. Somebody would feel sorry for
the poor, nearly naked girl, held hostage in the mad house of merry
men. Someone would offer her a ride into town. Someone…

No one came. I started jogging in the direction
I thought was town. No one. Quiet street. Should I ask to use a
phone? Call a cab? I kept jogging, hit a crossroads, kept jogging.
A woman drove by in an Escalade, hyperactive kids strapped into the
seats behind her. She stared at me like I was a street hooker.
Scandalous.

Finally, there was another car. This one, a
Lexus sedan, rolled to a stop just ahead of me.

I ran up to the window. It rolled down to reveal
a slightly soft-looking fiftyish blue hair in a suit and glasses.
My first impulse was to stick my gun in his face and commandeer his
vehicle, but Miguel’s success with the Banana Boys –not to mention
Andy, and all the rest of us who had fallen for his silver tongue,
came back to me. This seemed like a good opportunity to try his
method out.

“My boyfriend locked me out of the house,” I
said, feigning mild distress. “We had an argument this morning, and
it’s his idea of a joke not to let me in.”

“Well that doesn’t sound like fun,” he answered,
aping sincerity. More likely he just wanted a nearly-naked girl in
his car. Hey, use what you’ve got.

“Can you give me a ride?”

“Sure, hop in.”

I did, and he drove.

“What’s your name?”

“Sheri. What’s yours?”

“Melvin.”

Just what I needed, another M.

“Where do you want to go, Sheri?”

“Tulane. I can stay with a friend there until he
comes to his senses.”

“He must have lost his senses, putting a little
thing like you out on the street. Your boyfriend in school
too?”

“No. He works. I met him at a club.”

“Which one?”

“The Minute.”

I’d seen it in the French Quarter.

“I’ll have to try it. I guess I’ve been going to
the wrong clubs. I’ve never run into anyone as pretty as you.”

He wants to fuck. Perfect.

“Maybe I’ll take you there sometime. It would
teach my boyfriend a lesson. Show him he’s got some
competition.”

“That sounds like fun. You a girl who likes to
have fun?”

Creepy man, just drive me to Tulane.

“Sometimes, if it’s with the right man.”

“How old is your boyfriend?”

“Forty-five,” young enough to intimidate, old
enough to make him think he has a shot.

“You like mature men.”

“As long as they can keep up with me.”

Fuck, I hate flirting. Fucking hate it. How
could Miguel stand it?

“You know, eight percent of men never lose the
level of testosterone they had in their youth.”

“Ooh, what does that mean?”

“Testosterone is the male hormone that
influences hair growth, muscle mass, metabolism, and libido. It’s
essential…”

Great, a doctor pervert.

My phone began to ring. I looked at the number.
Yoki. I turned the volume down and answered it.

Yoki’s panicked un-whisper immediately started
in my ear. I was glad I had turned the volume down.

“Omigod, Annie! Now there are two of them. One
of them had a gun under his coat. I saw it! They don’t look like
students. I’m fairly certain they’re watching my door, or one of my
neighbor’s! Are you coming soon? Annie?”

“Is that your boyfriend?”

“Oh, sugar,” I said. “Don’t talk like that. Stay
calm.”

“I’m trying, but they’re scary-looking people,
Annie. They look like some of my dad’s coworkers, and those secret
service chaps are not the kind of people you want showing up at
your door!”

“No, baby. I’m going to Tulane. I’m going to
stay with a friend. She needs me more than any unemployed ladies’
man.”

“Annie, what are you talking about? Unemployed
ladies’ man?”

I felt a thick hand on my thigh.

“Tell him you’re going to be busy for a few
days,” said the man with his fat hand on my thigh, “Tell him he
should have taken better care of you.”

He pulled the car over and put it in park.

“Annie! Are you coming? Annie?”

“I’m with a nice man, sweetie. He drives a
Lexus. He says his name’s Mel-“

That was when he tried t take the phone out of
my hand. It had taken him long enough to realize what I was doing.
He wasn’t used to this kind of thing. I was.

And remember, I said “tried”.

With my left hand, I struck a glancing blow off
his cheekbone and nose. It was enough to make him bleed and
protest.

“You hit me! You bitch!”

How quickly the B-word comes out at times like
these.

He tried again for the phone, then tried for my
face.

I drew the .40 and pistol-whipped him good. I
put the gun to his temple.

He cried out in anguish.

“Oh god, oh god. How could you…How could
you…”

“I’ll have to call you back,” I said to Yoki,
and hit the end key, muttering to myself, “Should have done it my
way to begin with…”

“Oh god. Oh god…”

“Drive, puddin’ head,” I said. “That’s all I
want you to do.”

He blithered, but he did as he was told.

“I have…I have a family. I have…”

“What? You’re scared of me now? You think I
would have hit you if you hadn’t groped my leg? What is wrong with
you people? All you people? I asked for a ride. I’m in a bathrobe,
locked out of a house, and you can’t just give me a ride. Can’t a
guy just give a girl a ride in this world?”

“Hey, you flirted with me. How was I supposed to
know–”

“Know what? That you’re some special case? That
you’re harmless with all the weirdoes and crazies out there? That
you don’t mean anything when you grab my leg and try to take my
phone?”

“I –I was afraid you’d get me in trouble. My
wife–”

“You shoulda thought of that. Shoulda thought of
that before…” Wait a second. It wasn’t my job to teach this guy
some lesson, some social skills. “Just drive the fucking car.”

He did. We got close to Yoki’s building. I
didn’t want him to take me all the way there. He’d watch where’d
I’d go and tell the police when he called them. Unless I killed
him. That would buy me some time, but even I realized how stupid
that would be.

Only because I had no idea how nuts everything
was about to get.

“Stop here.”

He did. He was shaking, sweating.
Journeyman.

“Got a phone on you?”

“You’re not going to call my wife?”

“Not if you drive outta here quiet and don’t
talk about this to anybody. You make it public. I cry rape. Who you
think the cops are gonna believe?”

He fished a Bluetooth out of his pocket and
handed it to me.

I took the butt of my pistol to the hands-free
device on the dash. He didn’t try to grab me. In fact, he cowered,
covering his head.

“Park somewhere. Break your window. Tell the
cops somebody broke into your car. You tell them about me, and I
squeal about how you molested me, and if that happens, trust me,
the cops will be the least of your problems, because my boyfriend
will honest-to-god rip your throat out. Got it?”

“Y-yes.”

I got out and ran.

Some students saw me running across the campus,
but there was no avoiding it. I was in their hive. A group of guys
whistled at me. A girl in a bathrobe, running in broad daylight.
Slightly conspicuous.

I got sandspurs in the soles of my feet. If
you’ve ever gotten sandspurs in your feet, you need no explanation
as to what a nuisance they are, but if you have never had the
privilege, imagine little balls covered with needle-sharp spikes
that bury themselves in your flesh. They’re some evil invention of
our twisted Mother Earth, and they grow in the grass in the south.
During the fall they are numerous, and there’s no avoiding them. I
had to stop to pull the little savages out. I hopped over to some
verge beside Yoki’s building and tried to make myself a little less
conspicuous while I got the little monsters stuck in my fingers
instead of my feet. I took the opportunity to call Yoki.

She answered before the first ring. She must
have been staring at the phone.

“I don’t see them anymore, Annie. I don’t know
where they went.”

“Yoki, how do I get into your building?”

“You need a keycard…You don’t have one. Oh
no…”

“Stay calm. I’ll get in somehow. Call me if they
show up again, all right?”

“Right.”

I hung up. I watched people passing in and out
of the front door. There would be side doors, less obtrusive places
to enter, but there would not be as many people going in and out. A
group of girls was headed in right now.

I trotted over.

“Oh, thank goodness! I went out to get a tan and
forgot my card in my shorts. Thank goodness.”

The nice girls looked at me a little strangely,
but the weirdness of my present predicament was so far into the
ultra-weird spectrum it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. They let
me plow in behind them without a second thought about it.

Inside. Stairs or elevator? Elevator was
quicker. Stairs offered more room for maneuvering. Where would
these shady characters be? Knowing who they were and why they were
there would help me figure that out. But there are some behaviors
that are nearly endemic to an activity. Lurking, for instance,
which was what these guys were doing, is usually characterized by
repeated motions, cycles. If these guys weren’t after Yoki, they
wouldn’t be back, which would be great. I wouldn’t be forced to do
anything else rash. But if they were after Yoki, as she seemed so
certain they were, they would lurk back her way before long, and
she could tell me about it.

I called her.

“Annie, Annie…”

“Shut up. Do you have a fisheye thing?”

“What?”

“A fisheye lens, on your door, so you can look
out.”

Jesus Christ was barking wildly.

“Oh, a peephole. No. I have to peek out. Do you
want me to open…”

Damn.

“No, Yo. Don’t open anything. Stay where you
are. I’ll be up soon.”