The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten (15 page)

But finally, about twenty minutes after I should have turned back, I hit a promising block.

Assuming you aren’t outnumbered and can avoid getting physically overpowered—always a big assumption—it’s pretty much perfect for my purposes to be a girl, alone, having a strange guy approach you on the street. There’s not a jury in the land that would convict a girl who committed some act of violence against said guy, as long as you don’t let yourself get carried away into overkill. The only reasons I don’t hang out in dangerous places and hope for some guy to come along so I can stick a key in his eye—just by way of letting off some steam—are because it’s always possible the guy will have friends, which is no good, because I don’t like it when the power balance shifts away from me, and because if it happens more than once or twice the police
will
start to wonder why it is a nice girl like me attracts so much trouble.

But here I was, alone on a block where there was only the sort of bar that doesn’t even have a beer sign in the window, which meant I was obviously looking for trouble, or a good time, or some combination of the two. So what if I just wanted to take a walk and clear my head and get away from J and Kelly and their prosaic little minds? My intentions wouldn’t count for much with the kind of men who frequented establishments like this. They were beasts, officer—absolute beasts. I’m lucky to be alive with my virtue intact. Etc. It’s ironclad.

I got a little flutter of anticipation when a guy a few years older than me stumbled out the door and started fumbling with a lighter. He was quite focused on his cigarette ritual, and I thought he wouldn’t notice me as I walked across on the other side of the street—but he happened to look up, hearing my footsteps I guess. Then he tucked the cigarette behind his ear—charming affectation—and grinned, strolling across the street to intercept my path. He was a little shaggy, but not unattractive compared to most mere mortals—of course, next to my beautiful Edwin, he might as well have been a grinning chimpanzee or a medieval peasant with no teeth and shit in his beard. Not that he had a beard, really; he had a little soul patch sort of thing just under his bottom lip, which had probably been the height of stylishness in some movie he’d seen from the early 2000s. More alarmingly, he had a tattoo of a spiderweb on his neck, which suggested he had either exceedingly poor impulse control, a substance abuse problem, or no concept of consequences. I kept walking, but reached into my pocket, where, on my keyring, I had my pepper spray—a gift from my dad. Harry had insisted I take it with me, and I hadn’t argued—he said it was more potent than the commercially-available concoctions, practically mace, despite the adorable little canister. All I needed was an excuse.

“Hello beautiful,” the guy said, stepping in front of me. He was wearing a Bemidji State University sweatshirt. “I didn’t realize this neighborhood was next door to heaven, but it must be, with angels like you going by.”

A cheesy pick-up line? Maybe he was planning to lull me and then lure me somewhere secluded so he could rob and murder me. “Move aside, please,” I said politely, and was gratified when he took a step toward me instead.

He acted like he hadn’t heard me. “Normally I bitch about how you can’t smoke in bars anymore, but having to come out in the cold sure paid off this time.”

“I’m sorry,” I said coolly. “You used to be able to smoke in bars? I didn’t know that, but then, I wasn’t born in the
Eighties
.”

He gave me a funny look, then laughed, deciding I’d made a joke. “Look, I don’t normally just walk up to people on the street like this, but, hey, want to come inside that bar over there? My name’s Rufus. I’ll buy you a drink, name your poison.”

Maybe he had a bunch of friends in there. Maybe he was the least scary one—I could hardly imagine anyone
less
scary, even with the spiderweb tattoo—and had been sent to bring back a victim for them all to attack together.

Or maybe he was just a slumming college boy hoping to get lucky outside the bar when he’d struck out on the inside. God, wouldn’t
that
be boring. “No poison for me thanks,” I said. “Now, move aside, please.” If he didn’t move this time, I’d be totally justified in spraying him in the face with unpleasant stinging compressed chemicals and then laying into him with the pointy toes of my new boots a few times. Harry would probably even tell me I’d done exactly the right thing. If he actually touched me in a way that left a mark, I’d be in a position to do much nastier things—strikes to the groin, hooking a finger into his eye to scoop out those bullshit-brown eyes, palm-smash to the nose, maybe driving some bone splinters into his brain…

But he just sighed. “Angel flies too high for the likes of me. I understand.”

He stepped aside, and just then the door of the bar opened, and two more guys stepped out, about his age, but less cute—one was a bit bigger and broader and scruffier, the other scrawnier and wearing glasses, neither visibly tattooed. “Hey, douche, how long does it take to smoke a fucking—Hello.” The one who’d spoken—the bigger one, of course—grinned at me. “Man, you totally found something better out here, it’s nothing but skanks in the bar tonight, I don’t know why we come to this place.”

Three of them. Hmm. That was a bit much, even if they weren’t particularly intimidating. Probably if I attacked one with sufficient viciousness the others would back off, but it was always possible they’d leap to his defense out of some misguided sense of all-for-one honor; boys were weird that way. But if I had no choice—

“We come for the 25 cent bottles of Pabst,” Rufus said. “But, this one, nah, she’s not into it. Guess she’s got places to be.”

“Shit, you blew it,” the other guy said. “Hey, sugar, I’m way more charming than this loser, why don’t you give me a chance?”

“Ease off,” the boy with glasses said. “It’s not cool, a bunch of guys crowding around a woman on the sidewalk, you know? You have to have some empathy, put yourself in her position.” Then, to Bonnie, “I apologize, we’re harmless, really.”

“I knew you shouldn’t have taken that women’s studies class,” the other guy complained. “I thought it would be a great place to meet chicks, but it’s filling your head with all kinds of shit.”

The boy with glasses shyly smiled. “Ah, you know, this isn’t the best neighborhood, if you’re walking somewhere, it might be better not to go alone, I mean—”

“Oh, you’re gonna escort her, Mr. Chivalrous Knight?” the biggest boy said. “Oldest trick in the book, sister, don’t fall for it, he’ll be wanting to show you his etchings next.”

I was trying to decide if an opportunity for deniable violence could be salvaged from this increasingly innocuous situation—maybe I’d let four-eyes take me for a walk, then attack him, and later claim he’d gotten inappropriate—when a car came screaming around the corner, taking the turn with such velocity that the vehicle slewed around almost sideways. The car was long, low, and silver—a midlife-crisis car, a penis substitute, you know the kind, but I have to admit, it
did
look kind of sexy and powerful, clichés are clichés partly because they’re effective, after all. It was a pretty potent interruption, and probably ruined my plans… but as you’ve probably figured out by now, I don’t mind surprises, as long as they’re
interesting
surprises.

The car zoomed straight for the boy with glasses, who was in the middle of the deserted street walking toward me, and he dove back to the sidewalk by the bar, where his taller friend gaped at the car. Rufus started cursing and backed up right against the chain-link fence surrounding the empty lot beside us. The car stopped beside me, the passenger door flying open, and a voice from the darkness within said—“
Get in.”

I obeyed, giving Rufus a little wiggle-fingered wave as I pulled the door shut, and then the car screamed away, swerving toward four-eyes and the other boy on their side of the sidewalk, just enough to send them skipping back toward the bar in what I assumed was pants-wetting terror. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.

“My hero!” I said, looking at Edwin in the driver’s seat, but he didn’t seem to share my mirth—his jaw was clenched so hard he might as well have had tetanus. “You came out of nowhere to save me,” I purred, reaching out to caress his cheek. “Who knows what those boys might have done to me?”

“The one with glasses,” he said, choking the words out. “He had… he had so much
lust
in him.” He glanced at me, his eyes taking in my short skirt.

“Did he?” I said, surprised. I thought I was good at reading people, but I hadn’t seen lust on his face, and Edwin had only seen him for seconds, through a car windshield at that. “Are you sure you aren’t… projecting?”

He almost laughed at that. “You
are
a sight to incite such feelings, but he could have been dangerous. He wouldn’t stop staring at your, ah, chest, and your, ah, legs, and, ah, you know. Your butt.” He gritted his teeth again. “Listen, distract me, would you?”

“From what?”

“From what I’d like to do to those
boys
. From turning this car around and going after them and making them regret messing with you.”

“Go ahead,” I said lightly. “Someone should teach them a lesson.”

He shook his head. “It… wouldn’t stop with being a lesson. You have to be
alive
after a lesson in order to learn anything, and I… don’t trust myself right now. So, please talk? About anything, really, the more trivial the better.”

“I guess murder would be an overreaction,” I acknowledged, thinking. “All right, well, there’s my mom, who’s been sending me some fairly insane e-mails lately, I mean, more insane than usual, mostly about her dreams and how she’s afraid something bad’s going to happen, but I’m pretty sure it’s just separation anxiety or empty nest syndrome or something…” I prattled on in that vein for a while, letting myself be a touch more catty than I usually am in my public persona. It was too easy to let my guard down around Edwin.

“Where were you going, anyway?” he said after a while.

I shrugged. “Just taking a little walk. Kelly and J were shopping, I got bored. I’m supposed to meet them for dinner, oh…” I looked at the clock in the dashboard. “Really soon. When I don’t show up, they’ll assume I’ve been murdered. So don’t murder me. You’d be playing right into their expectations.”

“We’d better reassure them, then.” He deftly spun the wheel, U-turning across empty lanes, and drove back the way we’d come, more or less.

“Are you over your bloodlust?” I said.

“As much as I ever am.” He shook his head. “Did you want to have dinner with them? Your friends?”

“Not if I get a better offer.”

“Would you consent to dine with me?”

He had such a funny, archaic way of speaking sometimes. “Yes. That constitutes a better offer.”

Edwin glanced at me. “You don’t seem… troubled, by what happened.”

I shook my head. “What, getting harassed by drunk boys on the street? I’m female, and my hometown is a college town
and
a tourist town, so it’s not the first time I’ve ever been catcalled or propositioned. I know sometimes it goes farther than that, girls can get in trouble, but it never has for me. I’ve got pepper spray, and I had 911 dialed into my phone, all I needed to do was hit ‘send.’” And I could have stabbed four-eyes in the throat before he got so much as one handful of boob, but no need to mention that.

He nodded grimly. “The world is a dangerous place. Lake Woebegotten is small, I know, but it is also safe—peaceful.”

Peaceful is boring, but there was no reason to say that.

We got back to the mall, and he parked next to Kelly’s car. Her compact kind of looked like a pig parked next to, I don’t know, a
god
, which was fitting enough. We got out and walked companionably to the mall, where Kelly and J were hovering around the arcade. I waved to them. “Hi guys! Look who I found!”

“Uh,” J said. “Hi.” Kelly waved at him shyly.

“Wait here,” I said to Edwin, and pulled the girls aside. They both knew I was into Edwin. “Guys, he wants me to have dinner with him, I don’t want to back out on my sisters, I know that’s totally lame—”

“Do it,” Kelly said. “Seriously.” I could tell she’d lick Edwin if she could. Alas, Kelly was only ever going to be best-friend, other-girl material. Maybe in college she’d blossom if she got slutty enough.

J was more doubtful. “If you’re sure it’s okay. I mean…”

“I’ve got my phone,” I said, patting my purse. “I’ll call you after dinner and let you know I’m okay. If you don’t hear from me in a couple of hours, feel free to tell Harry I’m gone and you last saw me in the company of Edwin Scullen, okay?”

Kelly laughed. “Fair enough.” J nodded way too seriously. I’d have to remember to call, or they
would
have Harry after me.

I returned to Edwin, hooking my arm over his. “I have my liberty. Where are you taking me?”

“Ah, well, I don’t, ah…”

“Eat in restaurants,” I said. He stiffened. “In
Bemidji
,” I said, and he relaxed. “Because who would eat in Bemidji?” I turned on my phone and zipped around online and found an Irish pub not far away that got good reviews and featured corned beef eggrolls, which sounded too grotesque not to try. “Let’s go here. Brigid’s Cross Irish Pub. You cool with that? With
crosses
and all?”

“Brigid is the name of a saint,” he said, “but before that, it was the name of a pagan goddess. And I have no quarrel with crosses
or
goddesses.”

He opened the car door for me—such a gentleman—and I let my body brush against his as I climbed in. Something was going to happen tonight. A boundary was going to be crossed. Things were going to be revealed.

This shit was
on
.

MY DINNER WITH DRACULA

FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK

T
he pub was kind of cheesy from the outside—what real Irish pub would feel the need to advertise Guinness that prominently?—but inside it was nice, lots of dark wood, well-stocked bar, and best of all, some deep and discreet booths, including one that opened up just as Edwin veered toward it. Once we were comfortably ensconced, it felt like the rest of the world was somehow off in another room. We’d been together in the car, of course, but this was the first time I’d ever felt really alone with him, and centered in his attention.