
Moolah and Moonshine
Petit Morts #3
Jordan Castillo Price
ISBN: 978-1-935540-03-8
All rights reserved.
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Here's to your new life in France. Be sure to try the toast. And even the fries. But watch out for those ticklers.
With any luck, Emmett would not be called upon to make a toast. Lately, though, he knew better than to trust his luck.
Because Rosemary was traipsing off to her new job in Paris? Because he was stuck in a far-flung suburb of Topeka with a rickety old house that was falling down around his ears? Because he'd always assumed he'd visit Paris by the time he was thirty---and Milan, and Prague, and London too---but thirty had come and gone, and he'd never even applied for a passport?
What could you call that, other than the most rotten luck in the world? He loved Rosemary so dearly, and she was leaving him in Kansas to deal with the horrible house...alone.
If he really wanted to get out of proposing a toast, Emmett supposed he could try the tactic of distraction instead. Who wasn't stopped in their tracks by the presentation of a gift? He knew he was. But what to get her for her big bon voyage. A bottle of wine was the obvious choice, but Rosemary had been a teetotaler since the Toyota-in-the-ditch incident, which luckily had only injured her wallet. Maybe a scarf, then. She loved scarves, but she never seemed to wear them. And besides, she'd spent the past few weeks giving away everything that didn't fit inside her hot pink Samsonite luggage set.
Emmett scowled at the pompously overdecorated row of storefronts in search of inspiration. Handmade jewelry. Hand-dipped candles. Handcrafted everything, and all of it perfectly hideous. The human touch was clearly overrated.
Purchasing a dry cabernet, presenting it to Rosemary and proceeding to drink it all himself was beginning to look like the most logical course of action when the sound of a tiny bell registered on the threshold of Emmett's hearing. He turned to look, and saw a shop he'd missed on his initial sweep of the street. A candy store.
The name Sweets to the Sweet was painted on the window in nearly illegible artistic scrawl. The building wasn't quite as tarted-up as stores on either side. It was small enough to be "cute," tucked as it was into the shadows of the hulking gingerbread-covered specialty boutiques.
Rosemary always said candy went right to her ass.
Chocolate, then. Perfect.
Emmett stepped in out of the wind, and the bell tinkled as he pulled the door shut behind him.
The smell was the first thing to hit him, a wall of dark, rich scent so powerful it seemed too thick to breathe. It was so tangible Emmett pulled off his glasses and buffed them on the edge of his sweatshirt, as if the aroma might leave a film on his lenses. It smelled of chocolate, yes, but beneath that, hints of other things lingered, strange things Emmett had no name for. In a way it reminded him of his house, the dilapidated thing that was supposed to be such a wonderful investment, but had turned out to have secret pockets of mysterious smells, odors released by various materials in various stages of decay, all of them contributing to the imminent demise of the structure that was supposedly completely sound when the inspector picked through. The inspector whose phone was then disconnected, whose office was now housing an after-school job program.
A violent hiss startled Emmett and he flinched. The espresso machine. He put his glasses back on. A young, dark-haired man behind the counter smiled to himself as he filled an espresso cup, then he turned toward Emmett and said, "You look like you could use a drink."
Emmett never treated himself to expensive coffee anymore. Not since the house had taken a nosedive, anyway, and taken his entire savings with it. But the brown foam on the top of the espresso clung to the porcelain, the tiny bubbles glinting rainbow-colored with dark coffee oils, and he figured a few more bucks wouldn't matter one way or the other. He leaned across the counter, feeling suddenly middle-aged in the face of the shop clerk's flawless youth, took the small cup he was handed, and said, "Thanks."
The clerk was dressed in a chef's uniform, with herringbone pants, a red bandanna knotted around his throat, a black apron dusted with cocoa, and a black chef's coat with the name Chance embroidered in red over his heart. Emmett wondered who would name a newborn baby "Chance," but maybe it fit him.
Chance's smile turned slightly wicked, and Emmett realized he'd been caught staring. He looked down through the glass counter with sudden and profound intensity. "I need a gift."
"You can't go wrong with chocolate. Of course, I could be biased."
"Got anything that'll go right to someone's ass?"
Chance laughed---a small breath, an exhalation---but it comforted Emmett to know that at least he was still amusing. "All of it."
"Great. Give me something that would make a girl 'ooh' and 'ah.' And, uh, I've only got twenty bucks."
Chance set a small black box on the countertop and placed a square of blood red paper inside to line it. "I sense a mixed message. Color me intrigued."
"Oh, right, I see what that sounds like. It's for...she's my best friend." Emmett stared harder at the countertop. The recessed can lights above threw perfect yellow circles onto the reflective glass, and before he considered that he was telling a perfect stranger something quite personal, he said, "She's leaving."
Beneath the reflected orbs of light, Chance's hand moved between the chocolates, flitting from one to another and back again, as if it was of utmost importance he select the perfect piece. "You make it sound pretty final."
"She's going to Paris. The tacky little shoe store she manages got bought out by some French setup and they're sending her to Paris, all expenses paid. Paris. The Paris. What are the chances she'll ever be back?"
"If you're so hungry for Paris, then why not go with her? Your friend won't mind. Will she? I'm sure she'd love the company." Chance's hand hovered over a chocolate with a perfect whorl on top. Emmett whispered, "That one," and it was plucked from the display and placed in the red-lined box.
Emmett stared hard at the spot where the chocolate had been. It was now a gap, a space, a place where something had once been, but now there was nothing. "That's what she said," he admitted after a long and very heavy pause.
Chance shifted the chocolates in the box, and when it became painfully obvious that Emmett didn't plan to elaborate, said, "And?"
"And I can't."
"Allergic to airplanes? Go the old-fashioned way. On a ship."
"No, that's not it." Of course the clerk thought he was afraid. Everyone else figured Emmett for a coward, so why not a total stranger? "It's just...it's complicated."
"I see," Chance said, in a tone that made it clear he didn't, not at all.
Emmett could have given him a dozen grisly details about the house---a horrible place that grew more horrible with each new discovery: dry rot, termite damage, and of course, the smells....but he knew the more he explained, the more it sounded like he was making excuses. "My money's all tied up in a house I can't sell."
Chance selected another chocolate, tucked it into the box, then looked at Emmett expectantly. "It needs too much work," Emmett added.
"I think you should talk to Sam."
"No, that's okay, I..." the lie that Emmett was about to tell to deflect Chance's concern died on his tongue---the lie he used so often that some part of him clung to as if it was true. That he was working on it. That he had a contractor. Yes, once upon a time there had been a contractor. And he'd done a great job on the rotting porch roof. But the estimate for shoring up the basement posts where the wood had gone so soft you could drive nails into it without a hammer---that five-figured number had been the start of Emmett's stages of house-grief. Denial. Anger. Acceptance.
"I can't afford to fix it." Emmett said it so quietly, the words were lost in the hiss of the espresso machine.
Chance closed the box and slipped a red band around it. "He'll be here any minute. What could it hurt?"
"He works here?"
"I don't think he's got the temperament to work for me." Chance smiled to himself. "He comes here to sit, right around five thirty. And nurse a single coffee until close."
Emmett glanced at the clock. Twenty-nine minutes after five, and his espresso was still hot enough to scald his tongue. He supposed it wouldn't hurt to talk to this Sam person---a retired builder, maybe? Or a tradesman? Plumber? Electrician? He wasn't afraid. If this Sam had a lot of time on his hands, maybe he'd at least have some bit of advice, some words of wisdom as to where Emmett could start patching up the awful house. That way, if the market ever turned up again, and he'd repaired the worst of the damage, he might actually be free of the place within his lifetime.
The bell over the door jingled, and Emmett turned with his espresso raised to his lips expecting to see "Sam" right on cue---white hair covered by a tall, stiff baseball cap, maybe in overalls, with a wrench in his hand---but instead, Mr. Tall, Dark and Twenty-Something ducked in out of the wind.
Emmett went still. The other customer might have been a bit plain by some people's standards, but Emmett had never been impressed by showy guys with tanning bed skin tones and teeth bleached to the point of glowing in the dark. He liked a manly man, preferably taller than him---like this guy. Their eyes met briefly, then the other customer nodded and hung back a few steps, waiting his turn.
"Right on time," Chance said. He poured a cup of coffee.
Emmett was caught mid-sip. He spluttered, cleared his throat, and hoped he hadn't just drawn espresso into his lungs.
Chance set the cup on the counter. "We were just talking about home repair."
Sam held out his hand, a bit shyly, though obviously he was too polite to completely brush Emmett off. "Sam Kowalski."
"Emmett Russo."
Sam's hand was cold from the biting wind. And big. And strong. And Emmett wondered what possessed him to think he had any chance with someone like Sam. Even if Sam happened to be gay, and single, it wasn't as if anyone would want to sleep with Emmett...not in that house.
"I don't know how much help I'd be," Sam said. "I mean, I'm not really a carpenter or anything."
"Sam is good with his hands," Chance said.
Emmett snapped a look in Chance's direction to see if he was being mocked, but the clerk was busy unloading a rack of coffee mugs into a neat pyramid. The ceramic gave off tiny clinks as he stacked them.
"I'm pretty handy around the house," Sam clarified.
Emmett glanced back at him. Sam was blushing. And painfully cute.
Chance said, "I thought you might do Emmett a favor and have a look at the worst of the problems. Unless you're too...busy."
"No, I...yeah. I don't have anything to---"
"I'm a little strapped for cash," Emmett cut in.
"As a favor," Chance said smoothly.
Sam shrugged. "Oh, yeah, it's not a problem. Like I said, it's not like I'm a professional or anything."
Sam took his coffee to the sidebar and emptied three packets of sugar into it, stirred it, and took a sip so hot it had to have taken out a few taste buds. Chance told Emmett, "I'll put Sam's coffee on your check."
Emmett knew he was being railroaded---though the reason why was a mystery---but he supposed that if he was being coerced, he might as well be coerced into getting to know Sam a little better. Even if no one in their right mind would get involved with him once they saw the house.
He drank his espresso down to the sludge in two gulps while Chance rang him up on a monstrosity of an antique register. The coins he dropped into Emmett's outstretched palm were chilly, but no doubt it only felt that way to Emmett since his hands were overly warm from cradling the small porcelain cup.
Both Emmett and Sam climbed into their own cars: Emmett's a Jetta that would need a new transmission soon, and Sam's a pickup truck with a large dent in the hood and a few patches of repaired rust where the paint was more matte than the area surrounding it. Emmett was comforted by the state of Sam's truck, but a bit scared, too. Because it gave him hope that maybe Sam wouldn't judge him by the horrible house. And hope could be a very scary thing.
"It's a really old house."
"I hadn't noticed." Emmett tried, at the last moment, to ensure his commentary was less barbed than usual. Sam glanced at him and smiled. Emmett assumed he'd been successful.
"Ranches and split levels all around it. But this one's...what is it? An old farm house, I think. See that hill? I'll bet a barn was built into the side of the hill. If you dug, you'd probably find the stones from the old foundation."
And that foundation would probably be in better shape than the one Emmett was currently trusting to hold up his house. He did his best to pretend he wasn't on the verge of mortified panic as he unlocked the front door. Sam had come out of his truck with a massive old tool box in one hand and a mason jar full of nails, bolts and screws in the other. Good with his hands? Hopefully. And it appeared he might know how to fix things, too.
The lock stuck. Emmett bit back a nervous laugh and wiggled the key. The mechanism resisted him longer than it usually did. Probably on principle, since there was a strapping young lad with a jar full of nails standing behind him.
And when the door finally did open, the smell seemed more pronounced than usual. "Sorry about that. Would you believe the realtor was burning scented candles all over the house and it never occurred to me they were there for any reason other than ambience?"
The odor of slightly soured milk hung in the doorway, though there hadn't been so much as a teaspoon of milk in the house since Emmett had signed the deed, since he wasn't much for breakfast and he drank his coffee black.
"Moisture must've seeped in somewhere." Sam glanced up at the lintel where the porch roof had failed. "A dehumidifier will help with that. Plus, if you can't do a teardown anytime soon, there's paint on the market that can seal it up and mask the smell." Sam set his jar of nails on the telephone desk and crossed the entryway to the dining room. "This place has seen a lot of neglect, but look at it this way. All the light fixtures, all the floors and molding---original. And they don't make 'em like they used to."
"Thank God."
Sam crossed to the mantle of the fireplace where Emmett had never once had the courage to build a fire, and paused. A dozen framed photos gathered dust on the mantle: Emmett's grandparents, now playing Pinochle somewhere in the great beyond. His parents and sister Lynn, her with a sleek bob and a sleeker waistline, before she got married and gained eighty pounds. Family. Friends. His cousin's kids. And front and center in full, lurid color---Emmett and Rosemary, on their birthday, which they shared, though she was three years younger and she never let him forget it.
Emmett hadn't yet shaved off his goatee by that birthday, Rosemary's thirtieth, therefore Emmett's thirty-third. They wore matching tiaras, and sashes that read "Queen for a Day," though "Queen" was the only word showing on Emmett's. They both looked fairly drunk. But happy. Definitely happy.
Emmett watched Sam stare hard at the snapshot. He supposed there were worse ways to be outed. Sam noticed Emmett noticing him; he blinked and cleared his throat. "Your...uh, sister?"
"In spirit only." Emmett took the snapshot off the mantle, blew the dust off the frame, and put it back fondly. "She's leaving next week, for good. I can just see it now. Tweets and emails every half hour or so at first. Then once a day. And eventually, nothing but chain letters, and bad jokes with ten pages of forwarded headers on top. I might as well let a rotten timber fall on me now and put me out of my misery."
"It's easy enough to make sure that never happens." Sam grinned at a picture of Biscuits, the family dog, in a sweater. "Toss your computer."
"Blasphemy."
"I sold my laptop after...when I came home from school. I don't even miss it anymore."
"It's not like that. I need it for work. I might watch as many funny cat videos on YouTube as the next guy, but I pay the mortgage by trading futures."
"I don't know the first thing about investing."
"Good. It's mind-numbingly dull." And Emmett wasn't particularly great at it anymore, either. The horrible house had made him jumpy, and prone to sell things off before they'd peaked.
Sam angled the photo of Emmett and Rosemary away from the glare of the overhead light fixture. "Still, you could write her letters, by hand. I think hand-written letters have more personality than emails."
"True. My cursive has sent a nun or two into heart failure."
"People wrap up letters with ribbons. They stuff shoeboxes full of them, with their other mementoes. They hang onto them for years. Not like email."
"You haven't seen my inbox."
Sam smiled. He shifted a photo of Emmett's sister in her Madonna phase so he could see it better. "No significant other?"
"Lynn? She's married. The wedding photos go all the way up the staircase."
"Not her." Emmett saw that Sam said that with studied casualness, focusing on Lynn's bangles and crucifixes as if they were actually interesting.
Emmett might have strung anyone else along for the sake of enjoying the heavy, stilted silence...but Sam didn't bring that pettiness out in him, so he showed mercy, and said, "The only man in my life is Bob Vila. And he never calls me back."
Sam laughed, and used Emmett's remark to segue out of the potential minefield of the photos. "So what's your biggest problem...in the house?"
"All of the above?"
"How about your top three?"
While Emmett was tempted to keep indulging in his own smartassedness, Sam practically oozed sincerity. Emmett figured he might have been stupid enough to try to buy into the American dream and end up with a 150-year-old albatross around his neck, but it didn't mean he needed to be a prick to the first person who was willing to look at it without signing a liability waiver. "You mean small stuff, or structural stuff?"
"I dunno. Anything."
"The radiators bang. Really bang, hard, like someone's hammering on sheet metal all night long."
"I'm sure that's fixable. We might need to rent some tools, flush some buildup out of the system. What else?"
"Mysterious drafts."
"There's all kinds of weatherproofing on the market. What else?"
Emmett sighed. "The foundation."
Sam looked solemn. "That might be way over my head."
No, it was under his feet. But Emmett was growing to like the idea that he didn't need to come up with a snappy comeback to each and every thing Sam said. He didn't need to be entertaining. And it hadn't really registered how exhausting the whole "I've got a wisecrack for every occasion" façade had grown until he was able to relax it for the span of a single conversation.
"I don't usually invite people I've just met into the basement," Emmett said.
Sam hefted his toolbox from the floor. "I might as well see it. I'm probably imagining it worse than it is."
Emmett took up the jar of nails and led the way. The door in the back of the pantry was something right out of a slasher film. Emmett opened it and flicked on the overhead light. At least that worked. For now. He winced at the lingering, cabbagey smell that rose out of the dankness. "Sorry. The Ghost of St. Patrick's Day haunts the stairwell."
For all its faults, at least the basement had a high ceiling. Even Sam, who must've been well over six feet tall, didn't need to stoop to keep the cobwebs out of hair. He'd produced a flashlight. He clicked it, got nothing, rapped it against the heel of his opposite hand, and then a light flickered on. He began beaming it into all the nooks and crannies that Emmett always tried very hard to ignore. "Hold the flashlight a sec."
Emmett obliged. Sam had paused at an old pipe so covered in crud it was hardly identifiable as a part of the plumbing. "See this?" He pointed at a hole Emmett had never even noticed. "There's supposed to be a cap over it." He crouched and sifted through the crusty remains at the base of the pipe. "It must have rusted out. It's letting out sewer gas---not dangerous or anything. Just annoying."
Emmett considered adding the epitaph "Not Dangerous, Just Annoying" into his will, if he ever wrote one.
Sam pulled a tape measure out of the toolbox and measured the hole. "I think this is still a standard size." He flashed a smile over his shoulder, and Emmett wondered that the sincerity in it didn't turn him to ash...or a pillar of salt. Or perhaps a pile of the crud that mysteriously appeared no matter how often he swept the basement. "Maybe if we get a few of the easy things fixed, you won't feel so overwhelmed by the place. Build up some momentum to get going on the bigger projects."
"Look, back there in the store, I meant what I said. I really am broke. I could maybe pay you minimum wage, but even that'd be stretching it."
"Hey, I said I'd do you a favor, right? Don't even talk about money with me. I've got collection agents hounding me to the point that I tossed my cell phone. I had to give up my apartment and move in with my mother, who can't talk about anything else day and night. I'm so sick of money I could scream."
Emmett tried to imagine what Sam might have done to incur those kind of debts. Gambling? Credit cards? Maybe a brand new convertible that he wrapped around a tree? None of those seemed like him, what little Emmett knew of him, anyway. "How did you---?"
"I screwed up."
Very direct. How refreshing.
"Look," Sam said, "sorry, it's not your problem."
"I shouldn't have pried."
"You weren't prying. I just don't like to talk about it."
"Not another word. We can find some more bad smells if that'll make you feel better. I think the old saw 'misery loves company' is one of life's greatest truisms." He pointed at the south wall, which looked particularly untrustworthy. "Or how about some termite damage to cheer you up?"
Sam shook his head and smiled despite himself. "I hate to disappoint you, but everything you've shown me so far is fixable. There's some sagging, but everything's mostly square and plumb. We jack up the beams a couple of inches, pour a new post...." He stopped mid-sentence and stared at the far wall.
"And what?"
Sam took the flashlight back from Emmett and crossed to the east wall, where decades of rusty farm tools hung. Emmett had never disposed of them, since he figured all the sharp and pointed edges would shred the inside of his garbage bin. It was easier to just leave them hanging there until time and oxidation completed their transformation to the ubiquitous basement crud. "You're not gonna suggest a little steel wool and elbow grease will clean those up, are you?"
Sam dropped the flashlight beam to the floor. There was a gap there, half-hidden by a rake that looked like a prop from The Grapes of Wrath. "That's not good," Sam said.
Emmett looked away. He'd thought he would be relieved once Sam's relentless optimism hit a roadblock...but he'd been wrong.
Sam set the toolbox down and knelt to get a better look at the gap. Emmett glanced at a flaking scythe that hung right above his head. "You've had your tetanus booster, right?"
Sam's earnest young brow furrowed deeply. Emmett resisted the urge to scream "What?" at the top of his lungs. Sam licked his fingertip, then held his hand in front of the crack and scowled. "How can you have a draft coming in from down here?"
"The whole place is drafty," Emmet said. "I never really thought about it."
"This is the basement."
"So?"
"So the drafts would come in by the ceiling. Not the floor."
Just when Emmett thought he couldn't possibly feel more stupid, a new and spectacularly ridiculous thing surfaced that made him feel even lower. He got down on one knee beside Sam---his jeans had been snagged by a stray nail earlier that day, so they'd be trashed within a few more washings---and he put his hand to the gap where floor met wall. There was definitely a draft.
"Does it have something to do with where the house sits in relation to the hill?"
Sam glanced at the ceiling, puzzled, to get his bearings. "No---that's impossible. You're at the bottom of a hill. Not the top."
Emmett figured he'd better stop asking questions before Sam needed to explain concepts like gravity to him. Or to define what air was.
"I'd thought maybe the foundation had shifted over here," Sam said, "but now I don't even know---"
Emmett stuck his hand through the tangle of horror flick farm equipment and knocked on the wall. He and Sam looked at one another sharply. It didn't sound like concrete. Or stone. Or moldering skulls...or whatever the rest of the basement had been constructed from.
"It's probably a root cellar," Sam said. "My aunt Jean had one in her place---before she sold it and bought a condo."
"Great. A root cellar. The fun never ends."
Sam rapped on the wall in a few more places between the gaps in the tools. "Someone probably walled it off, and then figured it was easier to set the tool hooks into wood than stone."
"So long as it doesn't stink." Emmett got down on hands and knees and gave it a sniff. "If there are any corpses walled up in there, they're at the leathery stage." He stood and stretched his back.
"That's it?" Sam said. "You're not going to check it out?"
"What do you think we should do---tear that thing down? What if it's a load-bearing false wall? We could end up with the hall closet crashing through the floor."
Sam attempted to give Emmett a hard look, but succeeded only in flashing adorable dimples instead---dimples that ate away at Emmett's resolve as surely as rust corroded his pipes.
"Seriously," Emmett said. "Would could possibly be good in there?"
"Who knows? Maybe someone tucked away a stash for a rainy day and then died without cashing out. And if it's old," Sam flaked the paint on the wooden wall with his thumbnail, "the dimes and silver dollars would be real silver, and the bills would be antiques."
How silly, Emmett thought. Nothing good had come from the horrible house in the two long years in which he'd owned it. Why would it start now? And yet...dimples, and those big, brown, guileless eyes. Emmett was at the mercy of Sam's whims. He pulled a three-pronged hand tool that was either a cultivator or a baby-disemboweler from the wall. The ancient clamp that held it to the wall gave off a tiny metallic wail as it released. "I should've had you sign a waiver," he muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Emmett fetched a tarp that had once covered a shipment of new drywall, back when he still had money...and hope. They piled the tools onto the plastic and Sam dragged them aside, while Emmett admired Sam's physique. Sam seemed very good at anything that involved movement. Or standing there. Or doing anything at all.
Emmett cut his eyes away just as Sam looked up. "Well?" Sam said. "Want to lay a bet on how many silver dollars we find in there?"
Could he bet zero? Emmett didn't know. It seemed more important to humor the kid. "What does the winner get?"
Something flickered over Sam's pure-as-the-driven-snow expression. He wet his lips. Subconsciously...probably. "Loser cooks dinner," he said, and it was his turn to look away fast.
Because it sounded suspiciously like a date. Emmett eased forward ---the lighting threw shadows like crazy---to see if Sam was blushing. He was. "You're on."
Sam pulled a small prybar from his tool box and handed it to Emmett. "See if you can pull these nails without breaking off the heads."
"Ten silver dollars," Emmett guessed. He slid the prybar under an old nail, pushed, and the nailhead popped off. He supposed Sam couldn't help but have seen, but Sam didn't mention it.
"Only ten? What about hundreds? Thousands?"
Emmett popped off another nailhead, but couldn't think of any appropriate swear words. If there'd been any doubt at all that he was besotted by Sam, the lack of colorful curses springing to mind was all it took to convince him. "You didn't let me finish. What I meant to say, before I was so rudely interrupted, was ten thousand."
"Oh, I see. All right. I'll guess two hundred and fifty thousand. A quarter of a million." Sam pulled a nail. It screeched, but came out whole.
"Only a quarter? Pessimist." Emmett struggled with a nail and rocked it free. It was a shortish nail.
"You gonna go higher?"
Emmett put on his best Dr. Evil voice and placed his pinky to the corner of his mouth. "One million silver dollars."
Sam burst out laughing.
"I'd split it with you." It seemed impulsive, even as Emmett said it. But he didn't care.
"No, that's crazy. It's your house."
"I would totally split it."
Sam worked at the board he was prying free and didn't meet Emmett's eye. Impulsive? Maybe. But wildly romantic, too.
Emmett added, "And I'm holding you to making me dinner when I win. So don't even think about backing out."
"I do nuke a pretty mean hot dog. You'd better like relish."
Emmett paused to debate whether it was too ridiculous for him to try to be flirty with a remark about holding the onions in case he wanted to kiss somebody when Sam wedged his prybar under the wood, tugged, and pulled the board well away from the wall. A chorus of screeching rusty nails sang out. The board swung down, a broad board, at eye level, and darkness gaped beyond. Sam and Emmett both stared into the dark that seemed too profound to disturb by calling into it and waiting for an echo. Then Sam picked up the flashlight.
He aimed it into the hole. "It's not a root cellar," he whispered. "It's a tunnel."
Emmett was so baffled that he didn't realize he'd slung an arm around Sam to get a look at the supposed tunnel until he'd already done it---and registered a few things. Solid. Firm. Warm.
Totally embarrassing.
He waffled so hard about taking his hand back he didn't even see, not at first. Not until Sam bounced the beam off the ceiling. "This leads into the hillside."
"It's probably just a tornado shelter," Emmett said in an attempt to be reasonable. "A turn of the century tornado shelter. Think about it---Wizard of Oz, Kansas...It's a twister, Auntie Em. I'm sure there's nothing in there but scratchy blankets, sensible shoes, and a few jars of dust that used to be preserves."
Now that the first board was off they had something to grab, and the others came easily. Emmett loosened boards with the prybar, and Sam tore with his hands. Neither of them spoke, not until there was a gap big enough to fit through. "Do you have another flashlight?" Sam tried to sound casual, but his voice was trembling with anticipation.
Which fanned the flames of Emmett's imagination. "Batteries are dead. I have tea lights."
"Go get them---and don't worry. I won't go in without you. You should be the first one to see. It's your house."
"I get it. You can stop reminding me." Emmett hurried upstairs and pawed through the kitchen junk drawer where an unopened pack of tea lights was buried among the kitchen gadgets he never used and about a thousand twist ties. He found a saucer from his mismatched collection of dinnerware to carry it on, and a box of wooden matches for lighting the pilot that was always blowing out.
By the time Emmett got back to the basement, Sam had pried off all but the lowest board.
"So..." Emmett said. "What are the chances I light a match down here and we both explode?"
"Natural gas is the flammable one---heating gas. Not sewer gas, at least not at this concentration. Sewer gas mostly just stinks."
Natural gas stunk too---or at least the utility company added something to it to ensure it stunk, so that people didn't blithely go about their business in the midst of a gas leak. Still, Emmett could think of worse ways to die than being blown to pieces beside a handsome young man just as the first blossoms of hope germinated in his hardened heart.
He put the small candle on the saucer and lit it. They didn't explode.
It was hard to gauge the depth of the tunnel; the candlelight and flashlight beams bounced back from a veil of cobwebs that obscured the path a few yards in. It was about six feet high with stone walls and crumbling mortar, and the concrete floor, Emmett noted, was lighter than the flooring of the rest of the basement.
"Come on," Sam whispered, though hopefully there was no reason to whisper. What could they disturb? Rats? The tunnel didn't smell like rodent urine. It smelled like dust. Sam nudged Emmett with his elbow in encouragement. Emmett noted Sam had picked up the jar of nails and was clutching it to his chest like the Holy Grail.
The two men fit in the tunnel side by side---barely. They approached the first veil of cobweb and Sam cleared it with the end of his flashlight. The light danced wildly off the unknown ahead, and tendrils of cobweb drifted down to crackle and singe in the flame of Emmett's candle.
The pop of the flame and the sound of his own breathing was loud in Emmett's ears. For a moment, a single shining moment, he actually did believe there was something grand awaiting him---if not a pile of money, maybe antiques, or even jewelry. And within that moment, there was a nanosecond where he was willing to imagine himself free at last. Free of the horrible house. Free to run off to Paris.
Although Sam would still be in Kansas. Emmett wondered if Sam would come along for the ride. He hoped so.
"Up ahead." Sam was still whispering. "I think it's...a room."
They shuffled in. Difficult to tell exactly by the light of a flashlight beam and the leaping flame of a single candle, but it looked to be a good-sized space. An old furnace took up the center of the room. Sandy grit rained from the groaning ceiling as they crept closer for a better look.
Emmett said, also in a whisper, "And here I thought the percussion boiler was original to the house. Looks like something even scarier pre-dated it."
"This is no boiler."
It looked like a boiler---the fittings at the bottom where a gas line hooked in, at least. Maybe it was a boiler that had mated with a big Weber grill and a margarita fountain. "If it's not a boiler, then what are all these pipes sticking out of it for?"
Sam bent to look at a second piece of equipment, connected to the first by a long, downward-angling pipe. Emmett had taken the second chamber for some sort of storage or overflow reservoir. Sam pointed to a spigot at the base. "It's a still."
"As in moonshine?"
"Bathtub gin. White lightning. Hootch."
"Well, I'll be," Emmett mused. "Someone had quite the operation here, once upon a time."
"Kansas was the first dry state. This isn't original to the house, but it's old." Sam sized up the apparatus. "I'd say they must've been selling, not just brewing. Not with this big boy."
"Bootleggers. In my horrible house." Emmett put his hand over his heart and sighed theatrically. "Finally---something to not hate about this place."
He and Sam stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing at huge metal drum. Neither of them moved to ease away from the other. "You really hate this house?"
"Passionately."
"I guess it's all a matter of perspective. I'd give anything for a place of my own. No matter how much work it needed."
Then stay here, Emmett wanted to say. Help me fix it. Because with you here, it doesn't seem even half as horrible. But since he'd just met Sam, he figured he'd come off as desperate if he said as much---even if he tried to blame his lack of judgment on the sewer gas.
He didn't say it, of course, but the pause where he couldn't think of anything else to say was loaded enough to keep him speechless. Still, neither of them had moved apart---and if Emmett wasn't imagining it, Sam had pressed even closer, and he leaned down to speak directly in Emmett's ear. "So, who wins the bet? Neither of us?"
"How about...both?" Emmett was so busy priding himself on being so smooth about doubling their potential dates that he was taken completely and utterly by surprise when Sam leaned in farther still, and pressed a tentative kiss to his lips. Emmett was almost too shocked to respond---almost---but just as Sam was about to pull back, Emmett leaned into the kiss and returned it.
Sam smelled like male things---toolboxes and pickup trucks and his old denim jacket---and Emmett needed to tilt his head up for the kiss. Tall, guyish and endearingly shy...a killer combo. Emmett knew Rosemary was going to be envious of his sudden spark of luck. Even as she settled in to her new Parisian flat.
When Sam finally did pull away, candlelight danced over his features. The dark that had seemed so sinister when they first uncovered the secret passage now felt lacksidaisically romantic. Emmett wondered if the tea light would stay put if he balanced it on top of the old still, or if it would manage to catch onto something that was still flammable despite its eighty-plus years on the planet. At least now if he blew up, he reasoned, he'd do it with a smile on his face.
It might have been awkward to kiss someone while holding a candle on a plate and attempting to keep from setting himself on fire, but Emmett was up for the challenge. He slid his free hand around Sam's neck to see if he could coax another kiss. Sam surrendered easily. Very encouraging. And then Emmett felt the brush of Sam's tongue against his lower lip---very encouraging, indeed.
Emmett chanced some tongue and felt Sam's breathing catch. He pulled Sam closer. Something heavy clattered to the floor. Emmett opened his eyes, startled. It was much darker than it had been when the kiss began.
"Shoot..." Sam ducked away, still clutching his jar of nails, and made a grab for the flashlight he'd just dropped. It rolled out of his grasp on the uneven concrete, wobbled, then picked up speed. Sam followed in a crouch, scuttling after it, but the flashlight stayed just out of reach.
Grit sifted from the ceiling and rained down, mostly on Sam, with a sound like frying bacon. Emmett cupped his hand around the candle flame. "I think that's our cue to move to the sofa," he said. Unless you want to skip that and head straight to my bedroom, he longed to add, but he decided he'd better not overburden his newfound luck.
Sam almost had the flashlight, but a shower of old ceiling caught him in the eye, and he stopped to rub at it.
"Don't, you'll make it worse. I have saline solution upstairs."
Sam rubbed his eye with the back of his hand. "I think I got it."
Emmett tried to shield the candle with his body while he crossed the room to retrieve the flashlight. Getting plunged into total darkness with Sam would normally have been a good thing. But not in that particular location. The flashlight rolled away from Emmett, and then Sam, swerving eerily on the uneven floor as if a spirit guide were steering it.
Sam laughed---nervously, Emmett thought, and made another grab. The flashlight paused, teetered, and rolled away faster still. "This is ridiculous," Emmett said. He lunged for the flashlight, and cracked his hand against something large and distinctly wall-like. "F...udge."
Sam laughed. "You don't need to be polite. Feel free to swear."
"You're the one who said, and I quote, 'Shoot.' I'll save the F-bomb for later." The full implications of what he'd just said sank in, along with visions of himself using the "F-bomb" in its most literal sense of the world---asking to perform the act, or maybe begging to have it done to him---and Emmett was thankful for the darkness. Even though it had just caused him to split a knuckle on an unsuspecting wall, it kept him from seeing Sam's reaction to the latest doozy.
"What did you hit? Is that a wall?"
"It came out of nowhere. Sideswiped me."
Sam pressed a hand to the wall and a fresh onslaught of grit rained down, accompanied by a long, ominous creak. "I'm a little leery of this ceiling."
"Don't say I didn't warn you."
"So where's the flashlight? Did it fall somewhere---is there a grate in the floor?"
Emmett could have groped for it in the near-dark, but he was none too fond of getting ubiquitous basement crud under his nails. He set the candle plate on the floor, figuring they'd spot the flashlight casting a shadow a foot to either side of the place they were currently searching. The flame guttered wildly.
Emmett cupped his hands around the candle. His heart pounded. "I hope that flashlight didn't have sentimental value. I think we're gonna have to make our great escape and chalk it up to collateral damage."
Sam stared at the candle flame. "Is that a breeze?"
"Weren't you the one who just explained to me that we were underground?"
"What if there's more? What if there's another tunnel? Or a cave?"
"Closest cave's in Flint Hills."
The flame guttered again, and yes, now that he was aware of the possibility---though in the midst of trying to discount it---Emmett realized he did feel a slight breeze against his hand.
Sam, who was evidently less intimidated by the crud, felt for the flashlight. "There's a gap, right here, a three-inch gap. It doesn't even feel like a wall. I think it's...a door."
"Of course it's a door. Because anyone who'd put up two false walls is either a moron...or a genius."
Sam ran his hands up the wall, door, whatever it was, and knocked on it. Emmett was tempted to tell him that would only work when there was someone on the other side to answer it, but he figured voicing that opinion wouldn't get him any closer to the couch...or the bed.
"Hear that?" Sam whispered. They were back to whispering again. "It's hollow."
"Mostly I hear ceiling crumbs bouncing off your jean jacket. Seriously, Sam, let's get out of here."
Sam's whispering grew urgent. "I found a latch." He grabbed one of Emmett's hands and jammed his fingers into a slot in the wall. "Right here. Feel it?"
"If we had enough light, we'd see this wasn't some kind of secret subterranean passage. I'm sure it's just a storage closet."
"C'mon...open it."
Emmett did his best to ignore the spongy feel of egg sacs, the leavings of some long-dead spider, pressing against the pads of his fingers. If he were with Rosemary, he could have jerked his hand back and done the "icky" dance. But Rosemary didn't smell like machine shop. She didn't kiss him with tongue.
Emmett squeezed. At first he thought nothing would happen---that the latch was too old, too disused to function. But then he felt a slight give, and then a click.
Ceiling rained down so hard it was as if there were someone in a secret compartment up above dumping a bag of kitty litter on them. Emmett dove to shield the candle with his body.
"Fuck!" He batted out the smoldering patch of fabric on his sweatshirt, and told himself to be happy he wasn't wearing something really flammable, like flannel.
Once it was clear Emmett wasn't going to burst into flames, Sam grabbed him by the arm. "You're wrong. It is a secret passage."
This hallway was narrower than the first, with packed-earth walls and a ceiling low enough to force Sam to duck. "Let's go to the hardware store," Emmett suggested, "grab a couple of flashlights, and then have a look at this."
"The flashlight's got to be here somewhere." Sam did a cursory search, but the flashlight was nowhere, as if it had simply ceased to exist. "Don't you want to just see how far it goes? We already found a still. What else is stashed down here?"
Emmett's big secret was that beneath his protective shell, he'd always been a pushover---something Rosemary knew full well, but only chose to exploit on select occasions. It had taken her a couple of years to figure it out, though, while Sam seemed to zero right in on the tendency and embrace it like an old friend.
The hand he'd been holding the long-lost flashlight with rested on Emmett's shoulder now. And so Emmett allowed himself to be talked into delving down into the cramped earthen tunnel with nothing but a single sputtering candle to guide him.
The tunnel stretched far enough that Emmett wondered if it would open out on the other side of the hill. "At this rate," Emmett said, "we're gonna end up in Sunflower Heights. And they have a rent-a-cop who gives a pretty stern warning to anyone who doesn't have a sticker on their windshield."
Sam squeezed his shoulder. "I've always wondered why it's called Sunflower Heights but it's built in a valley."
"It's one of those things you need to live in a gated community to comprehend."
Emmett stopped walking, pulled a second tea light from his pocket, and lit it from the first. The two flames, side by side, made a big difference in the amount of light being cast. Emmett added a third candle, and saw Sam watching him by that candlelight. Handsome. Young. Eager. Practically a stranger, and yet, Sam was right there with him---fully present, in the heart of the hill, creating new memories...a new history.
When Sam leaned in for another kiss, Emmett held the candles off to one side. He felt like he'd never been so aware of himself and his body before: the weight of the saucer and the sense that it might be tilted; the flicker and dance of candlelight throwing subtle patterns against his closed eyelids; the cool caress that played over his teeth when Sam drew breath in response to a daring sweep of his tongue.
The kiss ended and they both paused, close, silent, until finally Emmett couldn't resist saying, "I really, really want to go back." He slid his free hand around Sam's waist and let his fingertips graze the waistband of Sam's jeans.
Sam placed a small, fleeting kiss on Emmett's lips, like a promise. "We'll see what's here...then we'll go back upstairs."
Emmett no longer cared where the flashlight had rolled off to. He practically charged down the passage---which, seriously, was much longer than he'd imagined, maybe a quarter of a mile, maybe more---or maybe it just felt that way.
The floor sloped down, and the slightly gritty texture turned slimy. "Groundwater?" Emmett wondered out loud.
"The air doesn't seem so dry here."
Emmett strained to make out a jumble of dark-on-dark at the edge of the candles' light. "Maybe it has something to do with that cave-in up ahead. Probably cracked the pipe to some banker's Jacuzzi. Now can we go...?" He almost said "to bed" but he caught himself just in time.
Sam slipped by Emmett and inched up ahead. "I don't think it's a cave-in. It looks like it wasn't finished, is all. And there on the wall, right before it. Is that...a door?"
Emmett was about to reply, but a flash of white caught his eye, Sam's white shirt, striking in the candlelight against the darkness, and a dark vest. He'd been wearing a vest under his jean jacket? It wasn't the sort of fashion statement Emmett would have expected from him. And it seemed like an odd time to ditch his jacket, given the obvious lack of coat hooks in the tunnel. "What happened to your...?"
Sam clutched the Mason jar to his chest and pressed his ear to the door. "I don't think I hear anything."
"Sam---"
Sam turned the latch. The door swung outward. "There's a room," he whispered. "It's full of stuff." And without even waiting for Emmett, he went in.
Emmett rolled his eyes, but he followed. He supposed, in all fairness, that they were so far down the tunnel he was no longer technically the property owner, and Sam had as much right to plow ahead as he did.
"Full of stuff" was an understatement. The room was a small storage chamber about eight feet square, and every wall was floor to ceiling kegs and crates. Everything was wood------no plastic, no Styrofoam, no corrugated cardboard or packing peanuts. Emmett raised the saucer to get a better look at the merchandise...and found it wasn't a saucer at all.
It was a lantern.
"What are you wearing?" Sam said.
Emmett's groin dropped. Literally. It was as if his boxer briefs were there one moment, gone the next. He barely resisted the urge to cup his free-falling testicles in his hand. "Me? What are you wearing?"
Sam looked down at himself like he'd never seen a vest before and clung to his Mason jar for dear life. "How'd you do that?"
"I didn't do anything." In hopes of being more subtle about settling himself, Emmett grabbed for the waistband of his jeans---and found it halfway up his ribcage. And he was wearing suspenders. "Okay, I'm hallucinating. There was a gas leak, and we're both sprawled out on the basement floor with spiders in our hair thinking we're a couple of treasure hunters in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe Rosemary'll find us before it's too late."
Sam patted the front of his vest. "Wool." He reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. "This is real. Why would I hallucinate having thirty-eight cents in my pocket?"
Emmett reached into his own pocket. His yielded up a handkerchief and a pocket watch. "I'll bet I even hallucinated that I kissed you."
"I think I was the one who kissed you."
"Now I know I'm dreaming."
The sound of a door slamming cut short any additional argument as to who kissed whom. A rectangle of light appeared on the far wall---a door---and the illumination shone in from beneath it like a pale liquid had just spilled on the floor. Sam and Emmett looked at one another. And then the sound of heavy footsteps carried through the closed door.
Emmett whispered, "Oh my God, we're in someone's house."
"No we're not. It's a store or a business. No one keeps this much stuff," Sam gestured with his Mason jar toward the ceiling-high stack of crates, "in their...house." He stared at the jar, puzzled. The nails, screws and bolts were gone. It held water instead.
While Sam and Emmett looked at the jar in bewilderment, the door banged open. Emmett squinted against the light that was a dozen times brighter than the glow of the lantern he held.
A man stood in the doorway, so backlit that he was little more than a silhouette. "All clear," he said, no-nonsense and authoritarian. "C'mon out and show us what you got." And he said it so matter-of-factly, too. As if they'd been...expected.
Emmett and Sam stepped out of the storeroom, blinking against the light. The man in high-waisted wool pants and suspenders had a mustache that belonged in a barbershop quartet. He led them into a wood-paneled hallway with a bright bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The smells of pipe tobacco and sweat were thick in the air.
Emmett noticed Sam straining to catch his eye. He stopped gawking at the hallway long enough for Sam to mouth, "What is this?" to him, but all he could do was shrug and try to keep up with the man with the mustache.
The man led them to another room lit by a glaring, bare bulb. Wallpaper covered the plaster from wainscoting to ceiling, and a stark wooden table with a single chair took up most of the space. The man sat. Emmett took that to mean he should remain standing. Among the odds and ends on the table---some books and ledgers, an inkwell, an ash tray---were a pair of shotglasses. The man pulled them to the edge of the table and said, "Well, go ahead and pour."
Sam looked down at the Mason jar like he'd just gotten a shock from it, then he obediently twisted off the top and filled the glasses.
Emmett suspected it wasn't water at all, and his stomach clenched at the thought of being told to drink it---but he needn't have worried. The man with the mustache struck a wooden match and lit one of the shots, then pulled a long chain to turn off the light. A tiny flame shone bright against the darkness. "Burns blue," the man said. "Pure enough."
Emmett gave Sam's arm a covert squeeze. What if it hadn't? Then it would've come to fisticuffs. Or tarring and feathering. Or whatever happened when someone was displeased, wherever they were. Whenever they were.
"You got the terms?" the man said.
Emmett and Sam looked at each other. Sam patted down his pockets. Emmett did the same. Pocket watch. Handkerchief. But in the other pocket...a folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it to try to determine whether it actually contained "terms," or whether it was a shopping list for Moxie, Blackjack gum and cod liver oil.
Mustache Man snatched it out of his hand. "The less you know about it, the better." He glanced at it himself, holding the paper at arm's length like he was in sore need of bifocals. "You can take a room upstairs while we sort this out and give your boss an answer. Go catch the end of Amos and Andy...and don't think about wandering around. Folks'll remember this one here for sure." He nodded towards Sam. "That beats all. Kid like you running gin. You could probably score a basketball scholarship from the Jayhawks."
"Bum knee," Sam said.
It was the first thing either of them said, and it appeared to have been the right thing. Mustache Man grunted sympathetically, then led them up a narrow back staircase and into a drab room with a pair of narrow beds, a pair of narrow chairs, a single narrow window, and a radio that was the size of a major appliance.
"Make yourselves comfortable," Mustache Man said, with a distinct undertone of "don't go anywhere." He closed the door. The deadbolt clicked.
Emmett and Sam stared at each other. Emmett was tempted to continue along the lines of, "where are we" and "when are we" and "what the heck happened to my underwear," but Sam looked just as spooked as he felt. "Any ideas?" he ventured.
Sam crossed the room to the window, hooked a finger behind the windowshade, then lifted it away enough to get a look outside. He went pale and let the shade drop. "It's the same out there."
Emmett hadn't planned on sitting on any of the furniture, since utilizing the objects around him would seem to indicate his corroboration that something real was happening to him, but his knees felt too rubbery to support him. He sat on the edge of one of the beds. Springs creaked.
A distinctly uncomfortable lump pressed into his right buttock. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a newsboy cap, and fought the urge to put it on for the sake of being ironic. He tried to settle down, but something in the opposite pocket jabbed him on the other side. He pulled it out. It was cash. Not just any cash, but a huge, fat roll of it. He showed it to Sam and set it on the nightstand. "Just in case there was any doubt we've reincarnated as a couple of thugs."
"This can't be reincarnation. That would put us in the future."
"Retrocarnation, then. Reincarnation's redheaded stepchild."
Sam paced, though the room didn't really allow for much pacing from someone with as long a stride as he possessed. "Kansas started Prohibition in the 1880's, but it was legal to go buy liquor in Nebraska until 1919."
"You just happen to know that."
"History major. So given that we're probably sometime before the Twenty-First Amendment, and the fact that there's not war propaganda everywhere, I'd guess we're sometime in the twenties."
"I thought the Roaring Twenties were supposed to be fun."
"Maybe not so much in Kansas."
Sam peeled off his glasses so he could knuckle his eyes. The earpieces were wrapped painfully around his ears. He supposed he should be grateful he hadn't been wearing his contacts when they dropped down the laundry chute of time.
"Why doesn't he want us going outside?" Sam said.
"I think we're doing something especially illegal." Emmett looked pointedly at the roll of cash, and tried to recall if he'd ever broken any laws quite so flagrantly before. Occasional scores of pot in college, piggybacking onto his neighbor's unprotected wireless network back when he'd lived in a duplex. As outlaws went, Emmett made a pretty poor showing.
"I wish we could go out and just walk around. Maybe grab a newspaper. See what there is to see."
Emmett gestured toward the radio. "You want to immerse yourself in the hallucination? Be my guest."
Sam turned on the hulking behemoth. It actually needed to warm up before it would play. Emmett supposed there were tubes involved. And maybe a bit of sorcery. They joined the station in the middle of a radio play---which was hokey and over-emoted and impossible to follow. Emmett's fingers itched for a remote control so he could pull up a menu and read the date, time and program guide.
Sam joined Emmett on the bed. The springs protested even more loudly. "One thing I can say for whatever's happening...you look pretty slick in that outfit."
Emmett tried to look down at himself. White shirt, plaid trousers and gray suspenders that attached to his waistband with buttons. "Yeah. Real dapper."
Sam leaned in, cupped the back of Emmett's head, and drew him into a kiss. Their lips met. Sam's tongue brushed Emmett's lower lip and tried to elicit a response. "I think," Emmett whispered, "that this is at least as illegal as bootlegging. And ten times as taboo."
"I know." Sam kissed him again, deeply this time, sliding his tongue into Emmett's mouth and sinking his fingers into Emmett's hair. They kissed, long and hard, until Emmett's cock, totally unconstrained by whatever his trusty boxer briefs had turned into, rose tall and proud inside his roomy plaid trousers. "I never realized plaid was so hot."
"But the Mustache Man---"
Sam got up, wedged one of the chairs under the doorknob, then turned to face Emmett with a look in his eyes that made it clear he knew exactly how devastating he could be, if he put his mind to it. He'd just been going easy on Emmett...so far. "Don't you like me?"
Emmett did his best not to glance down at the peak in his trousers. "I like you more than cosmopolitans and free HBO and scratch-off lottery tickets put together. But this place..." this time, he thought, "is freaking me out."
"We can't go out and look around---not unless we want someone to catch us climbing down the side of the building on tied-together sheets." Sam sat down and the bedsprings squalled again. He slipped an arm around Emmett. "So why not? Why not have our first time be memorable?"
Emmett did have to admit---he liked the sound of "first time." Not only was there something intrinsically sweet and even innocent about the phrase itself, but it implied that Sam was looking forward to additional times as well.
Sam rose from the bed and knelt between Emmett's knees. He took both of Emmett's hands in his. "I'll bet your house is awesome now."
"If it even is my house. We're working for The Boss now, remember?"
Sam turned one of Emmett's hands palm up and kissed the inside of his wrist. A thrill shot up Emmett's arm and down his spine. "I'll bet it takes them a while to draft their terms." The words were cool against the trace of moisture Sam's kiss had left on Emmett's wrist. "They don't have computers to type 'em up on. Or calculators to check the figures, for that matter."
"If we get caught, I think they're gonna lynch us. Whether our moonshine's good or not."
Sam opened Emmett's fly. Emmett might have had reservations, but his cock didn't. He supposed the plaid even made it look bigger. Sam wrapped his fingers around the base and admired it for a moment. "So you were uncut before...right?'
Emmett rolled his eyes.
"Just checking." Sam ran his tongue along the foreskin, then eased it back. If tweed-wearing thugs did burst in, Emmett decided, they'd know. Even if he pulled his pants up and Sam and he jumped apart, they'd know he'd been getting a BJ from the tall kid with the big, brown eyes. But while he assumed that such a realization would have made his interest flag, exactly the opposite happened. The danger---the excitement---made everything intensify.
Sam's perfect, wet tongue slid over Emmett's vulnerable cockhead with such breathtaking exquisiteness it sent Emmett spiraling into the place where libido crushed ego and all thought centered on his dick. "But I want you to get off too," he managed, somehow. He was surprised he even remembered what words were.
Sam fumbled one-handed with the waistband of his woolen trousers. "Seeing you like this...I'm halfway there already." Emmett's glasses were beside him on the bed, and he didn't want to risk losing an ear by attempting to put them back on at that very moment, but he could see well enough to tell that Sam was hung. And that if he'd been uncircumcised before the secret door, it was no longer the case. Given that Sam handled himself like his equipment was entirely familiar, Emmett figured everyone's body parts had escaped whatever mojo transformed their clothing.
Sam turned his attentions back to Emmett. This time, once he wet Emmett's cockhead he took the whole thing into his hot, wet mouth. Emmett groaned, and when his eyes wanted to close, he forced himself to watch---because it was a turn-on, seeing Sam kneeling between his legs in that vest, surrounded by the drab grays and browns of the rest of the room with the inane radio show playing in the background.
Sam tongued and then sucked, tongued and then sucked, all the while jacking the base of Emmett's cock to bring him off fast and dirty, and eventually Emmett couldn't watch anymore. He sank his fingers into Sam's hair, threw his head back and closed his eyes.
Release was intense and sudden. Emmett clamped down on whatever sound he'd almost made, and it came out as more of a strangled gasp. Sam made a noise of approval around Emmett's cock while it shot. He's swallowing, Emmett thought, and like everything else about the encounter, it was primal and intense...and hot.
Sam pulled away, sat back on his heels, and stroked himself fast and hard for both of them to see. If they'd had male pinups in the thirties (and for all Emmett knew, maybe they had...but he'd never seen any) they would have looked like Sam---lean and handsome, cheeks flushed, lips swollen from giving head, and that big, thick cock shiny-tipped and ready to shoot any second.
"Gonna come," he breathed, and his spine arched and stiffened. A glistening, milky strand painted the rag rug at his knees, and another. A third, with less force behind it, rolled down his knuckles. Emmett took in Sam's expression, eyes closed, lips parted, pure bliss.
Sam opened his eyes. He looked a bit dazed. Emmett dug in his pocket, came up with the handkerchief, and passed it over. Sam wiped his hand. He stared at the handkerchief for a moment, then gave it back.
Amos 'n' Andy segued to a jingle---you'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent---and still the Mustache Man hadn't come to retrieve them. Emmett and Sam lay in each others' arms on one of the narrow beds, both keeping still so as to prevent any telltale creaking.
"When we first met, I wasn't exactly sure you were out," Emmett said. What he actually meant was that he hadn't even known Sam was gay---but he didn't know how well that observation would be received.
"I am."
"Before...when you said you screwed up...I hope it didn't mean there was some big melodrama about getting disinherited because someone figured out you're into men."
Sam smiled---a melancholy smile---and his gaze turned inward. "Uh...no. Although my mother tried to make it about that, because I think she's always been so disappointed that she tries to blame every problem I've ever had on the way I'm wired. Like I have any choice. Like if I just tried hard enough, I could...." He traced the contour of Emmett's cheekbone with his fingertip while he gathered his thoughts. "Well, anyway. My live-in boyfriend 'borrowed' a term paper from my hard drive and Topeka State expelled us both. But I was there on a full ride scholarship, and not only did they revoke it, but they charged me for the three years I'd been there."
"They can do that?"
"That's what the collection agency tells me."
Emmett didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry."
"I'm at peace with it now, mostly. Jeff figured he wouldn't get caught since we had different professors, but I guess they run everything through some kind of plagiarism-detection software nowadays. I think he was more devastated than I was. And I've been chipping away at the debt for the past two years. I think I can pay it down in another three, or maybe less, if I can pick up another part-time job." He grinned, a bit forced. "And then I can move out. If we ever get back."
If? "When we get back," Emmett said, "you don't have to go sit in that candy store after work just for the sake of having somewhere to go. Unless you're one of those weirdoes who prefers the scent of chocolate to the refined aroma of sour milk and cabbage."
Sam ran his cool fingertips down Emmett's cheek. "The chocolate smell does get a little cloying after the first half hour or so."
On the radio a gunfight ended, and a smooth-talking ad man came on extolling the virtues of Irium in fighting tooth decay for fifteen cents. "I'm really relieved I didn't bring my toothbrush," Emmett said.
Sam looked baffled---and not by the prospect of getting something called "Irium" in his mouth. "Fifteen cents? Emmett, how much money is in that roll you have?"
Emmett pulled out The Wad. There was a twenty on the outside, probably for show. He'd be lucky if it was wrapped around something other than plain newsprint. He unrolled it and saw another. And another. "Let's see...twenty, forty, sixty...." The next bill was a hundred.
They counted it out, slowly, together. Two-thousand, three hundred sixty dollars in all. A respectable wad even by normal standards. But in whatever year it was? "I think you can buy a house for that kind of cash," Sam whispered.
"No. No way."
"Yeah. If it's after 1929, we're talking Great Depression. You can get breakfast for a nickel and a pair of shoes for a buck."
Emmett considered his shoes. They were heavy and a bit scuffed, though they were broken-in enough that at least they didn't pinch.
"We should go spend it," Sam said.
Emmett raised an eyebrow.
"Why not? It's your money, right? It was in your pocket. Why not have some fun while we're here?" He glanced at the rumpled bedspread. "Uh...more fun, I mean."
Emmett hoped Sam wouldn't ask him when the last time was he had fun. Present circumstances not included. "It is a lot of money, but unless they've got their mega-radios turned up to eleven, I think they'll hear us breaking down the door."
"What if we don't go back, not right away. What if we just pretend? We stay in that tunnel and sneak back out a while later. We'll need to be careful; I think if we get too close to your house, our clothes will change back---and the money will probably go with them."
"Whatever happened, it didn't happen all at once. I saw that vest on you in the tunnel." Emmett relived the feeling of his balls dropping. "My clothes finished changing in the storeroom."
"Okay. I have a plan."
Emmett stared at Sam's earnest young face and tried to imagine himself saying no, let's go back to our awful little lives without even seeing what it's like to pull out a big wad of cash---with a flourish, of course---and living the high life. And he had to admit that even he wasn't that much of a wet blanket. So they hashed out their plan, and they waited for the Mustache Man.
They were staring at the radio in dismay over the political incorrectness of Amos 'n' Andy when he tromped up the hall and unlocked the deadbolt. "I'd tell you that hootch is no good to try and talk you down, but you and me both know I'd be lying. Fact is, times are tough. Don't even know where your boss found enough good corn for a batch like this, and I don't care. But I can't give him what I don't have. I scraped together a counter-offer. You tell him it's the best I can do---and the best he'll get anywhere around these parts."
"Yes, sir," Sam mumbled. Emmett didn't trust himself to say anything, for fear he'd accidentally mention Neil Armstrong, the Internet, or Dippin' Dots.
He kept his eyes peeled as they were hustled back toward the basement. The runner had telltale threadbare tracks on it. He could guess which way was out just by looking at the carpet.
"I'll leave the door to the storeroom open for you so you can bring me his answer, but don't get any funny ideas about cleaning me out. Nothing but salt pork and firewood in there. And besides. I know where he's staying."
"Yes, sir," Sam repeated. Emmett lit his lantern from a box of wooden matches not unlike the ones he kept near his stove, and he and Sam dutifully ducked into the tunnel.
Sam crept to the bend, checking and double-checking his vest with each step. Emmett cupped his genitals to his body---surreptitiously, he hoped---in anticipation of his boxer briefs' return. It didn't come. Emmett relinquished his family jewels so he could turn up the lantern and look down the tunnel as far as he could see. There was no finish line, no ribbon strung across it that read "Welcome Back to the Present."
"Floor's dry," Sam said. "If we're really gonna do this, I think we shouldn't go any farther." He sat down on the packed earth floor, rested his back against the wall, and settled in to wait.
"Do you think there's really a 'Boss'?"
"I guess so. Someone must've put the moonshine in my hand."
"What if there's some big, scary farmer on the original side of the tunnel and he blows us away with a double-barrelled shotgun 'cos he doesn't know who the heck we are?"
Sam considered that idea. "I don't think so. I've got a feeling this tunnel goes back to the basement. Your basement. In our time." He leaned in for a kiss---and it was easier now, now that they'd done so much more than that. There was a rightness to Sam that Emmett hadn't felt in ages with someone new. He turned and put an arm around Sam, and the scratchy wool of the vest even felt right. They kissed with the laziness of two new lovers with time to kill, and when they finished the kiss, Sam whispered, "If we don't go back, if we turn around and sneak back out the thirties end of the tunnel, nothing says we have to stay in Kansas."
That hadn't been the plan. The plan had been to wait until Mustache Man was probably asleep, slip past him, spend some money, and sneak back in when the coast was clear. Emmett expected himself to be shocked. He wasn't. "We could ride a riverboat down to New Orleans and gorge ourselves on chicory coffee and beignets before Hurricane Katrina. We can sail down to Havana, lounge around in Bermuda shorts and smoke cigars before the Bay of Pigs. We can see the Twin Towers."
"Those were built in the seventies."
Emmett's heart did that funny little leap it had when Sam had first kissed him---yes, it was Sam who'd instigated the whole thing. Emmett had always wanted to be adventurous. He just needed a little help. "Okay. I figure I'll be...what? In my seventies, myself. If I go easy on the Cuban cigars and beignets, I could visit the World Trade Center."
"Or Europe. Think of everything that got bombed in World War II. We could go see it before it's gone."
Sam rested his head on Emmett's shoulder. "We could see the Eiffel Tower."
Paris.
Emmett gazed down the tunnel into the blackness that led back to the horrible house. It seemed like the choice should be obvious. Sam. Paris. A world where he'd be safe from emailed jokes with three-page headers, at least for another sixty years or so. It was an obvious choice, actually. It was just more painful than he'd ever imagined.
His family, he hoped, would eventually get over the shock and the grief. And Rosemary would have Paris to help her forget. Emmett would have worried about the news ruining her trip---but, come on. It was Paris. She'd have plenty of distractions to keep her occupied. "Do you really want to do this?" he asked Sam.
Sam looked up, cupped Emmett's jaw, and pulled him into a slow, sweet kiss.
"I think," Emmett said, "if we want to stay, we've got to prove ourselves. Make sure there's no turning back."
If he'd been expecting Sam to back down from the challenge, he would have been disappointed. "Okay. Let's do it."
The thought of closing the door to one possibility to keep the other open felt so right to Emmett that he didn't even bother shielding himself from the reemergence of his modern underwear. He and Sam strode back toward the basement of the horrible house, not quite side by side (since they wouldn't have fit in the narrow tunnel that way) but as close to it as they could---with Emmett in the lead.
Emmett had hoped they would find something, an old pipe, a scrap of wood, but the tunnel was totally empty. It didn't matter. When they reached the door to the still's hidden room, the ceiling began to rain gravel from the mere vibration of their footsteps. Emmett reached up and touched it. A cascade of dirt sifted down and covered his shoes.
Sam put a hand on his shoulder. "Look."
Emmett looked down. Sam's flashlight lay flush against the tunnel wall, nestled tightly, nearly invisible. Emmett checked his lantern. It felt strange. Like maybe it wasn't a lantern. Maybe it was a plate with three guttering tea lights on it. No. It couldn't be. Emmett told himself he was not holding a plate. You didn't hold a plate dangling under your hand, after all. He closed his eyes and recalled the pendulous feel of the lantern, its heft, its weight---and yes, it was still there. The lantern.
The door to the past hadn't closed---but that didn't mean it would remain open.
Emmett gave Sam a shove toward the Mustache Man's storeroom. "Go."
Sam hesitated.
"I'll be right behind you."
Sam's shoes scraped against the gritty floor as he took one step, then another, and finally, he began to run.
Emmett made a fist and punched into the ceiling. A hole opened as if a thin crust had been all that was holding it together, and gallons of dirt, wheelbarrows full, poured in through the hole. He coughed and staggered back. The lantern---definitely a lantern---swayed in his grasp. He punched into the ceiling again, and clawed out a handful of dirt.
Rocks began to rain down, and sharp-edged shards of concrete. Emmett backed up, twisted his foot on a hunk of debris and nearly went down. But he caught his balance and knocked a few more holes in the ceiling.
"Emmett, come on! It's gonna give!"
Emmett strained to hear among the clatter of the rocks and dirt. Maybe there was something, he decided. A groan. A shift.
The tunnel floor was uneven with dirt, now, and Emmett had to crouch to keep from opening even bigger holes in the ceiling with his head. The grit in the air was thick like smoke. Emmett climbed a few yards toward Sam and opened up a few more holes, then looked back over his shoulder. He searched for the flashlight, but saw the spot where it had been was now covered in scree. Even as rocks pinged off his shoulders, something inside Emmett lifted, and he knew he was ready to embrace the past. His future.
The ceiling rumbled.
"Emmett!"
Emmett turned toward Sam, and ran.
Emmett struggled for breath. His back was pressed against the wall, Sam was sprawled on his chest, and the air was stale.
A stroll on deck to get the blood flowing and work out the kinks in his back was probably long overdue.
However, a stroll on deck would entail prying himself from the bunk, putting on clothes and leaving their cabin---and he'd grown incredibly fond of the cabin. He settled his chin on Sam's head instead, and told himself he'd take that walk...later.
"Okay," Sam said. "Try this one: Have you seen my cousin? He is tall."
Emmett wracked his brain. "Avez-vous vu, uh...mon coussin?"
"That's great...if you're looking for your pillow."
Emmett sighed. "You know, even if by some miracle I managed to ask the right question, chances are I'll never be able to follow the answer. I should have signed up for Smile and Nod 101."
"And there's that legendary Emmett Russo optimism. Who hooked up with an optometrist that got his prescription right?"
"After five sets of glasses I couldn't see through...."
"At, what, ten bucks apiece? And who found some great underwear?"
"Which I have to wear inside-out so the elastic doesn't pinch."
"So I'm sure you'll pick up enough words to get by. Millions of people speak French every day. Why not you?"
Why not Emmett? Certainly far stranger things than the acquisition of a new language had happened to him. In the months since The Moonshine, as the two of them had come to call it---because being any more specific about the impulsive journey they'd taken together made their heads spin, and they'd decided it was healthier not to examine it too closely---Sam had proven himself shrewd in the art of forcing Emmett to let go of his preconceptions.
Time moves forward. There was one preconception they couldn't help but slough off. And Emmett did his best to cling; he woke every morning figuring he'd be alone in his horrible house with nothing but the smell of cabbage for company. But one day as they were walking by a soup kitchen in Poughkeepsie, he caught an actual whiff of boiled cabbage, and it turned out it smelled very little like his basement stairs. Go figure.
"I think I have a mental block about this whole 'cousin' thing," Emmett said.
"Just until we see what's safe."
"Come on, we're two Americans traveling abroad. Of course we'd stick together like glue. No one would expect anything else."
"I know, I know. But we've got to be careful."
"That's a remark about the last conversation I killed, isn't it? How was I to know Velcro hasn't been invented yet? Here's the really cool thing about this trip---if I slip up again, we can blame it on me saying something stupid because I'm an American, have a good laugh, and no one will know the difference."
Sam brushed a kiss against Emmett's chest, absently, in the way of a lover who'd been with him so long that the small gestures had become unconscious, like breathing. "I guess we can get away with calling one another mon ami."
Emmett hooked his heel around Sam's calf and drew Sam's leg between his. Their bodies entwined. "I'm sure we'll figure out the safe neighborhoods soon enough. It's Gay Paree, right?"
"Please tell me you didn't dream up this whole trip based on a scene from Victor/Victoria."
"No...but you have to admit, there'd be a certain je ne sais quoi to taking a cue from Julie Andrews about reinventing ourselves."
"If worse comes to worse, I suppose you could always shrug and speak in French clichés." Sam raised his head and Emmett captured his lips. Their tongues twined in a languorous exploration.
As their arousal began to burgeon, Sam turned his face away and brushed the tickle of Emmett's mustache from his upper lip. Emmett had offered repeatedly to shave, but Sam pointed out it had taken him over two months to grow an authentic looking 'stache, and insisted it helped him blend in. More importantly, Emmett suspected the fashions of the day might have been a guilty pleasure for his beloved history major, though he never called Sam on it.
When Emmett caught his own refection in a mirror, he felt like a vacationer getting his photo taken in a tourist trap of an old-timey portrait studio---but since the locals never looked at him funny, at least not until he opened his mouth and made a remark about Velcro or called something "cool," he figured it was in his best interest to let the barber do whatever he thought was best.
If Sam happened to get off on the feel of a big mustache brushing the base of his cock, all the better.
"How about this?" Sam murmured against Emmett's jaw. "Have you seen my friend? He is tall."
"Avez-vous vu mon ami? Il est grand et beau. Now here's one for you." Emmett trailed his fingers over the bare curve of Sam's hip, thought for a moment, and said, "Waiter, I'd like to order the fries."
JCPBooks e-books are priced by the word count of the story only. Any end matter or sample chapters are a bonus!
Jordan Castillo Price wouldn't mind vacationing in the past, but she wouldn't want to live there. She's sure she would languish without her iPod and her Post-Its.
I have several friends whom I pester for story ideas. My friend with the very old farmhouse was my brainstormer for this story, and our conversation went something like this:
"I need to figure out where a bad smell would come from in an old farmhouse."
"A dead animal."
"Okay, but I don't want a dead animal in the scene. Is there anything else you can think of? Some other weird smell?"
"...A dead animal."
"Right. Something other than a dead animal."
"Gosh, I'm sorry. That's all I can think of. Dead animal."
Luckily, after I grilled her for several more hours she remembered the rotten cap on the pipe.
I found out in another torture session that this particular friend has also been struck by a weird phenomenon called ball lightning. I've yet to find a story to insert that into---but never fear, there's plenty more stories in these fingertips just itching to get out!
Other People's Weddings by Josh Lanyon
"I'd rather be dead than wear this!"
Griff dropped the latest issue of Elegant Bride as Madeline Dalrymple burst from the dressing room cubicle, shot across the showroom floor, and slammed out the front glass door of Venetian Bridal Gowns. Her exit bore an unfortunate resemblance to a big purple balloon flying wild after being jabbed by a pin.
Mallory, Madeline's sister, appeared at the mouth of the hall to the dressing rooms, looking exasperated.
Sometimes Griff suspected that brides deliberately picked the worst possible dresses for their bridesmaids and maids of honor. Or maybe it wasn't deliberate. Maybe it was subconscious, a paying back of old scores, a testing of true devotion. The Watters & Watters strapless sheath of lilac layered over hot pink chiffon would have flattered Mallory's tall, slim, brunette beauty, but it just made short, plump Madeline look like a Purple People-Eater after a good meal.
"Well?" Mallory said to Griff.
"Well?" Griff returned blankly, with an uneasy look at Sasha, co-owner of Venetian Bridal Gowns. Sasha raised her shoulders infinitesimally. After twenty years of dealing with brides and bridesmaids, she didn't bother trying to understand, she rode the whirlwind the best she could---and cashed in at the end of the ride.
"Go after her," Mallory ordered. "Are you my wedding planner or not?"
Mallory's idea of Griff's job description was a cross between a personal assistant and confidante. By the second week of accepting the job of coordinating Mallory and Joe Palmer's nuptials, Griff knew he'd made a deal with the devil. Possibly literally. But the Dalrymples were Binbell's wealthiest family, and Dalrymple-Palmer wedding was going to be the social event of the season---plus he needed the money. In these days of economic hardship, prospective brides might not be willing to cut costs on dresses or cakes or hair stylists, but hapless wedding planners all too often fell under the heading Optional.
This, however, was different. Griff was experienced enough to know Lord help the mister who comes between a bride and her sister. "I don't think it's my place---"
"Of course it's your place," Mallory snapped. "Whose place would it be? You need to get her in line before she wrecks my wedding."
"She's still wearing her three hundred and forty-five dollar bridesmaid dress," Sasha pointed out mildly.
Now and again co-ownership seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Griff choked back words he would regret once he started juggling utility bills on the space next door, and pushed out through the glass door. The jaunty notes of the Wedding March followed before the door closed and cut them off.
The L-shaped strip mall, locally known as Wedding Aisle, consisted of Venetian Bridal Gowns, Skerry Weddings, and Guy's Tuxedos. On the hook of the "L" was Betty Ann's Crafts and Supplies. It was, as they said, a match made in heaven.
Maddy's blue Sebring convertible was still parked between Griff's classic red VW Beetle and Mallory's BMW Z4, but there was no sign of the runaway bridesmaid. He ducked his head inside Skerry Weddings, but Mallory was not hiding out there. He walked around the buildings to the end of the strip mall.
Maddy was walking up and down the asphalt drive behind Guy's, smoking a cigarette. She looked up with raccoon eyes at Griff's approach and snorted. She had stopped crying, which was a huge relief.
"Fuck, Skerry. Don't you have any pride?"
"Look." Griff spoke awkwardly. "Mallory's sorry if she didn't seem sympathetic, but it's too late to change the dresses. This is the final fitting."
"She's not sorry," Maddy spat out. "She wants me to look like a fucking circus freak. She deliberately picked the dress that would make me look worst. You were there. You saw. She could have picked the dress I liked, but oh no! It had to be something only her and her anorexic friends could wear."
Griff managed not to sigh. It had seemed that way to him too, but experience had taught him the sister dynamic was a weird one. A decade of organizing other people's weddings had made him very glad he'd been born an only child.
He said patiently, "Mallory's wedding is the most important day of a woman's life, so naturally she wants everything to be perfect. The way she always imagined it. You'll see when your turn comes."
Maddy's tear streaked face screwed into an expression of disgust. "First bullet point: I am never getting married. And if I did get married, it wouldn't be in one of these big fat geek weddings. Second bullet point: her wedding day is not the most important day of a woman's life. Do you honestly believe that shit?"
Er...no. Not really. Not exactly. He believed in marriage, obviously. Believed in commitment. A wedding was an important symbol of commitment, a significant milestone, but the single most important one? No. How could it be when most women married men, and most men didn't consider their wedding the most important day of their lives?
Then again, he arranged weddings for a living so....
He was still trying to think of a compromise answer when Maddy said scornfully, "Don't you find it ironic that all these people who despised you and made fun of you in high school hire you to do their weddings?"
Griff flushed. He said defensively, "High school was...a long time ago. Everybody does things they regret."
"They don't regret anything they did," Maddy retorted. "They thought you were a joke then and they think you're a joke now. The gay wedding planner. They're laughing at you."
This attack caught him off balance---not least because he and Maddy were not close. There had been three years between them in school, and whether Maddy believed it or not, her family and her money ensured she had never truly been the social outcast she imagined. For a moment he was right back there. Right back in Mrs. Dodge's tenth grade biology class, struggling not to cry because no one wanted him for a lab partner. No, because Hammer Sorensen had humiliated him once again with a cruel but accurate imitation of Griff's light voice and slightly affected speaking manner. The horror of breaking down in front of the goggling, giggling class. Like falling in the snow in front of a pack of wolves.
He could practically smell the formaldehyde. Hear the whispers.... But he wasn't fifteen years old anymore, and he hadn't cried since that day. Griff said shortly, "I don't think anyone would trust a day as important or an event as expensive as a wedding to someone they considered a joke. Are you coming back inside?"
Maddy raised her brows as though this sudden display of spine was unexpected. She flicked her cigarette to the asphalt and crushed it beneath her kitten heel. "I don't have a choice. Mommy Dearest will disinherit me again if I spoil Mal's big day."
True. Dilys Dalrymple's tight clutch on the Dalrymple purse strings was the ace up Griff's sleeve. He was leery of playing it, though, not least because it would require him having to deal with Dilys. She was more alarming than both of her daughters put together.
As she walked past him Maddy said, "You're good at what you do, Skerry. That's true. But my sister can afford the best in the entire country. Maybe you should ask yourself why she wanted you?"
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