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A Pinch of Cool
She gingerly stepped out from under her shelter and into the rain again, hoping this was worth it. She walked right up to the Georgian treasure, and looked inside. It actually had a foul odor wafting out through an open side window. She backed away, holding her nose.
Whoa! Mom, what have you got in there?
The van was even worse than she could have imagined. Her mother couldn’t possibly own it. There wasn’t any stove.
Mya peeked in a side window, putting her face right up to the glass, but she didn’t see anybody. Empty cans and jars, clothes and some very expensive-looking professional video equipment littered the inside. There were only two bucket seats in the front. Everything else had been ripped out.
Wait.
Somebody or something moved in the very back of the van. She couldn’t make out if it was man or beast because the lighting wasn’t quite right. She cupped her hand around her eyes to shield out any backlighting.
That’s when a white flash of huge teeth, attached to a head the size of an adult bear, growled and leaped right at her. Mya jumped back, screamed and fell right out of her Miu Miu heels, landing in a nice warm puddle.
“Damn!”
“Voodoo, sit,” a male voice said from behind her.
“Excuse me?” Mya said.
The crazed animal inside the van immediately sat down, but the barking didn’t stop.
Mya wanted to run for her life, but her cute little shoes sat right in front of the dreaded van. She refused to leave without her new shoes. They pulled her entire outfit together.
“I was talking to my dog,” he said as he stood in front of her offering his hand to help her up.
“I knew that,” she told him, trying for some calculated sarcasm.
She didn’t want his help. Instead, she stood up all on her own, and even though she was now entirely drenched, with a very wet bottom, she still had her dignity. Kind of.
“That animal is vicious,” Mya shouted. “He should be put down. Destroyed. What’s the matter with you leaving him in there to scare somebody to death?”
“He’s very protective of his home. He must have thought of you as a threat,” the Voodoo owner offered.
Mya could barely see him. Her bangs covered her eyes, but from what little she could make out, he looked somewhat familiar. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to figure out where she’d met him before.
“Me? A threat? To whom?” she asked.
“To me?”
“To you! Somehow I think it’s the other way around.”
“Why? I wasn’t the one who was peeking in windows. They have laws for that you know.”
He had a point, but Mya was never going to admit she was actually looking for her mother in that junk heap.
The rain eased to a drizzle, and when Mya finally got a good look at him he was almost cute, with golden-chestnut hair—somewhat curly—and piercing gray-green eyes and a slight grin on his lips. He had a fairly large nose with a slight roundness to the tip, but it fit his boyish face, and if he were cleaned up, he might actually be handsome…in that nerdy, street vendor sort of way. The man desperately needed a shave. Not that facial hair was bad. As a matter of fact, it was coming back in, but it had to be kept neat under the chin. His wasn’t. And his hair could have used a trim, much too long, with ringlets surrounding his face and ears. Of course, he had an amazing build under that wrinkled blue parka he wore, but who’s looking.
SO THE GUY was a hot nerd. It’s not like she was going to start dancing around a pole or anything. Oh wait, she didn’t have a pole…yet.
“I wasn’t peeking in your window,” Mya corrected.
“Oh?” He stood there staring at her from his six-foot-something vantage point, his arms folded up tight across his chest. Glaring.
All right, so she had a thing for tall guys, seeing as how she was a mighty five foot five, but they had to be tall, cool guys, and this one totally lacked the cool part. He would simply never do.
She immediately stopped herself from staring. “Well, all right. Maybe I was, but not the way you mean. I was merely trying to see who was inside.”
“And the reason being?”
Did he ever stop with the questions?
He was enough to infuriate her normally calm disposition. She folded her arms across her chest as well.
“You have my name taped to your window. I suspect you were mistakenly sent here by my mother.”
“Holy shit! Mya? Mya Strano? It’s me. Eric. Franko’s son. Eric Baldini. Don’t you remember me?”
That evil little boy had grown up, and now he drove a piece of junk and owned a killer dog and as incredible as it seemed, he was there to give her a ride home.
Holy shit!
2
SO THERE THEY STOOD , arms locked around each other like they were old friends, buddies, soul mates or even lovers. To the world humming around them they were just another kissing couple at the airport, with one of them either going or coming.
However, Mya had a different take on the whole thing. Hers was more of the startled variety. One of those times when out of a crowd of people a stranger calls out your name and you try your best to recognize this person who says he or she knows you.
Okay, it wasn’t quite like that, but it should have been for all the contact they’d had over the years. Let’s see, the last real memory Mya had of Eric, they were seven years old and he had just thrown a huge bucket of water over her sand castle, completely destroying it, on a beach in Malibu. Of course, she had retaliated by wrecking his sand castle by simply bulldozing over it with her sweet little feet.
Yes, and over the years she had seen pictures of him at various stages of growth and accomplishments, but who can keep up with all that growing and changing? She was too busy with her own hormones and accolades to worry about Eric’s, the boy who tormented her and she loved to torment back.
Eric had moved to Georgia, now the plates make sense, with his mother after his dad and mom had divorced. Even when it had come time to say goodbye to him, which was actually at this very airport, she had stuck out her tongue in defiance. No hugging. No tears. Not even a handshake. Not that seven-year-olds are known for shaking hands, but they could have done something. He could have done something. They never even touched…of course, there was that time out by the green shed when they were playing double-dare, but she didn’t want to think about that now. She was too busy hugging a childhood memory.
Oh wait, she suddenly remembered that they did hold hands in the airport, for a moment, but that didn’t count. They were merely both playing with his ticket when their hands touched. A natural accident.
She had been silly with joy when he moved away. At least for the first few weeks. Then she had missed their arguments and missed having him around to play with. She’d gotten used to all that bickering, all that toy-throwing. She had even tried to convince her mom to let Eric come and live with them, but Eric’s mom wouldn’t let him even fly out to visit his dad.
Mya didn’t know what to say, something that absolutely, positively never happened to her. Even when she was born, her mother said she came out of the womb mumbling and cooing. Yet there she was in the arms of Eric Baldini, who, for some odd reason, made her pulse quicken, and for a brief moment, seemed enormously sexy.
How odd.
“I…I need my shoes,” she mumbled once he let go of their embrace.
He leaned over and her world spun a little as she watched him. Almost as if she’d just been passionately kissed. She took a step back and tripped over her own feet and fell down again, hard on the cement. Now her butt hurt and the fall caused her to bite her own lip. This falling thing was getting entirely too wacky.
When she looked up at him, the rain had completely stopped and the sun surrounded his body, making him appear almost angelic. She half expected to hear birds chirping and a choir singing, but instead a cop said, “There’s no loitering. You’ll have to move on.”
Eric held out his hand. This time she took it. He held her shoes in his other hand. “We better get out of here before he has us towed away. You’re bleeding.” He touched her lip and a tingle shot through her. She sucked her bottom lip inside her mouth and tasted her own salty blood.
“Is it bad?” she asked looking into his eyes.
“No. It stopped.” He smiled. Definitely less nerdy when he smiled. He’d actually grown up into a really handsome man.
Who knew?
“Where’s your stuff?” he asked looking back toward the doors.
An absolute terror swept over her as she slipped her soaking wet shoes on her soaking wet feet. “You don’t actually expect me to get in that thing with that crazed dog and that obnoxious smell do you? And just what is that smell, anyway?”
He opened his mouth.
She held up her hand. “Wait. I don’t want to know. The dog is bad enough.”
“Voodoo? He’s a puppy dog once you get to know him.”
The sun was beginning to dry her clothes, but she had to admit, she was still cold and getting very tired. All she wanted was to go home to Mom’s.
“My mother actually sent you to pick me up?”
He nodded, grinning.
“My mother, who knows I have an unnatural fear of animals with teeth larger than mine, and hate dirt of any kind…that mother sent you?”
“Technically, my dad asked me, but he was calling on behalf of your mom.”
So, they were both in on this little deal. Already they’re trying to fix us up.
Mya thought about her options.
There weren’t any.
Not really. She had no choice but to take a ride from a cute nerd, to whom she was strangely attracted, and had once thrown an entire box of crayons at, hitting him squarely in the head (she wondered if he remembered that). And who came with a man-eating bear of a dog inside a beat-up van.
It could be worse. It could still be raining.
WHEN ERIC’S DAD HAD PHONED HIM to pick up Mya, he pictured a completely different woman standing outside of baggage claim. He honestly believed she would be rather large. She’d been a chubby little girl who stuffed food in her mouth all day long, had short curly hair—Rita always seemed to cut Mya’s hair in strange ultra-short styles—and weird glasses. Mya had worn glasses back then and whenever they’d fight, he would call her Four Eyes, of course.
But the girl in the floral dress with the strawberry hair down to her tiny waist, and a face that could bring the dead to life, wasn’t exactly what he was prepared for. Nor was he prepared for her fear of dogs. Not that most grown men hadn’t walked the other way when Voodoo was around, but her fear was borderline hysteria.
He opened the back of his van and tried to secure Voodoo in his cage, while Mya waited with her luggage on the sidewalk.
“This won’t take but a minute,” Eric told her, but the dog was ornery and wanted to give Mya a friendly welcome nudge. Mya stood as far away as she could. “He wants to say hello,” Eric told her.
“Hi,” she said, waving from her safe vantage point.
“I think he wants to smell you before you get in the van.”
Mya’s left eyebrow went up. He suddenly remembered how she could move each eyebrow independently. When they were about five or six, he thought she was an interplanetary alien because of it, but then he was a big fan of Star Wars.
“You can still do that.”
“Do what?”
“That thing you do with your eyebrows.” He tried to move his eyebrows independently, but couldn’t.
“You remember that?”
“Yeah. It’s not like it’s a common thing.”
“What else do you remember?”
“That you liked peas and spinach. What kind of kid likes peas and spinach?”
“You used to snitch butter out of the fridge and chew on your dad’s vitamin E caps and make yummy sounds.”
“I had a thing for oil.”
It started to rain again, and she still wasn’t in the van.
“You have to let him smell your hand or he’s going to be restless the whole way.”
“Aren’t there enough smells in that van already? Why does he need mine?”
“Dogs like to know who’s around them.”
Mya slowly made her way up to the open door with her hand held out, but he could tell that she was ready to pull it back at any moment. He took hold of it, and she moved up closer. He liked the feel of her skin next to his.
Calm down. There’s no hope here. She’s way out of your league.
Voodoo stuck his nose up to their hands and took a couple long sniffs, but to Eric’s surprise, Mya didn’t pull back like he had expected. Instead, they stood there for an awkward moment holding hands…just like they did the day that he left when they were seven.
AFTER THE SMELL INTRODUCTION with Voodoo, a black pit-bull–bulldog mix with a head the size of a beach ball and teeth way too big to think about, and he was safely inside his black metal cage, Mya sprayed almost her entire bottle of Nanette Lepore around the foul-smelling van. Peach and cranberry permeated the air. Then, while Eric loaded her luggage right behind the front seats so Mya could keep track of it, she gingerly hoisted herself up into the passenger’s seat. When everything and everyone was safely tucked inside, the trio was on their way home.
This ought to be good.
“You look so different,” Eric said while he merged into the swarming traffic.
“Growing up will do that to you,” Mya answered, not wanting to actually sit back in the faded gold cloth seat. She had no idea what kind of muck might be attached to it and didn’t want whatever it was stuck to her bare back. She leaned slightly forward and held her obviously chewed seat belt out so it wouldn’t touch her dress.
“No. I mean your hair’s a different color, no glasses and you’re, well, thin.”
Mya turned to face him. “Are you saying I was fat? ’Cause I was never actually fat. I was simply big-boned.”
“And you changed that?”
“I grew out of it.”
“Oh.” He stared at her for a moment, then back at the street, then back at her. “And your nose. I can remember you had a real—”
Okay, so Mya had had a nose alteration when she was nineteen. Nothing major. Just some tapering of the width and a little off the tip. It’s not like she had her whole nose reconstructed or anything drastic. And so what if she did have a nose job. Was that some kind of crime or something?
“Shouldn’t you be concentrating on your driving?” She forgot what she was doing and sat back in the chair, instantly feeling something sticky on her back. She leaned forward again.
Too late.
“Aw, what’s on this seat?” she whined.
“Voodoo drools a little. It’s the bulldog in him.”
“He drools on your seats?”
“Only that one. It’s where he usually sits.”
Okay, I think I’m going to be sick.
She sneezed.
“Sorry, but the heater doesn’t work. I’ve got a sweater in the back somewhere,” Eric offered.
She could only imagine what a stinking, wet, hairy mess his sweater would be. The thought made her shiver out loud. “I don’t really think I need it. Thanks.”
They drove out of the airport in silence, while Voodoo literally snored like a mad bull in his cage. The mere sound of his raspy throat reminded her of those vicious teeth of his.
She sneezed again. Perhaps she was allergic to something inside the van. Oh, hell, she didn’t even want to think about what it could be.
Once they were on the crowded freeway and headed to her mom’s house, she decided the least she could do was make some polite conversation. After all, the man was giving her a ride home. “So, what about this weather?”
He chuckled. “We haven’t seen each other since we were kids and that’s the best you can do? You want to talk about the weather?”
All right, now he made her smile. “Okay. What are you into these days?” She thought she’d use some of her interviewing techniques.
“That’s a start. I’m into a documentary. What about you?”
“I do trend analysis. In more familiar terms, I’m a trend spotter.”
“Oh yeah? I heard about that. Seems like it would be a cool job.”
So, he isn’t so nerdy, after all.
“I like it. Matter of fact that’s why—” And just as she was about to give him the skinny on her very important reason for being there, he suddenly got off the freeway miles from her mother’s house.
“Tell me you know a shortcut, ’cause this isn’t the best of neighborhoods to have something go wrong with this van of yours.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just need to do some taping.”
“Here? What could you possibly be taping here? A drug bust? A murder? What?”
“I’m working on my MFA in film.”
“You’re still in school?”
“Yeah. I graduate in June. I’m on spring break.”
“This June. Like in three months?”
“Yeah. Cool, huh?”
“Yeah.”
But Mya wasn’t so sure it was cool. When he first told her he was working on a documentary she assumed it was for some big studio and it would be for something serious, like world peace and he might be up for an Oscar, and she could go to the awards in a Prada gown and get interviewed by Joan Rivers. Then she’d get discovered and land the starring role in the next Tom Cruise movie and they’d fall in love and…
But he’s a film student!
He drove his van down side streets and straight into one of the more sketchy and bleak-looking areas of L.A. So maybe this was serious and she had misjudged him. Maybe he was doing something important about the downtrodden, the desperately poor and the hopeless in our society.
She looked at him with newfound respect. “What’s your documentary about?”
“Bars.”
Huh?
“Like in taverns?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not serious.”
Okay, don’t judge. Maybe it’s the decadence of the bars. Now that might be an angle.
“Why not? The saloons, taverns and bars of America made this country what we are today. They helped shape us. More historic events took place in saloons than any legal building in the whole of the U.S.”
She stared at him, not quite sure she had heard him correctly. “You’re not serious.”
“You said that already.”
“I’m assimilating the information.” She turned to face him. “Let me get this straight, your premise is that saloons helped shape our country?”
“Damn straight. I’m heading up to Gold Country next. And a couple days ago I was in Tombstone. ‘The town too tough to die.’ I went to the Birdcage Theater where the prostitutes had their own rooms around the poker tables. Did you know that Wyatt Earp married a prostitute? He met her in that very saloon. How’s that for tavern trivia?”
She was coming around. “Actually, that’s kind of interesting. I didn’t know that.”
This could be good.
She thought she might get to the Oscars after all.
He stopped the van in front of a run-down tavern. Two bad-ass older guys, with lots of tattoos and gold chains, sat on the front stoop, giving them the look. You know, that look that said, “What the hell are you two doing here?”
Mya locked her door.
“Aren’t you going to come in with me?”
“Where?”
“This is one of the oldest saloons in L.A. Just look at that architecture.” He bent over to check out the view from the front window.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“But Voodoo is going to need a walk, and I need to film this. Maybe you can walk him for me. Believe me, nobody will bother you with Voodoo.”
“Voodoo will bother me.” She wasn’t stepping one foot out of the van. She had grown accustomed to the smell and wanted to stay right where she was, thank you very much.
“He gets upset when he has to go.”
“Go where?”
“Piss. He needs to take a piss.”
“And you expect me to walk him?”
“Yeah. If you would. Please.”
He smiled over at her, but it was a fake smile. One of those pasted on things that used to drive her crazy when they were kids and he’d want to play soldier and she wanted to play anything but.
Voodoo started barking. Nothing too loud, only it had a guttural sound that made her nervous just being in the van with him. She didn’t know what she was scared of most, Voodoo or the two guys on the stoop.
Eric continued to lure her as he jumped out with his handheld professional-looking camcorder. “I don’t know if you should stay in there.”
“Why?”
“Well, sometimes Voodoo—”
Suddenly the odor that she had gotten somewhat used to intensified.
“Ohmigod!”
She opened the door and leaped out of the van so fast the two guys sitting in front of the store stood up to watch. Eric filmed the whole thing.
Fine!
“What did you feed him? That’s awful!” Mya hissed.
“Are you okay, lady?” one of the guys yelled from the stoop.
Mya turned and said, “Fine. I’m fine. Thanks.” She pasted one of her own fake smiles on her face.
“Like I said, when he’s gotta go, my boy’s gotta go.”
Mya followed Eric to the back of the van while he opened the doors. “Just get the dog out here, and don’t take too long taping in there, ’cause I’m not going to last too long out here. This whole thing is insane.”
“Great. I’ll only be a couple minutes.”
Eric freed Voodoo from his cage. The dog already wore a body harness with a thick black strap to hold him. He completely ignored Mya and jumped on the ground and headed for the nearest tree. The two scary guys slowly stood up and made their way into the tavern. A woman crossed the street as soon as she spotted the dog and a teenage boy hightailed it up the sidewalk.
Voodoo was like walking with a visible grenade. Everybody wanted to get out of your way.
So much for tattoos and mean looks.
“Here,” Eric said, handing her the leash. “You better hold on with both hands. He’s very strong.”
Mya grabbed hold, wrapping the strap around one of her hands for extra strength. She figured as long as the creature didn’t really look at her, she would be all right.
Eric went off happily taping the tavern, and even went inside, to apparently talk with the guys, while Mya held on to Voodoo.
Okay, she could do this. There was no reason to be scared of this animal. Eric had said he was a puppy dog, and he had done his smelling thing, so he was used to her scent.
Walking Voodoo didn’t have quite the same feel as walking a schnauzer, or even a golden lab. Having Voodoo on the end of your leash was like walking a tiger. You went where he led you, and at the moment that meant a tiny patch of dirt in front of a scrawny stick of a tree a few yards away from the van.
As soon as he found his spot and marked it with his pee, he proceeded to take a dump. Mya looked away, wondering if there was a law in this neighborhood about cleaning up the mess. Of course, there was no way that she would even consider picking up whatever rot that dog emitted from his foul body.
Suddenly there was a tug on the leash. Mya turned to check him out and watched as Voodoo tried to cover his dump with his hind legs. He sent leaves, grass and his rotten whatever all over the place, with some of it landing on the parked pick-up truck next to him. And as if that wasn’t enough, he lifted a leg and peed on the back tire.
“Oh, my God!” was all Mya could say as Voodoo ran from the crime scene with Mya in tow. He headed right back to the van. But there was somebody yelling at her and obviously chasing them from behind. Mya was not about to look back; besides, she could barely keep up with Voodoo’s pace. But whoever was chasing them sounded very male, very big and enormously angry.
Eric suddenly appeared in front of the tavern, took one look at the situation and hurried to the back of his van. He opened one of the doors just as Voodoo leaped inside. Mya followed, tumbling in on top of him, then hitting the floor with a thud. There was something wet and yellow under Mya’s hands. She desperately tried not to notice, but it was almost too much for her to assimilate. She told herself to relax, as long as it wasn’t acid, she would be fine.