Robert Asprin - E.Godz

But that had been then. He knew better now. He was a grown man with an adult sense of responsibility, though he still cultivated the roguish image of a devil-may-care playboy. It tended to lull his rivals and opponents into a false sense of security, never expecting the happy-go-lucky hedonist to be concealing a killer business instinct worthy of his corporate lawyer grandpa. (He'd gotten the idea from reading Batman comics and even had a T-shirt printed up with the question: What Would Bruce Wayne Do?)

Edwina had told him not to tamper with the office equipment, but there was no maternal ruling to prevent him from trying to persuade the office equipment to tamper with itself.

"You know, I'm not asking for the world," he told the amulet.

He was wearing Smile #297-A, the one he reserved for uncooperative clients who hunkered down behind barricades of blind, stubborn resistance. Logical arguments and all the tools of rational persuasion couldn't reach them there and Dov knew better than to waste his time trying. That was when he whipped out Smile #297-A, which offered its unsuspecting targets a devastating combination of fifty percent charm, fifty percent intimacy, and one hundred thirty-eight percent good old American bullshit.

The amulet wrinkled up its perfect Greek nose and uttered words of dread: "And what if you were? It wouldn't matter any more than you do."

The verbal barb flew true and speared Dov straight through the heart. He felt a stab of pain as vivid and agonizing as if the amulet's words had really taken the form of a physical weapon. But this exchange between Edwina Godz's pampered baby boy and his least-favorite piece of office equipment was nothing new. He had been on the receiving end of the amulet's sniping countless times before, whenever he'd expressed a desire to change the way things were run in the Miami office. Somehow the little lump of exquisitely crafted metal always knew just the right thing to say to leave Dov's monolithic ego shattered into rubble and dust. There was only one way for Dov to come out of these clashes with some shred of self-esteem intact, and that was to act as if the inevitable surrender had been all his own idea from the start.

"Attaboy," he told the amulet, switching to Smile #15, one of the basic models employed when buttering up maitre d's prior to wheedling his way around the waiting list at exclusive restaurants. "Just testing. You know how most office equipment starts to show wear and tear, doesn't work up to snuff, inches its way towards becoming obsolete and needing to be replaced?" He stressed that last word just enough to zing the amulet. (It worked: He saw the perfect lips contract just a hair and mentally high-fived himself for scoring hurt points on the tiny silver tyrant.) "That's why I like to run these periodic checks, make sure that you're still functioning in top form. I'll be telling Mother that you passed with flying colors."

"How kind," the amulet said coldly. "Will that be before or after the funeral?"

"What funeral?"

The silver lips grinned. "You know, most people read the faxes they receive."

Dov stared at the ensorcelled trinket, his smooth brow momentarily creasing with uncharacteristic worry wrinkles. He read the fax as he replaced the amulet on the machine. It was a simple task, one he'd done so many times before that he could do it blindfolded, by touch alone.

This time was different.

This time he dropped the amulet into the little wastepaper basket next to the fax machine. It was sheer luck that the trash receptacle's automatic shredding spell was temporarily disabled.

"HEY! What the hell do you think you're trying to pull?" the enraged amulet demanded from the depths.

Dov acted as though he had heard nothing. This was more or less true. The news from Edwina was so stunning, so shocking, so earthshaking that it threw Dov for a loop the size of Halley's comet's trajectory. He didn't notice that he'd dropped the amulet, and the only reason he finally snapped out of his daze was the reaction he got when the towel around his waist slipped its moorings and fell in a terry cloth puddle at his feet.

Solange squealed like a teenybopper at a Generic Boy Band concert.

"Wha—?" Dov looked up suddenly at the mortified masseuse, then down at his nakedness. "Oops." He retrieved the towel. "Uh, why don't you come back later, honey?" he told Solange.

She didn't wait for a second invitation: She fled the premises, leaving her portable massage table and other equipment behind. The amulet in the wastepaper basket was still snickering when he fished it out.

"Not very professional, is she?" it remarked.

"She's new to the business," Dov muttered. "Plus, she went to Yale—not the best place to learn what a naked man's really supposed to look like."

Still somewhat distracted, he paced across the floor to the panoramic windows of his office and gazed down at the street scene of Miami's smart South Beach section. Buildings that were all the colors of Easter eggs stood like graveyard monuments to the Art Deco movement. Palm trees swayed like topless waitresses with overloaded trays. Swarms of people at least as bronzed, blond, and beautiful as Dov Godz went sailing along their carefree life-paths. Their gleaming golden tresses streamed out behind them as they were whisked along via every form of transportation known to man—from rollerblades to red convertibles—so long as that form of transportation was guaranteed to show off their perfect bodies to the max.

"Bubble-heads," Dov growled.

"Wow," the amulet said. "You want to be them so bad it hurts, doesn't it?"

"Like an abscessed tooth." Dov saw no point in denying it.

"Well, I've got news for you, fella: You are them," the amulet stated. "Or hadn't you noticed?"

"I used to be," Dov said. He sounded world-weary enough for a whole platoon of French novelists. "Once. But not any more."

The amulet raised one silver eyebrow and looked truly concerned. "Uh-oh. You're thinking again, aren't you? I warned you not to try that. You're not used to the strain. What's the matter, fella? You need help? You want me to fax your guru, your personal trainer, your dietician, your feng shui consultant, what?"

"My mother is dying."

Dov dropped the words without prelude or fanfare, like a stick of bombs from the belly of an old warplane. He turned away from the window, leaned his spine against the cool glass, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes.

"Oh." The amulet was abashed. "Gosh. I—I—I'm real sorry to hear that."

"What do you mean, you're sorry to hear that?" Dov snapped, his eyes wide open again and shooting sparks at the amulet. "You knew about this before I did, the minute the fax came in! You're the one who was talking about funerals!"

"Yeah, but—but—" The amulet groped for the right thing to say. "Look, when the messages come in, they're just words to me, okay? What do I know about any power they might contain until I see how they affect you? What do I look like, a human being?"

"Hardly." Dov's lips curled as he studied the amulet. "Although you're obnoxious enough to join the club. Maybe that's what makes me forget, sometimes, that you're nothing more than a glorified interactive gewgaw."

"Maybe you wouldn't forget that so much if you spent as much time talking to other human beings as you spend talking to me."

Dov stared at the amulet, stunned. "What did you say?"

"You heard me." The amulet was smug, knowing it had scored another hit off its master. "And you know it's true."

That was the worst of it: The trinket was right. Dov frowned, trying to drum up some evidence to the contrary, but he was a truthful man at heart and he couldn't honestly say that there was any mortal soul with whom he'd traded as many words as he had with Ammi.