Linda Robertson - Vicious Circle

Johnny stepped inside. This was my personal space; allowing him in here felt completely different than opening the cellar, which wasn’t accessible from the house.

“I got Chinese. Might have to nuke it a bit. It stays hot pretty good except when it’s on the back of a bike in October. There’s nothing out here, you know. Not even a gas station. I got this in Cleveland, at one of my favorite spots.”

He paused, taking in the living room’s deep red walls, the chocolate-brown-corduroy-slipcovered furniture, the worn tan pillows. I felt my insides shrinking. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything cocky about all the Arthurian artwork and books being inside an old saltbox farmhouse.

“I’ve never seen your inner sanctuary before,” he said. “You’ve got style, Red.”

I managed to say, “Thanks.” He wasn’t too choosy if he approved of an aging farmhouse with creaky floors and little in the way of modern decor. I hoped we would make it through the evening without him catching on and cracking jokes about my weakness for Arthur.

He sniffed. “Did you get a dog?”

“I did,” Nana said as if she were sharing a secret. She stepped away from the window and was actually smiling. It made her look like someone I didn’t know.

“Really?” He turned to Nana. “What kind?”

“A Great Dane puppy,” I said unenthusiastically. “He’s huge.”

Over his shoulder, Johnny said, “Me too,” disguised in a cough. He did it so quickly that I almost didn’t catch it. Silently, I prayed that Nana had missed it. “I brought these especially for you.” He held a picnic basket out to Nana, complete with red-and-white-checkered cloth. He was going all out for the Red Riding Hood thing. I couldn’t imagine sinister-looking Johnny going into a basket-and-candle shop, but I guessed he had.

Across the basket’s top, wedged under the handles, was a carton of Marlboros. “For me?” Nana asked sheepishly.

He placed it into her hands. “Check inside the basket.”

Nana removed the carton and stuck it under her arm so she could open the hinged lid. “Cookies!” she exclaimed. With a deep breath, she took in the scent of them. “Oh. They smell divine! What kind are they?”

“Macadamia nut and white chocolate chip,” Johnny said. “Made ’em myself just today.” He offered her his hand. “I’m Johnny.”

Nana shifted the basket and accepted his hand readily. His tattoos didn’t faze her at all. It made me wonder why they disturbed me so much.

“I’m Demeter. Demeter Alcmedi.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Demeter.” He properly put the emphasis on the first syllable, as she had in introducing herself. She always hated it when people made her name sound like a Frenchman asking for a yardstick, duh-ME-tur. He was definitely racking up brownie points with her. Didn’t she know he was a wærewolf? She could usually tell right away. “The cookies are for after dinner, though. I hope you like General Tso’s Chicken.”

“My favorite! Did you tell him, Seph?”

“No.” I didn’t eat meat, so I began to wonder what he’d gotten for me. “Kitchen’s all the way back.” I pointed down the hallway.

He carried the bag on to the kitchen, boots thumping and chains clinking. Nana was smoothing her hair again. “Did I get it?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I laughed quietly.

“What?” she asked.

“He brought Chinese. I guess you’re eating out of a box anyway.”

“This is different.” She patted her basket happily and carried it down the hall.

When I joined them, Johnny had put his leather jacket on the back of a chair and started taking out the white paper cartons at the dinette table with two chairs on one side, a bench on the other. I got down the mismatched kitchen plates and grabbed some flatware from the drawer. “Uh-uh,” Johnny said, wagging a finger at me. “You have to eat with chopsticks.”

I gave him a dubious look; he countered with a defiant one. “Okay,” I conceded, “just don’t be too harsh when I’m wearing my dinner.”

He glanced sidelong at Nana placing her basket out of the way on the countertop by the sink and whispered to me, “If you get messy, I promise, I’ll clean you up personally.”

In the instant it took for my cheeks to warm, the image of him licking sweet-and-sour sauce off my cheek filled the cinema in my head. I couldn’t move.

Johnny took a plate from my hands and began dumping one of the cartons onto it. “You’re vegetarian, aren’t you?” he asked in normal tones, as if to cover up that he’d whispered to me.

I swallowed and wished I could pull the heat from my face as easily. “Yeah.”

“I couldn’t stand not having a couple of thick and juicy filet mignons, rare, with lots of peppercorns. Mmmm. Love it.”

Having figured him as a porterhouse type, I made a mental note. I’d promised him treats.

“Here you are, Demeter.” He sat the plate before her and came back to serve up another little box. He noticed the big oak dining set in the room beyond. “Oh, you have a dining room. Should we eat in there?”

“No. I never use it,” I said.

He shrugged. “Okay.”

“How’d you know I was vegetarian?”

His eyebrows jumped up and down, and he acted like he was locking his lips shut with a key. Then he quipped, “Celia told me.”

Celia was the first wære I ever knew. After the attack, I thought she and Erik were going to die—everyone did—but they both made it. Then we found out about their lunar furriness. I helped them find a safe house to spend their full moons in. When I bought this place, we fixed the cellar for them. At first it was just the band, but as she met more wolves and brought them along, we kept adding kennels. It was practically a pack now.

Celia was filling the cages as fast as we could renovate the space for them. The wæres brought pizza and beer and pretty much partied in the storm cellar until the change happened. Listening to them talk about the ups and downs of wæredom shaped my column topics. They each paid me twenty bucks a night for kenneling services and a continental breakfast of Krispy Kremes. Since that seemed to be the doughnut of choice for all wære-creatures, I’d bet the company’s sales always spiked before full moons. “Celia,” I repeated.

Johnny stopped serving and faced me squarely. “I asked her a lot of things about you.” He was very close. Though he’d kenneled here for six months—meaning I’d seen him six times, and then only when opening the cages in the mornings and leaving the doughnuts—I’d never been this close. He smelled like cedar and sage.

For the first time, I really looked at him. Not with furtive embarrassment. Not even with fear. I looked and paid attention. All the things I feared faded for an instant, and I saw Johnny beneath the tattoos. He had steely, blue-gray eyes.

“You two come and sit down to eat,” Nana ordered us.

Taking my plate of steamed vegetables on rice, I went to the table and deliberated about where to sit. If I sat across from Nana, Johnny could choose which of us to sit next to, but if I sat beside her, he would have to sit across from us both. That seemed the best plan. So I sat and tried to figure out the chopsticks, but I couldn’t get anything to my mouth. By the time Johnny had filled his plate with some kind of chicken dish and sat with us, I’d tried, without success, to pick up a bite of food a dozen times. Nana laughed at me. I felt terribly foolish, but I laughed too.

“I’m going to starve if you won’t concede to letting me use a fork.”

“You’re using them like a shovel and holding them wrong,” he said. “They’re delicate, but they won’t break. Hold them like this. Firmly.” He indicated how he was holding his, and I noticed he had more rings on his fingers than I did. “Pinch the food.”