Laura Gilman - Tricks of the Trade

So I did. She was a redhead, the kind of shaggy strawberry that only comes naturally or with a lot of money, and her eyes were wide-set and light-colored, and she had a body that probably wouldn’t raise the pulse of any red-blooded American male, unless he recognized the lean and agile muscles flexing as she walked. Toward me. There was a god, and she was gracious.

“Once again, Bonnie scores, and the rest of us strike out,” I heard Nifty mutter, and I spared him a consoling pat on the hand. “You do all right for yourself, guy. But this one seems to be more about the girl parts.”

“I’m allll about the girl parts,” Nick said in a singsong falsetto, picking up the tail end of our conversation. I wasn’t looking at him, but from the solid whap-noise, I was guessing that someone—probably Sharon—had just slapped him upside the head to shut him up before my visitor made it to our table.

“Hi.” She had an ordinary but pleasant voice, blandly Northeast, and her smile was even nicer up close.

“Hi. I’m Bonnie.” I slid off my chair to move away from my usually-but-not-always-discreet coworkers, and tilted my head to better look at my new friend. She was taller than me, and her eyes were definitely hazel-green and very pretty.

“Joan.” She gave me her hand, and it was smooth and soft and strong, and…

I didn’t feel anything. Not even the shiver of anticipation that usually came when someone gave me that kind of once-over.

Oh, damn it. Just, damn it.

It wasn’t that I was in a guy-phase, either. I’d gotten hit on last week by a very nice example of my type, slightly scruffy and broad-shouldered, and enough smarts to balance out the bad-boy looks…and I’d smiled and felt nothing other than a passing admiration for the package.

Even my recent off-work time with Pietr had been about release and comfort, not the sort of enjoyable, mutual passion I was used to feeling. I was…not dead inside, but rather unnervingly calm. Like a very still lake, when you’re used to an ocean.

I’d liked to have blamed it on some kind of off-season flu, or overwork, or maybe some horrible current-disease that was eating my libido but that wasn’t it, not exactly. If I let my guard down, or lingered too long, late at night, in my deepest thoughts, my entire body came alive like someone had dunked me in liquid current, every nerve tingling and wanting.

Just not for any of these would-be playmates.

The Merge. The stupid, unwanted, unasked for Merge, and Benjamin Venec’s own innate, dark-eyed appeal. Damn it, thrice.

I knew it was probably a lost cause, but Joan was cute as hell, and I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. Maybe getting to know her over a few drinks….

“You want to join us?” I asked, turning to indicate my for-now demure coworkers. A look of disappointment touched Joan’s face: no, she really didn’t. She wanted me to go with her, somewhere else, right now.

Some of the shiny rubbed off at that. Even if I’d been at loose ends and hot to trot, a quick hit wasn’t my thing. I’m a bit of a hedonist, yeah, but I liked to know the person I was with, more than just a name and a favorite drink. So with a regretful smile, and not really any regrets, I let that fish slip back into the sea and went back to my team.

“You feeling all right, dandelion?” Nick almost, almost managed to sound like he was seriously concerned for my well-being.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I twisted on a grin. “She was…too young for me.”

“Young.” Nifty sounded like he wanted to challenge me on that—and rightfully so, because she clearly had been well above the age of consent, but he didn’t. That, in a way, was worse than if he had ragged on me. It was either pity or worry, neither of which I could deal with right now, even if I had anything to tell them.

If I let them, the team would ply me with drinks and do their best to console me on whatever they thought was wrong, distract me with bad jokes or horrible stories, maybe try to fix me up with someone they knew who would be perfect…and normally I’d let them, accepting their own odd ways of showing they cared. But suddenly, my skin was too raw, my nerves too exposed, and I just needed to be by myself.

“Okay, I’m out,” I said, finishing my drink. “This little puppy is going home. Alone. I’ll see y’all tomorrow.” I grabbed my bag, paid out enough to cover my drinks, and waved goodbye before anyone could get a wiseass crack in about me being the first to leave. Okay, it was unusual but it wasn’t totally unheard-of.

Not recently, anyway.

I worked with trained investigators, each and everyone of them hired because they were obsessively curious, and incapable of walking away from a puzzle. I would lay odds they were playing paper-rock-scissors even now, to determine who got to ask me what was going on, tomorrow. And once they started digging, they weren’t going to let up. Not them.

Great.

I walked out into the night with the beginnings of a killer headache under my scalp, and a roil in my stomach that had nothing to do with the empanadas I’d eaten.

The Merge was starting to interfere, not with my ability to do the job, but my coworkers’. They were going to be focusing on the mystery of me, and maybe not on the work at hand. Of all the problems I thought this might cause, that hadn’t been one I’d considered.

“So what now, Bonita?”

The great thing about New York City—you can carry on an entire conversation with yourself, and even without an earpiece nobody gives you a second look. The usual chaos of Port Authority in the evening was weirdly soothing to get caught up in. If you know how to walk with the flow, you can get lost in the swirl of people, like being a single grain in a sandstorm, carried around and dropped off where you needed to be by some weird magic. All you had to do was not consciously think about what you were doing or where you were going, and let the universe carry you there.

I caught the A train uptown. Spring is the best time to ride the subway: everyone’s dropped off the heavy coats that overstuffed trains during the winter, and the summer’s sweat hasn’t begun yet. Considering how full the train was, that was a blessing. Bad enough some hip-hop wannabe teenager tried to hold the door for his pack of slower-moving friends, causing the conductor to bawl something incomprehensible until they were all inside and he let the door go.

On another day I might have been tempted to send a spark from the metal door into his hand, for being a jerk, but my focus was all inward, right then.

Fact one: the thing I’d worried about was here, the Merge was impacting work. That it wasn’t happening exactly how I’d feared didn’t change the fact. So, one excuse for avoiding it, blown out of the water. Or, at least, taking on water and sinking fast.

Fact two: my coworkers were right; this reluctance to plunge into new adventures with someone attractive and attracted was…very much not like me.

Or, at least, not like me-who-was.

J had always claimed that there would come a day when I’d settle down with, as he resignedly put it, “a nice little household.” Even he, who’d known me since I was eight, couldn’t imagine me being happy with just one person, either male or female. I had always liked—I still did like—variety.

And it wasn’t that my sex drive was shut off entirely. Pietr might not set off sparks but it had never been about that; we used each other for mutual comfort and release, full knowledge of what it was, and I…

I…

By the time my train had dumped me out at my stop, and I’d climbed the stairs to street level, the stutter in my brain and the rawness of my nerves had finally resolved itself into fact number three.