Also, I’ll be attending a few conventions in the next few months.  Watch this space; if you catch me at a signing, make sure you get a city-sigil.

One last thing; the book’s cover has been updated, so there’ll be a version 1.5 available before too long.  What do you think?

Want to read it?  It’s available here, and soon via Amazon.com as well.

And my goals are quite modest.  If I manage to eke out a hundred book sales, I’ll consider it a success.

I think it’s that certainty which has made me contemplate the labor-of-love aspect of self-publishing.  There have been endless re-reads and re-writes, dozens of beta readers and careful editing to create as polished a product as possible (without spending $1600 for a professional editing job, that is.  Maybe next time.), followed by the hunt for artists to create a cover, and a few months of back-and-forth work making that perfect as well.  Things that I, as a distracted writer, never considered, like interior fonts, cover bleed and proper margins, all came into play.  It was like planning a wedding.  It was, for all intents and purposes, a part-time job. (Note:  as an unpublished author, I already have three of those.)  Fame and fortune are highly unlikely.  I’ll consider myself lucky if I make back the money I’ve spent on the project so far, to be honest.   Ten years ago, this would’ve cost me more than a new car, so I’m just grateful that the self-publishing process has gotten more affordable, as well as a bit more respectable.

But, hey, here I am, on the cusp of having an actual, physical book that I wrote, sitting on the bookshelf.

Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Artwork by Kevin Steele

No more than ten minutes after they let Kroni out, Ivy came around a tight bend and slammed on the brakes, because there was a man standing in the middle of the road.  He wore a kilt like Kroni’s, and had antlers on his head.  In one hand, he carried a rifle with a long blade strapped to the barrel.  The butt was a single carved piece of wood almost three feet long, so the weapon could be used as a walking stick as well.  As the rig came to a stop, he began walking slowly toward them.

“Is that the cervie?” Swan asked.  “He’s making us stop?”

Why was she asking about what was obvious?  Corey had to bite his tongue before making a sarcastic comment; thankfully Ivy answered before he could ask if she was blind.  “He’s in the road.  Armed.  And it looks as though he’s strapped a pair of antlers to his head.”

“Arrogant bambi,” Swan said.  “You ever dealt with a woodsy cervid before?”

“No,” Ivy replied.

“He’s probably going to paw at you.  At both of us.  He won’t try to fight Pinkie or the Puppy as long as they’re not bigger than he is, and they keep their mouths shut.  Pinkie, don’t ask him any questions because he’s gonna be lookin’ for an excuse to fight you.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Marcus said.

“Should I shut down?” Ivy asked.  “He’s approaching.”

“Yeh, go quiet.  He wants us to be scared, but if he knows you are it’s worse.  He might want to see your tits.  Best just to show him.  If he goes after your snevvie, kill him.”

“My what?”

“Your baby-maker, idiot.”  Swan pointed at her crotch.

“That’s…not very helpful,” Ivy said, but it was too late for any further coaching.  She shut down the rig’s engine as the cervid reached her front fender, and pulled her dead man’s handle.  It was unlikely that the shifter would be able to drive, but it never hurt to be certain.

He walked to the window with an unhurried air, tapping his fingers on the metal as he went as if testing its strength.  As he got closer, Ivy could see a short sword-like knife strapped to one thigh.  Multiple bracelets adorned his arms and ankles, and he had several necklaces made from bits of pre-Fall electronics.  Similar shiny baubles hung from the antlers he wore.

“Honored guests,” he said sarcastically when he reached the window, “traveling my road.  How will you be of service to me?”

“I’m Ivy Aniram–” she began, and the cervid cut her off with a sharp motion of his head.

“I didn’t ask,” he said.  “Out, all of you.  Where’s the stag?  I can smell him.”

Remembering what Swan had said, Ivy opened her door, and heard the others following suit.  She slid slowly out, not wanting to provoke the shifter with sudden movements.

Once the four of them were in the road, the cervid prowled back in forth in front of them, thumping the ground with his rifle.  “None of you is a stag.”

“We traveled with one, but he isn’t with us now,” Ivy said, hoping that confirming Kroni’s existence wouldn’t cause further trouble.  Cervids could be notoriously mercurial.

“Don’t believe you,” the cervid said, and stuck his head inside the rig.  Ivy stiffened, and Swan put a hand on her arm.  She tightened her grip when the cervid climbed inside and rummaged about, tapping the floor and walls as if they had somehow secreted Kroni in a hidden compartment.  Ivy was shaking with anger; she glanced at Corey, who was looking back at her with worry in his eyes.  She had to stay calm, so she looked at the sky, flexing her hands in agitation.

“What, what, what if he takes a liking to something in there?” she asked Swan quietly, concerned mostly about the trunk from Detroit.  Swan just shook her head slightly, which Ivy took to mean that it wasn’t a good time to ask.

Finally, he emerged, carrying only his rifle.  “You belong to him, you come through here, you belong to me,” he said.

“We belong to ourselves,” Ivy replied.  “If you want trade for the use of the road, tell us what it is.”

The cervid laughed.  “Trade.  For junk?  Don’t need junk.  Need a doe.   Maybe you’ll do.”  He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on her knee brace.  “Junk jewelry.  You’d look better in shinier.  Maybe you’ll let me give you something shiny?”  He stepped forward, into Ivy’s personal space, and she resisted the urge to back up.  “Maybe not,” the cervid said, grinning lewdly.

He turned to Swan next.  “How ’bout you, pepper-face? You dress better, look better.  Let me see you.”

“The show’s not free,” she said.

“Road’s not either.  You belong to me on my road.”

“Fair enough,” Swan said, and lifted her shirt.  Marcus cleared his throat and looked away.

Corey goggled, as shocked by the sudden reality of Swan’s breasts as by the casual manner in which she bared them.  “Hey!” he said, stepping forward.  “You can’t make her do that!”  Why he was defending Swan’s honor he didn’t know, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that this didn’t feel right, it wasn’t right, and he couldn’t just stand by and–

Before he finished the thought, the cervid had swept the walking-stick butt of his rifle around and caught Corey a harsh blow on the side of the head.  Even as he was registering that he’d been clobbered, there was a heavy impact in the center of his chest and he was knocked off his feet, flying backward.

As the cervid kicked Corey, Ivy stepped forward to defend him, pulling her fubar out of her belt.  The butt of the rifle came around faster than she could see and caught her a stunning blow on the forehead that brought stars to her eyes.  Swan said, “Hey, bambi,” and punched the cervid in the face as he turned toward her.  He recoiled, and Ivy used the moment of distraction to hook the rifle with the claw end of her fubar and yank it away.

The cervid jumped, turned and shifted.  He caught Swan with his hind legs, sending her to land next to Corey.  In the same motion, he collected Ivy with his antlers, throwing her the opposide direction into the side of her rig.

She hit the ground and kept her fubar in her hand, feeling several places where the cervid’s antlers, filed to points, had pricked her skin without puncturing it.  She realized that the shifter could have eviscerated her in that single motion, if he had wanted to.

The angry cervid turned in place several times, glaring at each of them; when neither she nor Swan made an effort to get up, he shifted back into human form.  His false antlers had fallen off when he’d shifted, but the rest of his adornments and clothing stayed in place.  “That was stupid,” he said.  “You want to be killed, is that it?”

“You, you hit my friend,” Ivy said.  “He’s just a boy, and you, you, you shouldn’t have hit him.”

“I do what I want.”  He picked up his rifle.  Behind him, Marcus quietly sat down next to Swan and Corey.  He seemed to have a talent for becoming invisible in tense situations.  “You come with me now.  Clean my house.”

She narrowed her eyes.  “No.”

The walking-stick end of the rifle came up slowly, hovering in front of the spot on her forehead where she’d already been tapped.  “Then I’ll break your head.”

Ivy struggled to keep her face neutral.  Swan saved her.  “Do that, and none of us get out of here.  You’ll have to kill us all.”

The cervid moved his stick forward, closing the few inches that separated it from Ivy’s forehead, and used it to push her head back against the side of the truck.  He turned to address Swan over his shoulder.  “You say?”

“I do.  Only she knows how to drive that rig.  You break her head, she can’t drive, and we’re stuck here unless you want to feed us.  Then her friends who use this road want to know why her truck’s here and she’s dead, and they find out that you killed her.  And then, a whole bunch of them come and kill you.”

“They’ll try,” the cervid huffed.  He took the stick away from Ivy’s head and squatted in front of her.  “Show,” he said, indicating her chest.

Not breaking eye contact, letting him see the fury in her face, Ivy slowly unbuckled her overalls, pulled her shirt up.

“Nice,” he said, grinning.  He reached out and slapped her breast lightly with the back of his hand, making the flesh bounce, then tweaked her nipple.  “Too bad you’re not a doe.  We could have fun.”  He stood up and looked at the sky, licking his lips.  “Get off my scrape.”  With that, the cervid appeared to lose interest in the group completely.  He walked between Swan and Corey, off the road and into the woods.

Ivy got back to her feet and covered herself.  Corey and Marcus kept their eyes fixed on the ground until she spoke.  “Well.  That, that, that was unpleasant.  Are you hurt, Corey?”

“No’m,” he said.

“He’s blushing ‘cuz he looked at your goods,” Swan said.  Corey glared at her, but said nothing.

From the woods the cervid had disappeared into, a harsh, basso profundo roar suddenly shook the leaves.  Ivy dropped into a defensive crouch; Corey actually ran for the truck, moving as quickly as he could to get the vehicle between him and the noise.  Marcus jumped, but remained where he was.

“Bambi’s trying to scare us,” Swan muttered.  “Let’s get out of here, before he comes back to swing his cock around some more.”

“Are all male cervids so territorial?” Marcus asked her.

“Pretty much.  I think Kroni’s the only civilized cervie I’ve ever met.  In fact, he’s better than most human men.  You should put that in your book,” she said as they climbed back into the rig.  “Kroni’s the best cervid you could hope to meet.  He would have left bits of that bambi scattered all over the forest, and walked out of here wearing that goatfucker’s antlers.”

Ivy fired the truck up again.  Corey, in the front seat, looked at her, until she turned briefly toward him.  “Um,” he said, but she shook her head slightly, so he didn’t finish the sentence.

“It’s okay,” she said.  “You did good.”

“Is your head okay?”

“Hurts.  I’ll live.”  Ivy accelerated hard and drove quickly, jostling everyone inside and completely unapologetic about it.

–from Empty Cradle: The Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson, available July 2011.  Watch this space!

Lex Machina photo

Coming in the summer of 2011, this post-apocalyptic urban fantasy novel is the first of three.  Empty Cradle: The Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson introduces readers to a richly imagined vision of the future after a slow-motion cataclysm that puts an end to modern society.

Ivy Aniram can’t afford to make stupid mistakes.  A scavenger and rare traveler through a post-apocalyptic America, she’s ambushed and nearly killed thanks to a moment of trust she shouldn’t have extended.  The village of Hanson’s Home saves her life, but demands a hefty price in return–the birth of a child. As one of the few women untouched by “Empty Cradle,” a plague of infertility, Ivy is herself a valuable commodity.  She may have tumbled out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire.

Corey Sanderson, a farmboy who’s eager to escape Hanson’s Home at all costs, proves to be Ivy’s salvation, and she agrees to take him to the walled city of Detroit in exchange for her freedom.  Upon reaching Detroit, Ivy is hauled unexpectedly before the magistrates after Corey is involved in an altercation with a seriously unpleasant mercenary that results in the death of his shapeshifer girlfriend.   Ivy is surprised to learn that she’s needed to carry an important package to Strip City.  Scavs are rarely trusted with cargo for the city, but a recent war has destroyed the usual caravan routes and left Ivy as the only traveler willing to brave the 2300 miles of hostile terrain separating Detroit’s box from its destination.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and Ivy’s injuries threaten to make it an impossible task.  She’s got to trust Corey, which goes against her solitary, self-reliant nature.   Corey’s youthful enthusiasm, combined with a complete lack of experience “out in the dirt,” makes him both an asset and a liability.

It’s hard enough teaching Corey to properly navigate the ever-shifting social codes of the cities they travel to, but Ivy also has to deal with the usual perils of the road:  scarce supplies, determined bandits, equipment-stealing gleaners, mutated, half-human “biters” and the occasional territorial shape-shifter.  The other passengers Ivy takes on–Marcus McEvoy, a traveling historian with a mysterious past; Swan Dallara, a cheerfully abrasive female mercenary and her deer-shapeshifter companion Kroni–add further complications while helping to slowly bring Ivy out of her shell.  Though she’s the driver and travel-master, Ivy quickly learns that getting this particular package to its destination isn’t going to happen unless she accepts help.

Rapid-fire updates, glimpses into the world, images and more details including publication updates and purchasing information, can be found at the Empty Cradle Facebook page.

She still recognized the sigh, even though she hadn’t seen Nikki much in the past two years.  “Sorry,” Dori said.  “I know she can be kind of annoying.  But she means well.  Sometimes she’s pretty helpful.”

Nikki shook her head slightly.  “I can deal,” she said.  She picked up a piece of pasta on the end of her fork and looked at it without really concentrating on it.  “We should talk later about furniture, though.”

“Okay.”

“Do you still want to go look for that girl?  Taylor?”

Dori nodded.  “I was hoping Clover wouldn’t piss you off so much you’d want to leave, because I wanted your help.”

“She’s coming,” Nikki said.  It wasn’t a question.  “Fucking great.”

“Sorry,” Dori said again.

Nikki responded with a ghostly smile.  “I’ve suffered worse,” she said.  That statement seemed to take all of the tension out of her.  Nikki didn’t speak to Clover again for the rest of dinner, or on the way to the bar, but the sense that Nikki was gearing up to throw down on her disappeared also.  Maybe it was my imagination, Dori thought.

Showing Taylor’s picture at the bar worked better than she expected.  When they arrived, Nikki took over.  She left Dori and Clover behind, and showed the photo to the bartender, who passed her on to a manager, who passed her on to a group of customers.  Dori was too far back to hear the exchange, and when Clover tried to get involved she held her friend back, not wanting Clover to queer whatever deal Nikki was making.

When she finished with the customers, Nikki smiled at them–that was strange, since she rarely smiled–and headed outside, taking out her cellphone along the way.

“Where’s she going?” Clover asked.

“I don’t know.  Let’s wait and see.”

“People are going to think we’re a couple.”

Dori shrugged.  “It’s not like we have to prove it or anything.”

“That’s easy for you to say.  You belong here, as far as they’re concerned.”

“You’d be surprised at how wrong you are about that, actually.”

“So, what does your friend do?”

“Nikki?  I don’t know exactly.  I haven’t seen her in two years.  She just came back to town a few days ago.”

“Oh!  She’s that girl you met when you went down south to see Naomi?”

Dori nodded.  The music was just loud enough that she had to yell to be heard, which wasn’t any fun.  Clover didn’t have this problem.  The smoke smell was also making her want a cigarette.  All in all, Dori was ready to leave.

“Why is she in Michigan?”

“She lives here.  Or she did, a long time ago, and she’s just moved back.  Something like that.”

“And you have no idea how she makes a living?”

“None.  But that doesn’t mean anything.  I don’t know what you do, either.”

“Yes you do,” Clover said, giving Dori a playful shove.  “I’m still in the PT department at the university, you know that.”

She shrugged again.  “I don’t pay much attention to people’s jobs.  It’s not an important aspect of who they are, to me.”

“I’d say that a person’s job is a very important part of who they are.  Your work shapes you.  It defines you.”

“Um.  Okay.”  Dori felt like disagreeing, but not like arguing.  The front door opened, letting in a soft rush of cold air.  Nikki was back.

“She went home with two other women,” Nikki said.  “The day before yesterday.  I have an address.”

“How on earth did you do that?” Clover asked.

“I have sources,” was Nikki’s response.

“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

Nikki gave Clover an amused frown.  “Do I look like one?”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I thought a person’s job shaped them,” Dori couldn’t resist saying.

“Dorito, shut up,” Clover said with massive irritation in her voice.  “Are we going to go there, then?  Is she still there?”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t get a phone number, only an address.  I think we should just go there,” she said, looking to Dori for confirmation.  “It’s out in Ferndale.”

The house was a little ranch in on a street full of little ranches just like it.  Unlike the others, there were blankets over this one’s windows instead of drapes.  There were two cars lined up in the driveway, and one in front of the house, and the porch light was out, although the front window flickered with the glow of a television.  Dori looked at it and sighed.  She hesitated before getting out of the car, but that was just because it was cold out there, and very toasty warm inside Nikki’s rented SUV.  There were butterflies in her stomach, but she’d never let them slow her down before.

The door rattled loudly when she knocked, as if it were little more than two sheets of thin Formica nailed together.  There were sounds of a leisurely response from within, and while Dori waited she looked around the yard.  It was mostly covered with snow, like everything else was, but the house had the feeling of being the only one on the block that didn’t have a lawn.  Nikki and Clover stood in the driveway, waiting to see what would happen next.

“Whoizzit?” an irritable voice said from the other side of the door.

“I’m looking for Taylor,” Dori said, before she could think about how dumb she’d feel if this were the wrong house, or if Taylor wasn’t here.  Or if she’d stumbled onto a white-slavery ring and Taylor was tied up in the basement awaiting delivery to Saudi Arabia, or something.  Her imagination raced gleefully into the possibility of winding up a member of some random sultan’s illegal harem.

The least-requested member, probably.

The voice inside called, “Just a sec.”  Shuffle.  Shuffle.

The knob twisted violently and the door was yanked inward.  Dori’s suspicion that this was the local ghetto house was instantly confirmed as a pungent smell of dogshit and pot boiled out of the doorway.  The guy who had opened the door was about her age, with a clean-shaven face and somewhat more of a beer gut than he needed (currently quite visible thanks to his shirtless condition), and he relaxed a little bit when he saw Dori and Nikki and Clover in his front yard.

“You’re here for Taylor?” he asked.  “Are you her family?”

Dori shook her head, thinking that was a stupid question but not saying so.  “Just her friend.  Is she here?”  Also a stupid question, at this point.  Oh, well, I’m not really a private eye, she thought.  I just play one on my days off.

“Sure.  C’mon in.  I’m, Ron.”  He stepped aside.  Ron probably wasn’t part of a white-slavery ring, so Dori went on in.  Clover and Nikki followed.

On TV, Mel Gibson was battling outback biker savages in one of the Mad Max movies.  There wasn’t any furniture in the living room, only the television on a pair of milk crates and a pile of blankets that served as a couch.  There wasn’t any carpet, either, although the tack strips that had held it down remained all around the perimeter of the room.  Dori squinted in the half-gloom as she introduced herself and her friends, and saw that there were two other people in the room, both sprawled on the blankets and watching television listlessly.  The smell of pot seemed to be coming from their general vicinity.  The floor was littered with ashtrays, empty Wendy’s cups, compact discs and computer components.  Ron nodded in greeting to all of them, said two names that Dori forgot immediately, and then disappeared into the house to get Taylor.

“Jesus,” Nikki said under her breath, her nose wrinkled in open disgust.  Clover was somewhat less rude, but she stayed near the door.  Nikki moved out of the foyer and into the living room, prowling toward the kitchen.  No one attempted to stop her, so Dori assumed it was okay if she moved too, and walked far enough into the living room to see the TV screen and to realize that the dogshit smell was getting stronger.  Neither of the blanket-bound TV watchers acknowledged her.

“Dori!” Taylor squealed from the hallway.  She rushed out and threw herself into Dori’s arms.  Dori stumbled backward, not prepared for the collision, and hit the wall.  Taylor’s face was awfully close to hers.  “What are you doing here?”

“I came looking for you.”

“I knew you would!”

Dori extricated herself from Taylor’s embrace as best she could.  “So, um, what are you doing here, exactly?”

“I’m going to stay here.  I didn’t want to wear out my welcome at your aunt’s house, so I asked Ron and Tamara if I could crash here, and they said it’s cool.  There’s a spare bed in the back bedroom for me.  I have to figure out a way to get the rest of my shit from home.”  Taylor addressed one of the baked-out people in the blankets.  “Hey Tammy, this is Dori, who I was telling you about.”

If there was a response, Dori didn’t hear it.

Taylor saw Clover and Nikki.  Recognizing Nikki, she gave a little wave.  “Do you guys want to go out and get something to eat or something?  I think there’s a couple of places that’ll be open.”

“Actually, um, we came to take you home.”

“To your place?”

“No, Taylor.”  Dori suddenly felt very, very old.  “To your parents’ house.”

Taylor laughed.  “Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious.”

The girl stepped away from her.  “Fuck you!  I’m not going.  What’s the matter with you?”

The butterflies in Dori’s stomach were fading, but the hairs were standing up on the back of her neck.  She hated confrontations, even more so considering the last one had gotten her punched in the head.  And, for that matter, it was somewhat easier to be mean to Taylor considering she hadn’t even asked why Dori had a bit of a black eye going.  “Dude, don’t even get like that.  I’m kind of pissed at you, you know.”

“What for?”  Taylor’s eyes flashed angrily, but the look on her face was one of hurt and betrayal.

“You told your parents that we were screwing around!  They think I’m having sex with you!”

“So?  Who cares what they think?”

“Taylor, they’re gonna arrest me.  You’re a minor, remember?  I’m not.  I can get in big trouble for that kind of shit, and it’s only your word against mine that says I didn’t do it.”

Taylor crossed her arms haughtily.  “Well, if you have feelings for me, you should be prepared to face them, and tell them they’re wrong for wanting to keep us apart.”

Okay, now she had to be a real jerk.  Great.  Dori rolled her eyes and made the meanest face she could.  “Taylor, I’m not interested in you.  I’m sorry if you got that idea.”

“What are you talking about?”  Taylor’s voice rose immediately and tears sprang to her eyes.  “You took me in!  All the stuff we talked about?  You…I fell in love with you!  As soon as I met you–”

“No, you didn’t.  You have a crush, maybe, but that’s the way this shit is.  I don’t think you know what you want exactly, but sooner or later you’re going to figure out that it’s not me.  And either way, the feeling isn’t mutual, okay?  I like you, I think you’re cool, but…”  But I sound like every other after-school special and I’m probably giving you a neurosis that’s going to fuck you up for life, Dori thought, hating every second of this.  “Let’s just go, okay?  Your mom’s a complete bitch, but she’s worried about you.”

Taylor was crying openly.  “Fuck you!” she cried.  “Fuck you, you fucking bitch!”  Dori tried to give her a sympathetic look, but it wasn’t well received.

“Are you done?”  Clover’s voice surprised both Dori and Taylor, as sharp and unignorable as an eighth-grade algebra teacher’s.  “Because whenever you are, we can go home.  And you’re coming with us, whether you want to or not.  I don’t think you were listening exactly, but Dori could go to jail if you keep telling people you’re having sex with her.  And if you really loved her, you’d give a shit about that.  But I don’t think you’re old enough to know what love is, and certainly not to know what you want.  So let’s go.”  Clover opened the door, and some of the dogshit smell rushed out into the night.

Taylor turned to run to the back of the house.  Dori grabbed her arm without even thinking about it–Taylor had turned and oh, look, suddenly her arm was in Dori’s hand.  She had no idea what she was going to do with it, but when Taylor pulled and tried to run, Dori held on.  She looked at Taylor in surprise, and saw Taylor’s hand going back to deliver a slap.  Coming right on top of all the damage Smile had done to her head, that would’ve sucked, so Dori let Taylor go, and the girl overbalanced and fell backward.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Ron yelled, storming out of the shadows.  “I’m on the goddamn phone!”  There was still no reaction from the TV watchers, but the female lump might have been watching them now.

“Nothing,” Dori said.  “We just have to take Taylor home.”

Ron put his hands on his hips.  “Doesn’t look like she wants to go.”  Taylor got to her feet and scuttled around behind Ron, glaring at Dori with tear-filled eyes.

“That’s fine,” Nikki said.  “We’ll just send her parents.  Dori, this isn’t our business.  Tell her mother where she is and let her send the police.”  Her voice was quiet, but carried easily over the noise of the television.  “I don’t give a shit and I’m not going to fight.”  She was already moving toward the door.

Ron took a deep breath, looking from Clover to Dori.  “You better go,” he said to Taylor.

“But you said I could stay!”

“Yeah, well, I want you to.  But if I get busted, what are you going to do?”

Taylor gave him a look of hate and stormed out the front door, slamming it open as hard as she could.  She rushed out into the dark without a coat on.  Clover stepped out the door to make sure she wasn’t taking off, but Taylor merely raged to Nikki’s truck, got in, and slammed the door behind her, crying loudly.

“That went well,” Nikki said mildly, squeezing past Ron to leave.

“I thought you were her girlfriend,” Ron said.  “Why are you treating her like that?”

“I’m not,” Dori said.  “And she’s only fifteen.  Jesus, I’m almost ten years older than she is, I couldn’t be her girlfriend even if I wanted to.  She needs to go home.”  Ron’s response was a nod.  He seemed happy just to have the drama leaving his house.

Back in the car, Taylor didn’t say a word as they drove back to Ann Arbor.  The girl did nothing but look out the window and sulk quietly, and they let her.  Her quiescent attitude might have been due in part to Nikki’s silent, stormy presence.  Dori wondered if she was going to tell her parents where she’d been, or if she’d lie and say that they had been together, or worse.  She felt badly about it, but part of her hoped that she’d pissed Taylor off so much that the girl wouldn’t want anything to do with her ever again.

Apart from another thunderous door-slam, Taylor’s departure was equally drama-free.  Dori sighed and threw herself back in the seat.  She heard Clover sigh and relax as well.  As they pulled away, she said, “I’ve dealt with kids her age a lot, at the hospital.  They want to be talked to like they’re equals, but the minute you treat them like adults they walk all over you,” Clover said, yawning.  “When they’re being like that, the best thing to do is yell an order, and walk away.  They want to argue, but if you refuse to, they’re still young enough that they feel compelled to obey the adult in the end.”

“Some adults are the same way,” Nikki said.

“Sad but true,” Clover agreed.  “This has been a long day, Dorito, I’m going to call it a night.  When do you move into the apartment you signed for?”

“Two weeks,” Nikki said.  “A week before Christmas, and my birthday.” She sighed.  “Fucking wonderful.”

“Where are you staying?” Clover asked Nikki.

“I have a hotel.  I’ll be fine.”

“That could get expensive.  If you’d like a place to crash, we have a couch.”

Nikki shook her head no.  “I’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure?  Even two weeks in a cheap hotel is almost a month’s rent–”

“My job pays for it.”

“What do you do?”

“They call me an executive assistant in charge of whatever,” Nikki said with a ghostly smile.

“So you’re a secretary?”  Clover sounded disbelieving.

“Among other things.”

That closed the subject.

She thought about Smile a lot.  He had either been bailed out by Khalid, in which case he was probably getting the tongue-lashing of a lifetime and dying inside, or he was sitting in jail and hopefully not being gang-raped by the other prisoners.  Rationally Dori doubted that the Ypsilanti lock-up was that bad, but you never knew.  She was worried about him regardless.  If her head didn’t hurt so much, she might be feeling good enough to try to get out there and find out if he was okay.  She was pretty sure that he had punched her for something that had nothing to do with her at all.  Which didn’t absolve him, of course, but she could forgive and forget.  Smile just wasn’t abusive.

Oh, but he is, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Clover’s said.  They all are.  You can never trust him again.  If they hit you once, they can hit you again.  It’s the first time that’s the hardest!

Dori had an inkling that some of that was true, but it didn’t change her desire to talk to Smile again.  Clover wasn’t a hundred percent right, and she didn’t like Smile anyway.  Actually, she had liked him well enough when they were going out, but like Daniel and everyone else it seemed that all of a sudden they had to hate Smile, because he and Dori weren’t dating any more.  She wondered if Smile’s friends (many of their friends were mutual, but not all of them) would treat her like dirt now too.

Slowly, slowly, slowly dawn came.  She didn’t notice at first; it got easier to see the stuff on the walls, but that could have just been her eyes turning nocturnal.  When she could see the individual lizards on the MC Escher print that, incidentally, had been hanging on that wall for way too goddamn long, Dori knew the sun was coming up for real, and felt relief.  She watched the sky grow slowly lighter, and wondered when Andrea and Carl would wake up.

She dozed off, bringing her total sleep tally to two and a half hours, and suddenly Clover was there, stroking her hair gently.  “How do you feel, Dorito?” she asked.

“Ow,” Dori said, sleep-addled.  Was she at home?  Of course she was.  So why was Clover here?  One of her eyes didn’t open all the way.  It didn’t hurt that much; actually it was kind of an interesting sensation.  “I wish things would quit hitting me in the head.”

Clover took her hand away.  “Sorry.  I didn’t think.  I came down as soon as I got up, so I could be here when you woke up.  Your aunt left at eleven, so you won’t have to face her yet.”

Dori didn’t point out that she’d have rather dealt with Aunt Andrea than Clover to begin with.  “I’m fine.  I need to go do some stuff, if you don’t mind tagging along.”  Words Clover couldn’t possibly refuse, especially since she was in Save Dori From Evil mode.  Dori wondered if being aware of this was sufficiently devious for her to be accused of taking advantage of Clover.

“Come to the kitchen, and name it,” Clover said, clearly meaning it.

Dori shuffled down the hall to the kitchen and explained the Taylor situation, and the need to find the girl.  Clover bustled around the kitchen, making coffee and–ugh–oatmeal, and when Dori was done she looked disapproving.

“I agree, it’s best we find her,” she said.  “If something happens to the stupid little bitch, her parents are going to find a way to nail you for it.”

“That’s sort of what I was afraid of.”  Actually, she was honestly worried about Taylor’s well-being, too, but that didn’t bear mentioning to Clover.  It seemed like there were only two kinds of people to her: those who were With her or her friends, and those who were Against them.  It was hard to cross over from one group to the other, too.  “I thought I’d go to a few places and show her picture around, in case she got it into her head that she ought to find a dyke bar and look for me.”

“She obviously didn’t know you that well.”

Dori shrugged.  “She’s fifteen, she doesn’t know anybody that well.  Not even herself.  Give her a break.”

“She knows better than to accuse you of being a pedophile, I think.  She’s an idiot if she doesn’t realize how bad that could be for you.”

“Feel free to tell her that, if we find her,” Dori said.  “Anyway, that’ll be fun, playing private eye and shit.  I also have to go apartment shopping.”

“Your aunt said you were going to get your own place,” Clover said, nodding.  “Are you sure it’s safe, with Smile out there?  I’m sure they’ve cut him loose by now.”

Dori rolled her eyes.  “He’s not a serial killer, dude.  Besides, my friend Nikki is moving in with me.”

“Do I know Nikki?”

“You will.  She’s coming with, as soon as I call her.  What time is it?”

“Almost noon.”

“Shit.  I need to take a shower and get dressed.”

Since it was silly to go to a bar at one in the afternoon and expect anyone to be there, they apartment-shopped first.  Nikki drove, because she’d rented an insanely large sport-utility vehicle to get around snowy metro Detroit in.

“You look really funny at the wheel of this thing,” Clover said after they’d been introduced.

“I bet I do.”

“Can you even see over the hood?”

“Well enough,” Nikki said softly, then turned to Dori.  “I have four places we can look at this afternoon, and then we can go find your friend.”

“See,” Dori said to Clover, grinning ear to ear, “it’ll be good, me living with Nikki.  She’s the most organized person I ever met.  She can handle any crisis.”

“Getting your own apartment isn’t exactly a crisis,” Clover said.

“Sure it is.  I don’t have any furniture.”

“What do we need to get?” Nikki said, aware of why Dori and Clover laughed but not smiling.  She had an air of flipping open a mental notepad.

“Pretty much everything.  I think I have a bed.  My TV and VCR belong to Uncle Carl and they’re about five hundred years old anyway.  Should we pool our money and go in together on a TV and stuff, or what?”

“Let’s discuss that shit over dinner,” Nikki said.  “Apartment first.  Fill it second.”

The apartments were looked at quickly, one after the other.  Clover couldn’t resist putting her fifteen cents in on every one that they saw, and Dori could tell after a while that Nikki’s refusal to pay any attention to her was making her mad.  Clover couldn’t even intimidate Nikki by towering over her (looming was one of Clover’s psychological tactics); Nikki was literally only a third her size, but wouldn’t budge.  All of the decisions that Dori thought would be difficult were dispatched quickly:  two bedrooms or three?  (Two–if Liz was going to move in, they could get a larger place later.)  What floor?  (First–Nikki didn’t like heights and wasn’t interested in a balcony.)  Covered parking?  (No.)  Washer and dryer?  (Yes.)  Cable?  (Nikki barely watched TV, but Dori watched enough for both of them, so yes.)  By twilight, Dori and Nikki had a lease drawn up and ready to be signed at a nice complex on Ford Lake in Ypsilanti.  They celebrated with dinner at Olive Garden, Clover’s treat.  She insisted.

“That was impressive,” Clover said.  “It took Ari and I forever to find our first apartment.  I think we had to live with my parents for four months before we found a place.”

“Big decisions are only as overwhelming as you let them be,” Nikki said.

“As long as you’re willing to live with the consequences of a bad one.”

“If you know what you want and stand by it, there won’t be any bad decisions,” was Nikki’s response.  She didn’t even look at Clover.

“So…if you decided to buy a car, and the brakes failed and it crashed and killed someone, you wouldn’t call that a bad decision?”

Nikki didn’t hesitate.  “Not if the car was what I wanted.  The brake problem has nothing to do with my choosing the car, obviously, because I didn’t fucking know about it at the time.  I try not to beat myself up over shit like that.”

“Very noble,” Clover said sarcastically, aware that she was losing the argument but not sure how.

“Hardly.  I didn’t say I didn’t do it, I said I tried not to.  I fail.  A lot.”  Nikki said no more on the subject, despite Clover’s attempts to engage first her and then Dori in a continuance.  She got the feeling Nikki was going to go off on Clover, but it didn’t happen.

She couldn’t work, because Daniel wouldn’t let her.  “I can’t apologize enough times, Dori, that this happened here,” he said.  “I wanted to tell you, though, that the police called, and they have him in custody, so it’s safe for you to go home, whenever you’re comfortable to drive.”

“Can I just finish my shift?”

“You shouldn’t,” Kristi said.

“She’s right.  I’d feel better if you took the rest of the evening off.  I’ll pay you for your full hours, of course.”

Well, she’d be an idiot to argue with that.  She wanted to tell her earnest boss that this was nothing, that it was just a fluke and Smile wasn’t like that, there wasn’t anything for her to be afraid of, but even though she believed it she couldn’t make herself say the words.  Smile had never hit her before.  He’d never even threatened her.  He just wasn’t a violent guy.

Trouble was, there was a knot on the side of her face that kind of said otherwise, and Dori didn’t know what to think.  She felt a bit (okay, a lot) betrayed, because she’d been expending so much energy to defend him to everyone except Aunt Andrea, who liked him, and now he’d gone and proven everyone who said he was a loser right.  Aunt Andrea probably wouldn’t like him very much any more, either, considering that she volunteered at a domestic violence shelter.

“Fuck,” she said, touching the place where he’d punched her.  Half of her face was numb.  It felt like she’d been shot up with Novocaine, until she moved or touched it, and then it hurt.  Daniel had offered her a handful of Advil, and she’d accepted two.  They weren’t helping much.  Dori’s face throbbed, but she knew it felt worse than it looked.  She sat at the table closest to the register, by the door, and every time someone came in she got a blast of cold air across her legs.

Somewhat colder were the stares at her back.  These also probably felt worse than they actually were, but she imagined that everyone in the restaurant was staring at her, talking about the waitress whose boyfriend had just punched her in the face, the one who’d been talking to the police a few minutes ago.

Okay, it was probably all in her imagination, but she didn’t feel like dealing with it, this feeling like everyone in the place was whispering about her, pointing when she wasn’t looking.  That’s her, that’s the girl who got punched.  She wanted to turn around and stare back, or drop her pants and show them her ass, or some other thing to give them a reason to stare.  As the urge grew, Dori decided that it was a good time to take off, before she actually went through with doing something.  She left Pandora’s quietly.

Of course, where the hell was she going to go?  Daniel had already called home for her, so Aunt Andrea was going to fuss when she got there.  Dori didn’t want anyone else fucking fussing over her tonight, she’d had enough.

Meijer seemed like a good escape, for the moment, so she went there.  Dori pulled into the parking lot and sat behind the wheel for a while, looking up at the big, familiar red sign.  Instead of going into the store, though, she detoured past the front doors to the bank of pay phones, and found herself dialing Clover’s number.  Smile attacking her was the kind of thing Clover would insist on hearing about, and she’d be pissed if Dori let it get to her through whatever meager gossip grapevine she possessed.

Did people gossip about her?

Dori supposed they did; after all, the reason she knew Clover would go apeshit if Brian or someone else told her about this Smile escapade was because Clover had hit the roof after learning about the car crash secondhand.

Of course, that didn’t stop her from hitting the roof this time, either.  “I swear to God if I see that son of a bitch I’ll beat him to death!” she exploded.  Dori could hear the phone crackling, as if Clover were about to squeeze the handset in half.  “Dori, what did he do to you?” she asked, as if she hadn’t just heard.

“I’m okay,” she told her.

“No, you’re not.”  Dori could practically see Clover’s sneer of righteous disgust.  “What was the matter with him?  Did he feel like less of a man because you came to your senses and left him?  You hurt his ego, and he lashed out.”

“Um…”  Well, he sort of had, but not exactly.  “It was just a thing,” she said finally.  “It never happened before.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Yeah, but…”  She didn’t want to tell Clover about all of Smile’s problems, since her friend wouldn’t be sympathetic anyway.

“But what?”

“Nothing.  I’ll tell you later, maybe.”  Something about talking to Clover was making her very depressed.  Maybe it was the whole thing catching up with her.  It was utterly unfair–Smile had done this crummy thing and she was afraid of him, a little bit, but at the same time she was worried about him.  He certainly hadn’t meant to come to Pandora’s and punch her in the head, and now that he had whatever problems he wanted her help with were ten times worse.

“Where are you now?  Do you want to come and stay the night with us?”

Dori considered Clover’s tiny house way the fuck up in Oak Park, and her hyperactive retriever named Xerxes, and her transparent Trekkie husband Matt.  “Um, not really.  I might go over to the police station, actually.”

“Good.  You need to file a report.”

“No, I already did that.  I was going to post bail for Smile.  Otherwise his brother’s going to have to do it, and that will really, really suck for him.”

Clover wouldn’t have sounded much different if Dori had told her she’d just pissed on the floor.  “You want to bail him out?  Are you fucking psychotic?” she yelled.

She recoiled a little from the anger in Clover’s voice.  “You don’t understand how much Khalid treats him like shit.”

“I don’t care, either.  What, an hour passes and you completely forgive him for assaulting you?  Why are you so weak?”

“I’m not being weak, he’s my friend.”

“You don’t need him, dammit.  You don’t have to take his abuse.”

“I’m not taking anything,” Dori said.  As usual Clover was shouting her down.  The only way to compete was to yell, and yelling hurt her throat and her head and turned a discussion into an argument.  Which was exactly the same problem she had with Smile half the time, come to think of it.  At least with Smile there was makeup sex, though.  “It only happened this one time–”

“Oh, bullshit.  He’s been hitting you for months, Dori.  Don’t act like we haven’t noticed.”

Dori stopped, opened her mouth, but said nothing.  If Smile had hit her before, it was news to her.  And who was ‘we?’  Comment and question collided in her brain and neither made it to being voiced.  She found herself wishing she’d called someone else instead.  Like Nikki.

Duh, why hadn’t that occurred to her?

“Let me help you, Dori,” Clover said, her voice soothing.  “We can get through this together.”

There was that ‘we’ again.  Dori realized, for the first time, that she didn’t really like Clover that much.  Or at all.  “You don’t understand,” she said.  What she meant was, you’re not listening to me, but the distinction was of course lost.

“Yes I do!” Clover screamed.  “Don’t you get it?  My first husband did the same thing to me.  The anger, the violence, and the apologies.  I lied to myself for two years, telling myself it was going to get better.  And it never did.  It took him breaking four of my ribs before I got my head on straight and left him.  I lied to myself,” she said again.  “I recognize the same signs in you, Dori.  You’re where I was before I got married.  Smile likes to have anal sex, doesn’t he?”

Dori’s brain skipped several grooves.  She almost dropped the phone, and looked around to see if Clover’s squawk had been audible to anyone nearby.  Smile had never even mentioned anal sex, at least not as a possibility between them.  “Whuut?”

“He does, doesn’t he?  And you probably let him.”  Clover forged on.  She couldn’t see the incredulous look on Dori’s face, but even if she had been able to, it likely wouldn’t have stopped her.  “It’s how they work out their anger at first.  They can hurt you with your consent, and you’re too humiliated to tell anyone about it.  Sometimes that works for them.  Sometimes the man’s anger–not always at you, but at his job, at his life, at the world–gets to be too much, and fucking you in the ass isn’t enough.  So he starts hitting you.”

“Okay, but–”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Dori.  The true curse is the epidemic of silence.  If more women admit these things to one another, we can be stronger.  We’ll know the signs.”

Dori had an insight into why Clover’s husband Matt was about as threatening as an oven mitt.    She wondered if he had been like that before he married her.

Clover continued her rant for several minutes, and by the end of it it was beginning to sound like she was the one Smile had punched.  Dori missed much of the tirade, because she was trying to picture Clover’s tiny, wiry Filipino first husband Argo climbing up on top of his six-foot four-inch wife to put it in her giant ass, and that was a pretty amazing mental picture.  Dori had never seen Clover naked (she had seen Argo naked, but that was a long story) and had always imagined she looked something like a big mound of softened butter.  The funny thing was that Clover’s calves were thin, out of proportion to the rest of her, and that made picturing her naked more complex.  Her tits were small, too.  The image that she was trying to form in her mind kept breaking up.

Some time between the story of Clover’s being pushed down a flight of stairs by her uncle when she was six and a coach who had tried to fondle her in high school, Dori interrupted her.  “I need to go, Clover.”  Now she’s going to turn it back to me so I’ll let her take care of me, Dori thought.

It was disappointing to be right.  “Are you really okay?  You sound bad.  I can come down there, if you want.  You shouldn’t drive up here by yourself, but I’ll come and bring you back, if you’d like.  In case you don’t want to be alone.  I’ll be down there in half an hour.”

“No, you don’t have to,” Dori said absently.  She was digging in her lunchbox for Nikki’s number.  “It’s a long drive, and it’s late.”

“Fuck that, I’ll be there.  You don’t have to be alone tonight.”

“No, seriously, I’m good,” Dori said.

Clover was silent for a moment.  “You don’t have to shut me out,” she said.

Shit.  There wasn’t any remotely nice way to respond to that, and even though Dori did kind of feel like shutting Clover out, now that she’d been asked not to she couldn’t, without turning Clover into the victim.  Which was of course exactly what she wanted.  “Look, I have something to do tomorrow, and I just want to get sleep tonight.  I’ll call you, okay?”

“Anything,” Clover said.  “I’m off tomorrow, so call any time.”

“Okay.  Thanks.”  Dori hung up gratefully, waited a few seconds, then dialed Nikki’s cell phone.

It was after midnight, but Nikki answered quickly.  She said nothing while Dori told her a condensed version of the evening.  “Basically my ex-boyfriend smacked me while we were having a fight, and it’s a lot more complex than that.  He’s never been abusive before and I have a feeling it has nothing to do with me.”

“Okay,” Nikki said.  “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”  Dori hoped she was reserving judgment, because she really wanted Nikki to like Smile.

Pleasantly enough, Nikki hummed in agreement and changed the subject.  “So,” Nikki said, “apartment shopping.”

“I looked around a little bit today,” she replied, glad to be talking about something other than getting punched in the face.  She got the idea that Nikki figured she could take care of herself, and if she needed help, she’d ask.  Which was pretty much true.  Dori smiled.  She was also glad that Nikki wasn’t full of threats about what she was going to do to Smile if she saw him.  Clover and Daniel seemed to be forgetting that Dori actually liked Smile, and might not want to have all their awful punishments meted out to him.  At the same time, Nikki seemed more dangerous than Clover, if that meant anything.  Dori had the feeling that where Clover would yell and scream at someone she didn’t like, and generally look scary about the whole thing, Nikki would say nothing and the person would have some mysterious and apparently unrelated accident.  “I didn’t see anything that made me want to live there, at anyplace I looked.  Actually, I’m having a hard time picturing myself living in an apartment at all, it’s kind of weird.  Maybe we should go together.”

“I can do that,” Nikki said.

“I don’t have to work tomorrow,” Dori said, “and I thought we could go apartment shopping, if you’re free.”

“I’d like that.”

Dori smiled at the phone, and felt the need to wander Meijer abate somewhat.  “Oh, fuck, there’s another thing, too.  I need to try and find this chick.”  She told Nikki about Taylor.  “I’m pretty sure I know where she would have gone, thinking that I would have gone there.  I figured maybe if we asked someone, we could find out where she went.  Fuck, I should have done that tonight.”

“Not tonight,” Nikki said.  “Tomorrow.  I’ll come.”

“Cool!  Now I have a reason to wake up in the morning.”

That made Nikki laugh.  “Good.  I’ll see you then.”

Feeling somewhat rejuvenated, Dori popped into Meijer only long enough to pick up some headache medicine with codeine, so she could sleep.

Back at home, she parked under the streetlight, gathered her lunchbox and jacket, and stepped out of the car.

As she closed the door, there was a whistling sound behind her, and a sudden thwack right behind her head.  Dori turned and saw a hand holding a football.

It was the woman she’d seen a few days before at Meijer, the one who’d warned her about the stalkers.  “Careful,” she said.

Across the street, Dori heard male voices.  She looked that way, but didn’t see anyone; they were out of range of the streetlight.  It took a moment to make the connection between the ball and the voices and the thwack sound.  “Dude, did someone just throw that at me?”

“Appears so.”

The voices across the street were growing distant, and Dori could hear scrambling, shuffling, rustling footsteps as they went into the woods.  There was some laughter, too.  They had probably parked on the other side of the railroad tracks and walked in, she realized.  There was a church parking lot over there.  “How long were those fuckheads sitting in the cold waiting for me?” she asked no one in particular.  “And why are you here?  What are you, my guardian angel or something?”

The woman smiled, tossing the ball back across the street.  “Perhaps,” she said.

Dori wasn’t sure how to respond to that.  The woman didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, and she was already walking away.  “Um,” Dori said, but she didn’t look back.

Indoors suddenly seemed like a good place to be, so she went there.