Geek Mafia (16 page)

She laughed. "Don't be such a wimp. Just plunge on in, you'll get used to it in a second." She reached over to the side where she had set the wine next to the controls. She spun a knob, setting the water jets in motion with a roar, and then poured them both glasses of wine. Paul eased himself below the water; glad for the cover the Chapter 13

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frothing bubble afforded him. He watched Chloe pour, her wet breasts and pink nipples the sole focus of her attention until she turned towards him to hand him a glass.

"So this is genuine California hot tubbing, huh?" he asked, which sounded much lamer when he said it out loud than when he'd thought of it a moment before. She smiled and sat back in the tub so only her head and shoulders were above the water, making it easier for Paul to look right at her without ogling at her breasts.

"A prime example. Usually the view's not nearly this nice, but the wine's better. I take it you've never done this before?"

"Not really, no. Not like this."

"See, I'm good for you Paul. I get you involved in all kinds of interesting new activities."

"Sure. Forgery, Fraud, Breaking and Entering, and Hot Tubbing."

"Now be fair, the forgery was your idea, not mine."

"You do have a point. I'll cop to that one."

"And you're the one who said you needed a lawyer. I just offered to represent you is all. And since I'm not a real lawyer, I had to make up for my lack of legal knowledge with pure zealousness for my client."

Paul raised his glass towards her in a salute, "Which I greatly appreciate! Thanks again for that."

"My pleasure," she said. "It was an easy gig to be honest. I wish they were all that simple."

"So what's next?" asked Paul. "Where do we go from here?"

"You mean while we're on our little vacation or what's my Crew up to next?"

"Both I guess."

"Well, hopefully we'll get a chance to see a friend of mine while we're up here. I'll have to take the car tomorrow and poke around a bit, so you'll be here by yourself most of the day, if that's ok."

"I could come with if you want."

"No, no, that's ok. I've got some stuff I need to get done. We'll take a drive around the day after, though. Tour on up the Pacific Coast Highway a bit, which is just gorgeous."

"Sounds good." Paul knew she'd be up to something tomorrow, but there was no sense in pressing her on it.

She'd deflect any inquiries he made. "I'll just hang around the house and do some drawing, I guess. Maybe start working up some ideas I had for a new comic."

"You're thinking about starting a new series? That's great! You know, when we were gathering all those comics for the comic con I dug up a few old issues of your stuff. I especially loved that six issue series you did five or six years ago. 'End Dead' I think it was called."

"Thanks. That's one of my favorites too. I love drawing zombies and that kind of stuff. It didn't sell real well, but the critics liked it."

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Chloe poured them both some more wine, flashing wet boobs again as she did. "Zombies are fucking cool,"

she said. "The original Dawn of the Dead is one of my favorite movies ever. I just got the four DVD set that came out a while ago. It's amazing."

"What's your fascination with zombies? Aside from that fact that they're so cool."

"That's about it, really. I've loved monster movies since I was kid. When I was fourteen I even got my tattoo inspired by monster movies, sort of."

"What tattoo?"

"You didn't notice it a bit ago?"

"I saw something, but I couldn't make out what it said."

"Here, have another look." She stood up on her seat, so the water only came up to her knees. Her pubic hair was matted down and dripping, which was all Paul was looking at for the first moment. Then his vision expanded to include the pleasing form of her hips. Like a cello he thought. It was only third of all that he concentrated on the Gothic-script lettering just above the line of her hair. "MANEATER" it said.

"Maneater? Is that a warning or should I not take it personally?"

Chloe laughed as she plopped back down into her seat, splashing Paul as she did so. "The funniest part is that I didn't even get the whole joke of it at the time. I was fourteen and my best friend convinced me it was a good idea. There might have been some acid involved, I don't remember for sure. I just thought it was funny - you know a man-eater, like Jaws or a zombie or something."

"You missed the whole vagina dentate angle?"

"I didn't even have sex until I was sixteen! That was the last thing I was thinking about. I just wanted to have that tattoo somewhere my parents wouldn't see it. I wore one piece bathing suits for years as a result."

"Did you ever think about getting it changed or removed?"

"Are you kidding? Of course not! Unlike when I was fourteen, now it's actually true," she said with a smiling bite at the air. "Rrrowr."

"Ok," Paul laughed, "Now you've got me really scared. I definitely need some more wine."

"What about your ink there, sport?" Chloe pointed to Paul's right shoulder, where he had the logo for his former company, Fear and Loading Games, tattooed in bright red. "You gonna cover that baby up now that you've, shall we say, severed all ties."

Paul craned his neck and looked down at the tattoo - a logo he'd designed. It featured a very Ralph Steadman-like gamer reeling back from his laptop, different sized eyes goggling in what might be fear or, more likely, narcotic frenzy. Below, in a harried, graffiti script it said Fear and Loading Games. He'd grown so used to it he scarcely remembered it was there sometimes. "I don't know. Sometimes it's good to have a reminder of your mistakes. Besides, it's my design. At least that's one thing they can't take away from me."

Chloe reached across the tub and topped off Paul's wineglass. "That's the spirit," she said. "Now drink up, sailor and tell me more about where you got the ideas for End Dead."

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They finished the final bottle over the next hour, and stayed up chatting about zombies and comics and tattoos and everything else that came into their heads until their skin wrinkled from the water. Yawning, Chloe finally called it a night and headed for bed. Paul watched her nude body as she went inside to get them some towels, leaving watery footprints across the carpet. Was she coming on to him? Nothing in her body language -aside from the naked thing - suggested this. But then there was the naked thing. Hot tubs were well out of Paul's area of expertise and he didn't know what the etiquette was on something like this. Luckily, he was drunk enough not to put too much thought into it.

She returned with a big beach towel wrapped around her body and tossed one to him. "I might be gone by the time you get up tomorrow, but I'll be back by late afternoon. Good night."

"Ok. G'night," he said, clambering out of the water and wrapping himself in the towel. It was only then that he dimly remembered that she never had answered his second question. His attention had quickly wandered to other subjects, especially that tattoo. What was the Crew planning to do next? And did whatever it was include him? He'd have to ask again tomorrow.

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Chapter 14

Chloe was indeed gone by the time Paul stumbled out of bed late the next morning. He felt a little awkward in the strange, empty house, so he decided to do a little exploring. He puttered around, poking through drawers and looking for signs of who owned the place. There wasn't anything that led him to believe that anyone actually lived here. The kitchen was fully stocked with three different kinds of silverware and a ton of cheap, mismatched ceramic plates. There were two blenders. Everything was immaculately clean and recently dusted. It all looked to him not like someone's beach house, but rather like a vacation rental. He knew this area teemed with such places, which went for hundreds of dollars a night. Was Chloe just renting the place for the week or did she really know the owners?

After a bagel and cream cheese breakfast/lunch, he sat down at the dining room table with his sketchbook.

Chloe had taken her laptop with her on whatever her mysterious errands were and the TV reception turned out to be non-existent. He doodled away for a while, trying to figure out some way of getting back into the comics business again. Not that he really needed to. He had $840,000 hidden in a storage locker back in San Jose, a fact that he didn't really think about as often as he might have. The money didn't even seem real to him. If he played his cards right he'd never have to work again in his life. Buy a little house somewhere. Invest the rest.

He didn't need much more than $20,000 a year to be happy. As a comics artist he'd lived for four or five years on less than that.

If he wasn't going to make comics for money, then what was he going to make them for? Flipping through the sketchbook, he looked over the elaborate revenge-inspired sketches he'd been working on in the bar when he first met Chloe. There was a thought. He could do a comic about what he'd experienced since then. It was, so far, the most interesting thing that'd ever happened to him. Of course he'd have to change it so as not to implicate himself in the crimes he'd committed. But that was easily done. Change the setting maybe, make it a sci-fi story. Or maybe horror. Maybe a sequel to the "End Dead" comic that Chloe had liked so much. It was a starting place anyway, which was all Paul needed to begin drawing.

But Paul found it hard to concentrate on images of revenge. His first attempt at a zombie was a buxom, undead cheerleader using severed arms as pom-poms. He liked the joke, but the sketch turned out to be surprisingly sexy and, most disturbing of all, the creature had Chloe's lips and eyes. Well, almost Chloe's eyes.

He flipped the page and started again, trying to capture her face on paper. Then he moved on to full body portraits, recreating her luscious form as he remembered it from the night before. As the day went on, the drawings became more and more erotic and then explicit and finally, just plain pornographic.

It was nearly 4:00 PM before he heard the car in the driveway. He slammed the sketchbook shut and tucked it away in his backpack, pulling out a paperback novel. The last thing he wanted was for Chloe to see what he'd been drawing. At least not until after he'd had a chance to act some of those images out in real life. He heard voices in the entrance hall. Had Chloe brought a friend?

"Hello?" he said. "I'm in the dining room."

Silence. Then a thick Spanish accent. "Hello? Is someone here?"

Who was that? He got up from the table and went through the living room to the front door. There stood two middle aged Hispanic women with a vacuum cleaner and a basket of cleaning supplies. That explained why the place was so clean. They seemed startled to see him.

"Oh...um, hi," he said.

"There's no one s'posed to be here now," said the maid with the vacuum. "Who're you?"

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"I'm a friend of...my friend Chloe. She's friends with the owners. We're visiting."

"My list said no one's s'posed to be in this house until one more week," she said, pulling a folded piece of paper from her pocket.

"I don't really know anything about that. Like I said, I'm just a guest here. Maybe you should come back or..."

He was about to suggest that she call the owners, but suddenly realized that that might not be the smartest move. "Yeah, could you just come back tomorrow?"

The maid was looking down with supreme concentration at the piece of paper from her pocket. Paul didn't think she'd even been listening to him. "No, no. No one's supposed to be here all week. This is from this morning." She waved the paper at him.

"Listen," said Paul, "I don't know anything about that, ok? I mean, I'm just here as a guest." What would Chloe do? She'd spin a story. He could do that. He thought about yelling at them, blustering and shouting his way through the situation, but he realized that would backfire. It might even make them call the cops, and certainly the owners. No, he needed sympathy.

"I've had a just..." He stammered. "It's been a bad week, a bad month, ok? I found out that...I found out...let's just say I found out something about my health? Something not good." He tried to make it sound like he was choking back tears. The two maids looked at each other, not sure what to do. Were they buying this?

"I don't have a lot of time left, ok? Months the doctor said. My girlfriend and I wanted to have a vacation...one last trip before I...before it gets too bad." They looked sympathetic, or at the very least embarrassed. "She called up her friend and arranged for this last minute. Maybe it's off the books or it's a favor or whatever. I don't know. I'm sorry..." He put his hands to his face, as if hiding tears, although in fact it was because he couldn't make himself cry on cue and didn't want them to notice that.

"We'll come back," said the lead maid. "We're sorry you're not feeling well. We'll come back."

"Thank you. Sorry to have inconvenienced you or thrown off your schedule or whatever." He sniffled.

"It's no problem. Really. We'll come back." She and her companion backed out the door, shutting it behind them. He heard them talking in low voices as they left, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.

"Damn! What the fuck!" he said to no one in particular. And then, not for the first time in the last five minutes, he wondered where the hell Chloe was.

She finally showed up around 6:30. When he heard the SUV in the driveway he went to a window, fearing the maids or even the owner had returned. But no, it was Chloe, thank God. The SUV was a little dirtier than he'd last seen it and she'd obviously driven through mud somewhere, since the wheel wells were coated in it. He met her at the door, opening it before she put her hand on the knob.

"And where have you been, young lady?" he asked in mock (or maybe not so mock) disapproval. "Your mother and I have been worried sick!" She smiled and handed him one of the two bags of groceries she'd brought in from the vehicle.

"Oh you know, Dad, skipping school and doing drugs with my friends, the usual stuff."