Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance (5 page)

“What do you know about Jenny?” Hudson asked. “Anything at all?”

“Nothing.” I didn’t even remember my Honors English teacher’s name junior year. “I guess she was nerdy. I have a vague memory of a skinny girl with glasses, but I could be making that up. I’m shocked she remembered
me
.”

“She said she tracked you down.”

“I don’t know what to do with that, either.”

“Where’d you say you went to school?”

“Santa Monica High.”

“And you live in Santa Monica now, too?”

“I moved to Mid-Wilshire after I graduated.”

The truck’s clock light faded in a slow death. Hudson didn’t seem to notice. Dread sank into my spleen, and I reined it in along with the rest of my emotions. Any agitation on my part would kill the truck faster. Substitute agitation with fear, spike it with confusion, and spritz it with sexual attraction, and I was the perfect cocktail for vehicular destruction.

“You remember anything else?” Hudson asked.

I shook my head.

Hudson darted his gaze to mine, then back to the road. He’d gained a silver top hat to match the terrier. The man liked to accessorize with his apparitions.

“What was she talking about, all those brownouts? What does that have to do with the elephant?”

Adrenaline spiked, and I squashed it. “I don’t know. Maybe she was trying to prove we went to school together. She seemed skittish. Paranoid. Oh, crap. Do you think she’s on drugs?” Why hadn’t that occurred to me before?

“If she is, they’re pharmaceutical, not recreational. I’d guess she’s
off
her drugs.”

I dropped my head in my hands and took deep breaths. My life teetered in the hands of a mental patient.

“Huh.” Hudson tapped the dashboard. The lights had died there, too, and it no longer displayed our current speed. “You’d think a new truck like this wouldn’t have any problems.”

“You’d think.” A brand-new horrible thought popped into my head. “Is it possible this truck is stolen?”

Hudson grimaced. The silver Scottish terrier in his lap grew to Labrador size, its insubstantial body engulfing Hudson’s arms. “Probably. Trailer, too. I’ve been keeping my eye out for cops just in case.”

Traffic slowed to stop and go. It was midmorning on a weekday, but traffic in LA didn’t need a reason to turn into a parking lot. Hudson slipped into the slow lane behind a semi. The truck stuttered; then the gas caught again and it smoothed out.

“What’s that all about?” Hudson asked the truck.

I could have answered, but the truck did it for me in the form of a grinding squeal under the hood.

“Uh . . .” I said.

“Shit.”

Hudson steered toward the off-ramp we were approaching at a crawl. The truck lurched, then lurched again on the echoing jerk of the trailer. I felt like a bobblehead.

“Hang on.” Hudson pulled into the breakdown lane, but he didn’t stop. Moving barely faster than the traffic, he drove straight for the off-ramp. Pings and clangs of debris hit the undercarriage of the truck, and behind us, Kyoko trumpeted her displeasure. “Hang in there,” Hudson coaxed. I didn’t know if he was talking to me, Kyoko, or the truck.

We coasted off the freeway and into the parking lot of a dilapidated strip mall, serenaded by the frantic metallic-chicken clucking of the engine.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” Hudson said.

I refrained from commenting on the obvious.

Hudson cut the engine and the truck shuddered like a dog shaking off water. I trotted back to the trailer and saw what Hudson meant. One of the two tires on the trailer’s passenger side was shredded. The trailer canted at an angle, the back corner dipping toward the pavement.

I hopped onto the step and peered inside. Kyoko bugled, not moving from where she quivered against the front of the trailer. White showed around her dark eyes, and she swung her head and trunk back and forth in agitation.

“Shh, it’s okay. It’s over. You’re safe.”

“It’s definitely over,” Hudson said from behind me.

I turned and fought a grin. The silver top hat sat at a rakish angle. The round barrel was mirror smooth and just as shiny; the sunlight reflecting off it would have blinded me if it were real. Maybe President Lincoln could have pulled the look off, but not Hudson, especially not in a short-sleeve T-shirt. The silver terrier stood on point at his side, as large as a Great Dane now. Beneath its feet lay a recognizable square of a Monopoly game board with a green bar across the top: Pennsylvania Avenue. I looked around for a silver iron or boot or wheelbarrow, or better yet, the horse and rider, but it appeared Hudson’s emotions were linked to only these two pieces.

Hudson scowled at the ruined tire and ran his hand through his short hair—and the metal hat. The reality of the situation punctured my momentary humor.

“Now what?” Hudson asked. “Where are we supposed to find another trailer in this town?”

The trailer wasn’t our only problem. “Uh, how’s the truck?” I asked, eyeing the worn cowboy boots engulfing Hudson’s shoes. Perhaps he fancied himself a cowboy? We did have a horse trailer, after all.

Hudson swung his gaze to mine. “Okay, where are we supposed to find another trailer
and truck
in this town?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had the need.”

“Me, neither.” He pulled out his cell phone and glared at it, mashed at the black screen, then shoved it back in his jeans’ pocket. “I can’t even access my contacts list.”

I surveyed our location. The strip mall looked like a thousand others in the greater LA area, though this one fortunately had a large parking lot; the truck and trailer took up six spaces at an angle. A Thai restaurant, Laundromat, window blinds store, tattoo parlor, nail salon, and yogurt shop filled the two-block strip. The dull roar of the freeway mixed with the revved engines and stereo sounds at the crossroads. This wasn’t anywhere I recognized: It wasn’t near a familiar bus route, and I’d never had a feng shui consultation in this neighborhood.

“I’m going to get a new phone, then figure something out,” Hudson said. He pointed across the street at a hole-in-the-wall electronics store crammed floor to ceiling with tiny doodads and gizmos.

“Okay. I’ll stay here with Kyoko.” It was the best solution for everyone, especially the proprietor of the claustrophobic shop.

Hudson waited for a break in traffic before running across the four-lane road. The statue-still, pony-size silver terrier gliding along on its Monopoly square wasn’t what pulled my gaze from Kyoko to watch him go.

It took a few minutes of soothing babble before Kyoko calmed enough to mosey across the trailer to whuffle my hand and arm.

“I wish you could talk.” That’d make everything a whole lot easier.

I was sitting on the step of the trailer, arms outstretched, ankles crossed, soaking in a little sun with my eyes closed when Hudson returned. He plopped down beside me, shifting the trailer fractionally. The top hat was gone, and the terrier was normal size again, minus the Monopoly square.

“There’s good news and bad news. Good news: I have a phone, crappy as this burner is.” He held up a small black flip phone. “The guy over there had a phone book, so I found us a car rental place. Bad news: No one around here rents horse trailers. That meant trucks were not an option since we’re trying to keep Kyoko out of sight, and they didn’t have any work vans, so I went with the next-best thing. A Suburban.”

I knew cars like I knew HBO’s fall lineup, which was to say, not at all. When you can’t drive and every vehicle you get in breaks down after one use, what’s the point of learning more about cars? “Remind me what a Suburban is.”

“Big SUV. Hopefully, there’ll be enough clearance to fit an elephant.”

That’d make a great slogan for a billboard ad. A vehicle so big, it can fit an elephant.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Hold off on the thanks until we see if she fits.” He leaned back against the hot side of the trailer and closed his eyes, gripping the edge of the step with his hands. “What a day.”

My gaze slid down the tanned column of his neck. His shirt had flattened against his pectorals and bunched across his stomach. He was lean, but I could see muscle definition under the contours of the thin cotton. Visions of six-pack abs had my mouth watering, and I forced myself to look away, but it wasn’t long before my gaze drifted back. He looked like a model in repose, right down to the disgruntled expression.

Muffling a sigh, I forced my eyes closed and tried to think with my brain instead of my ovaries.

“How are we going to get the Suburban?”

“They bring it to you. Part of their shtick. We just have to drive the guy back to his office.”

“Convenient.”

I shifted my bag closer. I’d used some of the time Hudson had been gone to go through it, straightening what Kyoko and Hudson had messed up. Now I pulled out a water bottle and the remaining packet of crackers. These had peanut butter sandwiched between two tiny Ritz. I cracked open the plastic and offered one to Hudson. He took it, proving his eyes were open behind his shades.

“Do you always pretend to be the boyfriend of women you’ve just met?” I asked after I chewed my cracker sandwich.

“Only those with red hair. What about you? Do you always kidnap men who pretend to be your boyfriend?”

“Only the tall ones.”

Hudson grinned and took another cracker.

“Is there anything important I should know about you?” I asked. “I mean, I know your name and that you work for a security company, but, well . . .”

“Am I a serial killer in my spare time?”

“Something like that.”

“Let’s see. I’m twenty-seven. I don’t have any pets. I like football. And I have no desire to be in a movie.”

“What? You live in LA and don’t aspire to being an actor? I’m shocked.”

“I’m the lone man left. What about you? Any plans for stardom?”

“No, thank you. I’m quite happy as a feng shui consultant.”

“A what?”

“It’s like a specialized form of interior design,” I clarified, more than used to the question. “Basically feng shui is a practice of arranging your environment to suit, attract, and maintain the life you want.”

“That sounds . . . New Agey.”

“Ancient Chinese, actually, but I can see how you’d say that. There’s a lot of chi flow and energy movement to what I do, but also a lot of organization and spatial arrangement.”

“Huh. So you do what? Go into people’s homes and fluff their chi?”

I recognized his attitude. I got it from about half the people I encountered. It seemed you were either a believer in energy outside yourself working to influence your life—the universe, chi, God—or you weren’t. Typically, nonbelievers didn’t believe in feng shui. I didn’t take offense, and I wouldn’t try to make him believe. I’d seen feng shui work a thousand times; I didn’t have anything to prove to Hudson. “It’s a little more complicated than that. Less fluffing and more heavy lifting and bell ringing.”

“I wondered about the Christmas bells,” he said.

I shook my bag, and it gave a faint jingle. Bells were a great cure for a multitude of feng shui problems, most commonly to get chi flowing in stagnant areas of a house.

“You do that full-time?”

I shrugged. “I work for myself, set my own hours. I don’t have to work full-time to get by.”

“That sounds nice. Nine-to-fivers suck the soul right out of you.”

I nodded, though I’d never worked a nine-to-five job in my life. The closest I’d come was shortly after high school when I worked at a nursery where I could spend most of my time out with the plants and far away from the building’s phones and lights and cash registers. It had been a peaceful job that built up my upper-body strength, but it didn’t pay well and it ruined all my clothes. It also hadn’t fulfilled any creative spark in my soul, something feng shui did in spades.

“So, a feng shui consultant with an artist aunt. That’s all you’re going to give me? If today’s any judge, I’m going to have to do something spectacular to impress you on our first date, so help me out.”

I lifted my glasses to my forehead, and he mirrored me. He looked sincere. “You still want a date after this?” I gestured behind us at Kyoko inside the trailer.

“This is a hiccup.”

“A hiccup.” My eyebrows met my hairline. “Does this sort of thing happen to you a lot?”

“It’s a first, but I’ve got high hopes.”

I looked away, but I couldn’t suppress my grin. We were in the middle of an illegal scheme we were only peripherally aware of, poised for prison time if we didn’t get this elephant back to a questionably sane woman, and he was flirting with me. I liked his style. “Okay, I’m twenty-six, like softball, play a mean game of Bunco, and don’t have any pets either.”

A few questions later and Hudson knew I could converse passingly in Spanish, had lived in LA for my entire life, and had attended UCLA. The last was a stretch. While I’d gone to UCLA for college classes, I couldn’t enroll in a full graduate program. I couldn’t use a computer to type the reports. I couldn’t take the requisite lab classes. Instead, I’d taken extended education classes in interior design and feng shui, and I’d audited a few business management classes.