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One Hot Mess
In book stores March 24th, 2009!
“Luck is merely a product of the happily delusional mind.” Chrissy
McMullen, PhD, in one of her more maudlin moods.
Chapter 1
“Senator!” I said, bracing my leg kitty-wompus across my back door
lest Harlequin bound down the stairs and into Miguel Rivera’s
nattily attired crotch. It was eleven o’clock on hump day, too early
for a nap, too late to legitimize a meal involving bacon. “I, ” I
glanced past the senator’s smooth-suited shoulder at the septic guy,
just recently arrived to drain the pit in my yard. I’d called
SuperSeptic nearly a week ago when my toilet had rumbled eerily upon
flushing. It had been a particularly distressing moment since I
treat my system with all the sensitivity reserved for a high-strung,
fair-haired child. Since the growling incident, however, I had
become even more cautious, reserving my bathroom for mirror time and
emergency peeing.
Fourteen additional calls to SuperSeptic had produced a
“waste removal associate” immaculately attired in sparkling white
overalls with a red double
S emblazoned across his chest. He’d arrived not ten minutes ago,
merry as Robin Hood, saving me from violating the Clean Air Act
and/or murdering the
SuperSeptic guys.
The senator’s sleek good looks struck me as somewhat
incongruous against the backdrop of dusty yard and whistling septic
man.
“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” I said. And even if I had
been, I certainly wouldn’t have expected Miguel Rivera. He dined in
restaurants I couldn’t afford to drive past and owned property
beyond my capacity to fantasize about, including a modest rancho
called Alba Rojo, nestled somewhere in the Santa Monica foothills.
Three years earlier, he’d been a senator for the state
of California.
Currently, he was merely Lieutenant Jack Rivera’s estranged father.
Jack, on the other hand, is another story entirely. Kind of a cross
between a pit bull and a really top-notch aphrodisiac. Powdered
rhino horn maybe. Not that I would know. I need an aphrodisiac like
Collin Ferrell needs sexy lessons. But don’t
get the wrong impression, I no longer harbor any adolescent
fantasies for those foreign bad boys.
“Ms. McMullen,”
I am, after all, an intelligent, independent woman and a
certified shrink to boot. Still, that kind of snockered Irish accent
had, in earlier days, been known to pump my estrogen into overflow,
effectively drowning my brain cells and floating my imagination into
steamy flights of fancy involving,
“Ms. McMullen.” The senator’s voice yanked me back to
the present. His accent wasn’t bad either. A rich cappuccino of
political clout and Latino masculinity, that, oddly enough, reminded
me of François, one of my newest but dearest friends. “It is good
to see you.”
“Yes, I--” had no idea where I was going with that
statement and was more than happy to be interrupted.
“When I saw the septic truck parked near your house I
thought, perhaps, you
would be in your backyard. Might I come in?” he asked.
I drew back a half an inch and refrained from shrieking
like the village idiot.
But the truth was, I wasn’t quite prepared for a visit from a
political icon.
It was Wednesday morning. My first appointment wouldn’t arrive at L.
A. Counseling until one o’clock, giving me all morning to ignore my
housework.
Hence, my living room looked as if it had been struck by an
ill-humored poltergeist. I wasn’t particularly well dressed either.
In fact, I was a little understated for the SuperSeptic guy. But
he’d kept me waiting for most of a week and I thought he deserved
whatever he got. Including the tornado victim hair.
“I’d love to visit,” I said and pushed Harlequin back
with my knee, classily refraining from grunting. Harlequin’s a dog.
He’s a cross between a Great Dane and, something equally large but
not necessarily canine. “I’m afraid this isn’t a very good time
though, Senator. I--”
“Miguel, please,” he said. “I am sorry to interrupt your
morning ablutions. Truly I am, but I will not take up so very much
of your time.”
Ablutions, the word threw me, juxtaposed as it was
against the sight of
SuperSeptic man hoisting the lid from my apocalyptic pit.
“I would not have arrived unannounced if my visit were
not of the utmost importance,” the senator added.
His dire expression snagged the image of Ferrell as
defiant sex-slave right out of my mind, replacing it with a sketchy,
leftover nightmare in which the senator’s son lay facedown on the
concrete. I’m not generally prone to dark dreams, but the night
before had been a doozey.
“Jack,” I rasped. “He’s not--”
“May I come inside?” asked the senator.
I bent, grabbed Harley’s collar and held him at bay
while my guest stepped elegantly past us into my living room.
Harley and I followed, shuffling and panting. But the
senator was too well bred to mention my heavy breathing.
“What a cozy home you have here,” he said, barely
glancing at the detritus that had somehow accumulated on my
furniture since Thanksgiving. “When Rosita and I were first wed we
lived in a humble but comfortable--”
“Has something happened to Jack?” My voice sounded a
little croaky, which might, in the wrong circumstances, cause the
uninitiated to believe I cared about Rivera Junior.
The senator watched me for an instant, then shook his
head. “Gerald is quite
well.”
“Quite well? What does that mean? Has he been injured?
Is he--”
“No.” He smiled his thousand-dollar-a-plate smile.
If I were ten years older or one dateless night more
desperate, that smile might have convinced me to trade in my
favorite late-night companion for something with a pulse. But
François, as I call him, is a decent lover for someone who lives in
my bedside drawer and runs on batteries. Unlike more conventional
boyfriends, he never leaves the toilet seat up or hogs the remote.
Of course, he never pays for dinner either but there are pros and
cons to every relationship.
“So far as I know, my son is in excellent health,
Christina. You needn’t worry on his account,” said the senator.
I felt my lungs deflate but didn’t verbalize my relief.
Rivera and I have had
a bit of a tumultuous relationship for the past, well, from the
moment we first met over the body of a formerly illustrious football
player named Andrew
Bomstad. The Bomb had been rather rudely chasing me around my office
desk before dropping at my feet, dead as a salami. Lieutenant Rivera
had subsequently accused me of his murder.
“I cannot tell you what it means to me that you are so
concerned for
Gerald’s well-being,” the senator said. “He is lucky indeed to have
a woman such as yourself.”
I wondered rather obliquely if I should take umbrage at
his implication. After all, I was not Jack Rivera’s woman. We had
dated a bit, teased a lot, and fought like badgers. Rivera isn’t the
sort of guy you pick out china patterns with. He’s more the sort to
throw china at. Still, he has the kind of shivery allure that tends
to make women go weak in the head. I had been known to do the same.
But I’d never been jelly-brained enough to climb into bed with him.
After seventy-some failed relationships I was taking it slow,
playing it smart, communing with François and studiously avoiding
the stupid zone.
“So this has nothing to do with your son?” I asked.
“Well, in a manner of speaking, ” he said and let the sentence
dangle as he motioned toward my couch. “The past few days have been
rather taxing. Do you mind if I have a seat?”
“No. Of course not.” It seemed wrong to say yes, even
though, in fact, I did kind of mind. My hair was greasy and my
leftover mascara liberally spread between my lower lids and my upper
molars. I was dressed like a down-on-her-luck stripper, felt a
burning need to hover over the SuperSeptic guy, and politicians tend
to make me nervous, even when they’re not my pseudo boyfriend’s
prestigious sire.
The senator sat like he did everything. With a kind of
polished panache. I tried to do the same, but Harlequin has ruined
more grandiose gestures. Pulled off balance, I plopped into my Lazy
Boy like a kid on a trampoline, grateful that my t-shirt was long
enough to compensate for my shorts, which were rigorously true to
their name.
Wrestling the beast back under control and myself into
an upright position, I stared at the senator. He looked as calm as a
table leg. I, on the other hand, felt like there were pop rocks in
my abbreviated pants.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” I asked. It was
approximately five hundred degrees in the shade and had been for
days despite the fact that
Thanksgiving had come and gone. Hence the practically nonexistent
shorts and my growing suspicions that L.A. would, once again, be
bereft of a white Christmas. “Water, soda?” I felt as dehydrated as
pumice. “An iv drip?”
He smiled. “I’ll take a bottle of water if you have it.”
I didn’t. Elaine Butterfield, best friend and staunch
tree-hugger, had warned me against the evils of plastic. One and a
half million barrels of oil wasted annually on PET and all that. “Is
tap water okay?”
He assured me it was, so I locked Harlequin in my
solitary bedroom with his squeaky friend, Lucky Duck, then pattered
into the kitchen for the proposed beverage. It was lukewarm and a
little brown, but I handed it over and sat back down, determined to
look classier sans giant dog.
“Now, what can I do for you, senator?” I asked, crossing
one nearly naked leg over the other. I have pretty good legs, long
and relatively slim. It’s my torso that tends to resemble a steamer
trunk-well stuffed and sturdy.
He took a drink, somehow refrained from making a face,
and stared soulfully into my eyes.
“You are an intelligent woman, Christina.”
I waited. In the past, such statements have generally
been followed by, “so why the hell are you acting like such a twit?”
A query which has been posed with the regularity of the setting sun.
“Articulate, well spoken, intuitive,” he added.
“Well, ” I resisted either preemptively calling him a
nasty name in case we were on my usual track or mumbling ‘aw shucks’
and kicking the carpet with my bare, and notably dirty left foot. “I
wouldn’t say--”
“You would be an asset to any organization.” He took
another drink and nodded, staring ruminatively off into middle
space.
I narrowed my eyes a little. “What organization do you
have in mind?”
He shifted his gaze back to me and smiled as if just
remembering I was there.
“Tell me, Christina, have you ever considered becoming involved with
politics?”
No. But I’d never really thought about having a dentist
drill directly into my brain pan either. “I’m afraid I have my hands
full with my practice,” I said. My response sounded as diplomatic as
all hell to me. The truth is, I rent a little space in Eagle Rock
where I council the good, the bad, and the gorgeous. I had once been
a cocktail waitress in the greater Chicago area but thought that
getting a PhD might provide a better income whilst allowing me to
display a bit less cleavage as I ministered to the mentally
unfortunate. I was partially right; my colletages are almost always
above my nipples these days.
“I am certain you do,” the senator replied, diplomacy
obviously not lost on him. “You are, after all, a successful
businesswoman in your own right.”
Success is a matter of opinion I suppose. For instance,
I could afford to buy a peanut buster parfait pretty much whenever I
wished, but I couldn’t manage to pay for a new septic system. Thus
SuperSeptic’s third visit of the year. I refrained from fidgeting.
“Well educated. Intelligent.” He scowled a little and
seemed to stare through my left eyeball and into the world beyond.
“Are you feeling all right, Senator?” I asked. Usually,
when conversing with Miguel Rivera, it felt as though every other
woman on the planet had mysteriously disintegrated. Perhaps it was
that single-minded focus that made him successful in the political
arena. That and the fact that he looked like a slow orgasm in
Armani.
He shifted his attention back to me with an apologetic
smile. “I always wanted a daughter, Christina. Did you know that?”
No I didn’t know that. In fact, according to his only
son, he should have been rendered impotent at puberty, but maybe
that was a biased opinion. Most children have them. I myself have
often compared my mother to a burying beetle, which, if the spirit
moves it, will eat its young.
“Someone like you,” he added. “Bright, resilient.”
Was he hallucinating? “Listen--” I said, but he
interrupted again.
“Practical, yet instinctive.”
“Ummm. Thank you.”
“Not to mention beautiful.” His smile brightened a
little. He took a deep breath and leaned back, intensifying his
focus by a couple hundred watts. “Any man would be lucky to have
you,” he added, voice soft and speculative.
“I--” I began, but suddenly the realization hit me like
a linebacker on steroids--he was coming on to me. I jerked to my
feet. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t fantasized about the good senator a
time or two, but having your x-rated ideas reenacted in your living
room is a little different than simply playing them through your
mind when it’s just you and your high amp Frenchman.
“I know Jack and I generally seem mutually homicidal,” I yammered.
“But really, we’re--”
“Good for each other.”
I let the rest of my intended monologue hang unspoken in
the cranked up silence. “What are you doing here?” I asked finally,
breathless, motionless and a little stupefied.
He looked mildly confused, then his eyes widened and he
rumbled a good natured laugh. “Surely you did not think that I was,
that I was propositioning you,Christina.”
It took me a moment to catch my breath, longer still to
zap my brain waves back on track. “Of course not,” I said, and
stomped down my politically incorrect irritation. I mean, apparently
I’m bright and beautiful and all that other crap. So why the hell
wasn’t he coming on to me? “Why are you here, exactly?” I asked,
managing, quite successfully I believe, to disguise my annoyance.
“I came to beg your help,” he said and stood. His voice
was darkly dramatic suddenly, and as enticing as hidden calories.
Sometimes my late-night conversations with Francois
began similarly, but I didn’t think this was going to be that kind
of interlude. “My help?”
He held my gaze. “There has been a death,” he said.
Coming in 2009
- Faery Anthology written with authors
Mary Janice Davidson, Michele Hauf, Leandra
Logan
- Chrissy McMullen's
5th adventure, One Hot Mess, coming March 2009.
- Seduced By Your
Spell- book two in the
Witches of Mayfair trilogy coming March 2009
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