Bones by the Wood (13 page)

Thea was disappointed in herself, because she was disappointed that in the few days since the attempted holdup, Dizzy had neither been in touch or had visited the store.  She would have been worried that she was going crazy; it was as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened that night, except that she had a new entry in her phone’s address book.  Every time she saw it, she remembered that kiss, when she wasn’t busy remembering that kiss every other minute of the day.  She knew she needed to give herself a stern talking to.  She was being utterly foolish.  After the intensity of the moment, the adrenaline rush, a kiss was just a release of steam; she shouldn’t have been expecting anything, even after all the flirting.  She should know better.  She did know better, damnit.

There hadn’t been any questions asked at the store.  The tape hadn’t been missed.  Thea wasn’t convinced anyone ever checked it unless the receipts didn’t tally with the register.  It was probably just left in the machine to record over itself each night.  She hadn’t mentioned anything to Val, either.  It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her friend, but some instinct made her bite her tongue on the matter.  As much as she wanted to make it seem more real, Thea was sticking to the theory that the fewer people that knew what had happened, the better.

She hadn’t told Annelle about it all, either, but that was for a different reason.  Thea had an inkling that Annelle would be both unbearably smug and then would not drop the subject of setting Thea up with a biker, possibly any biker, if she knew that she was interested in one of them.  Thea doubted that Annelle would attempt to push her towards Dizzy; that was batting in a league far beyond her capabilities.

Keeping quiet about the most interesting thing to happen to her all week meant that she didn’t have a lot of conversation readily available.  It was a good thing, Thea thought then, that Annelle had invited her to the Dusky Kitten for their weekly coffee appointment.  Lyla Lyssa was giving a lesson to Myla in the art of burlesque dancing, and Annelle wanted to watch.  Annelle was interested in picking ideas out of the routines that could be used elsewhere in the club, and she wanted to keep an eye on how well Myla was picking the choreography up.

Currently Thea and Annelle were sitting on stools that they’d brought over to the main raised stage area, opting to sit higher up and further away than the seating that surrounded the stage edge.  If Lyla hadn’t turned out to be about the sweetest person that Thea had ever met, she would have been intimidated right into the ground.  The diminutive brunette had a thing about Fifties fashion.  Her street outfit had been a perfectly tailored dress, and she wore her hair in neat waves which brushed her shoulders, with a perfect barrel roll pinned at the front.  Now she was down to half the underwear set she’d started out with, a crystal encrusted garter belt over pink lace, French cut panties, attached to sheer black stockings with a seam running the length of the back of the leg. 

Thea couldn’t quite remember if she was even wearing panties that were the same color as her bra, but she knew damn well they weren’t anything fancier than plain cotton.  She was also sat on her hands, having found that unless she did, she was constantly smoothing her own uncontrollable locks into place.  It didn’t help that Annelle was working the corporate chic as usual, in a black pencil skirt and crisp white shirt.  Thea was beginning to wonder if she shouldn’t rethink her usual jeans, Converse and sweatshirt ensemble, the sweatshirt having been added over her beater in a nod to the cooler weather.

Lyla was showing Myla how to work with huge, blue ostrich feather fans and Thea was beyond impressed.  There were flashes here and there, but it was all so quick that if you blinked you missed it.  It was really artful too.  Not that what the girls did on the poles wasn’t impressive at all, but this was something else, like fucking theater or some shit.

By the time the lesson had finished, Thea was feeling positively clumpy and frumpy.  She followed Annelle to the bar for a refill of coffee, trying her very best not to slouch, while Lyla and Myla re-dressed.  As Annelle handed her a new cup of steaming liquid, Lucy and Alex arrived.  There was more than an hour until the club opened, and not all the girls would be dancing at once when it did, but they would be taking it in turns until the number of customers increased.   Both girls were wearing skinny jeans, but looked completely different.  Alex looked catwalk ready in a shiny vest and suit jacket rolled up to her elbows.  Lucy had thrown an old, faded plaid work shirt on with hers.

Alex and Lucy dropped their bags on the floor as they accepted a freshly poured cup each from Annelle, who turned back to the machine with another two empty cups when she saw Lyla and Myla making their way across the room.  Lyla perched carefully on a stool, taking care to arrange the folds of the full skirt of her deep red dress, with not a hair out of place despite the rigorous practice session.  Myla was looking typically perky and impervious to the change of season in denim cut offs which were almost covered by a Dallas Cowboys shirt.

Thea couldn’t hold back her admiration for Lyla’s talent.  “Wow!  Just...wow.  That was seriously impressive.”

“Thank you.”  Lyla accepted the compliment graciously.

Myla accepted her mug from Annelle.  “No, thank you.  This is going to be so awesome.”

Lyla tucked her hair behind one ear.  “Like I said, it’s really nice to be back home.  New York, LA, they’re just unreal places.  All those people walkin’ around, not givin’ a shit about each other.  And I like this, the small clubs.  The big places might be famous, but they treat dancers like slabs of meat with legs.”

Annelle was in almost full mother hen mode, looking extremely proud.  “Hopefully this is goin’ to be the start of somethin’ good for all of us.”

“Yeah.  Hopefully,” Lucy muttered as she took a sip of her drink.  She had a well-deserved reputation as a bitch, but even so, Thea was surprised at the openly insincere tone in her voice.  Lucy usually put on more of a friendly façade with new people before she let her true face show.  Thea figured her almost outright hostility was probably due to not being in the spotlight.  But having seen now what was involved with the routines, even Thea’s amateur eye could see that Myla had talent and capability, and a degree of subtlety, that Lucy did not.

Annelle lifted an eyebrow at Lucy, who pushed herself off her seat with a dramatic sigh and took her coffee with her as she headed to the dressing room.

“Sorry ‘bout that, hon.  She’ll... thaw... eventually.”  Annelle apologized to Lyla who shrugged.

“I’ve met bigger attitudes.”  Lyla’s tone was matter of fact.

Annelle nodded, and then turned to Thea with a change of subject that almost induced whiplash.  “Dizzy was askin’ after you the other night.”

Alex’s eyebrows climbed a couple of notches.  “You know him?”  She asked Thea.

Thea hoped she wasn’t blushing.  Not all the house lights were up, but it was plenty bright enough for everyone to see if she was turning beet red.  “Not really.  We’ve chatted when he’s been in the store.”

“He said he helped you out with somethin’ the other night.”  Annelle was keeping her expression carefully blank.

“Did he tell you what?”

Annelle hitched one shoulder.  Thea took that as ‘yes, but I’m not talking about it here’.  That didn’t leave Thea an awful lot to say, so she shrugged and concentrated on drinking her coffee.  “Wasn’t much.”  She mumbled into her mug.

Myla was smiling widely, though.  “That man can help me out with anythin’, any time.”

A sharp spike of jealousy nearly caused Thea to choke on her drink, but she kept her eyes down and concentrated on the muted pattern in the carpet until she was sure it had passed.  She’d known that Myla had fucked Dizzy, but she hadn’t been expecting to end up actually discussing it with her.  She knew that should she want to do the same, she could probably throw herself at him and he’d be unlikely to say ‘no’.  It didn’t seem like bikers were big on self-restraint, but for the sake of her own self-respect she needed to take a step back.  She didn’t want to end up with a reputation at the clubhouse; that would make life very difficult.  She was just going to have to live vicariously, but she still didn’t want to hear the low down, dirty details.

Thea had been staring at the carpet so hard that she hadn’t seen Lucy come back to the bar.  Her head snapped up when she spoke.

“Yeah, well, Britney said he wasn’t so fuckin’ legendary the other night.”  Lucy stepped behind the bar and helped herself to a refill.

“Because she got brushed off.”  Myla was grinning.  “The man obviously has taste.”

Having filled her mug with more coffee, Lucy rounded the bar on her way back to the dressing room.  “More like he’s too old to get it up all the time.”

“I’d be careful about sayin’ stuff like that, hon.”  Annelle advised Lucy.  “’Specially when it’s far from the truth.”

Thea couldn’t figure out why Annelle’s eyes flicked to her when she was speaking.  She hadn’t insulted anyone’s manhood, and she knew better than to fling accusations like that around when the dick in question was attached to a body wearing a kutte.

The moment, which was turning a little tense, was interrupted by the muffled raps of someone knocking on the front door.  Lucy, probably to escape further admonishment from Annelle, left her mug on the bar counter and went to answer it.  She returned holding two brown boxes.  One was larger than other, but neither seemed to be particularly heavy or difficult to carry.

“What’ve you girls been orderin’ this time?”  Annelle asked, as Lucy placed the boxes on the bar.

“They’re not for us.  One’s got your name on, the other is for Thea,” Lucy replied, obviously put out that she’d expended energy in the service of other people.

Annelle had nearly finished slicing through the tape that bound her box with a small knife that was kept behind the bar.  When she registered what Lucy had said, she stopped and looked at Thea, who was equally confused. 

“Why would someone send somethin’ here for me?”

“You didn’t order anythin’ to be delivered here?”

“No.  Why would I?  If I get somethin’ I don’t want Josh to see I get it sent to Clarice across the hall.”

Annelle pushed her box away, but the movement caused the last strip of tape to give way and the flaps popped open.

“Guess we know it ain’t a bomb then.”  Lucy said dryly.

“Guess so.”  Annelle muttered as she pulled the box back towards her and opened it more fully.  Thea had noticed that everyone else had leaned back, away from the counter, but when nothing went boom, and when they saw the blood drain from Annelle’s face, they leant forward.

“Nell, what is it?” 

Thea’s question seemed to snap Annelle out of a trance.  She was staring with wide eyes at whatever was in the innocent-looking box.  Annelle closed the flaps and put her palm firmly on top of the box to keep them closed.

“You don’t need to see what’s in there.”

Thea grabbed the box addressed to her and the knife.

“Thea, no!”  Annelle shouted, and made a grab for her hand, but she wasn’t quick enough, hampered by the fact that she was still concealing whatever had been delivered in her name.

Thea ran the knife through the tape swiftly.  Her box was slightly larger and flatter than Annelle’s, but still standard brown cardboard sealed with shiny brown packing tape.  Her fingers were trembling when she pulled the flaps back, but it was confusion, not fear, that filled her when she saw the contents.  She reached in and pulled out the science textbook that was apparently the only contents.  She flipped through the pages.

But even before Annelle’s perplexed “What the...?” cut the silence, Thea’s confusion was replaced by bone-numbing, muscle-freezing fear.  Trapped in between the cover and the first page was a snapshot of Josh outside his school.  Thea flipped through the rest of the pages again, but there were no further photos.

The shaking had extended from her hands to the rest of her limbs.  She could even feel it in her voice. “Josh said he couldn’t find this textbook.  He’s got detention today because he couldn’t find it.  How the fuck did someone get hold of it and how... why, did they deliver it here?”  Thea looked at Annelle, almost pleading with her to come up with a rational explanation, something that would erase the terror she suddenly felt for her son.