Divisions (Dev and Lee) (41 page)

Hal raises his eyebrows. “Fancy. It’s over on Calderton Parkway, other side of the city.” He pauses. “I could drop you off there, if you want.”

I think about it. I’m full, and while I wouldn’t mind hanging out with Dev and the team, I did just have Christmas with them. But Angela and Gena are both there, so… “Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem.” As he discards the toothpick and we get up, he says, “About that Brian, though. Just be sure you’re doing this for your reasons. You can’t go round trying to fix friendships you shouldn’t just because other parts of your life are falling apart. He was pretty shitty to you guys.”

“I’m not doing that,” I say automatically.

Hal’s response, “Okay, good, just checking,” is almost drowned out by the voice in my head that says, basically,
oh shit,
is
that what I’m doing?

On the walk over to his car, an old Tauron, Hal stays quiet, leaving me to ask myself that question over and over until he unlocks the door and I get in. I inhale, eager for something else to occupy my mind, and sort out the scents.

You may not be able to tell a lot about a guy from smelling his coat, but smelling his car—that’s something else. I sit in the passenger seat and inhale mostly Hal, Neutra-Scent, and female coyote. “Been taking your girl around?” I say. Her scent is mild and pleasant. It meshes well with his stronger fox scent.

“Some.” He doesn’t look at me as he pulls out of the garage.

“Car smells pretty clean. No trash in the back seat.”

He hmphs. “I kept it clean anyway.”

“She smells nice.” I just relax in the seat, not looking like I’m sniffing her out or anything. “Glad things are going better.”

He does relax then, his tail swishing behind the seat. “Something you said kinda stuck with me. Just that whole, ‘let her be herself’ thing. More I thought about it, the less she seemed like Cim. Beyond just the coyote thing. I mean, she doesn’t like popcorn at the movies, for one. She gets the yogurt peanuts. And she talks about politics like she can actually change things, not like everyone’s corrupt and it’s not worth the time.”

“That’s how I talk about it.”

“Yeah, that’s fun sometimes, but it’s fun to be positive, too.”

“My goodness,” I say. “Is my cynical scribe donning a pair of rose-colored glasses?”

He snorts and turns onto the crosstown expressway. “Things’re going better, that’s all I’m sayin’. At least, with me. I’m seein’ her again Thursday night.”

“And maybe Hellentown on Saturday?”

He wiggles his paw. “Maybe. If I can get tickets—plane and game.”

“I can maybe help with the game,” I say.

“Thanks.” He grins.

I nudge him. “Will I get to meet her in Hellentown?”

“Maybe,” he says. “Say, you know, Corcoran might be at that dinner. You could talk to him about the job.”

I stretch my arm out along the armrest and watch the city go by outside the windows, faux adobe clay and yellow sandstone turned brilliant gold in the last light of sunset. “At a team dinner? He’ll be with his family.”

“Well, if there’s time to mingle afterwards, Corky’s always happy to talk business.”

“One of those guys.” I sit and swish my tail back and forth, glad that Dev texted to invite me over, now starting to worry if the team will feel awkward with me there. Wives are one thing, but boyfriends…still, the whole point of the equality movement is to allow me to be treated the same as a wife. So if it takes me coming to a team dinner, then that’s what I’ll do.

When we get to the hotel, I put a paw on the door handle and say, “Hey. Whatever’s going on with your girl, it’ll work out. Y’know? These things do.”

“Yeah.” He raises a paw. “Have fun at your dinner.”

“And if they don’t,” I say, “then they weren’t meant to and you shouldn’t worry about it.”

“Easy for the guy with a steady boyfriend to say.”

“And look at all the shit we went through.” I open the door. “Still do go through.”

“Still?” He leans forward on the steering wheel, looking across at my face. “You haven’t mentioned Vince King at all today.”

I shake my head. Hal frowns. “You doing anything about that?”

“I really want to, but…it feels like I’m running out of options. I need to…how did Morty put it? Fish or cut bait.”

“Well…” He pauses. “Keep at it, I guess. I don’t know that most of what we do makes a difference. We just gotta keep doing it if it’s important to us.”

“Do we?” I curl my tail into my lap. “What if we have to decide between two important things? Like Cim and your career?”

“In that case,” he drawls, “she kinda made that decision, not me.”

“Still,” I say. “You could’ve gone after her. You chose not to.”

He taps the wheel, looks ahead through the windshield, and I think he’s smiling, but it’s a very faint smile. “Reckon I did. Well, you know, I figured Cim was already half gone. And journalism, that’s the stuff I love. Getting at the truth. Telling your story helped some people. Telling this story about injuries, that might help people. Shine a light, right?”

“Right,” I say. “It makes a lot of sense. Hey, thanks. And thanks for the ride.”

He’s already driving away by the time I realize I’m probably underdressed for this hotel. At least I put on a polo shirt so I have a collar, but still: everyone on staff is wearing a dark maroon suit with a bowtie, from the raccoon valet who holds the door to the concierge at his desk to the three clerks at registration. The lobby is decorated not only with art pieces, but with sculptures, and in one corner, a small fountain filling the air with soft bubbling sounds and chlorine odor. Clocks show the time in different cities around the world, there’s a business lounge the size of Dev’s apartment behind the front desk, and the carpet is so soft that I feel like I’m walking on someone’s bed.

I rub my paws on my jeans, but nobody is rude enough to comment on my appearance. Still, I don’t ask anyone; I look for the signs. There are discreet event listings—not on video screens; the hotel is too classy for that. They’re on bond paper with the hotel’s logo, posted in small elegant frames at either end of the lobby desk.

And I’m not the only person studying them. There’s a bunch of females of assorted species clustered around them, all of them in Firebirds gear—a kangaroo rat and a coyote in oversized jerseys, a fennec in a t-shirt she’s torn the bottom off of so the word “FIREBIRDS” is stretched out to twice its normal length across her chest and her tawny-furred stomach is exposed, a lioness in a two-piece bikini and nothing else but a Firebirds baseball cap, and a raccoon in a nice evening gown who would actually look like she belongs in the hotel if not for the garish Firebirds-logo earrings and the gold paint that’s been not too professionally applied to her mask.

“Maybe it’s the Welder’s Conference,” the lioness says.

“No, that room’s tiny.” The raccoon points to the listing. “It’s got to be the Kerr-Thomas wedding. That’s the only room big enough. I know. I’ve been to this hotel a bunch of times.”

“We know, Chas, Jesus Fox already.” The fennec has a southwestern drawl. “Why’n’t we just go sniff around?”

“I tried that,” the coyote says. “I couldn’t find them. It’s a big hotel an’ they got some areas blocked off.”

“Awright, let’s wait here for them to come out.”

I stand there long enough to skim the listing and see that the Firebirds’ dinner isn’t on it, and then I retreat to one of the plush sofas artfully arranged around a glass coffee table. I text Dev quickly asking him what room to go to, and then lean back, listen to the bubbling fountain, and pretend I really am staying here.

Across from me are two foxes, and at first I think they’re a couple. But when I put my phone down and pay a little more attention, I’m pretty sure they’re not. The guy is gay; I’m as sure of that as I am that I’m gay. He’s slimmer than I am, wearing well-creased slacks (though worn), a silk shirt open at the chest, and a salmon ascot—no, lighter than salmon. The light makes it hard to judge color here. Pink, maybe. And he has a shiny gold ear-stud in each ear. Everything but a pride necklace. Also, I can smell his cologne more strongly than his companion’s perfume.

The vixen isn’t gay, though, I’m pretty sure. She’s taller than he is, and dressed in a sheer red gown that looks even more appropriate to this hotel than the raccoon’s. No garish earrings spoil the effect on her large chocolate ears, though. She has a jeweled stud at the base of the right one, and that’s it. Though I think she has brushed some color into the fur around her eyes, it’s hard to tell because I don’t know her, and again, the light. She’s not old enough to be his mother, so I flick a curious ear to listen to what they’re talking about.

They’ve sort of noticed me, looking up when I sat down and then dismissing me. My polo shirt does have a Firebirds logo on the chest, but I guess that doesn’t interest them so much. Their voices are low, whispers that normally I wouldn’t be able to hear even this close, but the lobby echoes and magnifies them so I can catch a few words through the fountain noise and piece together others.

“…said if I saw him again he would totally take me out.” The vixen has a little hope in her voice.

“And he’s only, what, five years younger than you?” The gay kid smiles.

“Julie’s six years older than Mike. Anyway, I’m not looking to get married or anything. I have a job.”

“Be nice to have someone to take care of you, though.”

She puts a paw on his knee. “You need that more than I do.”

He smiles, confident. “I can take care of myself.”

My phone buzzes, and I look down to make them think I’m not listening in on their conversation. Dev wrote:
Sonora Mesa Ballroom
. But the kid’s confidence keeps me on the sofa for another minute, just listening.

“The tiger already has a boyfriend,” his friend says, and my ears almost, almost snap forward in what would be a dead giveaway.

“I know, and his boyfriend travels with them now.” The fox makes a face, and his eyes flick over to me, linger for just a second, then go back to his friend. “But he’s not the only one who’ll spend time with me.”

“None of them will go out in public with you.”

“It’s not about being out in public. It’s about getting to say,” and he lowers his voice, but I have a pretty good idea of how that sentence ends.

“Really? I’ve done him too.” She laughs. “I wouldn’ta thought.”

“Well.” The kid smirks. “A muzzle is a muzzle.”

“Oh, I don’t do that.”

“You should try it sometime.”

She sticks her tongue out. “In my
mouth
?”

“Just for a second. Then you swallow and it’s gone.”

“
Ew
.”

He grins at her. “To each his own. Anyway, that fox you’re after was in a gay club in Yerba.”

She stares at him. “He was not.”

“Read the papers, dear. Miski took a bunch of them out.”

“Well, I know from experience that he likes,” she runs a paw down the front and side of her dress, “this.”

“Maybe he likes both.” The kid fiddles with his scarf again. “Doesn’t matter. One of them will drink too much, will get a room here.” He leans back to look at the front desk. “Just a matter of waiting.”

It sounds like they’re not going to talk any more gossip, or at least not name names about whom they’ve been with (although a fox, in a gay club in Yerba—that narrows it down to two), so I turn my phone off and stand up. That draws their attention back to me, and the kid’s brown eyes narrow as he takes me in. He’s sharp—so’s she, for that matter—and I don’t want to give him time to figure out that I know where I’m going. So I walk off quickly to the concierge, who looks at me with suspicion when I ask about the Sonora Mesa ballroom. “Do you have an invitation, sir?”

I show him my phone, with the message from my contact marked “Dev,” but he doesn’t seem convinced. After a little bit of negotiating, he calls his event manager, who calls Vince the press liaison, who I guess finds Dev somewhere in the banquet and then calls the event manager back, who calls the concierge, and a mere thirteen minutes later, I’m given directions to the room.

I duck around the elevator lobby and use the stairs to make sure I’m not being followed. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m in a spy movie, but in this case, I really am worried that the kid, the vixen, or some of the less subtle groupies will be following me.

Nobody does. I pad up a staircase as wide as Dev’s bedroom and then down a hallway into which you could squeeze his whole apartment. It’s lined with mirrors and paintings, dotted with small end tables, each of which has an intricate desert flower arrangement, and the carpet up here is a beautiful southwestern pattern of orange and blue and red and black, and oh yes, it’s just as soft as the one in the lobby. Amazingly, considering how many events are apparently going on tonight, the hallway is dead silent, and the background scent is just a mélange of all the people who’ve walked through it, masked by Neutra-Scent in the air enough that I can’t tell anything about any of them. I’d thought the coyote was a couple dominoes short of a full case when she said she couldn’t find the team just by sniffing around, but as it turns out, the doors along the hallway are well-insulated against sound, and the air circulation keeps smells from collecting, and it would be impossible to find anyone without actually opening every door.

At the end of the hallway there’s another staircase, this one only wide enough to fit two of our sofas across. I walk up to the third floor, at the end of which is a large pair of double doors and the sign, “Sonora Mesa Ballroom.”

I hesitate—I don’t want to just walk in. And then I think, I’m invited. I’m going in. So I open the door and slide into the room.

Immediately, the noise of conversation and the smells of about a hundred people greet me. I step to the left, letting the door close, and look around the room. I’d expected sedate dinners at tables, lots of eyes turned my way when I walked in, but what I’ve stepped into looks more like a cocktail party. There are high tables scattered around the room, but mostly people are just standing and talking to each other. Barely anyone even looked at the door as it opened and closed.