The Balance Thing (14 page)

“Sure.” Max assumed a resigned expression. “So nobody tells the truth about their sex life and we don't discuss money. Sounds like Thanksgiving at my mother's house.”

“Ah”—I handed him a drink—“but would your mother serve raspberry flirtinis?”

“Not on her best day.”

 

THE PARTY WAS ONCE AGAIN
hosted by Connie's parents. There was once again a fleet of handsome waiters circulating with champagne and various nibbleable things. Once again an ice sculpture (this time of a mermaid—I couldn't begin to guess the significance) contained an extravagant amount of caviar. Once again it all hit Vida the wrong way.

“Do you think they'll have to walk in backward?” she asked, as we all turned to the staircase following the announcement that Mr. and Mrs. Ian Hastings were about to make their grand entrance.

“It does feel a little bit like we're playing the reel in reverse,” Max agreed.

“Except this time all the presents are unwrapped,” I pointed out.

Connie's mother had been busy in her daughter's absence. She'd unwrapped all the gifts that had been given on two continents, made a careful list of who'd sent what so
Connie would have an easy time with the thank-you cards, and set all the glittering swag out in an ostentatious display on the long dining room table.

Vida had gasped when she'd seen it all, and Max had started whistling “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”?

“Max!” I elbowed him. “This is not a road company production of
High Society
. Cut it out.”

At least this time there were no speeches. When Connie and Ian hit the bottom step they were swallowed by the party like the rest of us.

We mingled.

“Becks,” Vida said suddenly, “don't look now, but there's a guy over there who's been checking you out.”

“What guy?”

She not-so-subtly jerked her head. “The one by the mermaid.”

“Never go into undercover work,” I told her, and looked over by the mermaid.

There was someone looking at me. I didn't think I knew him, but he had one of those faces that could have been on anyone. And now he was smiling.

I turned back to Vida. “I'm not up for flirting tonight.”

“You're never up for flirting.”

“Um—I was at the last party we went to, and look how well that turned out.”

“How well what turned out?” Connie materialized to Vida's left. We both jumped.

“Connie! How are you? How was Venice?” Vida and I babbled.

Connie's party smile wobbled. “Let's go out to the terrace.” She turned away.

Vida and I took the time to exchange one raised-eyebrow
look before we followed her, grabbing Max by the French cuff on our way to the door.

As soon as we hit fresh air, Connie burst into tears.

“It was awful,” she sniffed, reaching for Max's pocket handkerchief. “It was supposed to be paradise, but it was so hot and there were so many bugs, and there was nothing to do.” She looked at us wildly. “Absolutely nothing to do. No clubs, no restaurants or theaters or museums, just fourteen days of Ian and…nothing.”

“Connie,” Vida said. “You make it sound like you were on some desert island. I thought you two were going to Paris and Venice?”

“The two most romantic cities in the world,” I agreed. “Wasn't that the plan?”

She blew her nose violently. “That
was
the plan. Before Ian decided to
surprise
me by changing everything and taking me to that godforsaken hellhole.”

“What hellhole was that, exactly, Connie?” Max asked.

“The Four Seasons on Maldives.”

Vida was the first to speak. “Maldives? As in the islands in the Indian Ocean? As in the best scuba diving on the planet?”

Connie sniffed. “We did go diving a few times.”

Now it was Max's turn. “The Four Seasons? As in luxury I can't even imagine?”

Connie enlightened us. “As in a thatched-roof water bungalow on stilts and our own private lagoon.”

I stared at her. “That bastard. He made you have your own private lagoon?”

“Connie.” Max struggled to understand. “You're saying that Ian swept you away to the most exotically romantic hon
eymoon destination on the planet and you're…pissed?”

“He didn't tell me!” She stamped her foot, which didn't really help if she was trying not to look like a spoiled princess. “Do you know how much planning went into Paris and Venice?”

Oh, the planning. I think the three of us got it at the same time. “Connie, sweetie, did the change in plans mean you'd packed wrong?”

She turned on me. “I did not pack wrong! I packed perfectly appropriately. I even sent things by FedEx to both hotels so we wouldn't have to carry too much luggage. And I had reservations at restaurants that I'd made
months
before. And I knew exactly what we were going to do every day, and there was
so much
to do, and then…” Her voice trailed off. “Maldives.”

I don't think I'd ever heard the name of an island paradise spoken with such complete loathing.

“There must have been a shop,” Vida said hesitantly. “I mean, you must have been able to buy a swimsuit and some sunscreen, and really, what more do you…” The remains of the sentence were withered by Connie's glare. “I get it,” Vida backpedaled. “That's not the point.”

“Of course there was a
shop
,” Connie said acidly. “There were several quite lovely
shops
. And there was swimming, and snorkeling, and diving, but when all was said and done in the evening, there was only…”

“Ian?” Max suggested.

“Ian,” Connie agreed.

Something told me the honeymoon was over.

P
ublicity. The next few weeks were all about getting Vladima's name in print. She was already an underground goddess to the poorly socialized Goth set, but I wanted to bring her out of the darkness, so to speak, and into the light of mainstream entertainment. Being careful, as Josh continually reminded me, not to kill her in the process.

“Vladima does not drink Pepsi,” he said.

No problem. But in the back of my mind I wondered if she might wear an outfit from Bebe. I didn't bring that up yet.

 

THE FIRST STEP
in the comic book project was to take the storyboards Josh had created for the past three Vladima plot lines and turn them into a graphic novel. For that job we hired a twitchy guy named Rabbit (for reasons I refused to investigate) who seemed to be born for the job.

I also had the Web master, Alex, add some simple code to the site so we'd be able to tell how many hits we got in a day, as well as track the relative popularity of different areas of the site.

I knew that if we could get Vladima's visitors to log in when they came to the site, we'd be able to get even more session information. Like where they visited first and how long they stayed with each page, and how often the same user came back for more—useful information if you want to know what's working and whether your advertising dollars (which I now had) were paying off in new viewers.

But getting people to log in was tricky. You need to give them something in return for the information they give you. We talked over a lot of ideas, but everything we could think of ended up sounding silly. Not that the idea of a crime-busting vampire sex idol wasn't silly already, but you know what I mean.

It was Jeremy, the AniSplash programmer, who came up with the idea of the Vladima screensaver. We'd just take a dozen or so of the more compelling panels and turn them into a slideshow. Jeremy told us it would be easy to create, and we could offer it as a free download from the site.

“Free?” Josh had said doubtfully. “I thought the idea was to make money somehow.”

“Getting them to download something is one step closer to getting them to buy something from our online store. It takes the Vladima experience from passive—just viewing—to interactive.”

“The Vladima experience?” Josh echoed.

“Online store?” Jeremy asked. “What online store?”

“That will come a little later, when the demand for Vladima T-shirts reaches critical mass.”

“There's a demand for Vladima T-shirts?” Josh asked.

“There will be.” If I had anything to say about it, a Vladima T-shirt would be mandatory fashion for every
beginning freshman in America. Especially if I could get some member of a reasonably cool band to wear one in a video. And really, how hard could that be?

 

THE SECOND WEEK IN JULY,
Vladima got mentioned in both
San Francisco
magazine and
Entertainment Weekly
. Josh called an all-minion meeting to mark the occasion, and when I walked into the break room, I was doused with champagne by the entire staff. That sort of thing had never happened in any of my previous jobs. I was now officially a member of Vladima's cult.

The meeting turned into a full-on party, which I enjoyed with sodden clothes and wine dripping from my hair as we discussed in all seriousness the relative merits of garlic necklaces or vampire teeth for the freebies we'd be handing out at our booth at ComixCon.

“What about wooden stakes?” Raven, the sound engineer, wanted to know. “Wouldn't they be good? And cheap to make?”

“I don't think we should hand out actual weapons,” Josh told her. “There might be a vampire at another booth, and we wouldn't want our fans to go around the convention trying to slay the competition.”

“There probably will be vampires at other booths,” I told him. “Vladima isn't the only undead hero on the market.”

Which led to a round of supportive shouts such as “She's the best!” and “Vladima rocks!” and “She could kick Vampirella's ass!”

“Hey,” Donovan said suddenly, “are we going to have a live Vladima at our booth?”

All heads turned to me. Except Josh's. He suddenly found something in the microwave that needed his attention.

“I'm auditioning actresses next week,” I told them all. “It's going to be tight, but we should be able to cast someone and get a costume made in time.”

“That'll be some costume,” Alex commented.

“Um, yeah.” I looked at Jeremy, the creator of Vladima's magnificent breasts. “Well, the reality of an actress's actual body might not live up to the animated version, but we'll see what we can do.”

The thought of an actress's actual body had quite an effect on the group. Four dateless guys spoke as one. “Can I come to the auditions?”

I looked over at Josh, who was blushing if I wasn't mistaken. “No you can't,” I told them.

That sort of broke up the party.

Josh threw me a towel as the minions filed back to their cubicles. I looked down at myself in dismay and started dabbing around the edges.

“Um.” Josh looked at a spot on the wall behind me as he spoke. “I've probably got a T-shirt or something I could lend you upstairs.” He glanced at my face quickly, then looked away again. “You could, uh, get cleaned up.”

“Upstairs?”

“Yeah.” Now he started straightening scraps of paper on the bulletin board.

The only thing upstairs was the mystery office. “You know what's upstairs?”

“Of course I do. What do you think is up there?”

Since I'd found out Josh wasn't running a porn studio
upstairs, I hadn't really thought about it. “I don't know. A drug lab? A front for the mafia?”

He stared at me. “That's quite an imagination you've got there.”

“Why? What is upstairs?”

“My apartment.”

“You're…kidding.”

“Sorry to spoil whatever little fantasies you've got going, but it's not exactly a den of iniquity.”

I don't know why I was surprised. Maybe it was because I'd always figured something sinister was going on up there. And maybe it was because I'd never really thought of Josh as having an apartment.

“You're still dripping,” he said.

I came back to my senses. “You're not exactly fresh as a daisy yourself, pal.” He'd caught more than his share of the spraying champagne earlier.

He looked down at his soaking shirt. “So let's go dry off, and then we can go over the new storyboards.”

“Deal.” After all, it was just an apartment, and it was just upstairs.

So why did I suddenly feel as if I'd had a lot more than two glasses of champagne?

 

HERE'S MY PRIMARY IMPRESSION
of Josh's loft: weird.

Not that it was weird-looking or anything. In fact, I was a little startled by how nice it was. The space was huge, and tall windows let in all the light that had been banned from the downstairs studio. Josh had sectioned areas off with
bookshelves and modular units to establish clearly defined spaces for everything.

There was a living area with a sofa and massive amounts of audio and video equipment. Another space was set aside as a reading nook, with one comfortable-looking leather chair, one good lamp, and a lopsided stack of books. The open-plan kitchen had up-to-the-minute fixtures and trendy track lighting. Beyond the kitchen, behind some modular closet units on wheels, I saw the corner of a large low bed.

It was comfortable. It was surprisingly tasteful. It was immaculate. And it was weird. Weird to rinse myself off in Josh's bathroom and pat myself dry with Josh's fluffy towels. Weird to be sitting on Josh's sofa wearing Josh's U2 T-shirt, and waiting for Josh to come back from the kitchen with a cup of tea. Very weird to be in his home rather than downstairs in his office, and extremely weird that, despite the weirdness, it was nice.

He sat next to me after handing me a steaming mug. I just had time to notice how close he was when he spoke.

“There's something you should know.”

I've never had a conversation start with those words and end well. I braced myself. “What?”

“I've given Vladima a partner.”

“A…? Oh. Um…” For some reason I was completely flustered. “A partner?” I wished I could stop looking into Josh's eyes. “A partner.” Then I realized what he'd said. “A
partner
?”

He explained. “I think she needs someone to—I don't know—to hang out with. I mean, I've been thinking for a while that she needs a Watson, you know? A Robin to her
Batman? A partner.” The way he was looking at me made it clear that it was important that I agree with him.

But I wasn't so sure. “You created another superhero?”

He shook his head. “I messed around with that for a while, but then I decided on a mortal.” He reached over to the coffee table and opened a folder. “Dr. Ethan Black.”

I looked at the drawing. A dark-haired guy in a lab coat wearing glasses. “He's a research scientist?”

“Among other things.” Josh explained. “He used to work for the FBI crime lab, but he got fired because he kept insisting there was a female serial killer who was gruesomely murdering all the mobsters and drug lords.”

Ah-ha. “He was on to Vladima?”

Josh nodded. “That's what the new storyline is—Vladima's pursuing a pedophile, and Dr. Ethan Black is pursuing her.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “By the end of the third issue he'll have decided that her vampire vigilantism is just what this town needs.”

Josh grinned. “Something like that. Will you read it tonight?”

I took the folder. “Sure.”

When I looked at him, I felt there must be something else I should say. I opened my mouth, but suddenly the weirdness came rushing back and choked me.

So I took Vladima and we got the hell out.

 

I DIDN'T HAVE TIME
to go home and change before meeting Max for dinner at a little restaurant on Fillmore that probably had a name, but that we always just referred to as “the cheap Thai place.”

“What's this?” He gestured to Josh's T-shirt. “Are we into vintage rock fashion now?”

“It's borrowed.” I pecked his cheek. “It was either wear U2 or smell like a wino.”

“Tough call.” He put his menu aside and clasped his hands. “So what's new? Tell me everything. I want to get all the boring ‘you' stuff out of the way so we can spend the rest of the evening talking about me and my brilliant new show.”

He produced a stack of postcard-sized flyers for
San Francisco Follies
, the show he was backing, which would be opening in a few days at the Next Stage Theater (which was actually the auditorium of an Episcopal church on Gough Street, but who cares—it's showbiz).

“I want you to give these to everyone you know,” he instructed. “And at some point you'll need to explain to me why, if you can get that damn cartoon vampire mentioned in every column in America, you can't generate a little heat for your oldest and dearest friend, but that can wait.”

He gave me a dazzling smile. “You didn't answer me. What's new?”

I set the folder of Josh's storyboards on the table. “New story for the cartoon vampire, no new story for me.”

Max opened the folder and started leafing through the pages. About halfway through, his eyebrows went up. “She has a love interest.” He looked at me. “She has a love interest?”

I shook my head and took a break from Max to order a Thai iced tea and some red curry. “Not a love interest,” I told him when the waitress had gone, “a partner.”

“You don't sound very happy about it.”

I made a face. “I really don't care one way or the other.”

“I believe you. Thousands wouldn't, but I do.”

“It's just that if she has a partner, there's bound to be a
power struggle as he tries to control her, and I—What?” Max was giving me his Dr. Freud look.

“Just because your relationships are about power doesn't mean Vladima's are.”

“We're not talking about me. And anyway, my relationships are not about power.”

“Uh-huh.” If he'd had a beard, he'd have been stroking it.

“Oh, come on, Max, aren't all relationships about power? Connie says—and I'm not saying Connie is in any way my romantic role model—but Connie says in any relationship you're either the hammer or the nail.”

That seemed to shut him up for a minute. “Well, that certainly explains a lot about her marriage,” he reflected.

“And how the hell did we end up on the subject of relationships anyway? I thought we were going to have a nice quiet dinner where we'd talk about what a marketing genius I am and how you're the next Flo Ziegfeld.”

“All right, all right.” He held up his hands in surrender. “You win.”

“Good. Are you going to eat all of those spring rolls?”

He held out the plate. “I'll only say one more word on the subject.”

“Max!”

He snatched the plate away before I'd had a chance to take anything.

“Not until you listen to me.”

I stared at him. “Fine.” Whatever.

“I only want to say that you do have a relationship with a single, straight guy that isn't a power struggle.”

“I do not.” I speared a spring roll and did my best to ignore Max.

“What about Josh?”

I rolled my eyes. “Josh isn't a guy.”

“I wouldn't count on that.”

I gave Max a look. “He's a colleague. There's nothing personal about our relationship and there's certainly nothing sexual.”

“Right. Just out of curiosity, have you seen the way he draws you?”

“He doesn't draw me. He draws Vladima.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe that was true once, but after a while there got to be a definite resemblance. And in this new one—” He opened the folder and turned a page to face me. “Baby, that is you in a black leather bustier.”