The She-Hulk Diaries (20 page)

Then she heard sirens wailing in the distance.

Shulky raced out of the club, and just as quickly as they arrived, the Hummers were speeding away. She wanted to chase them, but the club guests and all the onlookers and paparazzi clustered around her, grabbing at her and shouting, “She-Hulk! She-Hulk! She-Hulk!”

Cameras clicked and lights flashed.

Ellis joined her outside, with Amber trailing behind him. She looked small and had gotten grimy in the commotion.

But Ellis looked sexier than ever. Shulky ruffled his thick hair and said, “Thanks for the assist,” in a throaty voice as she moved close to him.

“Anytime,” he said in that gravelly voice.

“I’ll take you up on that. I’ll take you up on anything, playboy.” She leaned toward him so that her nose was close to his neck, and she inhaled his scent. Nice—warm and manly. Ellis was so astonished he just stood there.

Shulky noticed Amber glaring at her. She gave the hammerhead a contemptuous look and said, “Beat it, pipsqueak. This is for grown-ups.”

Shulky wrapped her arm around Ellis’s waist and pulled him to her so that their hips crushed against each other, and I was thinking
OMG!
, and then she gave him a kiss that was so deep and long that it took all the air out of his lungs.

The fight and the sense of shared victory excited her, but She-Hulk and I both felt
something else
with Ellis. Maybe it was just my bittersweet memory of his taste, his scent, his touch, because she seemed almost melancholy as she broke from him. Amber grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the Jade Goddess.

I was
a little a lot
seriously FREAKED out. Because Ellis had kissed Shulky back, and I felt jealous in a hurt way. I was used to being envious of her, but this was different, as if she’d betrayed our friendship.

Then everyone began yelling as squad cars screeched to a stop outside the club, their lights turning everyone but Shulky red.

As she waited for Sergeant Patty to get out of the lead car, she glanced back and saw Dr. Sven Morigi in the doorway of the club, watching her with admiration. Shulky thought he was awfully pretty and she winked at him.

“Hey, Shulky,” said Patty as she came forward with a frown. “What went down here?”

The women moved away from the crowd, and Shulky told Patty about the fight.

“Were you in the club when they invaded?” Patty asked.

“I was down the street and coming here when I saw the Hummers pull up. They were already inside when I entered through the kitchen,” She-Hulk said. “You should talk to Dr. Sven Morigi, the Eurosexual eye
candy by the door. They were calling for him and he might know who they were.”

“Do you think they were goddamn regular humans?”

“They bounced off the walls like regular humans,” Shulky said, with a grin. “It wasn’t a real contest, but I had help from that big hunk o’ man who’s down the sidewalk with that nasty curdled-milk peewee.”

Patty snickered. “Not everyone can have your stature, Shulky. Okay, I’ll see what I can find out. Nice coincidence that you were here.”

“Sugar, it’s never a coincidence that I’m at a
partay
. Make sure Morigi gets protection. Those men weren’t superhuman, but they’re not amateurs either.”

“I’ll get on that right away. Just FYI, we haven’t had any leads on Superbrat. Have you heard anything?”

“If I had, you’d know it. Till next time, Pattycakes.”

People were now coming close and asking, “Shulky, are you staying?” and “Are you coming back inside?” and “You’re so hot! Can I buy you a drink?” but she remembered that Dahlia was waiting and probably scared.

Shulky asked Patty to send a copy of her report to Ruth, and then she waved to everyone and said, “Go on inside and have fun!”

Once the crowd had hurried into Club Nice, assuming that Shulky would join them, she raced off into the night, making a series of turns to throw off anyone following her, before returning to the back entrance of the club.

She-Hulk called softly, “It’s me. You’re safe and can come out now, sugarplum. They’re gone.” She leaned down to take Dahlia’s small hand.

Dahlia was trembling and her eyes were wide.

“You’re speechless. I have that effect.” Shulky grinned. “Let me change into someone more uncomfortable.” And I thought,
You’re hilarious, Shulky
, and then she shifted into me.

I was standing in the skimpy bodysuit and huge shoes. I flapped my arms to warm them. “Wow, it’s really cold.”

Dahlia continued to stare with those wild violet contact lenses as she handed me my dress, shoes, and coat.

“Thanks, D.” I quickly slipped on the clothes, changed shoes, and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

We’d gone two blocks and the only sound was our heels clattering on the pavement. Finally I said, “The silence is very peaceful, but I think I almost miss you talking. Almost.”

She stopped and gripped my arm and then opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again, and said, “OMG, you’re She-Hulk!”

“I’m me. She-Hulk is She-Hulk.”

“A, how could you have kept this from me all this time? B, why didn’t you tell me before? C, were you Shulky when we were roommates? And, D, OMG, I’m besties with a superhero!”

“One, it’s been agony keeping my secret from you. Two, I didn’t want you to know because I wanted to keep you safe from the villains who are part of Shulky’s life. Three, I was contaminated by gamma radiation
after
law school and I’ll tell you more in a warmer place. Four, there are things I can’t tell you because they’ll compromise others’ privacy. Most of us aren’t like Tony, public with our alternate identities.” I couldn’t tell her that I was given the contaminated blood by my cousin because he was really protective of his life as a chemistry teacher. “And, five, Shulky’s best friend is whoever is around to party, but you are
my
best friend. Is that okay?”

“I think I can manage being BFFs with a famous attorney who’s also a notorious groupie.”

That made me happy because most people glom on to Shulky; maybe I’d always been afraid of losing Dahlia to her.

D was quiet again before saying, “I have so many questions that they’ve made a traffic jam of epic proportions in my brain.”

“Let’s grab a cab and go to your place. We’ll make a pot of tea and I’ll tell you and Rodney the general outline of my life, including what happened at the club tonight.”

So that’s what we did. I’ve never seen her as quiet and thoughtful as she was while I recited my story. She did ask, “Who gave you the gamma-radiated transfusion when you got hurt?”

“An associate who had it on hand. I’m not at liberty to say any more.”

“It’s horrible that the people who shot your mother almost killed you, too.”

“Yes, it is.”

“But you took your mother’s murder with such…
maturity
isn’t the right word and neither is
calmness
. You held it all in.”

“Let’s not get sidetracked by that.” Two hours later, when we were discussing the night’s events, she said, “Do you think that the attackers intended to keep Sven from testifying against ReplaceMax?”

“I always advise my clients, never jump to conclusions. The most apparent answer is not always the right one and you might miss the truth if you’re only looking for reasons to support your thesis.”

“So what you’re saying is that yes, you think so.” She poured the last of the tea, now cold, into our cups. “You macked on Ellis Tesla again after all these years.”

“Shulky macked on him, but she’s very affectionate,” I said. “He still carries flash paper in his pocket.”

“He’s got a rocket in his pocket,” she said with a grin. “He’s still Ellis Tesla under the thin gloss of a civilized man. From now on, this date shall be known as the Night of the Smexy Men. I wish I could have seen you both fighting the baddies.”

“I’m sure Ellis acted to protect Amber. I didn’t fight, Shulky did.”

“You keep making that distinction between you and She-Hulk.”

“Because we
are
different people, or entities, or personas. When she takes over, I’m inside there, but only as an observer.”

Dahlia suddenly laughed and said, “Well, that solves one mystery. I always thought that those sex vixen outfits you hide away were for a secret double life as a dominatrix. I was sad that you were not very good at it, because I didn’t see any extra income.”

I laughed, too. “D, if I was a dominatrix, I would dress more modestly
than Shulky. Look, I have to call in a report to Ruth at the Mansion and then I’ve got to crash. Write down any questions you have about She-Hulk and me, and we’ll have dinner and I’ll answer as many as I can. Okay?”

“Just one last question! That kiss with Ellis—what did you feel?”

“Honestly? Confused. I don’t feel her sensations as if they’re my own, but she enjoyed it. The kiss isn’t relevant about his feelings for Amber. When Shulky decides to kiss a man, he’s always thrilled to reciprocate.”

“Hon, you act like you’ve got nothing to offer. But Dr. Stunning’s definitely interested, and Ellis wrote over a dozen songs about you. The Gin Cycle.”

“He wrote over a dozen songs using Gin as a default name for groupies. I’ve been entirely over Ellis Tesla forever, except as a Fringe Theory fan. Besides, he thinks I’m a socially inept girl who has sex with coworkers in closets.”

“What!”

“Add that to your list of questions,” I said. “Good night and sweet dreams!”

I called the Mansion and reported the incident. Finally got to bed and couldn’t sleep for thinking about everything that had happened.

• Great time with Sven and got to go to cool club!
  
• Sven could be PFLOML, is single, and seems interested
  
• Shulky stopped assailants from kidnapping/hurting Sven and others
  
• Relieved to finally tell Dahlia the truth
  
• Ellis Tesla lives!
  
• Kiss was OMG! Amazing!
  

• Maybe Probably
  Have put Dahlia in danger by letting her in on secret
  
• Difficult to feel relaxed around Sven, and his client status forestalls any other relationship
  
• Why did Ellis kiss Shulky back if he’s engaged to the hammerhead, and why do I even care?
  
• Sven still in danger since most assailants escaped
  

Ellis’s flash paper made me remember the lyrics to Fringe Theory’s “Game Theory.”

Why did he use my name—my alleged name—in all those songs? The lyrics couldn’t be about me, because I am not a sex goddess or femme fatale. Because if he was singing about me, he would have called.

Day 8 of New Resolutions!

Before work, I turned on the TV and checked online news sites. Headlines read NIGHTCLUB ATTACKERS NOT PLAYING NICE! and SHULKY RULES THE CLUB NICE PLAYGROUND. I turned off the show when the announcer said, “And now for our Cute-Clip-of-the-Day about a friendly furry-tailed rat that’s delighting tourists at Rockefeller Plaza!”

I called Patty Palmieri to see what she’d learned. She wasn’t in yet, but I talked to Detective Mike Washington, who told me that they’d apprehended the men in one of the Hummers.

He said, “They talked because they have nothing to tell. They were supposed to abduct Morigi unharmed, drive him toward JFK, and they’d receive further instructions en route. We traced their contact number to a Chechnya origin, but it was a burner and we lost the trail. You were with Dr. Morigi before the attack, right?”

I told him the essentials and said, “Mike, if the purpose was merely to intimidate Dr. Morigi, the thugs wouldn’t have been instructed to take him to the airport. If the purpose was to silence him, they could have simply killed him.”

He asked me if I had any theories, and I said that I didn’t like to jump to conclusions, but it was possible that some individual or group wanted to use his genius for nefarious purposes.

Mike told me that Patty already suspected as much and that the Feds were consulting on the case.

When I mentioned that I was glad to have left the club before the invasion, Mike gave a warm
huh-huh-huh
laugh. “Counselor, for a lady who says she doesn’t like danger, you sure seem to always get yourself in prickly situations.”

“Prickly situations are all around,” I said. “I guess that comes with living at the center of all superhuman activity in the known universe.”