Vampire in Paradise (9 page)

Ah! He saw where she was going now. Wealth was her forbidden fruit.

“No,” he said bluntly, although he could gain riches in a trice, if he wanted to, or Mike allowed him to.

“Too bad,” she said, and stood. “Too damn bad,” she repeated before walking away.

The scent of lemons was almost overpowering in her wake. Tiffany hobbled after her in her high shoes, and his men left to prepare for a conference call with his brothers.

“Don’t be so hard on Marisa,” Inga said to him when they were alone. “She’s under a lot of stress.”

“Are we not all?”

“Not like her. She has a daughter with a growing brain tumor who will die without a certain operation.”

An oddly unpleasant thought occurred to him. “I did not know she was married.”

“She’s not.” Inga glared at him as if he was making a judgment about Marisa’s morals.

“I am not the moral police,” he said.
Just an angel on the lookout for immoral folks.
“I am just trying to gather all the facts.”

“Why?”

“Truth to tell, I am not certain.” He considered what Inga had told him and conjectured, “Her daughter is dying and needs an operation. Let me guess. It is a very expensive operation. How much?”

“One hundred and seventy thousand. In a hurry. Well, she’s already raised almost a hundred thousand through various fund-raising projects. Another seventy thousand is needed.”

“And she expects to earn that much waitressing and massaging for a week or so on this island?”

“It’s a start,” Inga said, her eyes not meeting his.

“Ah!” Now he understood. This island was like a Garden of Eden, and Marisa’s apple had a name. Harry Goldman.

Not if he could help it!

The only question was, what role did Sigurd play in that garden? Adam or the snake?

But then, an ever more troubling question entered his mind. What if Marisa was the apple, and Sigurd was the one being tempted? It would be just like Mike to try to trip him up.

Hah! He was stronger than that.

He hoped.

M
arisa, Inga, Tiffany, and Doris were sitting in the large hotel ballroom, along with two hundred or so new employees, listening to an indoctrination lecture.

And indoctrination it surely was.

Banners and badges proclaimed the conference theme: “FOE Proud!” Sample TV spots ran on video monitors along the sides. There was even a music video that was loud if nothing else.

“I wonder if they realize that the public will think FOE stands for the postal service’s ‘forwarding order expired,’” Marisa whispered to Inga.

“Hah! These folks are delusional,” Inga whispered back. “The PR director, Mitzi Dolan, told me that the pornography movement will go down in history comparable to the civil rights movement.”

“They better not mention that to the NAACP.”

A woman sitting in front of them turned and said, “Shh!” She was taking notes, for heaven’s sake. But then Doris, on Marisa’s other side, was taking notes, too. When Marisa tried to read what she’d written, Doris glared at her and covered her words with a forearm.

Touch-y!

Martin Vanderfelt, dressed to the gills in white slacks, a Hawaiian shirt, and docksiders, stood at the podium, where he had been lecturing them for almost an hour. His pristine white hair and mustache gleamed against his already deeply tanned face. He was an impressive cheerleader for pornography, even though they weren’t supposed to use that word.

“You will find two ‘FOE Proud!’ badges in your folders. Wear them proudly . . . ha, ha, ha . . . at all times. The second one is a replacement in the event you lose the first one. Some folks have done that already.”

More like lost them deliberately.

“You’ll want to wear them when you get home, too, or give them to friends as souvenirs.” Harry smiled winningly.

Does he really believe his own hype?

Probably.

“Folks, sexual freedom is alive and flourishing,” Vanderfelt announced. “Last year there were more than four million websites catering to men’s, and women’s, freedom-to-choose sexual palates. In fact, almost a hundred million people visited adult sites last year. That’s half of all the superhighway travelers. Who says adult entertainment is dead?”

Loud applause greeted his words.

Like smut cheerleaders, they all were.

“We have Larry Flynt of
Hustler
magazine to thank for all this,” Vanderfelt said with dubious reverence, waving a hand to encompass the crowd and the hotel gathering. “Larry was pioneering for freedom of expression in adult entertainment before anyone ever heard of the phrase. And he suffered for his efforts.” Vanderfelt bowed his head for emphasis.

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the sheep-like crowd.

He was referring to Flynt having taken a bullet from some nutcase outside a courthouse in Georgia where he’d been fighting one of his numerous battles and had been wheelchair bound ever since. St. Larry of Smut.

“Now, on to the agenda.”

Marisa and Inga weren’t the only ones to groan.

“No one, and I repeat no one, is to speak to the press. If you are approached by a reporter, direct them to Mitzi.” He nodded to the young woman sitting behind him on the dais. Mitzi, who resembled a young Rosie O’Donnell, looked as if she would like to punch Harry a good one. Marisa suspected he’d been passing off any uncomfortable problems on her.

“I thought there weren’t supposed to be any news media here on the island,” one man yelled out.

“There aren’t,” Harry said, “but they’re sneaky bastards . . . excuse my language. I don’t doubt that some will try to slither in. They might even be sitting amongst us now. And you just know they’ll portray us as less than the professionals we are.”

Marisa glanced quickly at Doris, who said emphatically, “Not me.”

“Another thing,” Harry said, followed by more groans. “Please give our celebrities here some space.” He nodded toward the front row where Becky, Lance, and a dozen other actors and actresses sat.

“Don’t ask them for autographs, or approach them about your own careers. Same is true of the directors and producers,” Vanderfelt went on.

He is delusional. That’s why half the folks are here.

“There will be plenty of opportunity for that the last day of the conference when they can sign videos or posters for you.”

Or body parts.

Tiffany raised her hand, and Marisa and Inga sank down in their seats. She asked in her pure Southern accent, “Mistah Vanderfelt, suh, what if they approach us?”

“That would be different,” Harry conceded as his face turned red. Clearly, he wasn’t going to ask Tiffany what she meant by “approach.”

“Imagine that,” Inga said. “Someone in the porno industry blushing.”

“Now who’s being sarcastic?” Marisa whispered to Inga, who had been harping at her for being so cynical all the time.

“If you’ll check over the schedule of workshops and events in your folders,” Harry continued, “you will get an idea of the times when your particular jobs may begin and end. For example, breakfast in the communal dining room begins at seven a.m. and ends at eight-thirty, with workshops starting at nine. Lunch from noon to one, followed by more workshops and conference events until four. Dinner from five to midnight.”

Marisa read over some of the workshop titles: “How to Profit from Erotic Home Videos.”

Apparently,
erotic
is okay.
Porno
is not.

“Is Anything Taboo?”

God, I hope so.

“So You’ve Invented a New Sex Toy?”

Marisa tried to picture some dumb everyday guy trying to talk his wife into experimenting with his crazy device on her sensitive parts, and cringed.

“Investing in Sensual Entertainment.”

Add
sensual
to the list of okay words for
porno.

If Marisa had the cash, pornography was the last place she would put it.

“To Wax or Not to Wax. (Demonstrations Optional).”

Okay, this is really going too far.

“Fifty Shades of New Sex.”

Enough with the Fifty Shades already!

“Bondage in the Bedroom.”

Marisa’s mind had been wandering. Harry had been continuing to talk. He said now, “You all can break up into your separate groups now, by employment. Good luck and have fun.”

The crowd applauded and began to stand and stretch, looking around for signs proclaiming their particular work descriptions. Household maintenance. Landscaping. Restaurant services. Lifeguards. Security. Electronics. Health spa. Beauty salon.
Etc.

“See you later,” she and Inga said to Tiffany and Doris, who went off in opposite directions.

“I’ll go with you to the restaurant group, then head over to the spa one,” Marisa told Inga, who couldn’t stop giggling at everything they heard and saw.

As they passed the medical group, Marisa burst out laughing.

Sigurd appeared to be arguing with a nurse. Whether she was an actual nurse, or someone hoping to get a video role as a nurse, she had dressed to fit both parts. A white nurse’s uniform cut so high on her thighs that Never Never Land would be exposed if she bent over even a little bit. Her well-endowed bosom was barely contained, with the top unbuttoned down to her abdomen. An old-fashioned nurse’s cap sat on mile-high, teased blonde hair. She wore five-inch, white, stripper high heels. Bloodred lips matched her bloodred nails. She had piercings in her eyebrows, nose, lip, and God only knew where else.

“I can so give shots,” she heard the woman whine.

“With those nails? You would pierce a patient’s skin from twenty paces.”

“I’ll have you know, these sculptured nails cost me five hundred dollars. No way am I cutting them!”

“They breed germs, you lackwit.”

“Do not! I’m gonna tell Mr. Vanderfelt on you.”

“Feel free.”

Sigurd was dressed for the part, too. Blue scrubs enhanced his clear blue eyes.
Had he been in surgery? Or was he just playing a part?
His blond hair was held off his face with a rubber band at the nape. He had both hands on slim hips, and white bootied feet covered his shoes.

The man was drop-dead, be-still-my-heart gorgeous.

An old rock tune bounced in Marisa’s brain and she thought with what was probably hysterical irrelevance,
This “Doctor, Doctor” can give me “the news” anytime he wants.

What news? This is silly.
When was the last time Marisa had felt such an overwhelming attraction to a man?

Probably when she’d succumbed to Chip’s pleas in college and ended up pregnant. No, even then, when her hormones had been humming like drunken bees, Marisa hadn’t felt like this. The sensation of her blood heating and zinging to all the intimate parts of her body both frightened and exhilarated her.

Oooh, I am in big trouble.

Sigurd glanced up at that moment, noticed her perusal, and shrugged.

Zing!

The news was not good. Not for a woman with a sick child who needed to focus.

He winked at her then.

Double zing.

The zings stopped when she got her first look at the Phoenix waitress uniforms. Little black nylon, form-fitting dresses that ended high on the thigh and were unbuttoned on top practically down to the wide red belt. Worn with red high heels. Even worse was the white tank-top bodysuits that spa employees were expected to wear. Also worn with the red high heels, which seemed to be standard issue foot attire for the women employees at the conference!

When she protested, the restaurant manager said, cold as ice, “Wear it or go home.”

The spa director, Hedwig or Hedy Meyer as Eleanor had mentioned on her initial interview, was a little kinder. Hedy was a no-nonsense, business-like, burgundy-haired (dyed, of course) German woman of middle years. With the shoulders of a linebacker and a flat-chested, muscled body (her biceps were remarkable for a woman), the bodysuit made her look more like an oversize gymnast than a masseuse.

“Wear Band-Aids and a G-string and no one will know you’re not completely naked under the silly thing.”

If this was what it took to earn extra money for her daughter’s operation, Marisa was beginning to think that Harry Goldman was looking better and better.

Sigurd had called for a meeting in his hotel office late that afternoon. His five men sat in folding chairs around the small room, and he had Vikar on the speakerphone.

Sigurd gave Vikar a description of this bizarre event and its bizarre attendees, including his last patient of the day. A man who had an industrial-size bolt in his scrotum.

The men in the room winced and Vikar asked, “How could that happen? Was he working on some construction job? No, I cannot imagine any circumstance where that could occur. Although . . . remember Olaf Dimwit who managed to get a splinter the size of a lance stuck in his buttocks one time when he was swiving an energetic maid on his longship?”

“Remember? Remember? I was called to remove it. He bled like a stuck pig and cried like a babe for fear my knife would slip and cut his favorite body bits.”

They all smiled at that.

“A man asked me today if I ever use my bristly haircut to enhance my sex partner’s pleasure,” Karl told them then.

“Have you?” Jogeir asked.

Karl gave Jogeir a jab in the upper arm. Being newly re-wed after an exceedingly long period of celibacy, Karl would likely do just about anything. “No, but I am always open to new ideas.”

“That is nothing,” interjected Svein. “When I was patrolling the beach, a woman was sunbathing. Nude. As I got closer, she spread her legs wide, and I saw that she was bare as a plucked chicken down there.”

“Waxing. Modern women do that. Betimes with unusual patterns,” Armod explained. “A landing strip. Stars. Half moons. Diamonds.”

All four of them gaped at Armod, whom Sigurd could swear hadn’t seen a woman’s private parts in fifty years.

“There was a special on one of those women’s cable television shows. I was flipping channels looking for music programs.”

“Special?” Sigurd choked out.

“On the history of female waxing. Truth to tell, it started in the 1960s with the beginning of pornographic videos,” Armod elaborated, “when, for the first time, female private parts were being seen up close like.”

“How come I don’t ever see those shows?” Jogeir complained.

“Because you much prefer war movies,” Armod pointed out.

Vikar made a coughing noise over the speakerphone. You could be sure he would be repeating this conversation to his wife, Alex. Not to mention his brothers. “We’re getting off the subject here. Give me an update, Sig, and I’ll pass it on to the others. Mike is bugging me to find out what you have accomplished thus far.”

“
What?
I’ve been here less than a day. What does he expect me to . . . ?” He inhaled and exhaled for patience and gave his report. “There are evil men and women on this island. Whether that is due to Lucie influence or their own bad acts, I cannot say for sure. Perhaps it is just that this type of sordid event attracts sordid people.”

“And Lucies?” Vikar prodded.

Sigurd nodded, as if his brother could see him. “They are here. I smelled and saw evidence on one human, and where there is one Lucie there are bound to be others.”

“At the least, you five can attempt to redeem those sinners who make the choice to repent, whilst searching out Jasper’s minions,” Vikar mused.

Actually, vangels didn’t go out seeking sinners in general to save. That was a job for priests and theologians. If they did approach any sinner they came upon, that’s all they would ever have time to do. Suffice it to say, sinners flourished in this new world. No, vangels were to go after those who had been targeted by the Lucies.

“I will send more vangels when needed,” Vikar added. “Hmm. Now that I think on it, I will send them, anyway. For a certainty, if there is such an aura of evil as you describe, the Lucies will consider it prime hunting ground.”

Sigurd agreed.