The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Queen in Her Parlor

Previously: "Criss Cross Consequences" 

You know exactly what Chen is going to say, because it's what you/he would say in his place: Forget about Andrea, stick Thomason someplace else. Also, talk to Kirkham about swapping in and out of rich fucks and stealing all their candy money. And where's today's sales receipts?

But you text him anyway. The reply comes only a few minutes later, stating a time and an address.

* * * * *

It's a big house in a nice subdivision not far from Gardinhire's, and it contrasts nicely with the cramped quarters that Gary Chen is used to flopping in. Fucker must be living it up hard, you think as you pass Chelsea's car on your way to the front door.

The bell is answered by an unshaven blonde guy in a tank top and track pants; you recognize him after a moment as Jordan Cooper, Chelsea's older brother. He was a lacrosse star at Westside a few years back, but right now he looks like he's just woken from a nap. "Yeah?" he demands while giving you a hard but puzzled stare. You have the impression he was expecting you to be delivering a pizza.

"Hey, I'm lookin' for Chelsea. Got a invite from her, if that makes a difference."

Jordan blinks hard, as though you've just told him that you're here to blow his sister at her request. But he opens the door wider. "Yeah, sure," he says. "Come in. She's in the back, by the pool."

"Isn't it kind of cold for that?" It is, after all, the second week of October.

"Did you say you know Chelsea?" he snorts. "Straight on through the den there, out the sliding doors. Getcha anything?"

"Thanks, no."

Jordan follows you into the den—a large but disordered room—and throws himself onto a sloppy sofa after picking up a cell phone. You go out a sliding glass door and down a short pebbled path to a swimming pool shaped like a kidney bean. Under a wide patio umbrella, facing the west, sits a shapely girl in a reclining patio chair. She's wearing short shorts, a halter top under an open blouse, huge sunglasses, sandals, and a floppy hat. She smiles up at you.

"Hi Gary," she squeals. "You've never been out here, have you?"

"Nope." You pull a chair over and fall into it. "I'm gonna start coming out here more?"

"Fuck no," she giggles. "And who let you in? Jordan? You know, my brother's got this major hard-on for Asian girls. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, doesn't matter. Guys like him are how come you can't get it on with a girl like Lin." Her titter turns into a hiss.

"Nice fuckin' family. Maybe I'll start wearin' a dress, a blonde wig, shave myself all over, and teach Jordan the pleasures of takin' a ladyboy anally. Do that if I can't get it any other way."

You can't see her eyes behind the sunglasses, but her grin tightens noticeably. "What did you want to talk about?" she asks.

"You ever hang out with Andrea Varnsworth? She ever get wet in your pool?"

"No. Andrea and Chelsea don't get along. Why?"

"No reason, I guess." You get up. "Sorry to waste your—"

"Sit down. Talk to me." Her phone buzzes. "Distract me from the train wreck that is my life."

That bad? You sit again. "I heard you and Gordon went mucho busto."

"I said distract me. Why do you want to know about Andrea?"

"Has to do with moving your homies around. I want to put Thomason in for Andrea."

Her jaw drops. "Eww, why? I mean, is it so you can get a blow job from her finally?"

"Eww, no," you mimic. "It's about moving product. I figure Andrea's got contacts where I can't reach. Also, she's good advertising. She does it with her friends, pretty soon they're in the market to be smart and cool like her."

Chelsea's grin widens. "Ooh, I like it. It must have been one of my ideas. But you can't get to her, is that it? So you want my help?"

You shift in the chair. Chelsea asks, "What are you going to do about Evans and Mendoza?" when you don't answer.

"Already taken care of. Evans is handling Trantham and Eastman for me, and Mendoza's steering Kevin Hall around."

"Hall? He's a junior, I said I wanted—"

"He's in a lower class, he'll set you up someone to sell in the school next year. Also, he gets us into the football squad, gets a clue about where who's supplying them."

"Oh. Smart. That's fast work, Prescott, good work. You know, I only had to look at you to know I was turning the business over to a guy with a good head. I like the Andrea thing too, and I can help there. But what about the other thing I want from you? That idea for a little light larceny?"

"I'm not doing it. Too fucking dangerous to get Kirkham mixed up in it. You know Kirkham. Fuck, even you can't handle him."

"Then get Johansson to handle it. He was hot for Gardinhire, wasn't he?"

"No, and he won't do it."

"Make him."

"He's out of it, man, face it. And better that he be out of it, that it's just me, 'cos then you just have to deal with me and not worry what he's getting up to."

"Then forget Andrea, put Thomason on those jobs."

"I already promised Thomason he could be Andrea, and he's got his heart set on it."

"Vomit. So unpromise him. If you want me happy, Prescott, happy enough to give up this and start wiping my grandfather's ass again, you will find someone to do that job."

You throw your head back and slouch in the chair. It's exactly as you knew it would be. It's about grabbing enough cash to retire the debt to Mathis, and then more to set aside for college, and then more so college can be comfortable, and then more because those rich fucks like Gardinhire and rich cunts like Kelsey could stand a good financial fucking. Chen wants it hard, and the thought of it makes him hard, and you know that because you can feel the same hardness inside yourself.

At least this argument proves that you're not turning into Gary Chen, despite what you've feared.

Or maybe it doesn't, because if there's one thing Gary Chen hates, it's being pushed around and forced to do things.

"You're going to do this, Prescott," Chelsea says after a long silence filled only by the sigh of the occasional wind gust. "And I really don't like the way you're fighting me. Best to get it started sooner rather than later. But there's one thing you can do in the meantime that'll make me happy."

"What?"

She doesn't answer immediately. Then she leans forward. "Take care of Seth Javits for me."

Javits? The basketball player? "How do you mean?"

She stares at you from behind those sunglasses. "I don't care who you use," she says. "Use Thomason or Johansson or Kirkham. And keep my name out of it, obviously. My real name. As far as they're concerned, I'm Chelsea Cooper, and you're trying fuck me over somehow. You'll have to make up that part, too."

"You're not making any sense, man."

"I want you to swap Javits with an imposter, like you did with me and Black and Matthias and the others."

You have no love for Seth Javits—an alpha-jock brute and bully like Patterson and Black and Lynch—so you've no immediate objection. "Okay. But I don't see what advantage that gives us."

"Doesn't give you one," she retorts. "But do the swap, and afterward you tell him that he—the new and improved Seth Javits—that he has to dump Cindy Vredenburg. Dump her cold and dump her hard, right away. And after that—" She settles back in the chair. "After that he needs to make a play for me." She wriggles her fine ass into the seat. "Don't tell them I'll say yes, but I will."

You stare at Chelsea. "You're a sick fuck, man."

"This isn't about—" she snarls, then catches herself.

"This is about keeping what I've got," she says when she's calmer, but the anger still burns in her voice. "But if I'm gonna be stuck like this, I'm gonna enjoy every fucking bit of it, everything that should be coming Chelsea Cooper's way." Again she has to master herself, but now her rage is at a steady boil.

"It's fucking Patterson's fault," she seethes. "Smug, cock-sucking scumbag. I went to him last night, told him Gordon was through, on his way down, not coming back, for the good of the team and the school we had to cut him loose totally, and we had to make it hurt him. Told Patterson he and I needed to be the new couple, even showed him my fucking tits so he'd—"

She turns purple.

"And the cock-sucker just laughed at me! Told me if Gordon was through then so was I. We were up in the fuck room, talking, and he even took my key away. Said it was Gordon's to share, but Gordon was out so I was too. That's why we're talking here instead of— Anyway, Patterson's got all the keys to up there and he's redistributing them, raising up his own favorites. One of 'em, naturally, is Javits, so he and Cindy now get to go up there and I don't, and that means—" She starts shaking all over, violently. "Cindy the cunt'll call a snap vote for team captain of the cheerleading squad, and if I lose it—"

She hiccups. And hiccups again. Hard. She gasps and swallows and with a trembling hand grabs up a fruit drink that's sitting by her side. When she's recovered she settles back, but grips the armrests of the chair. "But if Seth is my boyfriend, if he dumps Cindy for me, then she can sit and spin on the quad flagpole and no one will give a shit about her."

She smiles at you: a hard, bright, glinty thing. "Do this for me, Prescott, and I'll mostly forgive you for the fucking over you're giving me."

Next: "Caleb Johansson Returns" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"