I raised my fist and said “Contumax,” but I felt like a satanic geek when instead of replying with “Potestas,” she said, “Hey, look at you, boy toy.”
“Hey,” I said.
Being called a boy toy might have been flattering if she hadn’t been festooned with knives. At each hip, two loaded sheaths were fixed to her belt. In a scabbard against her back hung a full-length sword, which she could draw by reaching over her left shoulder. From each wrist dangled a straight razor, and though the blades were at the moment safely folded into the polished-ivory handles, I suspected that with a flick of her hands, she could bring both razors out, up, and into service. Whatever all she might want to do to a boy toy, I didn’t think I could assume that sex would be part of it.
“You know Rob Burkett, honey?” she asked.
I said, “The twelve rules of successful management.”
The sound she made was half laugh and half snort. “Yeah, he’s kind of an asshole. Where’d he get that stupid shit-happens poster with the cat and the crocodile?”
“Wherever, it wasn’t a Hallmark store.”
“You seen him? He said he’d be down here in his office.”
Evidently, she hadn’t gone around behind the desk and looked in the knee space, where Rob was in the fetal position as if being born into death.
She came close and looked me over from crotch to lips to eyes. “You part of the show tonight?”
“Yeah. Are you?”
“Can’t wait. They’re givin’ me a juicy little boy.”
With a flick of her wrist, she brought the dangling ivory handle into her hand and released the straight razor, which appeared to be sharp enough to divide a human hair from end to end.
“Excellent,” I said, pretending to admire her dexterity and style. “You ever cut one before?”
“A juicy little boy? Nah. Youngest ones I’ve cut are like eighteen, they come on to me, thinkin’ they’re so hot, but they’re pussies. Only thing hot about ’em is their blood. My name’s Jinx.”
Yes, I thought, I suppose it would be.
But I said, “I’m Lucius.”
“I think you’re luscious,” she said, and she stroked the flat of the razor blade slowly along my left cheek, as if she were giving me a shave.
The steel was cold.
Her eyes were the jaundice yellow of a very sick man’s urine.
“Your eyes are amazing,” I said.
“They’re really blue. I’m wearin’ contacts that make ’em this way. Wild-animal eyes. I want my little boy so scared the second he sees me, he pisses himself right then.”
“I think he will.”
“You think he will?”
“I know he will.”
Jinx said, “I’m from Reno.”
“I’m from Arizona.”
“Where in Arizona?” she asked, flicking open the straight razor in her left hand and drawing the flat of the blade along my right cheek.
“Little town you never heard of.”
“Maybe I have.”
“Lonely Possum, Arizona.”
“Sounds like the ass end of nowhere.”
“You can get a lot of land cheap. Keep neighbors at a distance.”
She said, “Nobody hears nothin’ you’re doin’, huh?”
“None of their business, anyway.”
With a quick gesture of each hand, she flipped the blades back into the handles and let them dangle from her wrists again.
I didn’t feel any safer.
Jinx said, “What’re they givin’ you for the show?”
“This girl. They say she’s eight.”
“Who’s your patron?”
“Zebulun.”
She was impressed. “I want to see her, the girl.”
“What, now?”
“Yeah. Don’t you want to see my juicy little boy?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Maybe in the show, when I’m almost done with him, you can step in and help me finish.”
“And you could step in and help me finish mine.”
Smiling, she put one finger to my mouth. Her nails were long and glossy-black. Slowly she traced the outline of my lips.
I couldn’t decide whether she wanted to kiss them or cut them off.
She said, “Later, should we get it on, really rock it hard?”
This didn’t seem to be the kind of woman to whom I could explain that there was only one girl for me, Stormy Llewellyn, and that I was faithful to her.
I said, “The way it looks to me, that decision is entirely up to you.”
My response pleased her, and her smile widened. “You got that right, boy toy.”
Just when I thought I knew what she would do, she surprised me by pressing close and licking my chin.