Walking on Sunshine Read online

  “I wonder if that’s what killed them?” I said, looking inward.

  “Them?”

  “I think about them every day. I say a little prayer. ‘Marilyn and Amy, Janis and Whitney, keep me straight. Let me live right and protect everything and everyone I love.’” I put my hand over his on his knee. “You taught me that.”

  “I have never taught anybody to pray,” he said with conviction.

  “When I was a kid, and you crashed and burned your band, and Uncle Chester told me why, about the drugs and the alcohol, I swore I wouldn’t destroy my life like that. And then when the work paid off and I hit the top of the charts over and over, I realized how many people were depending on me—my whole family, my company.”

  He took my hand in both of his. “Oh, honey. If you died tomorrow they’d still be rich.”

  I flinched. “I know. I catch myself thinking that sometimes, and it scares me to death. I don’t want to die.”

  “But you’re tempted to check out, like Amy and Marilyn and Janis and Whitney.”

  “Just to get some time to myself,” I pleaded. I half-hiccupped. “But what would I do with a vacation? I’m still alone. The only people I know who know how to relax are my loser cousins, and the first thing they’d do is give me a bong and a line of coke to relax with. I want to stay alive, Baz.”

  He laced his fingers through mine. “I know, babe.” His head was shaking slowly again, and he smiled. “What the hell am I doing here?”

  This was weird, talking about all this as if it was real.

  But it was real. And he knew it. He was the only person who did.

  I admitted, “I guess that’s what I was asking when I asked who you are. If you know who I am and what’s happening to me, what can you do?”

  He shrugged. “Not a goddam thing except hold your hand, apparently. You don’t like to hear it, but you’re amazing. Every test that I flunked, you’re passing. I thought I had self-control, but of course I hadn’t. I was full of testosterone, and all that that implies,” he said excusingly, almost the way a woman would say I’m fat, and then I believed he really was older than a fifty-eight-year-old man with an iffy dick.

  I think I smiled. “Is that so important?”

  “Let’s say it is. I don’t think my ego can take much more.” He was almost laughing at me. “But you. How do you do it? You have grace. All I had was power, a sense of responsibility, an even bigger sense of destiny. I was brought up to inherit the throne by my grandmother.” He made a face.

  I knew about ambitious family. I nodded.

  He said, “It’s like a sense of entitlement, only a lot worse. Think of every lawyer you ever met. Do they teach that in law school, or are the bastards born feeling like they own everything?”

  I thought of the lawyer I’d met most recently, my stalker’s father. “Entitlement is right. I felt it myself, when I was nineteen, for about ten minutes. Then my next album went platinum worldwide.”

  “And that’s what stopped you feeling entitled?” he said incredulously.

  “That’s when I realized how many people worked at my record label, the people overseas who made my CDs, the people who sewed my merch. And my family of course, which is a short word for such a big responsibility. If it weren’t for them I think I’d go crazy.”

  He made a face. “I’d say your family was driving you crazy. Why don’t you fire them and hire some people who will do what they’re told, without all the back-chat and harassment?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Is that how you ran your empire?”

  His gaze fell. “No. I kept my boyhood friends around me as long as I could. Even my half-brother, who was never satisfied with the consolation-prize throne he got when I got the crown of Assyria. Sometimes I kept them long after I could trust them. Just so I could have someone around me who knew me. If you know what I mean.”

  “Yes!” I smiled with relief. “You do know. They’re aggravating, and they slow everything down, and I wouldn’t give up a minute of it. Because if they treated me like Yoni-the-star, I’d be nothing but a goddess to them. Or a machine for making money. Or a sex object. I can fire someone for sexually harassing me, but I can’t hire someone to know me since I was a baby. There’s a limited number of those people. When they’re gone, I’ll really be alone.”

  As I said this, I realized that if Baz was right, I might live to be as old as he was.

  I shuddered.

  Baz smiled at me again. I nearly melted with relief. It was so good to talk to someone who understood. Who didn’t think I was going crazy. Who knew how it would come out—at least, to the twenty-seven-hundred-year point. It might be a bumpy ride, but I wasn’t going to die, and I might not be screwing it up too badly, and it might not all be, well, hateful.

  He didn’t seem to think so anyway.

  “That reminds me,” I said. “What have you been up to all this time—since you quit being a king?”

  He took his time answering. “I’ve been doing this and that.” I was stunned to catch him blushing. “If you must know, I’m a sex demon now.”

  “A—?” This again. All men have to brag about their thing. All. Of. Them. Knowing that has been my shield, whenever I found myself getting curious about sex.

  “I was sick of war by the time She caught me. Dealing with contractors gives me a headache, so architecture was out, and librarians have to work for a living. So I did what a lot of broken-down gods do. There’s always work for sex demons,” he explained.

  This conversation was way out of the park. I squeezed my aching eyeballs behind my hands and laughed. I said behind my hands, “Prove it.”

  “I think I already did,” he said.

  I peeked at him. “Rose petals and gold plating? What if that was just me?”

  “Now, have any of your boyfriends kissed you and got you to do that?” He looked pained.

  “I’ve never kissed anybody until today.”

  “What?” He put his coffee mug down with a clunk.

  “I’ve been working since I was twelve,” I said defensively. “I don’t have time to date.”

  His jaw dropped. “But when you were in college—surely—”

  “I didn’t go to college. I had tutors.”

  “Your family!” He scowled. “Boy, they sure keep your nose to the grindstone. They’re as bad as my grandmother was. Hell, at least I got a week off here or there for frolicking with dancing girls.”

  “You weren’t in danger of getting pregnant,” I said primly.

  He kicked his chair back suddenly and stood up. “This is wrong. This is—it’s indecent, is what it is,” he sputtered. “How the fuck,” he said violently, “can She expect you to become Her avatar when you haven’t even—”

  I sat there and grinned. I’d finally rocked him out of his Yoda-like calm. “Self-control, my man.”

  “Stand up.”

  “I’ve made it this far.” And I’m as far as ever from getting pregnant.

  “And you’re planning to wait how long?”

  This was a good question. If there was one thing I couldn’t have, out of the thousands of things I denied myself every day, it was a baby. But surely a— “You say you’re a sex demon?”

  “I am,” he said with a grim smile. “A damn good one.”

  “Do you get women pregnant when you, uh—”

  “I do not,” he said huffily. “I take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints.”

  I laughed. “I would think hell would pay you extra to knock women up.”

  He still stood over the table, looking threatening and outraged. “We call it ‘the Regional Office.’ As opposed to”—his finger pointed up—“‘the Home Office.’”

  “How much do they pay you?”

  “Thirty pieces of silver a month, plus bonuses for beating my quota. Don’t change the subject. Stand up.”

  “Quota.” I giggled. “A sex demon has a quota.”

  “Three women a month.” He was bright red now, but
he grinned back. I laughed out loud at his dismay and embarrassment. In spite of the shit I was giving him, he had a sense of humor about himself that seemed to be in every cell of his body.

  I teased, “A ‘damn good one,’ huh?”

  His eyes turned lazy and knowing, and I realized we both knew that I knew that I’d known all along that we would—

  He put his hand out, and I put my hand in his. I stood up and walked around the table and stepped into his arms.

  BAZ

  It had been many centuries since I noticed how young or old, how beautiful or homely a woman was, as long as she was in my arms. Women are women. They all need the same things. They all have the same things to give.

  So I’d thought.

  As her arms slid around me I realized again that she was everything I’d failed to be—gracious, patient, moderate, kind in victory. All that and still in her twenties. In my twenties I had ruled three kingdoms. Armies of thousands had shouted my name. I shuddered.

  In her presence, everybody wanted to fall in love.

  And she handled that, too, with grace and consideration for the thousands who worshipped her.

  And she tried every day to bring herself to the edge of a heart attack. For practice.

  What did she fear that made it necessary for her to practice that?

  She stepped into my arms and lifted her tawny face to mine and I stroked her poor ironed-flat hair away from her eyes. “You know,” I said, “there are compensations for becoming divine.”

  Her forehead creased. “Name two.”

  “Not right now.” I held the hair out of her eyes with my thumbs. “I want you,” I said, “to concentrate a little bit. Not too much. You’re here to have fun.”

  “Fun?” She smiled. “What is this alien word?”

  “Pretend it’s a performance and all you have to do is have fun.”

  She shook her head, turning her cheek against my hand as if she liked the way my hand smelled. “Performances are work.”

  “Okay, forget that. At least, can I ask you not to gold plate my Lair? It won’t do the cappuccino machine any good.”

  She grinned. “Is your room full of sweat socks?”

  “Moderately,” I said, remembering why I don’t bring women to the Lair. “But,” I remembered, “my roommate Veek keeps his room immaculate.”

  “Won’t he mind?”

  “He’s chasing other game tonight.”

  She giggled. “Is he a sex demon, too?”

  “Yup. You’ll be impressed.”

  “I’d like to see an immaculate room,” she said, “that isn’t a hotel room.”

  “Fine. But first,” I said, and bent to kiss her.

  I didn’t know how to contain a lover’s magic. Normally I’m working to bring it out.

  She tasted like toothpaste. She smelled like some scented shampoo, and musk, and fresh clean sweat. She didn’t know what to do with her tongue. Slowly and carefully, I showed her, feeling her open to me, her slender body pressing closer to mine.

  She was catching on fast.

  I drew back and she opened her eyes. “Nice,” she said.

  “Nice?” I mocked. “That’ll look good on my report to the Regional Office. ‘Subject thought I kissed nice.’”

  “Your report? Oh, right. Thirty pieces of silver.” Her eyes fell half shut, laughing at me.

  “For you I should get a huge bonus. I’ll show you the form. You can help me fill it in later.”

  She snuggled tighter to me, bumping against my dick. “You say the sexiest things,” she said. “Let’s do that again.”

  She looked into my eyes and I was stunned, suddenly, to realize I wasn’t lying to her. At all. There were sixty or seventy million things about me she didn’t know, but I wasn’t hiding them, exactly. In fact, I kind of wanted to tell her. I drew in air and my lungs went hot and the air got sweet and sparkly. She made me feel out of control, and yet as solid as a spinning top that can spin forever. Just as long as she held me like this.

  We kissed again. This time she had a very good idea what to do. I did something entirely crazy.

  I let go control.

  When I came back to reality we were locked together, swaying together, twisting. This made every muscle in my body stretch exquisitely. The air still sparkled. She slowed her twisting movement and I opened my eyes.

  “I don’t want to move,” I admitted. “There’s five bedrooms out there, and a couple of them are even kind of clean, and I don’t want to let go of you.”

  “Well.” She shuffled, and something clicked and clattered at our feet. She looked over her shoulder at the floor. “Oh, no,” she said in a dead voice. “Not again.”

  I looked down. We stood up to our ankles in a pile of dull green rocks.

  I kissed her forehead, pushed away, bent, and picked one up. “Raw emeralds, I would guess.”

  I held it up so she could see. Size of a pigeon’s egg. I wondered how many we could sell before the price of raw emeralds plunged.

  “Change of plan,” I announced. “We’re going to my room. I’m prepared to launder Veek’s sheets tomorrow, but this could get messier than that.”

  She looked at the emerald with distress. “Should we clean up?”

  “Later, babe.” I led her out of there, shuffling raw emeralds away from our feet, and finally swinging her up into my arms and carrying her down the hall to my room.

  I felt like a giant. She was in my arms, solid yet weightless, slim but massive like gold, like all the treasures of Babylon.

  YONI

  All I’d done was concentrate on thanking him. That’s all. And then—piles of emeralds.

  He didn’t seem to mind at all.

  I forgot them.

  I couldn’t believe my luck. I would finally have sex! And with someone who knew his business! With my childhood hero! He didn’t even freak out about the emeralds. He picked me up like a baby and carried me to his room.

  “How come you smell so nice after a show?” he said, his nose against my neck.

  “I shower,” I said. “Duh.”

  “When I did the Mesopotamians, I never showered after a show. I always woke up sweaty and stinking of stale beer. They had to hose me off.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said, but I was looking around the room. Yes, there were sweat socks, piled in a trash bag so full it was overflowing. “Don’t you ever do laundry?”

  “Not if I can help it. We don’t have the machines.”

  “What?” I gave him a shocked look. “With all the gadgets in this dump?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You don’t own a washing machine or a dryer?”

  He shrugged. “I throw away my socks. When I run out of clean pants and shirts I give the dirty ones away.”

  It was otherwise a pretty tidy room. His bed was big and made the way a teenager makes his bed, by throwing the sheets up over the pillow and smoothing them a little. Against one wall were bookshelves, against the second, speakers. Against the third, a stack of open cubes, each full of brand new folded tee shirts and jeans, with all their tags. Three cubes were stuffed with brand new sweat socks, still in their packages.

  The bed was kind of big for one guy. I turned my eyes toward him again, suddenly timid. My heart thumped.

  “Do you have, like, birth control?” I said, feeling like an idiot for not knowing more about it.

  “One of the perks of being a sex demon. Sex demons don’t make babies.” He said solemnly, “Yoni, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Baz, I hope I’m not making you do anything,” I said in return.

  “How could you?” he scoffed, but his eyes changed. His face was more open to me than before. He wasn’t laughing inside at everything I said.

  I had put on this shirt for him, when I showered after the show and dressed to go home with him.

  The shirt buttoned in front. I didn’t feel I could trust my nerve to last from the moment of reaching for the hem to pulling it off and getting it o
ver my head, so I unbuttoned. My fingers hardly shook at all. “I hope you won’t mind how scrawny I am,” I said breathlessly.

  “I never notice those things,” he said, watching my fingers. “You look perfect.”

  I thought, This needs to be perfect for him, too. I formed an intention very carefully. I probably wouldn’t have the brains to focus again all evening. Or, to be brutally honest with myself, I probably hadn’t the skill. He was the sex demon. I was the virgin.

  I focused.

  Give him a good time. Make him happy.

  It was the least I could do.

  Then the last button came undone. My shirt fell to the floor.

  His eyes widened and darkened.

  Under his gaze, my nipples did a funny thing. They squinched up. I reached for the fly on my jeans.

  He started trembling.

  I was pretty nervous myself. I unzipped and slid my jeans off, stepping out of them and leaving them bunched between my feet.

  I could hear Baz breathing harshly—or was that me? I reached for him.

  Suddenly he fell to his knees in front of me. He put those big hands over my hands and turned them and kissed them each, on the thumb and on the palm, and then he laid my hands on his knotty bare shoulders. I noticed suddenly that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Or pants. When had that happened?

  He was looking at my crotch, and I couldn’t stop blushing. The, what did he call it, the mana rose and filled the air around us. Distracted for a moment, I told myself sternly, Give him a good time. Make him happy.

  And then he set his hands on my hips very gently like giant white butterflies, and he slid his thumbs between my legs and pressed, and I stopped concentrating on anything except his touch. His thumbs slid deeper and deeper between my thighs, then curled backward? forward? hitting something sweet. I gasped. My hands tightened on his shoulders by themselves.

  I could feel his breath hot on my belly.

  His forehead touched my belly button.

  I shut my eyes. His forehead slid down my belly. Now I started trembling. Then I felt something warm and slippery between my legs. Wow! I sneaked a look. He was licking me! I squeezed my eyes shut.