Ladies and Gentlemen I Present You… #4
“That’d be a shame,” Liam said. “Maybe a cut? Or a simple plait might do.”
“A blond braid would be a change,” she admitted. “Or maybe dark brown… or auburn, like Chuck’s!”
“Green,” Grace said smugly. “I hear green goes great with vampire skin and freckles these days.”
“I don’t see it in your hair,” Molly muttered.
“Pink’s hot this summer,” Grace replied with a catlike smile.
“Green makes him look jaundiced,” Chuck said flatly. Well, Molly was his favorite.
Molly gave Chuck a kissy-face, and he laughed, the sound infectious.
“Dogs,” Liam said. “Sorry, Chuck, I know you like to make an entrance, but somebody mentioned dogs. Last I heard, the bet was that Michael would get either the most out-of-control giant puppy in the entire kennel or a dog that makes Methuselah look like a teenager. I still don’t know who won.”
“You had a bet on that?” Michael asked, his limpid brown eyes practically swallowing his narrow face.
“Yes, we did,” Carl said, gazing fondly at his mate. “Now tell the man who won.”
“Wait….” Michael frowned. “Was there another category? Old, destructive—”
“Ginormous,” Molly said. “I had money down on ginormous.”
“Tiny,” Grace said. “I had tiny and mean.”
Michael stared at all of them. “But which one of you won the bet?” he demanded. “Because I got one of each! I got old and ginormous and young and destructive and ginormous, and two old and blind and two tiny and mean!”
“Hunter,” Josh said, shaking his head. “He had his money on plethora, and he cleaned us all out.”
“I bought a damned fine gun with that money,” Hunter said, with zero regrets.
“You should have bought me a dependable dog sitter with that money,” Carl told him.
“We turned our backyard into dog heaven, complete with a dog door into the laundry room, which will forever smell like wet dog, and so far we can’t find a single person who’s willing to stay at our house, use our air-conditioning, eat our food, and clean up dog poop for a living wage. ”
“Students,” said Josh and all his student-aged friends.
“Carl, my man,” Grace told him. “You should have asked us sooner. Perfect job for students. Don’t worry about it. I’ll have you two people willing to split the wage as long as they can eat your food and watch your TV.”
“Thank you, Grace,” Carl said, truly grateful. And then he brought their attention to the elephants not in the room. “Where’s the grownups?” he asked, because by this time Danny, Felix, Julia, and Leon were usually there.
“I don’t know,” Josh murmured. He’d been thinking about his mother for much of the day.
Not all day—those hours with Liam had been delicious and necessary, but Josh’s mother usually would have been downstairs when they’d been playing video games, just to check on him.
As much as a boy didn’t want to have his mother poking into his romantic life, Josh also knew she’d fussed over him sending Liam away for the last months.
She’d promised the night before that her fainting spell had been caused by too many nerves on an empty stomach, and he wasn’t to worry, but, well, his mom.
The whole world worshipped Julia Dormer-Salinger, but that was only because they hadn’t been able to get the word out to aliens, where universal adoration would make her reign complete.
“We’re right here,” Julia said cheerfully, entering the room on Leon’s arm with Felix gallantly on the other side. “Is Tor here yet?”
As Julia bent down to kiss his cheek, Josh searched her face for something—anything—that would tell him what the delay had been about, or any hint at all about the night before.
All he could get from her—or any of them—was a sort of blinding happiness that was at odds with the soul-eating worry that had consumed the lot of them since they’d first seen Kadjic’s message, written for Danny and submitted in code on Stirling’s not quite hacked system that January.
“No, ma’am,” Chuck said. “Tor’s going to be a little late. Apparently there was a rather spectacular art theft last night, and Torrance is getting out the follow-up story before he comes in from Chicago.”
Julia gave a gracious, interested smile as Leon pulled the chair out behind her and settled her in. “Oh really,” she said. “Has there been any news as to who would perpetrate such a heinous crime?”
Grace snickered. “Sometime this morning,” he said, “the real painting appeared in the house of one of Dizzy Gillespie’s heirs, to whom the painting was actually willed. He’d had no idea it had been recovered, but he was ever so grateful to find it hung on his wall.”
Josh cocked his head at Grace, impressed. “Was this before or after you brought me doughnuts?” he asked.
“Definitely before,” Grace said, doing his little facing-sunshine dance.
“You didn’t even tell me,” Josh said, genuinely tickled. “I was going to do that this week.”
Grace kept dancing. “I have hidden depths,” he preened.
“You do indeed,” said Danny, seeming pleasantly surprised as Felix held the chair for him as Leon had for Julia. “Thanks, Fox,” he said fondly. “You didn’t need to—”
Felix kissed his cheek, Danny blushed, and the whole table stopped to watch.
After a collective breath, Julia said, “So did Tor want us to hold the table or—”
“Tor wants you to start now,” Torrance Grayson said, walking into the room with a large bowl in each hand. “And Tor’s bossy boyfriend told him to bring the first course.”
“Which is…?” Julia asked.
“Basic salad,” Tor said, bemused. Marco was a top-rated chef—he usually went a little more adventurous. As Liam took the bowl from him to place at one end, he added, “Somebody will be out with a dressing selection in a minute.”
Julia clapped her hands. “Perfect,” she said happily. “I was really in the mood for basic ranch, lots of croutons. He really came through. Brisket for the main course?”
“Sure,” Tor said. Torrance Grayson was a trim man with a pointed chin and large blue-gray eyes who looked both trustworthy and droolworthy on screen.
The downside to his expressive features was that his confusion was easy to read.
One of Julia’s favorite things was good food, and she, Felix, and Danny (and Leon!) had offered Marco worlds to stay at the Salinger mansion to create food for them and their guests.
When they weren’t feeding their family, they were often feeding celebrities or businessmen—Marco was in high demand, and his cachet was growing by the gig.
Brisket and ranch salad wasn’t usually his thing.
“I was in a mood,” Julia told him mildly, and her delighted smile returned. “And now it’s a good one!”
Once Tor had set the food down and taken the last remaining place, the other servers came in bearing “fixings”—bacon, cheeses, croutons, eggs, various vegetables and dressings in trenchers—and for a moment everybody’s energy was taken serving themselves family style and digging in.
Josh glanced down the table to see Liam skeptically poking at a bowl of olives and another one with feta in it. “Green salad,” Josh said. “Olives, feta, some oil-and-vinegar-based dressing—it’s really very good.”
Liam grimaced and grabbed the croutons instead, and Josh laughed.
Liam had been very blunt about his “plain” tastes when they’d spent all that time on the yacht, and Josh was suddenly looking forward to teaching him a whole lot of fun things about food.
His parents hadn’t dragged him across Europe at seven for him to be dependent on chicken nuggets and potato chips now.
“But why’s it called a salad bar?” Grace said next to him, as though they’d been in the middle of a conversation. “Is there alcohol in the dressing? Chopped brass in the lettuce? Where does that come from?”
“From restaurants where they used to set everything out on a counter so you could choose your ingredients,” Josh said. “Buffets. How bad were you fishing for a topic?”
“See?” Grace asked. “Why don’t they have fish bars? Where you walk up to a counter and choose fried flounder or swordfish or smoked salmon—”
“They do,” Stirling said. “It’s called a fish market, idiot.”
“Have you been to a fish market?” Tienne asked dreamily. “All these muscular men—”
“And women,” Molly said.
“Calling out to catch and then throwing hundred-pound fish at each other. It’s amazing.”
“Ooh—I want to throw fish,” Grace said, shoving a bite of salad in his mouth that was mostly cheese and ranch dressing.
“Like that weird Muppet character who uses them as boomerangs?” Michael asked. “My kids love that guy!”
“Mm…,” Grace said thoughtfully. “I don’t know if that guy’s my Muppet alter-ego. I think I’m more Animal.”
Everybody stared at him.
“What?” he said, on another amazing bite of mayonnaise and cheese.
“Nothing,” Josh murmured. “I just… I think we all agree. Perfect. You nailed it.”
Grace preened some more, then turned to him. “And you’re Kermit.”
“I thought I was more Scooter,” Josh said, although he was secretly pleased. “Danny’s Kermit.”
“Felix is Kermit,” Molly said thoughtfully. “Danny is Scooter, and you’re Robin, the little frog.”
“Always size,” Josh sighed dramatically.
“And I’m Miss Piggy?” Julia asked archly.
“Are you an ass-kicking beauty with impeccable taste and amazing shoes?” Chuck drawled, and Julia’s genuine laughter was also her concession. Miss Piggy she was.
“Does that make me the Count?” Leon asked, obviously hoping to play.
“One, two, three giant yachts!” Danny teased in the Count von Count’s Transylvanian accent, and Leon’s brilliant smile tugged at Josh’s heart.
He’d worked so hard to become one of them.
Josh was suddenly so very glad he hadn’t driven the man away when he’d been sick and defensive and feeling small.
He wondered if he should tell Leon that, though. They had never really cleared the air.
“So who’s Gonzo?” Hunter asked, interrupting his thoughts and surprising them all.
“Do you want to be Gonzo?” Josh asked, because he’d sounded genuinely concerned.
“No,” Hunter said. “I just… you know. Need to know there’s a Gonzo in the universe.”
“I’m Bunsen Honeydew,” Stirling said proudly.
“And I am Beaker,” Tienne said.
“Scientists.” Stirling’s quiet beam was almost as proud as Grace’s not so quiet one.
“And already a couple in canon,” Tienne said, bussing Stirling on the cheek. That quickly, they were in their own little test tube, and the conversation flowed around them.
“I’d say I’m Gonzo,” Tor said, chewing thoughtfully, “But the thought of Marco being Camilla the chicken—”
“Camilla was a beard,” Marco said, walking in from the kitchen with a tray on his shoulder and a tray rack under his arm. “We all know Gonzo’s soulmate was Rizzo the Rat.”
“Since you refused to sit down with us,” Tor said acidly, “I’m not sure you get a say in the table talk.”
“Don’t be ornery, Gonzo,” Marco retorted. “I just didn’t want to hear Grace profane my food again with whatever the hell it was the last time I sat down.”
“Don’t repeat it,” Julia barked, and they all turned to Grace, who shoved another bite of ranch-flavored mayonnaise in his mouth like he hadn’t been about to refresh everybody’s memory.
“What about Carl and Michael?” Marco asked, busing the finished salad bowls from most of the table. Josh watched as Grace worked to finish the rest of the ranch dressing.
“If you drink it straight from the trencher, I’m never eating with you again,” Josh murmured under the voices of the rest of the table.
“There’s a reason I’m not supposed to know it’s in the house,” Grace whispered back, sounding genuinely baffled. “It’s like a weird sickness.”
“Hunter, take his bowl,” Josh said, and while Grace glared at him, Hunter took the bowl and the trencher and handed them to Marco.
“Nice lift,” Liam said in admiration.
“You sit at a table with thieves,” Hunter muttered.
Over their byplay, Michael said, “Carl’s Rolph the dog and I’m Shrimp Louis! Get it? ’Cause I’m small, and Carl’s trustworthy, kind, and funny”
And once again, the entire table was struck silent.
Lucius said, “That could be the most adorable thing I’ve heard said at this dinner table. This conversation is almost too wholesome for us.”
That pronouncement was followed by raucous laughter and much throwing of dinner rolls, which normally Josh would have participated in.
But as he looked around for reactions, he noticed that Julia and Leon were holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes, nodding, before Julia reached out and took Felix’s hand as well.
There was something very… intimate, about the four of them, Danny included on Felix’s other side. It was like they had a secret that nobody else would understand.
“You saw that?” Liam asked around Grace’s back.
“Yeah,” Josh murmured. “I wonder what that’s all about.”
“They’ll tell us,” Liam guessed, as Josh’s mother sent him a coded look from under her eyelashes. “Whatever it is, they can’t keep it a secret for long.”