A/N: In addition to fluff, general silliness, and some really rotten metaphors, the following story contains references to Underground, Lux, Mad Jack, Madder Rose, and even that perennial oddball The "L" Word. Feel free to fire off questions and comments if things get confusing. Better yet, check out those other tales o' woe. Won't make any sterling claims regarding what's on deck right now, but some of the forerunners aren't half bad. That said, belly on up to the bar, folks. The party's about to begin...
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RED EYE: RECEPTION
Lisa Reisert's face was hot. All the hotter for it being a cold and overcast day. She was on the second-story balcony of Jackson Rippner's condo, overlooking the Atlantic; she was on the phone. And on the other end of the line was the one person on Earth who could, without fail, every single time, short-circuit her customer-service powers. The one person with or to whom she couldn't be a people-pleaser twenty-four-seven.
Her mom.
Lisa's cheeks felt as though they'd been slathered with Tiger Balm. She focused on a seagull bobbing in the whitecaps twenty yards offshore while Joan Reisert (nee and once-again Colbert) talked a stream of relationship advice into her ear. She'd braced herself before the call to Dallas— she was her mother's only daughter, and she was getting married, and such news warranted a certain amount of freaking out on practically any mother's part— but nearly thirty minutes past the announcement, and Joan's shriek of surprise (Lisa was hesitant to think of it as a shriek of delight, as the sound was joltingly reminiscent of the sound the Reisert family beagle, Turko, had emitted when Lisa, then eight years old, had accidentally ridden her bicycle over Turko's tail), the outer edge of sanity was looming large. She wondered if seagulls ever got eaten by sharks. If, floating on the surface, they were visible from below. If the splash of their landing, or the paddling of their webbed feet, was enough to put them on a predator's sonar. After all, Jackson had said, largemouth bass occasionally snatched and gulped down swimming ducklings. If Lisa were that seagull, she'd be putting the question to the test right now. She'd be kicking for all she was worth. Flailing. Slapping the waves with her wings. Plunging her head underwater and screaming through her long beak: "Come and get it!"
In her right ear, Joan, oblivious, droned on: All I'm saying, honey, is you've been out of circulation for a while. He might seem like the best thing since Tampax, but you shouldn't feel obliged to marry the first man to get back in your panties.
Lisa flinched. "Do I really need to say I can't believe you said that, Mom?"
Are you pregnant, Lisa?
"No."
Are you sure?
"No. I mean— Yes. Mom, I'm not—"
Then test yourself. Twice. Make sure. And remember: if you're trying to trap him with a baby, it won't work.
"Mom, no: stop—" She felt as if she were sleepwalking toward the edge of a cliff. Maybe the cliffs of Cornwall, as they appeared in Paranoiac. Nothing but day-for-night-filtered sky and empty space ahead. The promise of pummeling waves and skull-splitting rocks far below. She found herself mentally chanting Jump, jump, jump. "I didn't mean— I meant to say—"
Ask me, Lisa: I know. You might think it's a good idea: find a hot guy, hook him with a pregnancy. You know that's how your father and I ended up together, don't you? Because of you? You're old enough to know that.
Which, Lisa thought, makes me a hooker, in a manner of speaking. Thanks, Mom.
Emergency measures. She knew it was awful of her (conversely, as Jackson might put it, she was beginning to understand why Joan heard from her daughter, on average, only twice a month, if that), but she couldn't take much more. She needed a break. "Can you hold, Mom? There's someone on the other line." Before her mother could reply, Lisa clicked over to the second line and listened, with her eyes closed, to eight seconds of blessed hiss. She clicked back to line one. "Mom, are you still there?"
Of course I'm still here, Lisa. Just remember, he'll resent it. He might not say a word at first, but he'll—"
"Mom— Mom? Listen: I've got to go. There's a huge sinkhole—"
— end up hating you forever, and you'll have no other choice than to crawl into a bottle and drink away the pain—
"— opening up right in the lobby, and the Lux— the lobby— the whole hotel— is falling into—"
— but at least you'll have your beautiful children. Lisa, there's nothing more important than the love of—
"Love you, too, Mom. Gotta go. Bye."
She hung up. Then she stood there shaking. The urge to fling the phone off the balcony was so strong that Lisa felt that if she merely held onto the handset, it would yank her with it into space. Behind her, she heard the glass door slide open. A moment later, Jackson Rippner was standing unobtrusively beside her. A bit of irony, there: the fact that subtle motion lent itself as well to tact and relationships as to covert ops and assassinations. Beneath the cloudy sky and his brushy brows, his eyes were sympathetic and thoughtful and more darkly sapphire blue than usual; the wind molded the fine knit of his pale green sweater to the lean muscles of his torso and arms. He carried two uncapped bottles of beer; he offered her one. Lisa took it. "Thanks."
Maybe the sales contract for the condo had included days like this. In terms of temperature, anyway, if not temperament. She knew he sometimes missed the north, just as she sometimes missed Miami when they were working out of Chicago. For Florida, the day was unseasonably chilly. Unlatitudinally chilly. Wind buffeted her hair and his, flicked foam from the tips of the waves sliding gray-green toward the sandy shore.
Jackson followed her sightline from the phone to the water. "You could order a hit on her, you know," he said. "You have the power. Think about it: it would be more ecologically sound than another phone battery corroding in the ocean."
Lisa sipped her beer. She was supposed to say "That isn't funny." What she said, instead, was "Don't tempt me."
He settled in next to her, their shoulders nearly touching, his left elbow inches from her right one on the railing of the balcony. Sunlight lancing through crevices in the clouds struck matched coppery highlights from the crowns of their heads.
For now, Lisa felt no inclination to go inside. Post-Joan, the wind and the cold felt nothing but refreshing. She took a long drink of her beer. "People say that women turn into their mothers."
"Yes. So?"
"Doesn't that concern you?"
"Nope. Want to know why?"
"Because you'd simply order the hit on me?"
"No. Because you're the exception to the rule. You're like your dad."
Though she didn't smile, Lisa untensed slightly. She said: "I asked him once why he didn't get back into the dating pool once he and Mom broke up."
"Can I tell you what his reply was?"
"Please do."
"He enjoyed the quiet too much."
"Mm hm. That, and 'Only back to Texas? I was hoping she'd keep going until she hit Australia.'"
Rippner smiled. He let her drink her beer in peace, and was content to keep her company. Space within proximity, proximity within space, some-such relationship psychology mumbo-jumbo that was, nevertheless, absolutely accurate. They had no big plans for their wedding: their respective bachelor and bachelorette shindigs, two weeks ago, followed by next week's party at the Lux Atlantic to announce their engagement, were about as epic as things were going to get. The way Rippner saw it, they'd had a chance to get hammered with their friends. Now they'd be getting hammered together. Before being hammered together, as it were, into a shiny new united front.
"Shindigs," almost by definition, implied shenanigans, and there the girls had taken the lead. During the ladies'(-question-mark) outing for Lisa, Rippner's boss, the golden-haired, perpetually tousled, and admittedly Amazonian Claire Carter, had managed to get herself and wide-eyed Cynthia, Lisa's right-hand girl at the Lux, arrested as the result of a mysterious maneuver called "the figure-eight." Rippner wasn't quite clear on the specifics, though, from what he could piece together, "tag-team mooning" might have been a moderately accurate description. Too bad the girls' third target had been an unmarked Miami police car, occupied, appropriately, by two Miami police officers. Rippner was quietly proud of the fact that Lisa had managed to take Claire down before Claire, taking umbrage at the officers' deficient senses of humor regarding said figure-eight, could consign the representatives of Miami's finest to a stint in the hospital. Granted, Claire's jeans had been around her ankles when Lisa blindsided her; nonetheless, that was one video log that wasn't going to be erased any time soon. One for the ladies. (Or two, if you counted the tattoo. The tattoo that somehow ended up on Lisa's backside after Cynthia blacked— or backed— or chickened out. Rippner had to admit he liked it: a little smiling cartoon Elberta was, if you pardoned the expression, just peachy as far as he was concerned.) And one for the guys on Rippner's night to howl, when Claire's husband, tall-dark-and-gargantuan John, for whom the word "tequila" translated roughly as "HULK SMASH!", tackled and tipped over a SmartCar.
"It was parked," John had said, sounding a bit stunned. "Nearly. It was nearly parked."
That, as they hustled him away from the scene of the crime, Rippner on one side, data-whiz Paul Miller on the other, each gripping a muscle-roped arm.
"The guy was at a stop sign, John," Paul panted.
Now, two weeks later, Rippner sipped his pale ale and relaxed in the company of his best girl in all the world. Crazy impending moms-in-law be damned. Compared to John and that fucking SmartCar, and the had-to-be-a-linebacker who'd extricated himself from the thing and chased them for six blocks, the engagement party at the Lux was going to be a cakewalk.
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The plate read "BABY."
The bumper to which it was affixed belonged to a gleaming black Mini Cooper S with a full Cooperworks sports package and a bit more under the bonnet than the home team back in Yorkshire had originally provided. Acquisition of said plate had required the removal— tidy, timely, and quite terminal— of merely three other applicants from the Florida vanity-plate pool. A bargain, really.
"Be gentle with her, darling," Rosemary Wheeler said to the valet, in the kind of purr that suggested a crisp twenty would be just the beginning of his tip if he did as he was told, as she alighted from Baby's cozy black-on-black interior. A smile, then, a flash of teeth, a bit of dazzle for the doorman, and she sauntered into the main lobby of the Lux Atlantic.
Rosemary, the mistress of disguise, was tonight masquerading only as herself, in a blue sheath dress so curve-hugging that she expected to wake tomorrow to find a "WET PAINT" sign taped to her back. At the entrance of the hotel's swankiest party room, where the top-level intros were taking place, she moved through the crowd seemingly unseen. As Rosemary entered, the woman who had to be Ellen Rippner, the widowed Mrs. James Rippner, a lean, graying, evenly worn brunette in a dark suit-dress, seemed to be mounting a most effective attack on her future daughter-in-law without, so to say, having to fire a single shot: Rosemary passed by in time to hear voice the world's coldest "I'm glad to meet you, Lisa." The target of her volley was wearing a beneficent smile, dimples, and the type of sickeningly modest dress (a shimmering concoction in degrees of cream and silver) that Jackson Rippner, flanking her at present like a loyal Weimaraner, would no doubt peel off of her like candy floss once the evening was done. "Mom: no freezer burn tonight, okay?" Rosemary heard him say. "Lisa's one of the good guys."
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Not all the torments of hell. Not, by standards modern or ancient, torture. Just a patch of "bad" en route to the "good." The "good" was the trays of canapes, the buffet, the open bar, the hours of snide comments that lay ahead.
The "bad" was speech-time. Jackson, wisely, no doubt would refuse a turn at the mike. No telling who— besides Rosemary— might take a shot at him while he was waxing poetic. Dear Lisa was too delightfully self-effacing and, at this point in the evening, not nearly intoxicated enough to be expected to toot her own nuptial horn. Unfortunately, that still left her father. The burly, grizzle-headed poster-boy for Men's Wearhouse making his way to the front of the room with the air of a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials: that had to be him. Odd, Rosemary thought, that he seemed so eager to open the treacly floodgates of oration without Lisa's mother being present. Either, like Jackson's father, the former Mrs. Reisert was dead, she was a real piece of work, or she simply didn't exist. Rosemary opted for number three. Someone as divine as Jackson's auburn-haired goddess would simply have sprung full-blown from the head of Jove.
Or Joe, as the case might be.
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She chose a tactical vantage point in a shadowy corner near the bar. A spot from which to see without necessarily being seen. And a location that would put her first in line when the rush for drinks began. Rosemary looked out at the room. John and Claire Carter were standing across the way, looking tall and elegant and terribly self-important. Paul Miller, their primary data-handler, was on hand in the herd, too, a straw-haired wraith in a blue suit. That he had a crush on Rippner had been less than a secret for years; at present, he was lurking near the buffet, his creepily pale eyes focused mournfully on the object of his desire, who was obliviously sharing a schoolkids chuckle-and-blush with the equally unaware Miss Reisert.
Rosemary relaxed against the bar and prepared to endure the inevitable. From a low dais near the room's double-wide doors, Joe Reisert peered down through his lineless bifocals at the piece of paper in his right hand. His amplified voice rumbled out through the room's wall speakers: "I have— excuse me—" The obligatory rasp of static as he fiddled with the remote microphone he held. "— a few words—"
Here, Joe, thought Rosemary, as conversations sputtered out and the partygoers turned like good little zombies toward the front of the room, allow me: Blah.
"— regarding my daughter, Lisa—"
Oh, dear God, not the entire rap sheet. Think of us mere mortals.
"— whom I've come to think of not as my little girl—"
And "blah," and "blah," and— just for shits and giggles— "blah."
"— but as a very special young woman, a very intelligent and strong young woman I'm privileged to know—"
For variety, we can always throw in an "urp." Gastrointestinal deja vu. Good lord, did I really have onions for lunch?
"— and whose love and loyalty I cherish—"
Dear Lisa has all the charm and functionality of a cocker spaniel: yes, Mr. Reisert, I'll grant you that.
"— and reciprocate."
Too many syllables, Joe. You just lost both Jackson and John.
"I'll keep this brief—"
Too late.
"— I met Jackson Rippner under unusual circumstances. I'll be honest: I've had my doubts about him—"
You are, of course, not the only one.
"— But he's conducted himself honorably; he's earned my respect. In this day and age, that counts for something.—"
Not nearly as much as unlimited power, money, and a loaded Glock, but please: do continue.
"—More importantly, I trust Lisa. I trust her judgment. I trust Jackson, too. I'll be happy to welcome him to the family.—"
And thus it came to pass that every diabetic in Miami simultaneously exploded.
"— So, officially, tonight's big announcement: Lisa and Jackson are engaged. Engaged to be married, that is—"
Because "engaged in mortal combat" would, I imagine, be too much to ask. Rosemary rolled her eyes through the whistles and applause.
From the dais, Joe Reisert grinned out at the room. At his darling daughter and her tame assassin, so dapper, lovely, and perfectly matched that if you coated them in Lucite, they could be the topper on their own wedding cake. "Tonight's second announcement," Reisert added: "— the food, lodging, and drinks are on us. Have fun, folks. Thanks for coming."
Amen. Rosemary turned to the bartender and ordered her first martini of the evening.
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Before Rosemary had her drink in hand, less, in fact, than thirty seconds after the end of the speech, the obligatory cheek-kisses, the hugs, the blushing and the beaming, Lisa Reisert cornered her. Like a fucking torpedo that, had there been a God, would have turned hot-fish and blown its launching sub clear to Mars. But there was no God, at least not among the water features and potted palms of the executive party room of the Lux Atlantic. Lisa walked up to the bar and said, with ice in her tone and flint in her gray-blue eyes: "Miss Wheeler."
"Miss Reisert."
Rippner was nowhere to be seen. How terribly trusting of him. Lisa continued: "Shall we get right down to it?"
"Oh, do let's."
"I could have you thrown out."
"So have me thrown out. Have me arrested, while you're at it. Broward County serves a wicked baloney sandwich."
"You impersonated me in a sex video."
"I was slumming."
"You shot Jackson."
"You shot him, too." Rosemary scanned the room, spotted Rippner talking to the Carters. No doubt about her, the proverbial fox in the booze-filled henhouse. "Look at him, the smug bastard. There are two types of people in the world, Lisa: those who've shot Jackson, and those who are waiting their turn. It's practically expected. He's used to it."
"You tried to blow up the hotel—"
"And you'll notice how the man with the Mountain-Berry-Blast eyes was right there to save the day."
"You drugged me; you hit me. You shot my chief of security—"
"And, again: it got better. You broke my nose. Your idiot co-worker nearly broke it again. You threw me off a balcony—"
"We were all falling. You tripped, missy."
"— and had me stabbed. If you think about it, Snow White, you tried to order your first hit on me. I'd say we're about even." Rosemary looked at her critically. "Poor thing, you look all done in. I think I need a drink."
"I think you do, too."
Rosemary turned back to the bar, downed her first martini, and ordered a second. In the minute it took for the initial infusion of vodka to work its magic in her brain, Rippner installed himself at the far end of the bar, where he sat nonchalantly not-watching from a safe distance. "Safe" in that, if worst came to worst, he could have a cocktail skewer embedded in the evil Miss Wheeler's carotid artery in under five seconds. While Lisa waited on a mojito, Rosemary ate the olive out of her second martini and smirked in Rippner's general direction.
"Someday you'll be the death of him, Lisa. Someday, because of you, he'll hesitate. And whoever he's fighting won't."
"You're hesitating right now, Rosemary."
"Social niceties. Hardly polite to kill a woman at her own engagement party. Not when there's such a nice buffet and the liquor is free."
"Why don't you come in?"
A second's disconnect on the startle. Rosemary stopped in mid-sip. Her smirk became something more incredulous. "Are you offering me a job? Are you actually offering me a job—?"
"You're a seasoned agent, Rosemary. You're intelligent; you're creative—"
"Is this the Carters talking? Their usual twaddle about making the best possible use of available resources—?"
"Or you know what they say about keeping your enemies closer."
Rosemary looked across the room at Rippner, who had left the bar to talk to Joe Reisert and a delicate, auburn-haired woman Rosemary didn't recognize. A stunner, that one. Wearing the charcoal-gray seal-sleek sibling of Rosemary's dress, and she had the body to pull it off, too. Lisa was thanking the bartender for her drink when the woman greeted Rippner with a smile and a kiss. Heads up, Lisa dear, Rosemary thought. Someone just joined me on the 'watch' list.
"I'd be close enough to steal him, Lisa," she said, aloud, once Lisa had finished sucking up to the help. "Never mind that I'd have open access to the company's databases. I'd take him away from you."
"If it were that easy, you could have him."
"And if it were that easy, then I wouldn't want him, and you know it." Despite herself, Rosemary smiled. "You're not as empty-headed as you look, Reisert."
"And you're not quite the bitch you think you are, Wheeler." Lisa met Rosemary's eyes for a long, even moment before glancing back out at the room. "Will you excuse me?" She looked suddenly stricken. "My mother just came in."
You would have sounded happier, thought Rosemary, if you'd just announced that a tornado was heading straight for the building. "Of course."
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To almost anyone but her son Larry, Joan Reisert (now once-again Colbert) was the rum-runner version of her daughter, preserved, post-wreck, metaphorically speaking, in a nineteenth-century hurricane on the razorback shoals off Key West, by the forces of a sunny climate, L'Oreal, and Absolut. In the here-and-now, she had already targeted John and Claire Carter. "Lisa told me you were dead," she gushed to John. She'd only just arrived, and already she sounded like she'd had three too many Cosmos. "I'm so glad you're not."
She thinks they're the Rippners, Lisa thought. Jackson's parents. Oh, God. As she swooped in, she heard Claire mutter: "Would you be considerin' a trip to the afterlife, missus...?"
"John, Claire: pardon me—" Lisa got herself between Joan and the smiling but darkly befuddled Mr. Carter. Or, more importantly, in terms of her mother's continued existence, between Joan and Mr. Carter's wife. "Mom. Hi."
Joan Colbert regarded her daughter at a critical arms' length while, understandably if uncourageously, the Carters, at least for now, made good their escape. "You're not pregnant."
"No, Mom, I told you: Jackson and I aren't planning on—"
"And where is Jackson...? I need to talk to that boy."
"You need to meet him first, Mom." Automatically, subconsciously, she sought Jackson out in the crowd. And when she saw him, groomed and trim in gray Armani, his striking good looks— cut-glass cheekbones, wideset clear eyes, lips just full enough to be lush— falling tonight, definitely, on the side of the angels, she felt almost like a traitor.
Joan clutched her arm and stared where her daughter was looking. "That's him—? That's him? Honey, tell me where I can get one."
"Oh, no," Lisa whispered, as her mother beelined for Jackson. She half hoped he wasn't armed.
She half hoped he was.
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To be continued, you betcha...!