The In Crowd

She hurried down the alley her footsteps slapping on the wet pavement.  This was definitely not part of the plan.  Something caught her foot.  A bottle, branch or hand—either way she found herself flat on the pavement, cheek to the ground, face to foot with a very large, very black boot.

“My dad says if you don’t pay the protection money you owe he’s gonna break your legs, but not until after dinner ’cause my mom’s tired ’cause when she slaves over a hot stove all day and cleans the house and does the laundry that makes her hair look bad and her hands red and the girls are drooping so bad that without a bra she looks flat-chested and like she has Uncle Tony’s beer gut and she deserves appreciation and no that doesn’t mean the three minutes of bed shaking followed by the worst case of sleep apnea since—”

“Jeannie!” Clark said, interrupting the seven-year old before the kid revealed more of her parent’s marital bliss.  “Little Rudy, you wanna ease up off of me?” She glared at Jeannie’s twelve-year old brother.

“Sorry Miss Clark,” he said, taking two giant steps backward.

With a groan, Clark levered herself off the ground, “This is what I get for taking Agnes’s shift instead of telling her to piss off like everyone else does.”  Frowning at the wet hem of her second-hand magician’s cape and the alley goo smeared all over it, she cursed under her breath and wondered if she should take advantage of the casino’s twenty minute dry cleaning service.  With money being extremely tight, she’d have to run a tab.  She discarded the idea almost immediately.  Paying Fat Rudy’s monthly protection was bad enough without owing another loan shark.

Actually, a tab at Emperor’s Wash and Dry would make that three low-lifes with paper out on her.

Brushing off as much of the dirt as she could, she eyed Jeannie’s nearly black hair curled in two, fat pigtails.  Her brown eyes were positively doe like and her pink-seamed jeans and T-shirt completed the picture of sugar and spice innocence.

Little Rudy, on the other hand, took after his father: fat cheeks made his eyes squint even on the cloudiest day.  An unexpected growth spurt put him a little over five feet and did little to alleviate the abundance of baby fat that clung to his frame.

Together they were the most absurd pair of mob enforcers she’d ever seen.

“What’s with you two? Don’t you have homework or something?”

“Dad says we got to economize,” Little Rudy said.  “Too much money going into mom’s craft room and not enough coming in.”

“Times are definitely tough,” Clark agreed directing a wry smile at the boy’s sweatshirt decorated with macramé thugs sporting uzi’s.  “Speaking of, I’m going to be late for my excruciatingly lame job.  Tell your father I’ll stop by after my last show and drop off the payment.”  She reached to tweak one of Jeannie’s cheeks, but a blow to her chest slammed her into the brick wall of the Soul to Seoul Bar and Grille.  She fell to her knees in a puddle of what smelled like urine and blinked at the brown pungent muck that coated her kelly-green Converse sneakers before a hand, sporting two-inch claws encircled her throat, dragged her to her feet and pinned her to the alley wall.

“Go home,” she said between clenched teeth to the children doing a fair imitation of Munch’s Scream.

The werewolf holding her against the wall emitted a hungry rumble as he watched the kids scurry off and Clark moaned painfully, distracting him from the obvious urge to chase fleeing prey.

“Been looking for you, darlin’,” the were said, shifting his teeth and hands to less threatening dimensions.

“Been working,” Clark wheezed.

“What you’ve been doing,” the were corrected, dragging his nose along her throat and jaw, his erection growing as he scented her, “is attempting to use our product for free.  Your second payment is 48 hours late.”

“I need more time.  Got a new gig.  I’ll have the whole nut by the end of the week.  Promise,” Clark hedged, inferring from the werewolf, now rubbing himself against her, that she could either tell the truth and get brutally humped or she could not tell the truth and get brutally humped.

“Darker berry, sweeter juice,” he gowled, licking her café au lait skin like it was melting soft serve.

No way she was leaving this alley without her virginity (virginity being defined as the absence of sexual intercourse for a period greater than two years) or the magic Seymour, a minor demon and serious crime boss loaned her six months ago.

Down to their last two cans of tuna and packages of ramen noodles, going hungry was not something Clark and her parents had ever considered.  As the celebutante child of a renowned financier, Clark indulged in all the super-rich rites of passage:  crotch shots, drunken interviews, boyfriend stealing, an attempt at a music career and two three-second marriages.  All that came to an end when a whistle-blower leaked her dad’s decades-long practice of bilking his investors, leaving the whistle-blower a hero, her father a temporary insanity defense away from serious jail time and Clark and her mother nearly destitute.  That was twelve long years ago.  So when Clark got word of a “bank” promising a magical solution to all their problems, she leapt without looking, never thinking she’d have to wield actual magic, confront demons, werewolves and every other nightmare that wasn’t supposed to exist or pay the magic back at an exorbitant interest rate.

The instruction manual that came with her loan agreement consisted primarily of pictorial how-to representations which she could barely follow.  Still how hard could it be to make a horny dog heel?

***

“And for my last trick, I’ll pull a rabbit out of this hat.”

“You stink!” A high-pitched voice shrieked.

“Yeah, you’re a stinky poo-poo!” Shouted another.

“Slut!” Said another with cheeks painted with rainbows and stars just before a thick slice of chocolate frosted cake hit Clark in the middle of her forehead, slid down her nose and to the floor, leaving a path of frosting, colored sprinkles and strawberry cream in its wake.

Licking her frosting-covered top lip with an appreciative hum and maintaining remarkably calm in the face of twenty, nine-year olds chanting, “slut, slut, you’re a slut,” Clark stared into the top hat on the table in front of her, regulated her breathing, like the instruction manual told her to, and changed the white rabbit in the box beneath the table into a hundred tarantulas, hoping the multiple transformations wouldn’t permanently affect the werewolf the rabbit used to be.

With a benign, nurturing smile Mary Alice, the nun over at St. Anthony’s Merry-Girl-Round helped her to perfect, Clark tossed the contents of her top hat at the children like it was a bucket of feed scattered before squawking hens.

The resulting chaos was oddly relaxing, and realizing that she hadn’t eaten since her early bird performance, Clark pulled up a chair in front of the half-finished cake that said, “Good luck with the new hip, Maury” and dug in.

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