Losers Live Longer

I was glad I had an invitation to hand him for admission.

Once I was over the threshold, a perky redhead dressed in a neck-to-toe black leotard and miniskirt lightly grabbed me by the arm. I didn’t protest, curious to see where this might lead, but just as quickly she let me go, leaving something behind on my wrist.

“What’s this for?”

“If you go out to have a smoke, you can get back in.”

I thanked her and looked at the plastic bracelet she’d fastened on my wrist, like the one I’d found inside the wastebasket in Owl’s hotel room. Different color, but same make, same manufacturer. Different night, different color, but two pieces fitting together.

Looking at my hand, I realized I hadn’t washed up after leaving my office—after leaving Sayre Rauth—and I grinned stupidly, remembering her sweet sounds, her fingers let loose in my hair. My jaw was sore and my tongue —

Someone bumped me from behind and I moved forward.

The wide, brightly lit lobby was almost full. A nice turnout, no doubt a result of all the press coverage the festival had received in the wake of Wales’ death. People were there to see and be seen. I was just trying to see, myself. Looking for a skinny woman with beet-red hair and mesmerizing green eyes or a tall blond man who looked like a Swede. I didn’t see either one.

Instead, I faced a pond of strange faces talking, drinking from plastic cups, eating hors d’oeuvres from paper napkins, laughing, arguing, acting up, posturing and posing. People wearing sunglasses indoors, sporting slide-rule sculpted beards and haircuts set to expire at midnight.

I waded in among them, picking up snatches of their conversations (“You know Prentice? Well, he’s dying.” “Why?”), bits of gossip (“Stole his mother’s jewelry to get the money to finally cut his film”), and just plain inanities (“What’s the name of that gray I like?”).

Most of the guests were dressed in anonymous black suits and dresses, while a few were decked out in unusual eye-catching getups, as if sporting costumes from different genre flicks—a period piece, a sci-fi techno- thriller, a horror movie.

“Crabcake?”

“Wha?”

I turned. A tanned young man with curly sideburns held a silver tray aloft, balanced on his fingertips.

“Nibbles!” I said, reaching out with both hands.

I swear the guy shrank back in alarm. I scooped up four, left him two. Such a look! You’d think he’d been up all night preparing them himself. I crammed one in my mouth and shooed him away, because I saw a woman carrying a tray of chicken fingers coming by. I didn’t want her to think I was taken care of. I tried to catch her eye as I ate another crabcake.

I guess I was looking the wrong way. An unfriendly hand clamped down on my shoulder. I stuffed the other two crabcakes in my mouth and turned.

Jane Dough, Moe Fedel’s lovely rowdy, looking tough and terrific in a dark blue pantsuit, had hold of me. From her left ear protruded something like a black bendi-straw.

She said, “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

I said, “Mlff-mifuf wuhlff-mmulmuf. Mulmluff?”

She rolled her eyes. I chewed and swallowed.

“Working security?” I asked. “Moe must be understaffed. How ’bout putting in a good word for me? I’m affordable.”

“Go quietly.”

“Go? Hey, I just got here, I—”

“—please,” she said, a wintry smile on her face while her eyes continued to scan the crowd. “Just go now without a fuss. No scenes. Don’t forget, I can take you.”

I snorted. “You know something, Jane? You’re nothing but a bully.”

She met my eyes, but only briefly and barely, like when a sweater sleeve catches on a sliver of wood.

She smiled smugly.

“So, haven’t found my name out yet?”

“Why bother? Whatever it is, ‘Jane Doe’ suits you better.”

She didn’t like the barb. She bared her teeth and whispered something into the tip of her bendi-straw.

I saw a pair of heads in the crowd revolve toward me and settle. Two stocky guys worked through the mob until they were on either side of me.

Jane, her eyes roving again, told the pair, “Show him out.”

But before they could, up popped in front of me a Malibu-blonde whose black roots came up to my chin.

She was all-around tanning-booth golden, the color of a Thanksgiving turkey done to a turn, and smelled of cocoa butter. She wore a shimmering tasseled dress like a gun moll in a road company production of Guys and Dolls. The low-cut top hugged tight across her chest, prominently outlining her breasts. They had the shape and gravity of two clutch purses full of nickels.

“Payton! You made it.”

Jane was taken aback. Her eyes stopped scanning the faces in the crowd, went wide with disbelief.

“You know this man, Ms. d’Loy?”

“What? Of course, are you stupid? He’s my guest! Who are you?”

“I’m—”

“I don’t care. Payton,” she linked my arm and towed me away, “come with me and meet people.”

I craned my neck back, “See ya round, Jane.”

I asked Coy d’Loy, “Do you know that woman’s name?”

“Who? What, her? She’s no one, just additional security we’ve put on. Had to because of—” she dropped her tone lower, then compensated by raising the volume of her voice “—the tragedy. What happened to poor Craig.”

Heads turned and I noticed a smile tug on Coy d’Loy’s cheek, wrinkling her too-tanned flesh like the skin on last week’s butterscotch pudding.

She led me to a corner table where three people were seated. Two of them I knew, but wished I didn’t. The skateboard kid FL!P dressed in a plain white t-shirt and chowing down on chicken fingers. And the Russian thug with the black satchel-handle mustache who’d choked me demanding to know where Michael Cassidy was. He was pouring himself a shot from a bottle of Stoli as I approached.

The third person at the table was an attractive young black woman in a shimmering copper-colored dress that conformed to her firm figure like electroplating. I gave her my full attention and she returned it with an amused grin.

Coy d’Loy said, “Now Philip here you already know.” She indicated the blond kid, who didn’t look up from his plate of food. “And I believe you’ve also met Gladimir.”

The Russian shot me a hard look as he downed his drink and muttered, “Ya.”

I said, “I’ve had the displeasure.”

“Yes, well, I understand there was a slight misunderstanding earlier today between you two,” d’Loy said.

“Hopefully we can work past that. But first, I’d like you to meet Moyena. Moyena, Payton.”

I shook her hand and she dazzled me with a smile.

“Moyena is my newest associate. We at The Peer Group are expecting great things from her. You wouldn’t believe the trouble we had luring her into the fold.”

“Just playing hard to get,” Moyena said, a touch of irony in her low, lazy voice. “Nice to meet you, Payton.”

“Back at you.”

She tilted her head to one side and commented, “You’re actually quite handsome, Payton.” Like somebody had been contesting the fact.

Coy d’Loy tittered in agreement. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

I wasn’t surprised; I always get a bit more attractive when I’m working on something. A subtle form of