Kicking It

breed, and an old horny billionaire is going to want a young thing with tits done by Dr. Double D and the only lines on her skin the ones shown by her Brazilian wax. Bethy couldn’t compete with that, not anymore.

She asked me for a man who would see her as beautiful (which she was), to not be so shallow about the age yet stupid enough to be obsessed with her within a week and marry her within a month. It would be nice if he had a heart condition and died promptly on his own. One honeymoon had taken care of that for her before, but if that was too much to ask, she’d handle it. She’d handled it three other times and no one had ever caught her out.

Save for me.

“So, little Bethy Rose from the trailer park on Pike’s Hill,” I poured her a glass of the champagne, “keep your trash talk to yourself and let’s celebrate. I found you the perfect man, who matches all your qualifications save a minor one. He would love you instantly in all your ways and”—I laid the newly fashioned boots across her lap—“he has a highly documented fetish for women in boots. You are his ideal woman, Bethy, but every good con still needs a hook, and these boots are yours.”

Her anger dissipated, leaving her as pink and flushed and dewy as her middle name. “Oh.” Now she ran a hand over them and basked in the sight. After all, this was a woman who loved her thousand-dollar black-and-white snakeskin shoes and these boots—they made those shoes look like Kmart ninety-nine-cent flip-flops. The scales lay so flat you could barely see them as anything that had ever been separate from one another except for the color. Every color that existed was there. It wasn’t the bright explosion I’d dug up in another country. No, now it was a subtle watercolor wash that shimmered in a milky opal cascade. The first mermaid rising on the waves of the sea to drown a sailor would’ve been made of this. It was mystery and magic and impossibility with the mists of an Eden morning keeping it safe.

I filled my own glass and touched it to hers. A bell rang and somewhere an angel ripped off his wings in despair. “Satisfied, Elizabeth?”

She kept her hands on the boots, grasping pincers, and gave me that first smile from a week ago—that love-me-because-I-make-it-so smile. “If he’s all you say, I’m more than satisfied. I do get to keep the boots, yes?”

I smiled back, happy and bright, warm with the feeling of a job well done. “Bethy, I knew I was never getting those back from you again.”

* * *

On the drive in my sporty little red car to Hoover Dam, I told her about her new beau— she laughed when I called him that, but I thought he’d like the old-fashioned label. His name was Dennison Phillip Jameson—the rich do love their three names—he’d been born with a trust fund and not a silver but a platinum spoon in his mouth, had inherited even more when his parents died, and had owned several construction companies, mainly to keep busy. That’s why he’d be waiting for us at Hoover Dam. The construction companies had been sold off for even more unnecessary cash, but the man had never given up his love of a thing well-built. Originally from San Diego, monthly trips to Hoover Dam had never been out of the ordinary for him.

He was old enough that death wouldn’t be a problem for Elizabeth and, best, she looked just like his mother had in her prime, and the man had loved his mother a little more than was necessarily proper. With her face and his rather vanilla fetish for snakeskin boots, Elizabeth could’ve been made for him.

Things tend to work out that way when I’m on the job. It’s the universe showing its love of balance. I only help it along.

We drove over the dam and parked in the small lot. I waited until Elizabeth pulled on the knee-high boots. Her dress was a subtle harvest gold today and the gold in the scales picked up on it. “You look like the sun, Bethy Rose. The rising sun. He won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”

“You’re positive he’ll be here.” She brushed her hair back and her inner light doubled. She was, sad to say, gifted beyond words.

Pity.

“I am absolutely certain he’s here and waiting. He’ll be where he can see the water. The man loves the water.”

He’d have to, now, wouldn’t he?

We took the elevator up from the visitors’ center and steered clear of the enclosed area to walk to the open space where it was all sky and rock and the bluest water I’d ever seen. The dam itself was the white of a bleached bone, and that was appropriate. The last dab of paint to a work I’d labored over for a week.

“Where is he?” Elizabeth glanced around, but there was no one there. There had been a few people wandering about, but they were gone now. Gone very quickly. Sometimes people know somehow . . . They sense a minefield before they step in it. They turn and they go. And sometimes if I don’t want to be seen, people don’t want to see me. They, too, turn and go. Elizabeth and I were alone . . . well, excepting her one true love she was already saving up the potassium chloride for.

I leaned against the concrete that served as the barrier between me and nothing but hot, dry air. “Elizabeth, this is the desert. You haven’t lived here forever, I know, but have you been curious enough to drive out once in a while? See some things? You see Kokopelli all the time in the tacky little gift shops too good for the likes of you, I know. Kokopelli.” I shake my head and raise my face to the sun. “Glory hog and a whole lot handsy when he’s drinking. But forget him. Have you ever heard of Crow?”

“Coyote?

“Iktomi?”

I slid my gaze from the sun to her sudden frown and narrow-eyed blink. “Iktomi, that’s your last name. Is this a trick? Are you trying to rip me off?” So vicious the words now. So changeable, my Bethy Rose.

I laughed. “I would never rip you off. I’m giving you exactly what you want, a dead rich husband. But I am tricking you. You’re the first one to say that to me in so long.” I laughed again, stood and spun in a circle with arms wide. The sky spun with me, blue blue blue. It was once a deeper blue, the sun larger in the sky, and you could walk for years and not see a living person. The days do pass.

I stopped spinning, bounced on my heels, and grinned. “I have lots of names, sugar, so many I’d waste a good year telling you them all.” I put a finger to my lips. “But I’ll tell you a secret. They all mean the same thing.”

Trickster.

I liked Elizabeth because she was a good liar. She was my reflection in a mirror—hazy, as I did have six thousand years of practice on her, but she’d have made a good baby trickster . . . if not for her blindness to the balance. If you can’t see it, you can’t live it, and you can’t enforce it. Tricksters were created to bring balance and wisdom. Elizabeth had come to me a little late and too far gone for wisdom. But she also wasn’t stupid, my Elizabeth. She was a survivor, and so she thought to turn and leave. Thinking and doing, though, they don’t always go skipping hand in hand. As much as Elizabeth wanted to flee, she was caught firmly in the wheels of justice.

It was the balance for her.

“I’ve been so many myths, so many shapes, so many things, Bethy, you can’t imagine.”

This week alone I’d been an oversexed dolphin to teach a Speedo-wearing idiot a lesson he’d never forget. Great, great fun, that one.

I sat on the concrete barrier and told her a tale. “In Australia there was once a trickster called Dhakhan.” There were hundreds, thousands of tricksters, and I’d been them all. “Dhakhan was gorgeous, and I say that with all due modesty. A serpent covered with rainbow scales like a thousand sultan’s jewels. Does that sound vain? I probably was vain then; forget the modesty, swimming in the mountain lakes showing off like you show off your snakeskin shoes.” I kicked my feet back and forth lightly and remembered. “I watched over the people there, but where there are people there are bad people. Sometimes I had to punish the wicked. The murderers. Murderers like you, Elizabeth.” I patted the concrete beside me, and her mouth moved soundlessly as she walked over stiffly, fighting every step with all she had in her, before sitting down, wholly against her will, beside me.

Unfortunately for her, what she had accepted from me couldn’t be beaten. Her will was nothing next to it. It controlled her as she’d once controlled four stupid, stupid men.

“I stayed there a while—in Australia. It was like a vacation, a place so beautiful you could hardly look at it. But after ten years or so, I shed my skin and took it as a sign. Unless I wanted to mature into a new Dhakhan, it was time to go—to be something and someone else. And Coyote has always been my favorite—I won’t lie. But I hid the skin I’d shaken off. I knew I’d use it someday. There’s a great deal of me and my will left in that skin. There’s a great deal of justice in it. Now about that husband.” I leaned and looked down at the water below. Very far