Excerpt: The Queen's Sedge of Thistles

It all happened really fast. I saw a big, muscular guy in a long dark coat run up behind a lady, grab her by one shoulder and toss something into her face.
It didn’t look liquid exactly, it kind of looked like he’d just thrown a big gob of honey at her, then he let go of her. He kinda stopped right then, to stare at me.
I stared back. He had a hard, gnarled kind of a face with a couple days growth of beard and the kind of tan people who worked in the sun all their lives got. His eyes caught me, though. They were hard and keen. Light grey or blue, almost too pale to count as a color.
That’s not what stopped me. It was his expression. It seemed almost, I don’t know. Apologetic.
I blinked. He dropped on hand on the top of the rock wall, and hopped it just like Archie and I used to do as kids every time we were told to keep out of the swamp.
The woman kind of staggered once. Her bag of groceries fell out of her bag. She lurched to the side two steps as both hands clawed at the sticky slop all over her face. Her mouth sagged open.
Thinking if she might be choking to death, I dropped my hands on my rims and rolled toward her.
We got there before she fell to her knees. I pushed out my hands, touching her arms. “Ma’am? Can you breathe?”
She coughed a little, scraping at the stuff with her fingernails and swayed toward me. She spat some of the crap out of her mouth. A tiny little globule flew into the air, arched up and landed on the center of Sid’s left paw. Sid opened one eye, gave it a sniff, then closed his eye again.
If Sid wasn’t very alarmed about it, I guess it couldn’t be all that dangerous.
“I can’t see,” she said in voice I thought should be more panicked. “He threw this junk in my eyes.”
“I’ve got an eyewash sink in my garage about fifty feet from here.” I took hold of her arm near her elbow to steady her. Some of the slop had landed there. It not only looked like honey but it felt sticky like it too. I patted myself, looking for my phone. No, of course not, it was back upstairs with my keys. “It’s really effective. While you’re doing that, I can call the cops. I got a pretty good look at him.”
She shifted her weight, bumping her left foot up against one of my wheels. She paused. “You’re the guy that owns it, right? I’ve seen you.”
I wondered a little about her tone, how it seemed to get more relaxed with every word. Maybe she had a little bit of a concussion. Stunned by the blow.
I tugged on her arm, backing up to take on that massive curb stone again. “Come on, it’s just over this way. I can lead you.”
She stopped scrapping at the honey and set one hand kind of on my shoulder but a little bit on my neck, where my shirt gaped. I could smell the gunk now. It smelled oddly sweet. Like flowers almost.
Her hand felt radiantly warm against my skin. It made me try to remember how long it’d been since a woman, other than a doctor, touched my neck. Tenderly.
Bouncing backwards down into the street with a blind woman and an almost dead cat snapped me back onto the subject matter at hand. Oh yes, there it was. Eye wash. Cold water. Lots of it.
We got to the slope in the drive in front of the main gates when she tapped my neck. “Hey,” she said in a slightly distracted voice. “I’ve seen you. You come to the market and buy granola.”
My eyes snapped up. I stared.
No. It could not be. I blinked a few times, then closed my mouth before a few flies buzzed in.
“Uh. Yeah. You work at the booth. With all herbs and stuff. You make the breads and granola and stuff.” I shrugged like I really didn’t know the answer to this question. “Uh. What’s your name?”
“Pete.” She grinned.
I’d known that for the better part of six months, but nobody could tell me what it was short for. I’d ruled out the whole gender confusion he/she thing about a minute and a half after the lady that ran the booth told me. I was watching Pete cook up the oats and molasses and all when a pulchita slipped out of her hand and plopped onto the floor. Pete leaned over and the back of her shirt lifted up just an inch over the back of her skirt.
I caught a glimpse of the most perfect set of dimples ever to be observed in the entire history of men leering at women. I know people swear by the Adam’s Apple, or the size of the hands to gauge certain things, but me, I’m a dimples man. Girls have them there, boys don’t. Simple as that.
“Pete?” I asked, innocently as I steered her through the side gate which I’d thoughtfully left hanging open. I locked it behind us. I’d been waiting for six months to talk to her alone and this is what I got. Her the victim of a crime and me with Sid on my lap. “What’s that short for?”
She gave a soft laugh and curled her fingers gently against my trapezium. Her fingers felt so warm, sweat popped out all the way across my upper lip.
“It’s short for Pete.”
I watched her smile. I like the view, I thought. I like the view.
It must have been my hesitation because she gave me a soft little squeeze, and gave a slight toss to her shoulder.
“It’s spelled different than the boy’s name. P. I. E. T. E. People are supposed to pronounce it Piété, you know, with three syllables, but they don’t. They pronounce it like ‘piece’, a tiny small section of something. Only with a T.”
“But really it’s: pee ay tah?” I paused to usher her through the side door, which I’d also left hanging all the way open. “Like the statue by Leonardo da Vinci? The one the crazy guy smashed a few years back?”
I never did understand why anyone would ever do that to something so beautiful. Maybe being near something that perfect made him conscious of how much imperfection lived in him.
Back in the world outside of my head, Pete grinned, looking back at me. “That’s it. Nobody ever knows that.” She paused, blinking slowly at the cars and equipment filling the garage. “This is your place?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t like the way she just kept getting calmer and happier. I wondered if there were some kind of dope in that gunk. I pointed over to the eye wash station. “Let’s get this crap off you.”
She paused again, glancing around. Her free hand fluttered up to cover her heart. Her eyes went to the bank of windows marching across all the doors. Fear tightened her voice and her expression. “People can see in, can’t they? That guy could see in?”
Maybe. If he stood on something and craned pretty well. I glanced back. That guy did look pretty tall.
She lifted her hand from my neck and brought to join her other hand to cover the front of her blouse. “He could see me all wet?”
“No,” I said quickly, pointing with a straight arm at the freight elevator. “Nobody’s going see you all wet but you.”
Nobody, including me, I thought. Damn. I’d really wouldn’t have minded that scenery at all. That ivory silk blouse could bond to her like a second skin when properly soaked, letting a poor old pervert like me remember what beauty really looked like.
“Okay,” she said, lowering her hand to cup my cheek. Her hand felt a little sticky, but I knew it would wash off. I hoped that tingling warmth of her palm print never would.
In theory, I lead her to the elevator, but really, I think she lead me. I just stared up at her, trying not to grin like an idiot. Pete the granola maker was in my house, about to use my soap and get naked in my shower. While she was doing all that, I could toss some towels in the dryer just to make them extra fluffy and warm. I’d have them waiting for her when she stepped out. All pink and dewy.
Here’s your room service, ma’am. No need to tip.
I licked my lips. Whatever that stuff was, it tasted a little sweet. Not like honey, exactly, but kind of like the way clover tastes.
“It’s the maid’s year off,” I said as soon as the elevator cleared her sight line. “Sorry. Two bachelors live here.”
“Two?” she asked as a crease slowly appeared between her brows. “You have a boyfriend?”
“No.” I tried not to sigh or sound too defensive. It was reasonable question in light of my last statement. I pointed down at the lump of fur in my lap. “I meant him.”
“Oh. Who is he?” She smiled, rubbing her lips together, probably trying to cut down on the residue. They touched the tip of Sid’s nose. He licked her finger, then went back to ignoring both of us. “Now that I think of it, who are you?”
“He’s Sid. I’m Zeek.”
The elevator stopped and I reluctantly rolled away from her warm touch to open the gate for her.
I pointed at the bathroom as I rolled toward the bed, scooping Sid up.
“Sorry, bud,” I whispered, setting him down on his pillow down beside the foot board, right next to his litter box and his food and water dish. The more sick and weak Sid got, the closer the four critical stops in Sid’s life drew to each other. “Take a nap here for a bit.”
Sid opened one eye and gave me an unimpressed glare, then sniffed out a sigh and settled back down.
I heard the sound of a tap and water running, but it wasn’t coming from the direction of the bathroom. I turned my head. Pete stood at my kitchen sink, playing with the buttons on her blouse.
She met my eyes, smiling shyly. “Should I take my shirt off?”
Thank you, God, I thought, unable to force my eyes to blink. You do exist. So sorry I doubted you.
My betraying right hand lifted, pointing at the bathroom. “I was thinking you could wash up in there. In the shower. You know. Alone.”
She paused and her brows flicked together in confusion. She shook her head, touching her cheek. “Of course. Yeah. That was a stupid question. I can’t believe I just asked if you wanted me to strip. God, I feel weird.”
Unable to stare at her self mortification without adding to it, I headed around my bed.
“You just got hit in the head and covered in who knows what.” Turning, I rolled over to my chest of drawers and pulled out some sweats. “Trust me, it wouldn’t bother me a bit if you wanted to come over on a different day and dance around in your under panties, but by then your concussion will have worn off. You probably wouldn’t want to then.”
I turned back and stopped. I didn’t hear her walk over to me. I looked down quickly. She’d taken her shoes off.
I found few things sexier than a stocking footed woman.
She stood, holding a dripping wash cloth. “It wouldn’t bother you? Me in my panties? I mean, I’m hardly a model.”
“You’re hardly anorexic, there’s a difference.” I felt myself leaning back in amazement, I pointed at the washcloth. Something was definitely wrong here. There’d been a progressive shift in her mood that gave me preferential treatment but didn’t seem to do any favors for her.
“Hey, Pete. Do you want me to take you to the hospital? Your cheeks are kinda flushed and, well, you don’t seem quite yourself.”
She shifted her weight as her eyes lifted at the question. As if it took all her concentration to consider it.
“I do feel weird.” She touched her cheek with the back of her hand. “You’re right, I never act like this, but I thought, when I saw all that nice warm water running that maybe I should come over here and wash your neck. You know, where I touched it. I probably got it all sticky. And then maybe you could wash mine.”
Not even my God loved me that much. The truth became crystalline in that moment. Somebody drugged this girl. Her cerebral cortex no longer took directions from her, if she thought I’d make a good lay.
“Pete. Come on. Let’s get you in the car.”
Before I could tell my hands to push my rims backwards, she reached down and started rubbing my cheek and neck with that wash cloth. As she leaned forward, her partially unbuttoned blouse gaped open, giving me a fully unobstructed view of her deliciously ripe and fully natural breasts, just barely contained in fairly practical white bra. It looked soft though. Not scratchy like the lace ones.
I reached up to her cheek. The one on her face. I touched her, closing my eyes and pushed oh so gently. “Pete. Please. Something’s gotten to your head.”
“Has it?” I heard doubt and sadness in her voice. The washcloth paused. “I thought about asking you out the last time you came by the booth, and I thought maybe you might have said yes, I mean, even to a fat girl.”
She took a step backwards. I opened my eyes. There were tears in hers. And panic. She touched her cheek again and took another step back. “I should go.”
I rolled forward, cutting her off. I took hold of her wrist. “Look. If you want to go home, fine. I’ll give you a ride. Or if you want to go to the hospital, that’s fine too. I’ll wait with you. But don’t think that I wouldn’t love a sponge bath or another look down your blouse. It’s just that I think something’s messing with you. And I don’t want to be the creep who takes advantage of it.”
She stared at me for a long moment, then reached up to the side of her head, running her hand along her thick curls. She came back with a heavy palm full of honey colored gunk. She studied it for a moment, then looked up at me.
“This is the stuff that’s messing with me? Making me want for you to touch me?”
I squeezed my eyes shut as I realized what I stared at. The nympho-izing love goo. Archie was actually right about something.
Nympho-izing love goo.
Trying not to cringe, I looked at her, nodding. “Yeah. You got hit with a lot of it.”
“So.” She looked back down at the shimmering honey. “If you had this much on you, then you would want me just as much?”
My breath seized in my throat. It took a little work, but I huffed out a tenth of a lungful.
“I don’t work like I used to. I mean,” I tipped my head down toward my crotch, “it. It doesn’t work.”
Not without the aforementioned pills. That I did not have.
I waited for her to laugh. Or ridicule me. Or just plain leave.
“That,” she said, moving her palm until it hovered about six inches away from my right hand, “is not the question I asked.”
The good news is that I didn’t actually slap my face down into it and mush it around like I was a pig in slop. The bad news is, what I did do wasn’t much more subtle.