“Man, that be some cold. I’ll be waitin’ on you, Miss DJ. I’ll even turn off the meter seein’ as how you’re a regular. Ain’t you glad you got dat coat?” Arnie gave me a gap-toothed grin. He was old-school New Orleans, of the generation that still called shopping for food “making groceries” and referred to the near-west suburb as “Metry.”
“Thanks, Arnie. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Sure I did. I’d be riding the bus or forced to ask Alex if I could borrow the pristine Mercedes convertible he’d stored at his parents’ house in Mississippi last month. Things located near me, he pointed out, had a bad habit of turning into fireballs.
He hadn’t even offered me the use of his uncle Eddie’s beater of a pickup that got passed around the family in times of need. He could drive me wherever I needed to go, he’d said. My interpretation: He could control where I went if I had to depend on him for transportation. Thus my newfound relationship with Arnie.
Hurrying into the store, I relaxed at the cocoon of warmth that surrounded me, not to mention the piped-in Christmas Muzak and the reassurance of knowing an unlimited supply of junk food lay at my disposal.
I picked up a blue plastic shopping basket and made my way through aisles crowded with wrapping paper and Santa hats, tree lights and tinsel, weaving toward the back corner of the store where the actual pharmacy had been tucked. My footfalls fell in rhythm with Johnny Mathis crooning about roasting chestnuts on an open fire, which sounded dangerous.
Halfway down the “As Seen on TV” aisle, I lurched to a stop and backed up. For Alex’s Christmas present, I’d bought him a membership renewal at the city’s most high-tech gym, but the Perfect Bacon Bowl (“Everything Tastes Better in a Bowl of Bacon!”) looked like the ideal thing in which to hide the membership card. He’d be totally grossed out, toss it aside, and I could use it without admitting I’d bought it for myself. Alex considered bacon an express pass to heart disease. I considered it one of nature’s perfect foods.
Grinning, I grabbed the Perfect Bacon Bowl and wedged it in my basket. My amusement faded as the store’s holiday excess gave way to the health-care aisles, and the enormity of Eugenie’s situation finally hit me in all of its awfulness.
If she was pregnant, Rand would want the child, and Rand had a way of getting what he wanted even if it meant playing dirty. Oh, he thought he played fair, but the elves had an arrogantly warped worldview in which “fair” equaled “whatever the elf wants.”
Or would he prefer that she get rid of the child so his precious pure elven DNA wouldn’t be mixed with that of a human? I pondered that down half an aisle, but rejected it. Rand would want an heir. God knows he would never get one from his so-called mate, namely me, and if he had half a brain, he’d realize that.
Where would one find home pregnancy tests? I scanned row after row of vitamins, eye drops, elevated toilet seats, antacids, and finally found them—colorful stacks of boxes in frightening babylike colors of pink and blue and what had apparently replaced green as the new neutral pastel, lavender.
I stared at the half-dozen different brands, overwhelmed not only by the choice of tests but the ramifications of a baby fathered by Quince Randolph. What would a half-elven child be able to do? Look how many elven skills I won in the genetic lottery and I was far, far more removed from elfhood than this kid would be. Could the baby do bizarre mental games in utero? Were elves automatically devious and underhanded, or was that a learned behavior?
What was the gestation period for a half-elven child? Nine months like a human or an elephantine two years?
If Eugenie were pregnant, considering she’d lost a child before and the Catholic upbringing she staunchly upheld in the face of the weirdness around her, would she consider ending this pregnancy? Would it be fair to even ask her to consider it?
Okay, I was getting ahead of myself. There would be time later to panic and wrestle with moral dilemmas.
First step: Try the pregnancy test. The boxes all claimed to be ninety-nine percent accurate. Those results applied to humans, I assumed. Not surprisingly, the accuracy rating for half-human pregnancies had been omitted from the package labels. I picked one using the highly scientific method of prettiest logo.
I lingered in the candy aisle on the way to the register, thinking about Rand and piling in enough peanut butter cups and candy bars to replace my blood supply with cocoa and sugar. To balance it out, I grabbed a twelve-pack of diet soda along with Eugenie’s ginger ale.