Undead and Undermined

Chapter THIRTY



The doorway actually splintered . . . Sinclair had been in a hurry. He didn’t pause for a dramatic kick, he didn’t sock his shoulder against it like they sometimes do in movies, he just crashed through it. You know those cartoons where the character runs through the door, and the door splinters into the shape of his silhouette? Like that.

He and Marc found me lying in the closet with Jessica rubbing my wrists like Doc Olson in an episode of Little House on the Prairie. “Ma Has a Heart Attack,” maybe. Or “Laura Has PMS.”

“I can’t take it, I can’t, I absolutely can’t take anything else, it’s too much,” I gasped. “Tilt! Overload.”

“You better take a breath,” Jessica warned.

“Why? What possible good would that do except make me dizzier?”

“Point,” she admitted. “Sorry. I forgot for a second.”

“Sinclair loves me here.” I was staring at the (water-stained) ceiling. “Sinclair loves me in this timeline and in the old one, and he loves me here and we’re still in love here because he loves me here, so everything else can get worked out because he loves me, so it’s okay, it’s okay, don’t be scared, it’s all fine.”

“Thaaaat whole thing?” Jessica worried. “That was all out loud, Bets.”

“Who is it? Is it the Antichrist?” My husband was looking everywhere, all white around the eyes like a horse about to bolt, or stomp. “If she dared touch you again, I will—”

“What the hell!” Nick shouted, looking all 1970’s cop, with his gun drawn and standing in the (battered) doorway. “Jess, get away from her! Are you okay? Why are you both in the closet?”

“Get away from her?” Freshly outraged, I sat up. “That’s a nice way to talk to your landlady. Or the woman having sex with your landlord. Which is it in this timeline? Ooooh, I hate this timeline.” I laid down again, moaning.

“It’s, um, she’s okay.” Jessica coughed. “Relatively speaking.”

“What happened?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Bets, I’m not going to try to take your vitals this time,” Marc said, pushing past Nick and kneeling beside me. I was instantly comforted by his cool-yet-warm bedside-y manner. “You can see me all right, yes, honeybunch? You don’t feel sick? Or light-headed? Or deader than usual?”

“No, but don’t call me honeybunch.”

Feeling my neck, he laughed. I reached up and snatched his hand; we both pretended he didn’t flinch back. Guess I’d moved quicker than I’d meant to. It always startled the hell out of people.

I had no choice, I had to confide in him. Call it a cliché, but only a gay man could understand my pain and, possibly, Beverly Feldman. “Marc, there’s no Christian Louboutin here. He doesn’t exist here!”

Marc winced and tried to loosen my grip. “Ow, ow, ow! Um, I think—yeah, you might have broken at least two of my—who’s Christian Loobuhtohn?”

“Loo-boo-TAHN. Sorry.” I loosened my grip but couldn’t bear to let go. “He’s just the . . . just the most brilliant shoe designer . . . he’s a genius. Was a genius. Is he dead? Did he never get born? Poor Monsieur Louboutin!”

“You’re carrying on,” Nick observed, still watching the corners of the room in case a boogeyman leaped at us, “like he was a family member.”

“I wish. I would have loved it if he were my older brother—he’s in his forties now, so he’d be my much older brother. And he was born in France, right? And he’d sneak out of school—starting in seventh grade!—to watch the Paris showgirls, and he loved their high heels. Okay, that makes him sound like a little perv, but he’s an artist, dammit. So he dropped out of school to be a shoe designer and he thought up the red sole.”

“What’s a red soul?” Dickie-Nickie asked.

“Sole. He does—did?—a signature red shoe bottom, which was a great idea, and when I left my timeline he had paperwork into the US Trademark Office so he could trademark the red soles. Killer, right?”

The tapered heel, slick colors, and splashy-yet-subtle red sole were fabbo enough, but last month I’d been able to buy his new ones . . . zipper heels! Black stiletto pump, red sole, zippers bisecting the heel, complete with tiny silver pull tab. God, why hast thou forsaken me?

“If this was anybody else,” Marc was saying, “I’d recommend a transfusion and iron tablets. You don’t fool me, blondie, I know you’re light-headed.”

Of course I was. “You guys! He almost singlehandedly brought stilettos back into fashion in the 1990s. He designed the shoes I wore on my honeymoon when I almost got killed. And he doesn’t exist here.” I started to cry. This alarmed everyone. Which, lamely, I found comforting.

“They were red flats and they were so beautiful because they looked great but also I could run in them and they meant a lot because I got them on my honeymoon, which I didn’t think I’d have but I did finally after stupid Sinclair finally agreed to really get married.” I wept harder.

“You can’t remember to swing by the store and get milk,” Marc said, “but you know some shoe guy’s entire biography?”

“Okay, saving you just dropped off my to-do list.” I sniffled and sat up. “Dammit. Crying’s not going to bring him back. It’s not gonna fill my closet up with shoes that don’t blow. Garrett’s alive but there are no Christian Louboutins? It’s like Sophie’s Choice.”

Marc patted my hand. “That’s the spirit.”