Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [106]
I looked again. Lopez was standing still in front of the mambo now. Not talking, not making her put down the gunpowder . . . Not doing anything.
Jeff said to me, “He doesn’t act like a guy who dumped you.”
I had no idea why Lopez was just standing there. He seemed to be swaying a little.
“He didn’t dump me,” I said. “He gave me up.”
“He acts more like a guy who’s cutting you out of the herd and putting up a fence to keep the other stallions away from you.”
“Huh?”
“We’ve been in this room since, oh, a different geological era, I think,” Jeff said. “And this is the first time he’s moved more than eight inches away from you.”
I turned to face Jeff. “Tell me about the Imperial Food Forum. I don’t understand why you lied to me about it.”
“I didn’t lie. I just . . . omitted a lot of information and let you think whatever you wanted to think.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I really hadn’t thought about it. So I said, “I assumed you were in a play.”
“I was broke when I came back from LA, and another actor I know—Frank Johnson, in fact—told me about a job that was available. He said he wasn’t right for it, but maybe I might be, since I’d been keeping fit out in LA.”
“And?”
“And it was full-time work, and the money was pretty good.” He shrugged. “And if the floor show keeps going well, we’ll do some TV commercials. And that’ll be better money.”
“We all do things to pay the bills, Jeff,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you’ve got a part on a great TV show. I’m wearing a thong and playacting with a sword in a glorified supermarket.” He made an awkward gesture. “So maybe you can understand why I didn’t just come out and tell you.”
“D-Thirty is the only work I’ve had all summer,” I pointed out. “I’ve been waiting tables most of the year.”
“Singing and waiting tables,” he said with a teasing smile.
“Do you get cold in your thong?”
He gave me a mock punch on the chin, then he put his arms around me, and we hugged. As we pulled apart, Jeff peered over the heads of the crowd and looked into the center of the hounfour again. His expression changed so abruptly that I turned to look, too.
Jeff said, “Holy shit!”
I cried, “No!”
Lopez has stripped off his shirt. Bare-chested and gleaming with a fine sheen of sweat, he knelt before the brazier and plunged his hands into the pile of glowing red coals.
I screamed and tried to lunge forward. In sheer reflexive fear, Jeff kept a firm grip on me, stopping me from moving.
Lopez pulled the iron rod out of the brazier, raised his arms overhead, and held the burning rod in his bare hands, his facial expression completely blank.
18
“Lopez!” I screamed in horror.
He remained kneeling on the floor in front of the glowing brazier, his naked torso gleaming, his muscular arms raised high overhead as he held the glowing iron rod in his hands. His eyes were half-closed and unblinking, his face relaxed and strangely blank.
“Let me go!” My nose twitched from the irritation of my gris-gris pouch as I struggled with Jeff, frantic to get to Lopez and—and—and . . . Actually, I wasn’t sure what I would do. But getting him to let go of the red- hot iron bar seemed like a good place to start.
“Holy shit!” Jeff repeated, still restraining me.
Mambo Celeste was standing next to Lopez. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him to look at her, but I heard her voice raised exultantly and was aware of her swaying in a dance around his kneeling form, her arms spread wide as she chanted and shook her rattle.
His face still calm, almost sleepy, Lopez suddenly leaped to his feet and whirled around in a circle with the glowing rod, twirling it overhead with his hands, then letting it slide down his arms so he could make the thing dance around his torso, moving like a martial artist practicing with a bamboo staff.
That was when I finally realized that he wasn’t getting burned. His flesh was unmarred, and he seemed to be in no discomfort at all.
“Whoa!” said Jeff. “He works out, doesn’t he? Very flexible.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said.
I watched in numb shock as