Don't Rock the Boardwalk by Jordan Castillo Price

Author:Jordan Castillo Price [Price, Jordan Castillo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944779146
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9

YURI

Perhaps Dixon was right, and no one truly looks at anyone else. Or if they do, they don’t see. The Boardwalk was bustling, but at this early hour, only with the people who worked there. The shopkeepers cleaned windows, the maintenance crew swept sand from the planks, and the deliverymen dropped off more cheap souvenirs to sell. I stood on a section that had been recently swept, and gazed off in the direction of the cabins where I had wintered. I could not see the beach. But the top of a massive auger was visible above the treetops, and it saddened me.

How strange to be sentimental about the city where I had lived less than a year, when St. Petersburg could collapse and I would accept the news with a shrug. I had no use for this sentimentality. But since I could think of no particular remedy, there was nothing else to do but determine who was buying the shore.

The prospect of stopping them—by whatever means necessary—was a much more encouraging thought to dwell on.

I paused outside a “gallery” selling cheap jewelry and mass-produced ceramic trinkets. My reflection in the plate glass window greeted me, shielded behind the sunglasses. I was both resident and outsider. Knowing without being known. And it was a comfort to be able to operate outside the system, to be just an observer, with no claims to my time—

“Yoo hoo!” called a familiar voice—one which had been grating on my very last nerve, to the point where it intruded in my dreams. Drew Draws was already outfitted with his rhinestone apron and ridiculous glittery beret. “Buttinski!”

“That is not my name.”

“Oh please,” he said dramatically. “You should be thanking me for giving you a moniker. Really. You should. Everyone knows that a memorable presence is the best marketing.”

I took another glance at myself in the shop window and wondered how I ever thought a pair of sunglasses would be adequate disguise. “I am not here to draw,” I said.

“Nonsense.” Drew plucked at my sleeve. “Now stop admiring your large, strapping self and come over to the tent before the tourists get here.” As he marched off toward the corner of the Boardwalk he’d carved out for himself, I got a good look at what he was wearing beneath that apron. Shorts. Satin shorts. Extremely short satin shorts.

Shorts I would never un-see.

Had he been wearing such things yesterday as I stood beside him all day drawing tourists with exaggerated amounts of hair?

Well. Now it was not just his voice that would haunt my nightmares.

Ignoring his request, I turned and power-walked out to the parking lot as a new idea formed in my mind. Dixon might look enough like any other Spellcrafter to make the Handless second-guess whether they had seen him before or not. In my suit, though, with my shaved head, I was too easy to recognize. But I had been offered something which would make a much more effective disguise—something that would ensure none of the Boardwalkers (except Drew) could possibly take me for anything but a tourist.

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