Page 10 of The Face in the Water

The big man paused to give him a look. The swimmer and the bearded man shared a lightning-strike grin.

“It’s an easy fix,” the big man said, swinging that look back to the bearded man. “For example, instead of ‘it would be prudent,’ you could say, ‘you should remove.’”

The bearded man made an agreeing noise. “While we’re on the topic of easy edits, Emery, maybe we should talk about that version of the Lord’s prayer I heard last Sunday.”

“Please don’t get him started,” the swimmer said.

“I’ve never heard so many swear words peppered in before. And in a church, no less.”

“In the first place, motherfucker, that horse’s ass pastor asked me—” the big man began.

“Am I allowed to have a beer this weekend?” the swimmer asked. “I think I need a beer.”

“You’re certainly not allowed to have any gummies,” the big man said. “In case you’ve forgotten what happened last time.”

At that moment, of course, the conference’s social media manager-slash-photographer-slash-(whatever that robot was called, the one Jem made Tean watch all those movies about, the exterminator, maybe?) appeared again, saying, “Theo, I’m going to lose my mind. Have you seen—hey!”

Tean shot off into the crowd.

The lobby was clearly not a refuge. He checked his phone as he scurried into the Santaland labyrinth again, lifting his head to smile and nod at conference-goers he knew—or who had been in the same panels as he had. No messages from Jem. Nothing from Missy. A glance over his shoulder showed him the young man jogging after him, so Tean decided he’d better jog too.

Two turns and cutting through what was clearly some sort of service corridor landed Tean in a part of the resort he recognized, although he had no idea how he’d gotten there. He hurried to the next intersection. One of the hotel bars was located—yep, right there. Complete with walls, and dim lighting, and, just to reinforce how important this fact was, walls. Conference-goers filled the tables and booths and pressed up to the bar, shouting orders. Margaritas seemed to be in high demand—well, everything seemed to be in high demand when you turned a bunch of veterinarians loose for the weekend—and the bartenders laughed and joked and slung drinks as fast as they could.

Tean slipped between the knots of bodies, offering small waves of acknowledgment to the people he knew, working his way into the next section of the bar, where a wall would block him from sight. Around him, the usual chaos of a conference bar unspooled. A red-faced woman shouted, “A penguin,” like it was some kind of punchline, and her companion, a woman with a faux hawk, snorted her drink in laughter. A harried-looking girl who might have been barely eighteen shouldered past Tean with a tray of appetizers, the smell of cheese curds and marinara sauce trailing after her. A group of what Tean thought of as the old school of wildlife vets—middle-aged white men in pseudo-hunting apparel, including ridiculously impractical boots—grouped up around a two-top, one of the men attempting to do a turkey call in spite of his obvious inebriation.

In one of those swirls and eddies that carry people through crowds, Tean suddenly found himself facing an empty table. He dropped down into a seat, glanced at the men seated at the table next to him—one of them blond and muscular, in a Hennessy Landscaping tee, jeans, and heavy boots; the other slender, with long chestnut hair drawn up in a bun, and smelling unmistakably of cannabis—and took out his phone. Then he did a double take because the slender man was wearing what appeared to be pink Crocs (which Jem had refused to let Tean buy, even when the brown ones were on sale), purple tights, and an enormously oversized black t-shirt that showed a stick figure humping the words YOUR FEELINGS.

The slender man caught Tean’s gaze and brightened. “I’m blending in.”

The blond man snorted.

“Something to eat?” the harried girl asked, hovering next to Tean’s table, the now empty tray under one arm.

“Oh,” the slender man said, “you should have the cheese curds. We had the cheese curds—well, North had the cheese curds, but he didn’t share with me—”

“You said you didn’t want any,” the blond man said. “You shoved that anti-dairy council pamphlet in my face.”

“But even though North didn’t let me have any, on account of he’s keeping me waifish and frail until he puts a baby in me—”

The blond man choked on his beer.

“—they’re really good, well, I think they’re really good. In part because I could sense that they were good. Psychically, I mean. But in part because North made this noise when he ate one, and it’s the same noise he makes when I use my finger to—ah!” At that point, he started screaming, probably because the blond man was trying to rip one of his nipples off through the baggy black t-shirt.

“Uh, no,” Tean said to the waitress. “Still waiting for someone.”

She was gone before he’d finished speaking.

“Now I’ll never be able to get that areola embroidered,” the slender man was moaning as he massaged his chest.

“We never should have come here,” the blond man said. “We should have said no to this fucking job as soon as they mentioned this fucking place.”

“We love this place! We have good memories of this place!”

Tean tried to block out the argument as he typed a message to Missy, asking her to meet him in the bar instead of the lobby.

“We don’t have any good memories of this place,” the blond man said. “This place is your fucking wet dream because you got to spend a day with your non-sexual soulmate.”

“John-Henry isn’t my soulmate, Emery is. And I never said non-sexual.”

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