Hypothetically Yours
"Which way?" Nigel glanced at his watch. "It’s going to be dark before long and it will be that much harder to find." He steered the jeep through hairpin turns, trying to keep one eye on the road and one on the street signs. It was a challenge, given that he also wanted to keep one eye on Sydney.
"Left, and it should only be a couple of blocks. I just hope he has the antidote."
They both spotted the house at the same time. It would have been pretty close to impossible to miss it. Among the sea of pale pinks, beiges, and whites, the fuschia and turquoise stucco stuck out like a sore thumb. "Well," Sydney commented, squinting up at the bright ochre door with its X-rated stained-glass window, "Looks like bad taste crosses all boundaries."
"Apparently so," Nigel concurred. "Did a paint store explode?" In the last gasps of sunlight, the house practically gave off a neon glow.
When attractive middle-aged black woman answered the door, Sydney pasted on her best professional smile. Nigel had seen it often enough to recognize it, and he matched it with one of his own. "I’m not sure we’re at the right place," Syd explained. "We’re looking for Xan Lo Xiang."
"Oh, sure. Come on in, he’s here. I’m Renee, his significant other." Renee opened the door wide and called back through the house, "Xan, honey, you’ve got company! It’s those two kids Kim called about."
Nigel blinked, trying not to stare. The differences were nearly imperceptible, but they were there. Renee could easily pass for female in most circles. Only his Adam’s apple gave him away. Nigel wondered if the curves were the result of padding or of surgery, then squelched the thought. He definitely didn’t want to know!
Xan wasn’t what they expected, either. The diminutive Asian man wore his silver hair in a long ponytail, and paint splattered the Hawaiian shirt and khaki trousers he wore. Bare feet finished his ensemble. Just visible from the threshold, an easel held a half-completed oil painting of the sun setting over the ocean. A very good painting, Nigel surmised. He didn’t need an art degree to recognize the talent behind the work.
Sydney introduced herself and Nigel, explaining their ties to the University and their shared area of expertise. Together, they described their current impasse, sketching out the far-reaching effects of the charm and asking for help. Meanwhile, the old man gestured for his guests to take a seat on the cushioned rattan sofa. He poured steaming jasmine tea into small porcelain cups, the handle-less variety traditional to Asian culture. He handed a cup to Sydney and Nigel and poured one for himself and Renee.
Xan nodded throughout the narrative, interjecting an occasional question on the effects and the charm itself.
"So can you help?" Sydney finally asked.
"Nope."
"No?" Nigel wasn’t prepared for that. "Why on earth not?"
"You think I sent that idiot out with a real charm? What I gave him was hollow aluminum filled with flour. It wasn’t a love charm. The real thing would be wasted on him, and a disservice to the human race. Every woman within two thousand miles would be at risk!"
"Were you working on a real charm at the time?" Sydney asked. There was a definite edge of desperation to her voice.
Nigel automatically moved closer to her. He caught himself just in time to stop reaching for her hand. He figured it wouldn’t look right to their hosts if his "girlfriend" beat him to a bloody pulp in their drawing room.
"Come to think of it, I was. It was an original, one brought over from China by my great-grandfather. I was using it for a model to create the new ancient one. But there’s no way I mixed them up."
"Well, you must have gotten them mixed up, because this one works." Nigel’s patience was at an end and his stomach was twisting into knots. "Did the old charms have the ability to make someone ill? I don’t feel well, haven’t since I met Dick Little." Normally the comforting scent of tea worked magic on his nerves, but this evening, nothing was working.
Renee and Xan averted their eyes. Renee confessed, "It might, if he got the real one. It’s sort of... illegal."
"Illegal as in – oh my God!" Nigel ran one hand through his hair while clutching his stomach with the other. He began to pace, muttering half to himself, half to his captive audience. "It was filled with opium... The ancient Chinese used opium as an aphrodisiac!"* He doubled over, whooshing out a breath. "Illegal isn’t the half of it. It’s dangerous. In the right concentration, it could be deadly!"
"It was very concentrated, but would only become dangerous if the seal were broken. It is very old, authentic Chinese medicine. Without it, a love charm is useless. But if it made you sick, it would make your girlfriend ill, too. And it would kill the wearer before it affected you this way. No, your problem is too much worry. You need to relax, go see a movie. Better yet, go visit the great outdoors! You’re a teacher, always in the classroom. You should get out more!"
Sydney interrupted, "Nigel, are you okay?" Her fingers curled under his chin and lifted his gaze to meet hers. Her concern did far more to restore him than the tea had done.
Straightening, he replied, "Yeah, I think so. At least it’s not the charm."
A moment passed before she confessed, "I’m not so sure. I haven’t felt well since we were flying over Phoenix."
"What? I thought you were fine. You told me you were fine!" He accused in a loud whisper, "You lied to me, Sydney?" He had half a mind to wring her neck. Of course, knowing she could kick his ass went a long ways toward dissuading him from the notion. "You never lied to me before. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?"
"I’m sorry, Nigel," she whispered back, "I didn’t lie to you. I thought it was just stress."
Xan stepped in between them, peering at Nigel, then Sydney. "If you had enough opium to cause pains, your pupils would be constricted. It is just stress. Or you could have eaten too many tacos. I have just the thing to fix you up, an ancient Chinese recipe. It’s called Pepto Bismol."
"Thanks," Syd interjected, "But what we need is to counteract the love charm. It’s screwing up a whole lot of lives.
"Well, there is one possibility," mused Xan, "But it won’t be easy."
Tinny voices echoed through the office, voices that spoke in the carefully-modulated tones of practiced professionalism. "And in local news, a Boston man claims responsibility for the wave of riots along the Eastern Seaboard. Police now say that sixty-seven people have been admitted to hospitals thanks to the violence in the all-female altercations. Two hundred women are in custody, after each one claims allegiance to an entity known only as ‘Dickie’. ‘
"Analysts speculate that Dickie may be an underground new wave guru, though psychologists express concern at the sudden and widespread influence of a man who has created such a stir. In what has been dubbed ‘the Dickie Syndrome," normally stable women have left home and family in search of the elusive being. The FBI is investigating the phenomenon, which officials say parallels a large-scale brainwashing. They fear the encroachment of a different kind of terrorism, one aimed at destablizing the country’s intellectual pool. These women all claim to love ‘Dickie’ and claim that their particular deity loves them in return.’
"But 37-year-old Richard Little says he's Dickie, and that he is actively attempting to halt the unwanted advances of every woman within a thousand miles."
Karen clicked off the radio, rolling her eyes. "Unbelievable!" she muttered. "Imagine, fantasizing about Dickie!"
She picked up a stack of mail, sorting through it, then glanced at the corner of her desk, admiring her new nameplate. She picked it up, running a finger over the engraved brass and reading aloud, "The future Mrs. Dickie Little." She sighed, shaking her head. "Imagine the nerve of them , when it’s obvious he’s mine!"
When the phone rang, she dove across the glossy desktop, capturing the receiver and gushing into the mouthpiece, "Dickie?"
But her euphoria was short-lived. "Oh, hi Sydney." Crestfallen, she slumped into her chair, twirling blond curls around her fingers in an attempt to bury her disappointment. "No… Dickie isn’t here." Jealousy flared, knotting in her stomach. "What exactly do you want with my man, anyway?" After a pause, she relaxed. "Oh… Well, of course. Where is it?"
She slipped a key into Sydney’s office door and turned the knob, Karen skimmed blue eyes over the papers that were fanned across her boss’s desk. "What exactly am I looking for...?" She reached into the stack, retrieving a wrinkled parchment covered with spidery lines. "Yeah, I found it. But I can’t fax it to you. It’s too big... Wait, I have an idea." She recalled one of Nigel's stories, something about a previous hunt in Europe.
She set the receiver on the desk and expertly flipped the old map onto the glass of the office copy machine, pressing a button.
Five minutes later she faxed the map to her waiting colleagues, sending it in a jigsaw puzzle of twelve overlapping segments. When the phone rang, she dove across her desk, grabbing the receiver and gushing into the mouthpiece, "Dickie?"
"You know, Sydney, we’ve been underground before, in some pretty deep places. But I think this might just be the all time record."
As they threaded their way through the crowd, Sydney agreed. "Any lower and we’d have to be treated for the bends."
Nigel maneuvered around a 400-pound drag queen. The large man wore a blue satin dress, glitter eye shadow, a dark wig, and sliver spiked heels that kept him unsteady, as though tottering on the brink of a fall. The much smaller Englishman shuddered at the other man’s leering response. "Let’s not mention the word bends while we’re in this room, shall we, Syd?"
Sidestepping a tall, lanky entry in purple boa and neon pink wig, she replied, "Deal." Smoke hugged every pore, and the sour reek of cheap alcohol and human wastes threatened to steal away any breath left behind by the smoke. "I’m thinking we’re underdressed for this party. Unless you’ve got some secret desire to participate in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, let’s get what we need and get out."
Overhead, a disco ball threw off uneven reflections of dozens of colored lights, yet brick receded into shadow and little illumination reached the bare cement floor. A cacophony of disco and country music competed for superiority, each side blaring at ear-splitting levels. They made no attempt to keep their comments quiet. It took a shout from two inches away for them to communicate with each other. Sydney privately figured any of the regulars here had to be stone deaf, anyway.
She consulted the map segment Karen had faxed earlier. Tracing it with her finger, she sighed. "This has to be the place. The architecture is Victorian, the correct era, the location is right. There has to be a hidden passage to a sub-basement somewhere!"
A light tap on her shoulder broke her attention and Nigel pointed to a beaded curtain, its colors set aglow by a blacklight. Above and around the doorway, someone had painted scenes from a Bacchanal orgy. Ornate calligraphy declared: The Sub-Basement/Trespassers Will Be Violated/Welcome Trespassers! Nigel remarked drily, "I think we’ve found the hidden passage."
If the Sub-Basement was any worse than the room they were in now...
Sydney briefly entertained the thought that there might be some things worse than being terminally in love with Dick Little. The thought lasted just as long as it took to conjure up a picture of Little in the altogether.
"Ladies first," her companion offered with a fanciful flourish.
"Gee... Thanks, Nige." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. She flounced ahead of him, tossing over her shoulder, "If you want to stay behind, I understand. There are so many fascinating people in this place."
She counted to three before he passed her on the narrow staircase.
The rickety wooden steps creaked with each footfall, much to Sydney’s chagrin. She didn’t like announcing to anyone below that company was on its way. It didn’t help that they were heading into pitch darkness. She pulled out her flashlight. Its narrow beam did little to dispel an unease that grew exponentially as they descended. Wrinkling her nose, she told herself that it wasn’t really brimstone she smelled.
*This is actually true, the ancient Chinese really did use opium as an aphrodisiac. I know, I said I didn't study up for this fic. I lied, lol.
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