Fluffy(12)

“I’ll bet you do,” Karen says, pulling out a long zip tie. “Keep your hands where I can see them, Mallory, and we’ll do this the easy way.”

“You’re arresting me?”

“We found drugs in the other room, on top of the illegal occupancy and lack of a filming permit for–”

“You can’t arrest me! You used to babysit me! You used to bribe me with an extra root beer if I didn’t tell my mom your boyfriend came over and watched horror movies while I was asleep!”

“That was then, and by the way,” she says, giving me a dark look, “you blabbered about it and got me in trouble.”

“You and John Ralston let me watch Saw 3! I was six!”

Will is observing me with a calculation that makes my skin crawl, and not just the epidermal layer coated in Beastman’s coconut oil. I sniff the back of my hand.

I hope that’s coconut oil.

“She’s not high,” Will announces.

“How do you know?” Karen asks.

“Anyone who can bring up a twenty-year-old grudge like that,” he snaps his fingers, “isn’t high.”

Karen lets out a long sigh, the kind with an exasperated groan at the end that they must teach in police academy. “Good point.” She frowns. “But I kind of want to arrest her anyway.”

“For what?” I demand.

“Being a pain in the ass.” She turns to Will. “You’re the homeowner. We’ve got all the major characters out there, including some guy who insists his name is Spatula. Spatula Mangucci.”

“He’s the cream pie expert,” I explain, trying to be helpful.

More blinks.

“Cream pie?” Will reluctantly asks, a muscle in his jaw pinging. Is he trying not to laugh?.

“You know. For the cooking show...” My voice winds down as I realize what I’m saying. “Wait a minute. This isn’t a cooking show. It’s porn. It’s a porn set.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “So why would he talk about cream pies on a porn set?”

Karen’s eyebrows touch the brim of her police uniform hat. “For a valedictorian, you’re not very smart.”

Laughter twitches at the edges of Will’s lips. “But you’re funny.”

“Huh. Beastman said that, too. Right when he told me I needed to use spit to be a fluffer.”

Karen shakes her head and sighs. “Can I arrest you for being too stupid to live?”

“Pretty sure you’d have to arrest half the planet, officer,” Will says, frowning deeply at me. “You really don’t understand that you took a job on a pornographic movie set? One that’s operating illegally in my parent’s house?”

“This is your house?” My turn to challenge him. “It’s not the same house you lived in when we were in high school.”

I get a sharp look in return. “How would you know? You’ve never been to my house.”

I can’t admit that I made my mother drive past it 8,000 times in ninth and tenth grade, taking a detour through his neighborhood, and then driving myself the last two years of high school.

“Uh, you know. Everyone knows where everyone lives in a small town,” I say lamely.

He’s not convinced. Here’s the thing about Will Lotham: He’s a Rhodes Scholar. You know that annoyingly well-rounded person in high school, the National Merit Scholar and football star recruited by a Big 10 school he ended up turning down in favor of an Ivy, the one who got all the Veterans of Foreign Wars accolades and was Order of the Arrow and in Eagle Scouts, too? The one who got the lead in the school play every year, founded a food pantry for people with tree-nut allergies, and who used his ninth-grade science fair project to patent a new technology for turning mud into antibiotics in Eritrea?

Yeah. They annoy the hell out of me, too.

Notice how Will keeps mentioning I was valedictorian of our high school class?

That’s because he was salutatorian.

Second best.

To me.

Right now, though, would not be the smartest time to mention that, because it appears he is the only thing standing between me and a criminal record.

An aggrieved sigh pours out of him. “My parents bought this place a while ago. Sold the house on Concordian. Mom wanted more land and a pool.”

I just nod.

“And then they moved to Florida for half the year after Dad’s cancer scare.”

My heart pitter-patters with sympathy.

“I’m sorry.”

“He’s fine. But they dumped this place off on me to manage. The market’s still lukewarm in this price range, so we’ve been renting it through an online clearinghouse.” A sour look covers his face. “Why am I telling you all this? Anyhow.” He gives me a look that says somehow it’s my fault he’s spilling his guts. “The neighbors tipped me off to ‘unusual activity.’ I came here expecting a rowdy house party. Not–” He looks pointedly at the anal beads on the floor. “–this.”

“Then that makes two of us,” I offer up. “I didn’t come here expecting ‘this’, either.” I mimic his finger quotes. “I’m a house fluffer. I fluff pillows. Not penises.”

“You’re a house stager?”