Dov Godz was enjoying his daily massage-and-aromatherapy treatment when the fax from Edwina arrived. His long, limber, beautifully bronzed torso was stretched out full length on the masseuse's portable table, his muscles almost purring under the ministrations of her gifted hands, his eyelids growing heavy, and his consciousness drifting blissfully off to the edge of slumber.
Then that blasted watchdog amulet on the fax machine let out a Rebel yell shrill enough to raise General Robert E. Lee himself from the grave and Dov's gilded barge to dreamland was torpedoed by a single yeeeeehaaaaw amidships. He jumped straight up off the towel-covered massage table so high that he nearly left an oily imprint of his body on the white acoustic tiles overhead.
It was a mercy that Solange hadn't set up her table under the ceiling fan.
"Damn it, I'm going to have to fix that thing," Dov announced as he strode across the room to retrieve the incoming message. With one hand he nabbed the fax, with the other he tore the amulet from the front of the machine and held it at eye level. "Okay, sport," he told it. "Either tone it down, change it entirely, or get ready for an unguided tour of the Greater Miami sewer system."
"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dov," the amulet replied in a level voice that reeked of rationality. It was cast of the purest silver in the shape of a human face with the full, pouting lips, curly hair, and classically beautiful features found on ancient statues of Greek youths. There was, of course, one salient difference: The faces of the old, old statues were as lifeless as the marble from which they were carved; the amulet's features were animated.
"I don't think you understand the situation, friend," Dov said. "You're the one working for me."
"I am not," the amulet replied. "I am working for the corporation."
This was true; Dov knew it. His mother had furnished his office and his bank account with a liberal hand, but with enough strings attached for Dov to start his own marionette theater. One such string was decked out with tags reading If Thou Touchest Any Item of Thine Office Equipment, O Heedless Chump, Verily Thine Ass Belongeth Unto Me. The tags were all in Edwina's handwriting and were attached to Dov's life by strings of solid carborundum. Mom was very protective of the family business, and since she allowed Dov the freedom and the money to do whatever he fancied in all other aspects of his life, he found it convenient to bow to her inclinations in this small matter.
Unfortunately, her inclinations included a fax amulet that screamed like a horde of Johnny Rebs on bad acid whenever a message came in. He'd spoken to her several times before about changing it, but she'd always replied that as his mother she knew him better than he knew himself.
"You're a good boy, Dov, and a good worker when you want to be, but as the old joke about the camel goes, first I've got to get your attention."
Dov winced every time he recalled those words. The joke in question concerned the best way to make a camel obey commands and involved two bricks and the beast's testicles. He disagreed with his mother's assessment of his work ethic. Oh sure, when he was a teenager he'd slacked off at boarding school and college on a regular basis. So did lots of kids. It was all part of growing up, testing the limits, seeing how far you could go before you wound up with egg on your face. He'd never actually flunked any courses; he'd even managed to get some grades that were better than he deserved thanks to his seemingly inborn talent for charming the pants off most people.
But that had been then. He knew better now. He was a grown man with an adult sense of responsibility, though he still cultivated the roguish image of a devil-may-care playboy. It tended to lull his rivals and opponents into a false sense of security, never expecting the happy-go-lucky hedonist to be concealing a killer business instinct worthy of his corporate lawyer grandpa. (He'd gotten the idea from reading Batman comics and even had a T-shirt printed up with the question: What Would Bruce Wayne Do?)
Edwina had told him not to tamper with the office equipment, but there was no maternal ruling to prevent him from trying to persuade the office equipment to tamper with itself.
"You know, I'm not asking for the world," he told the amulet.
He was wearing Smile #297-A, the one he reserved for uncooperative clients who hunkered down behind barricades of blind, stubborn resistance. Logical arguments and all the tools of rational persuasion couldn't reach them there and Dov knew better than to waste his time trying. That was when he whipped out Smile #297-A, which offered its unsuspecting targets a devastating combination of fifty percent charm, fifty percent intimacy, and one hundred thirty-eight percent good old American bullshit.
The amulet wrinkled up its perfect Greek nose and uttered words of dread: "And what if you were? It wouldn't matter any more than you do."
The verbal barb flew true and speared Dov straight through the heart. He felt a stab of pain as vivid and agonizing as if the amulet's words had really taken the form of a physical weapon. But this exchange between Edwina Godz's pampered baby boy and his least-favorite piece of office equipment was nothing new. He had been on the receiving end of the amulet's sniping countless times before, whenever he'd expressed a desire to change the way things were run in the Miami office. Somehow the little lump of exquisitely crafted metal always knew just the right thing to say to leave Dov's monolithic ego shattered into rubble and dust. There was only one way for Dov to come out of these clashes with some shred of self-esteem intact, and that was to act as if the inevitable surrender had been all his own idea from the start.
"Attaboy," he told the amulet, switching to Smile #15, one of the basic models employed when buttering up maître d's prior to wheedling his way around the waiting list at exclusive restaurants. "Just testing. You know how most office equipment starts to show wear and tear, doesn't work up to snuff, inches its way towards becoming obsolete and needing to be replaced?" He stressed that last word just enough to zing the amulet. (It worked: He saw the perfect lips contract just a hair and mentally high-fived himself for scoring hurt points on the tiny silver tyrant.) "That's why I like to run these periodic checks, make sure that you're still functioning in top form. I'll be telling Mother that you passed with flying colors."
"How kind," the amulet said coldly. "Will that be before or after the funeral?"
"What funeral?"
The silver lips grinned. "You know, most people read the faxes they receive."
Dov stared at the ensorcelled trinket, his smooth brow momentarily creasing with uncharacteristic worry wrinkles. He read the fax as he replaced the amulet on the machine. It was a simple task, one he'd done so many times before that he could do it blindfolded, by touch alone.
This time was different.
This time he dropped the amulet into the little wastepaper basket next to the fax machine. It was sheer luck that the trash receptacle's automatic shredding spell was temporarily disabled.
"HEY! What the hell do you think you're trying to pull?" the enraged amulet demanded from the depths.
Dov acted as though he had heard nothing. This was more or less true. The news from Edwina was so stunning, so shocking, so earthshaking that it threw Dov for a loop the size of Halley's comet's trajectory. He didn't notice that he'd dropped the amulet, and the only reason he finally snapped out of his daze was the reaction he got when the towel around his waist slipped its moorings and fell in a terry cloth puddle at his feet.
Solange squealed like a teenybopper at a Generic Boy Band concert.
"Wha—?" Dov looked up suddenly at the mortified masseuse, then down at his nakedness. "Oops." He retrieved the towel. "Uh, why don't you come back later, honey?" he told Solange.
She didn't wait for a second invitation: She fled the premises, leaving her portable massage table and other equipment behind. The amulet in the wastepaper basket was still snickering when he fished it out.
"Not very professional, is she?" it remarked.
"She's new to the business," Dov muttered. "Plus, she went to Yale—not the best place to learn what a naked man's really supposed to look like."
Still somewhat distracted, he paced across the floor to the panoramic windows of his office and gazed down at the street scene of Miami's smart South Beach section. Buildings that were all the colors of Easter eggs stood like graveyard monuments to the Art Deco movement. Palm trees swayed like topless waitresses with overloaded trays. Swarms of people at least as bronzed, blond, and beautiful as Dov Godz went sailing along their carefree life-paths. Their gleaming golden tresses streamed out behind them as they were whisked along via every form of transportation known to man—from rollerblades to red convertibles—so long as that form of transportation was guaranteed to show off their perfect bodies to the max.
"Bubble-heads," Dov growled.
"Wow," the amulet said. "You want to be them so bad it hurts, doesn't it?"
"Like an abscessed tooth." Dov saw no point in denying it.
"Well, I've got news for you, fella: You are them," the amulet stated. "Or hadn't you noticed?"
"I used to be," Dov said. He sounded world-weary enough for a whole platoon of French novelists. "Once. But not any more."
The amulet raised one silver eyebrow and looked truly concerned. "Uh-oh. You're thinking again, aren't you? I warned you not to try that. You're not used to the strain. What's the matter, fella? You need help? You want me to fax your guru, your personal trainer, your dietician, your feng shui consultant, what?"
"My mother is dying."
Dov dropped the words without prelude or fanfare, like a stick of bombs from the belly of an old warplane. He turned away from the window, leaned his spine against the cool glass, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes.
"Oh." The amulet was abashed. "Gosh. I— I—I'm real sorry to hear that."
"What do you mean, you're sorry to hear that?" Dov snapped, his eyes wide open again and shooting sparks at the amulet. "You knew about this before I did, the minute the fax came in! You're the one who was talking about funerals!"
"Yeah, but— but—" The amulet groped for the right thing to say. "Look, when the messages come in, they're just words to me, okay? What do I know about any power they might contain until I see how they affect you? What do I look like, a human being?"
"Hardly." Dov's lips curled as he studied the amulet. "Although you're obnoxious enough to join the club. Maybe that's what makes me forget, sometimes, that you're nothing more than a glorified interactive gewgaw."
"Maybe you wouldn't forget that so much if you spent as much time talking to other human beings as you spend talking to me."
Dov stared at the amulet, stunned. "What did you say?"
"You heard me." The amulet was smug, knowing it had scored another hit off its master. "And you know it's true."
That was the worst of it: The trinket was right. Dov frowned, trying to drum up some evidence to the contrary, but he was a truthful man at heart and he couldn't honestly say that there was any mortal soul with whom he'd traded as many words as he had with Ammi.
He blushed to realize that he'd actually given the thing a name.
"This is all her fault," he snarled under his breath. His bitter words did not escape Ammi's silvery ears.
"Oh, come on, now! You can't blame your mother for dying!"
"I'm not talking about her: I'm talking about my sister, Peez." The look in Dov's eyes was grim and brimming with years' worth of anger.
Peez, his dowdy, depressing, hangdog big sister. Peez, who didn't have the socialization skills of a squashed spider; Peez, who couldn't make a friend if Dr. Frankenstein himself gave her the raw materials, the how-to instructions, and a spare needle and thread; Peez, who lacked the affable, easygoing charm that seemed to have come to Dov naturally.
Peez, who had envied Dov's personal magnetism from the day that they were both placed in the same class at school, and who decided that if she couldn't have her baby brother's boundless charisma and all the good things it brought him, at least she could enjoy playing the harpy and tainting everything before he had a hope of enjoying it himself.
Friends? Dov could still hear her dry, mocking laughter in his head. It was Valentine's Day and while his construction paper mailbox was stuffed full to bursting with flocks of little white envelopes from their classmates, hers was almost as flat as when she'd finished making it. You think they're your friends? Why? Just because they gave you valentines? Stupid! They only did it because their parents forced them to! And you know why? Because the only reason anyone ever does anything nice for us is because they want something from Mother!
He remembered fighting back against the ugly words, arguing that if what she said were true, then wouldn't the kids have given her a bunch of valentines too?
She only laughed again. She didn't even try to answer his question, she just gave him the same look she'd given him when he'd found out the truth about Santa Claus. It was a horribly knowing look that said: Have it your way. They're all your dear, dear friends. Sure they are. Trust them. Only when they make a fool of you, don't come crying to me. I tried to warn you. I tried to tell you the truth.
"It's all her fault," Dov repeated. "She's the reason I never let anyone get too close, the reason I've got hundreds of acquaintances, associates, social contacts, but not one single, solitary friend. She's why I've got no one I can really talk to except—except a refugee from a charm bracelet!"
"Thanks a lot," the amulet said dryly. "You think I like her any better than you do?" The chain that usually suspended Ammi from the front of the fax machine made a tinkling sound when the amulet trembled with rage in Dov's hand. "I can't stand it when I've got to announce a fax from that one. The bile positively oozes from every syllable in her transmissions! Mind you, big guy, you give her back as good as you get, but being forced to listen in on your exchanges is like playing go-between for a pair of rabid hyenas. It's starting to wear on my nerves."
Dov's mouth quirked up at one corner. "You don't have nerves."
"I've got sorcery-generated circuitry," Ammi replied peevishly. "It's practically the same thing."
"Well, in that case, I've got some good news for you: You won't be troubled by faxes between my sister and me for much longer. You know what the rest of Mother's message said, don't you? She's going to leave the family business to just one of us." His mouth tightened. "That one's going to be me."
He strode over to his desk and snapped his fingers. The polished glass top glowed. Rainbow-hued swirls of energy swam across the surface, transforming it into a seer's pool. Most mere mortals owned desktop computers that they hoped would meet all their needs, but Dov Godz was master of a real desktop that actually could do that and more.
"Research all available data and compile a list of key players in the E. Godz corporation. Include prospective as well as active clients if their potential influence is comparable. Make all necessary travel arrangements enabling me to visit each of these in the most efficient manner possible, allowing for M.E.S.T."
"M.E.S.T.?" Ammi the amulet echoed.
"Minimum Essential Schmooze Time," Dov replied. "I want to depart today by—" He consulted his wristwatch. Then he noticed that it wasn't there. He'd taken it off for his aromatherapy-massage session. "Oh, hell, I'll leave at six. Make New Orleans my first stop and get a really good dinner before getting down to business. No way New Orleans won't make the list." He glanced at the still-swirling desktop. "Stream the appropriate documents to my palmtop. Copy that?"
The desk uttered a soft, almost voluptuous sigh and in the voice of the divine Diana Rigg replied, "Anything you say, Dov."
Dov grinned. "I never get tired of that."
"I do," Ammi said petulantly.
"Jealous?" Dov's grin widened. "Too bad. And now it's back to the fax for you." He headed for the machine, intent on replacing the moody amulet.
"Wait a minute!" Ammi protested. "Don't put me back there! Take me with you!"
"Why?"
"I can provide remote access for all fax messages that might arrive in your absence."
"My palmtop already has that capability."
"I'm a portable firewall. You can stick me on your hotel phone and I'll screen all your calls."
"Nothing a discretionary shielding spell can't do."
By now the little amulet was grasping at straws. "Take me into any jewelry store and have them chip off as many bits of me as you want. Drop them off on the clients and you'll be able to eavesdrop on everything they're up to even after you're long gone!"
Dov clicked his tongue and shook his head. "No sale. You think these people are rubes? They've got their own resources for detecting bugs, even magical ones." He hung the amulet back on the fax machine and brushed invisible dust from his hands. As he turned to go he said, "Sorry, Ammi, but there's really no good reason for me to take you with me."
He was almost to the door when a very small, very shaky voice behind him said, "But I'll miss you."
Dov stopped in his tracks and looked back. "Say what?"
"I said I'll miss you," the amulet repeated, almost reluctantly. "A lot. There. I said it. Happy?"
Dov snatched the little trinket up again and confronted it with the impossible. "You're an appliance. How could you miss me? Or anyone, for the matter? It's like someone claiming he can't program his VCR because he once said something to hurt its feelings."
"Look, I can't explain it; I just know it," the amulet said, getting defensive. "And that crack about VCRs was uncalled for: They happen to be very sensitive. It comes from all the soppy chick flicks people make them play. Hey, take me with you or leave me behind, see if I care. But I'll tell you this much: It's going to get mighty lonely out there on the road, and one of those cold, solitary nights you're going to wish you had a sympathetic ear to listen to your troubles, even if it's only one that's made out of silver."
Dov stared at the amulet, taken aback by its outburst. The trouble was, its words made sense and he knew it. Only an idiot kept fighting when it was past time to surrender.
"Oh, fine," he growled. "You'll probably do something nasty to the fax machine if I leave you here alone. Might as well take you with me." He thrust the amulet into his pocket.
There was only one problem: He was still wearing nothing but a towel.
"Put on some pants, Einstein," said Ammi from the floor where he'd fallen. "Then let's get this show on the road."