Costume Not Included Read Free

the two females in his life had not occupied the same room at the same time – a state of affairs that would continue for as long as Chesney could arrange it. Of course, the young man knew that this happy situation could not forever endure; he was not looking forward to that inevitable moment, when the clash of universes must occur.
      Melda was saying something else. Chesney tore his mind away from the delayable-yet-unavoidable and paid attention. She was asking him if he wanted to meet her in the park or have her come to his apartment.
      "Here," he said, without need to think about it, "my place." There were things they could do in his apartment that they could not do in the park, things that were still new to Chesney's experience, and even more delightful than being called "sweetie." He could eat anytime.
      "We'd better make it the park," Melda said. "I'm hungry. And momma always said a girl should eat first, even when she was providing the eats." Chesney made a different kind of groan, and she said, "Don't worry, sweetie. Food gives me energy."
      She lived on the far side of the long river-following park. Carrying the picnic basket, it would take her a while to walk to their favorite spot – actually, it was Chesney's pick – near the amphitheater and the basketball courts. That meant he had some time. He used it to summon his assistant.
      The fiend appeared the moment the young man spoke its name, bringing with it a slight whiff of sulfur. As usual, it arrived hovering in the air, its saucer-sized eyes in a weasel's face at the same level as Chesney's, which meant that Xaphan's patent-leather shoes, wrapped in old-fashioned spats, were about three feet above the carpet. Between the fanged head and the foppish footwear was a pin-striped, wide-lapeled, double-breasted suit, of a kind that had been fashionable among the denizens of Chicago speakeasies, back when twenty-three-skidoo was on every hepster's lips.
      "Hiya, boss," said the demon around a thick Havana Churchill that protruded from between two huge curved canines that would have been a sabertooth's pride. The fiend removed the cigar only long enough to blow a complicated figure of smoke into the apartment's air and to lift the glass in its other hand to its thin, black weasel lips. Xaphan drank off a finger of tawny overproof rum, issued a breathy sigh of satiation, and put the cigar back where it had been, breathily pumping the glowing end to a brighter glow. When the Churchill was drawing to its satisfaction, Chesney's assistant said, "Whatta ya say, whatta ya know?"
      "I'm going out to the park for a picnic with Melda," the young man said, "then we'll probably come back here." He ignored the demon's suggestive eyebrow motions and low-voiced "Hubba hubba!" – he'd found that responding to Xaphan's prurience only encouraged more of the same. "But tonight," Chesney went on, "I want to go out and do some crimefighting."
      "Okay," said his assistant, in a tone that implied it was waiting to hear the details.
      But Chesney didn't have any details. "So I need to know what's going down" – he'd heard police officers, or at least actors pretending to be cops, talk that way on TV – "in the mean streets. What can we hit tonight?"
      Xaphan's eyes looked left, then right. It pulled the cigar from its lips and examined the glowing coal for a moment, then said, "I gotta tell ya, not much."
      "What do you mean?"
      Xaphan put the cigar back, shot the linked French cuffs of its silk shirt and gave a kind of hitch of its padded shoulders that always reminded Chesney of Jimmy Cagney in the old black-and-white, crime-does-not-pay films. "I mean," the demon said, "not much. These days, crime…" – it gestured with the hand that held the glass of rum, spilling a few drops – "there ain't so much of it around, see?"
      "Come on," said Chesney, "it's a big city. I've seen the figures." As an actuary, the young man was intimately familiar