sinor_sb13

I pulled the bubble-gum-pink limousine up to the front door of the Pepto-Bismal-pink stucco home of my boss, Ms. Rosetta Hughes. Ms. Hughes, or Rosie as everyone except employees called her, is the primo sales rep for Suzy Q Cosmetics in Florida. Suzy Q is a fabulous line of makeup and skin care products, and is sold to customers in their homes.

I’m her driver, or chauffeuse, as I like to call myself. My name is Suzy Q. No, really. OK, my driver’s license says Suzette Quinn, but almost everyone calls me Suzy Q. Actually, Rosie calls all of her peons, er, associates, Suzy Q. That way she doesn’t have to remember their real names. The few men in her employ she just calls Q. Yes, there are men’s products, too, and some men prefer to buy them from other guys. We have quite a customer base of gay men. The straight men who use our products buy them from our more attractive ladies, of course. And they seem to buy a lot of product.

Back to the pink. The official Suzy Q. color is, obviously, pink in all its many glorious shades. Not only is the Hughes house pink, but the pool in the back yard has a pink liner and is surrounded by plaster flamingos. Now, normally, flamingos are considered to be pink, but these birds have been around so long that they’ve been sun- and salt-water faded to a pale salmon color which clashes horribly with the color of the house. Rosie keeps saying she’s going to buy new flamingos, real ones, but she hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

But I digress.

The pink limo and I were there to transport Ms. Hughes to her office for an important sales meeting. She doesn’t have to keep a tight rein on her people. She’s a vampire, and they are either vampires or in thrall to her. But she’s the boss, and she has to have meetings.

By the way, I’m not a vampire. I’m not in thrall, either. I know a lot of her sales force is one or the other, but I don’t need to be. I’ll explain.

Five years ago I was an out-of-work femgeek, living in my parents’ basement (of course) existing on cheetos, coke (the drink, dummy, not the other stuff), and sometimes my Mom’s cooking. What money I was making came from occasional contract computer work, but those jobs were few and far between. A local fan group decided to put on a horror convention, calling it ScareFest, and I agreed (OK, begged) to work security. Hey, it got me in cheaply and I was able to hang out with the game designers and the autograph whores, the actors who were peddling their picture and signature based on one or two movies they made years ago.

It sounded like fun. Since I didn’t have to work all the time I got to go to a lot of the programming. It was a nice hotel, near enough to my house so I could go sleep in my own bed.

The weirdest thing about it wasn’t the actors or the gamers, it was that there was another group booked into the same hotel that weekend – a Suzy Q Cosmetics sales conference.

So we had Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, and Freddie Kruger mingling (unwillingly on both parts) with a babbling bunch of pink clad Barbie dolls. The monsters were fine; it was the others that were scary.

Anyway, I was patrolling outside the hotel over close to the Baja Mar marina (no, it wasn’t our jurisdiction, but I needed some warm air; the hotel was FREEZING) when I heard a strange noise. I looked up just in time to see a big pink blob hurtling my way. I thought briefly about trying to catch the object before it hit the ground, but since I was pretty sure it was either a person or something else heavy, I decided to get out of the way.           

When she landed, she didn’t go splat like I’d expected, but she did lay there for a while. I looked up the way she had come and noticed a forest of palm trees that could have been in the way of her trajectory. If she’d hit any of those...well, I wouldn’t have been able to recognize her as a Suzy Q representative, pink outfit or not.

I turned to go get a real hotel security officer (this was definitely not what I volunteered for) when I felt something grab my leg. I looked down to see the (presumably) dead woman’s hand clutching the hem of my jeans.

“Shee-ite,” I screamed, and tried to pull away. But the hand wouldn’t let go, and then the other hand joined it. Now, this type of thing is pretty common in horror movies. But it wasn’t supposed to happen in real life. As I looked down at her in, well, horror, she opened her eyes, staring at me and said, “Help me.”

I said, “Yeeooow,” and pulled harder.

She repeated her previous statement. I had the feeling she was expecting me to do what she said, but it wasn’t working. By this time she had gotten to her knees while still holding on to my leg.

I repeated my previous statement.

“All right, that doesn’t seem to be working,” she said to herself. “Please help me,” she said to me.

About that time I noticed the state of her clothing. Her blouse was hanging open and there were blood stains on it, on her chest and around her mouth. This wasn’t caused by the fall, I thought.

So I asked the obvious question. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I was thrown from the roof of this building by a madman. I was just sitting there having a snack and I was viciously attacked. Now I must quickly hide or he will discover that I am not dead,” she explained.

“This sounds like something out of a Wes Craven movie. If you don’t mind my asking, why aren’t you dead?”

“Because I’m very strong. Now, please, can you help me? Do you have a driver’s license? I just was awarded my pink limo from Suzy Q Cosmetics, but I need a driver.” She had managed to get to her feet by then and had transferred her iron grasp from my leg to my arm. “Given the circumstances, I don’t think it would look right if I drove myself.”

“Yeah, I can drive. But I’ve never driven a limo before, though how hard could it be? But anyway, why would I want to help you? How do I know that you’re not the nut case?”

“Because I can pay you, a lot.  What do you do, anyway?”

“Sit in my parents’ basement and watch TV. Okay, you got me; I’m unemployed. I used to work in IT for a small company that went belly-up last year. Haven’t found another job yet. The market’s glutted,” I sighed.

“I sympathize. I lost all my savings, a fortune, in that s-o-b’s gigantic  ponzie scheme, along with a lot of other people. Then, wouldn’t you know, the rest went when the stock market went south,” she said “However, I have found an exciting new profession and have done quite well at it. Have you tried Suzy Q cosmetics?”

She droned on about makeup, but I got the idea that she was rolling in it again. So I thought, why not?

“Okay,” I said. “Where’s your limo?” I had all my stuff with me in my backpack, so I didn’t have to go back in the hotel. I didn’t even have to tell anyone I was leaving, either. I’d finished my shift for the day.

“In the hotel garage.” Since I’d agreed to work for her, she’d let go of my arm and was busy buttoning up her blouse. She couldn’t do much about the blood stains, but she did wipe off her mouth on a hanky she had in her shoulder bag. “What’s your name?”

“Suzette. Suzette Quinn,” I told her. She thought a minute before she said it.

“Suzy Q! Your name is Suzy Q. It’s perfect. When you work for me you get all your cosmetics free. We’ve got some wonderful acne cream. And moisturizer! You know, most people think that if you have oily skin you shouldn’t use moisturizer, but you really should. It replaces the oil with healthy moisture…”

And she babbled on. We arrived at her limo and she handed me the keys. I wasn’t sure if I could stand being seen in a pink car, but, after she told me what she’d pay me, I decided I didn’t care what my friends thought.

I got a cute pink uniform with a pink ball cap that says Suzy Q in rhinestones. I was finally able to get out of my folks’ basement and into a condo not far from Rosie’s palace of pink stucco and salmon flamingos. Since I work mostly at night, I have plenty of time to play in the sand at the beach.

Yeah, I know she’s a vampire; hey, everybody’s got their eccentricities. But Rosie’s always been good to me. Besides driving, I take care of her website and a few dozen other things. If something happened to me, she’d have to find at least four other people to replace me.           

Anyway, back to the present. Another sales meeting. But my spidey-sense was tingling and I had a feeling that something more than handing out new products was going to happen at the office tonight. I usually go get something to eat while these meeting are going on, but I think I’ll sit in on this one.