"Oh, yes," I said. "Oh, that'll be great."
"I also got instructions," he said precisely, "to bring you anything related to moving that you might need. I have here strapping tape, masking tape, some Magic Markers, scissors, and stick-on labels."
The queen had given me a personal shopper.
"Did you want colored dots? Some people like to put living room things in boxes with an orange dot, bedroom things in boxes with a green dot, and so on."
I had never moved, unless you counted taking a couple of bags of clothes and towels over to Sam's furnished duplex after the kitchen burned, so I didn't know the best way to go about it. I had an intoxicating vision of rows of neat boxes with colored dots on each side, so there couldn't be any mistake from any angle. Then I snapped back to reality. I wouldn't be taking that much back to Bon Temps. It was hard to form an estimate, since this was unknown territory, but I knew I didn't want much of the furniture.
"I don't think I'll need the dots, thanks anyway," I said. "I'll start working on these boxes, and then I can call you if I need any more, okay?"
"I'll assemble them for you," he said. He had very short hair and the curliest eyelashes I'd ever seen on a person. Cows had eyelashes that pretty, sometimes. He was wearing a golf-type shirt and neatly belted khakis, along with high-end sneakers.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," I said, as he whipped a roll of strapping tape from a large lumpy plastic shopping bag. He set to work.
"Oh, scuse me," he said, and it was the first time he'd sounded natural. "My name is Everett O'Dell Smith."
"Pleasure to meet you," I said, and he paused in his work so we could shake hands. "How did you come to be here?"
"Oh, I'm in Tulane Business School, and one of my professors got a call from Mr. Cataliades, who is, like, the most famous lawyer in the vampire area. My professor specializes in vampire law. Mr. Cataliades needed a day person; I mean, he can come out in the day, but he needed someone to be his gofer." He'd gotten three boxes done, already.
"And in return?"
"In return, I get to sit in court with him on his next five cases, and I get to earn some money I need real bad."
"Will you have time this afternoon to take me to my cousin's bank?"
"Sure will."
"You're not missing a class now, are you?"
"Oh, no, I got two hours before my second class."
He'd already been to a class and accumulated all this stuff before I'd even gotten up. Well, he hadn't been up half the night watching his dead cousin walk around.
"You can take these garbage bags of clothes to the nearest Goodwill or Salvation Army store." That would clear the gallery and make me feel productive all at the same time. I'd gone over the garments quite carefully to make sure Hadley hadn't hidden anything in them, and I wondered what the Salvation Army would make of them. Hadley had been into Tight and Skimpy; that was the nicest way to put it.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, whipping out a notebook and scribbling in it. Then he waited attentively. "Anything else?" he prompted me.
"Yes, there's no food in the house. When you come back this afternoon, can you bring me something to eat?" I could drink tap water, but I couldn't create food out of nothing.
Just then a call from the courtyard made me look over the railing. Quinn was down there with a bag of something greasy. My mouth began watering.
"Looks like the food angle is covered," I told Everett, waving Quinn up.
"What can I do to help?" Quinn asked. "It struck me your cousin might not have coffee and food, so I brought some beignets and some coffee so strong it'll make you grow hair on your chest."
I'd heard that quite a few times, but it still made me smile. "Oh, that's my goal," I said. "Bring it on. There's actually coffee here, but I didn't have a chance to make it because Everett here is such a take-charge kind of guy."
Everett smiled up from his tenth box. "You know that's not true, but it's good to hear you say it," he said. I introduced the two men, and after Quinn handed me my bag, he began to help Everett assemble boxes. I sat at the glass-topped dining table and ate every crumb of the beignets that were in the bag and drank every drop of the coffee. I got powdered sugar all over me, and I didn't care a bit. Quinn turned to look at me and tried to hide his smile. "You're wearing your food, babe," he said.
I looked down at the tank top. "No hair on my chest, though," I said, and he said, "Can I check?"
I laughed and went to the back to brush my teeth and hair, both essential tasks. I checked out Hadley's clothes that I'd wriggled into. The black spandex workout pants came to midthigh. Hadley probably had never worn them, because they would have been too big, to her taste. On me, they were very snug, but not the snug Hadley liked, where you could count the... oh, never mind. The hot pink tank top left my pale pink bra straps showing, to say nothing of a couple of inches of my middle, but thanks to Peck's Tana-Lot (located inside Peck's Bunch-o-Flicks, a video rental place in Bon Temps), that middle was nice and brown. Hadley would have put a piece of jewelry in her belly button.
I looked at myself in the mirror, trying to picture myself with a gold stud or something. Nah. I slipped on some sandals decorated with crystal beads and felt quite glamorous for about thirty seconds.
I began talking to Quinn about what I planned to do that day, and rather than yell, I stepped from the bedroom into the hall with my brush and my elastic band. I bent over at the waist, brushed my hair while I was inverted, and gathered it into a ponytail on top of my head. I was sure it was centered, because the movements were just automatic after all these years. My ponytail came down past my shoulder blades now. I looped the band, ran the ponytail through, and I straightened, ponytail flying back over my shoulders to bounce in the middle. Quinn and Everett had stopped their task to stare. When I looked back at them, the two men hastily bent back to their tasks.
Okay, I didn't get that I'd done anything interesting, but apparently I had. I shrugged and vanished into the master bathroom to slap on some makeup. After another glance in the mirror, it occurred to me that maybe anything I did in that outfit was fairly interesting, if you were a fully functional guy.
When I came out, Everett had gone and Quinn gave me a slip of paper with Everett's cell number on it. "He says to call him when you need some more boxes," Quinn said. "He took all the bagged clothes. Looks like you don't need me at all."