Page 31 of Nicki's Fight
Like a well-oiled machine, we all went about our assigned tasks. I loaded up my car with the cooler and box fans, then hit the local convenience store, stocking up on several cases of water and almost a hundred pounds of ice.
When I pulled up to the store it was almost one thirty. The line for the meet and greet with Cameron stretched around the block. There had to be over a hundred and fifty people in line! Shit. I hadn’t really realized how popular this guy was. I pulled around back into the employee parking area, loaded half the ice in the cooler then took it inside.
“Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen! Reinforcements have arrived!” I hollered as I walked in the back of the store.
The heat inside was like walking into a brick wall. I saw Hicks in the back office, his always-perfect blond hair in a neat ponytail, but sweat was dripping down his forehead. Sonny was out front with Lee, manning the registers. The front doors were propped open. There was a table set up near the front windows with banners announcing “Award Winning Author/Artist Mason Cameron” will be signing autographs at 12 p.m. Noon was crossed out with a black Sharpie and rewritten as 12:30 p.m., 1:15 p.m. and now 3 p.m. There was a wall-sized promo print on the back wall touting Cameron’s “Dark Angel” series. Black and gold helium balloons hung festively around the store, but even they were starting to wilt in the heat. A few brave customers wandered aimlessly around the room looking at merchandise, but I noticed there wasn’t a line at the registers.
As I lugged the cooler in, my oldest brother, Ripley “Lee” Devereaux came up and wrapped me in a giant hug. Lee was almost six foot five and was the tallest of the Devereaux brood. He’d spent several years in the military where he’d met the man he’d thought he’d spend the rest of his life with. He and his fiancé, Mack, had been ambushed while on a mission in Afghanistan just a few weeks before they were due to be discharged. Lee came home with a shattered hip and a limp. Mack didn’t come home at all.
I hugged him back then pushed him away playfully.
“Damn! It’s too hot in here for you to be that close! What do you have in there, a furnace?” I teased, poking him in the stomach.
“Watch it, hot shot,” he growled as he slapped my hand away. “I could have called in dead today, you know!”
We both laughed. When we’d been kids, I’d done a lot of faking to get out of doing chores. As the oldest, Lee would get stuck doing whatever I didn’t.
“I would have dragged your sorry ass out of the grave, bro,” I chuckled. “Help me get this crap out of my car before it all melts and raises sea levels.”
Lee and Sonny followed me out to the car where we unloaded the fans, cooler, ice and water onto a cart they used for deliveries. We dropped the box fans off inside. Sonny went back to his phone call and Hicks began setting up the fans. I sent Lee back inside to help them, then began handing out bottles of water to the waiting customers.
The line of people was even longer than it had looked. It went all the way down to the end of the block and around the corner. If Cameron didn’t show up soon, we could be looking at trouble.
When I first walked out, the mood in line was ugly. Between boredom, the heat, and general frustration tempers were beginning to fray. I knew how to handle a crowd like this, though. In my full-time job as a bartender, I often had to deal with angry or belligerent guests. It was amazing how far an understanding smile would go in easing tension.
I started handing out cold water and working my way down the line. About half-way through I spotted a friend of the twins, Jeri. Jeri was a fourteen-year-old trans girl that we’d met the previous year. She was about five foot four with straight blue hair that was only just starting to grow out of a super-short boy cut. The twins had sort of adopted her when they'd met at an LGBTQ support group at the downtown library.
Jeri had discovered comics through the twins and become engrossed in the stories, spending so much time at their original store they'd talked her into taking a part-time position to help prepare for the Grand Opening of the new location. She had come out to her parents as trans only a little bit earlier in the summer. Her boyfriend, Tobi stood next to her, his arms wrapped around her protectively even in the heat.
“Hey guys! Want some water?” I asked, handing them a couple of bottles automatically.
Jeri grinned at me. “Hey Kaine! How’d you get roped into this? I thought you were working at the dojo today?” she asked.
“It’s all hands on deck,chica!” I said in response. I looked around, but not seeing any of my family members nearby, I leaned in and whispered in her ear. “They canceled classes!”
She looked at me, her eyes wide. My parentsnevercanceled classes. We’d had a blizzard last winter with almost three feet of snow and my moms had just loaded up their SUV and headed in.
“Shit! Thatneverhappens!” she exclaimed.
“I know, right? I think the moms are happy that it gives them the opportunity to surreptitiously help the twins,” I guessed.
“Do they need any help inside?” Jeri offered.
“Nah. There’s not really anyone in the store right now. Everyone’s just lining up for Cameron. I’ll let you know if that changes though, okay?”
After confirming I had her cell number, I continued down the line. I handed out water, laughing and joking with the people I recognized in line, either from the store or from working at The Belt. I was pelted with questions at first about what was going on and when Cameron was going to show up. I told everyone, truthfully, that I had no idea what was happening, but that we’d let them know as soon as we knew. I suggested everyone keep an eye on the store website for updates because I knew Hicks would be posting info as soon as we got it.
I had less than a dozen bottles of water left by the time I reached the end of the line. I rounded back and went into the store. I watched Lee angrily stack and re-stack the same boxes of trading cards three times.
“Any luck?” I asked Sonny as I took the cart back through to the back room.
He sighed and answered, “No, nothing. The last we heard his plane was on time, but we’ve heard nothing since then.”
“Are we sure he was even on it?” I questioned.
“His manager, Lizzie, said he was,” Hicks called from the back room. The noise of the box fans was making it hard to hear in the store, but it seemed to be helping the heat. “We just don’t know why he’s not here yet. We hadn’t sent him the hotel information yet, so he couldn’t have gone there.”
“I assume you guys called Lizzie again, right?” I asked.