Home > The Love Scam

The Love Scam
Author: MaryJanice Davidson

Prologue

 

Agh. Pain. And thirst. Painful thirst. Thirsty pain. Where? Was? Ow.

Rake Tarbell sloooowly rolled over and stared at a ceiling. (His ceiling? No.) His eyes were so gritty and the room so quiet, he could hear his eyelids sticking and unsticking as he blinked. And sometime in the last few hours, he’d eaten … a dead bird? And washed it down with another dead bird? One that had drowned in vermouth?

He tried to open his mouth and felt his gummy lips struggle to part. Had he been kidnapped? Hit over the head and kidnapped, then had his mouth and eyes taped shut?

No.

Worse.

Hungover.

He made it to the edge of the bed in a series of small wriggles, each one causing a wave of nauseating pain to claw up his spine and wash over his brain. When at last he was upright, he fought his gorge to a draw and buried his head in his hands, hoping for a swift death. He noticed he was in a black T-shirt he’d never seen before with the puzzling yet reassuring logo I DO ALL MY OWN STUNTS. No socks. No pants. By squinting very, very hard, he could just make out a pair of crumpled dark brown cargo shorts on the floor three feet away.

I keep telling you, Rake.

Shut up, Blake.

You can’t party like a twenty-year-old forever.

Seriously, Blake. Shut. Up.

His inner voice, which sounded exactly like his tight-ass twin’s, obligingly shut up, something the real Blake hardly ever did.

He managed to lurch to his feet and staggered toward a doorway leading to a sparkling clean bathroom—okay, mystery solved, he was in a hotel room. Bland white walls, bland tan carpet. De rigueur nightstand, two-drawer dresser, television. Shiny clean fixtures and various helpful signs his head hurt too much to even look at, much less interpret, but at least he had a vague idea of where he was.

He turned the tap on full and tried to kill himself: suicide by sink, glug, glug, ahhhhh. When he realized drowning would take too long, he cupped his hands under the cool flow and drank and drank and drank, then washed his face, ran his head under the tap again—thank God for roomy hotel sinks!—and slowly stood as he raked his fingers through his hair and slicked it back from his eyes.

He nearly screamed: He’d rarely looked so fucked-up. Even his inner Blake voice

(Kill it at once, and with fire!)

was horrified.

“Okay,” he said, and winced. His deep voice reverberated around the small shiny white bathroom, which is how he found out it hurt to talk. “Okay,” he whispered to his hideous, red-rimmed, ghastly pale reflection. Normally dark blond, his hair was now dirty blond. And his eyes, God, his eyes! Like the zombies in 28 Days Later or, worse, 28 Weeks Later. He was the before picture in an antacid ad. “Get out of the room. Don’t think about the scary hotel room from 1408. Figure out where you are, then get something in your stomach—no, you have to.” His reflection was shaking his head and looking horrified; time to get stern. “You know you’ll feel better with something in your stomach.” Mirror Rake cringed, but Actual Rake was relentless. “You’ve got a day of crackers and ginger ale to look forward to, you horrible-looking shithead, and only yourself to blame.”

Probably. He hadn’t ruled out kidnapping yet; this might be someone else’s fault. He’d been hungover before, though not as often as Blake assumed. He never did anything with the frequency Blake assumed—as a matter of pride, if nothing else. But he had no idea where he was or how he’d gotten to—to wherever he was. And the mystery wouldn’t be solved from the bathroom. Had any mystery ever been solved from a bathroom? How often did Sherlock Holmes take a dump? The books never said.

He left the bathroom and managed to inch across the room to the shorts, gingerly step into them, and pull them on. These, at least, did belong to him, though they needed a trip through a washing machine. He felt the comforting bump of his phone in his side pocket as he zipped up, and the beat-up loafers at the end of the bed were also his. He figured he must have checked in (somehow—how had he managed to walk, much less communicate with a hotel clerk?), kicked off his shorts (but left his shoes on?), collapsed facedown on the bed, his absurdly long legs dangling over the end, and the shoes had fallen off in his sleep. Stupor. Coma. What have you.

After a few tries, he found the door to the hallway. The water had helped; he knew most of the pain of a hangover came from dehydration. That, and knowing he’d done it to himself and had no one else to blame. Fine. He’d get some fresh air, take stock of his surroundings, start Plan Ginger Ale + Ritz = Might Not Die.

Somehow he made it to the lobby, though for a minute he thought he was going to hurl tap water in the elevator. He closed his eyes against the killing glare of the fluorescents and focused on his breathing, then staggered out of the elevator with a real sense of accomplishment: no barf left behind!

He ignored the guest babble in the lobby, though normally he liked talking to strangers, especially female strangers. Not today. If he had to focus on anything besides falling down, he would fall down. I’ll give everyone in the hotel a thousand bucks if they just don’t talk to me. Money well spent. He made it through the revolving doors once …

“Agh! Mistake, mistake! Stop the ride!”

… then twice around. The doors spat him out onto the sidewalk, where the sun immediately set about frying him like a T-bone.

Aaaggghhhh, my retinas! Who knew the sun was so huge and hot? In early spring, no less!

Eyes squinched to slits, he shuffled forward, breathing in the, um, fresh air—hmm. There was an odd smell; not bad, but distinct. Familiar. Wherever he was, he’d been there before. That alone was enough to cheer him up, and he squared his shoulders and took a few jaunty steps to his destiny while ignoring the people who were shouting behind him. Back off, strangers! It’s my time to shine! Or at least gobble some crackers.

Then he fell. Not far, thank goodness, but ack cold cold cold! The river/lake/ocean/what-the-hell-ever he’d plunged into was beyond bracing and well into hypothermia-inducing. He popped to the surface like a furious cork and wiped the water out of his eyes. So that’s what they were yelling about. Now would be a good time to start paying attention to my surroundings. Also, ninety seconds ago would have been a good time.

At first he thought the strangers were going to bludgeon him with paddles until he went down and stayed down, the perfect end to a horrific morning. Then he realized they were all extending poles and paddles and

(why????)

bottles of water.

“Venice?” he sputtered, spitting a stream of foul water back into the larger stream of foul water that was the Grand Canal. “I’m in fucking Venice?”

 

 

Another Prologue

 

NEW CHARITY DIRECTOR

Venice, Italy*: The executive director of Support San Basso Families has announced the hire of a new director, Ronald Kovac.

“Mr. Kovac brings to SSBF a decade of running American charitable programs, and we are very excited that he is joining the efforts to raise money for local families in need.”

Mr. Kovac, a native of Colorado, U.S.A., has announced that due to fund-raising efforts he undertook prior to officially taking the job, SSBF will be able to donate 200,000 euros to local families in need in time for Easter. The money will go toward housing repair and food.

“We are tremendously excited to have Mr. Kovac on board at our fine institution. We believe that, as San Basso was once a church and the building has been a part of our history for over a thousand years, SSBF is getting back to its roots, so to speak, by giving back to the community.”

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