Time: Late Friday night 4/24/98 to early Saturday morning 4/25/98.
Heather, Pen Durrell, and Nyx Fixx are used with permission.
Airplane lighting does nothing for a pale face, and the bathroom mirror in the plane about to land in Toronto just brought out Lora's tell-tale crows' feet all the more. She popped a few more eyedrops in her eyes, then dabbed away the errant mascara, applied more mascara, then added cream to the crows' feet.
"You'll have to do," she told the mirror. She gathered up the stuff she'd placed on the counter and turned to leave.
That's when she remembered the hair.
"What a pain," the fair-skinned woman muttered as she combed out the tangled mop. The mound of reddish-brown hairs she piled into the sink grew, causing her to chuckle. She was always amazed at how much hair came out of her head, yet she always seemed to have a ton of it. She flipped her massive mane behind her back, shook it twice to ensure it fell right, then turned around to check it -- in that tiny mirror she couldn't see the bottom.
"You'll have to do," she again told the mirror, this time tossing the pile of hair from the sink to the toilet, so as not to clog the drain, and retreated to her seat.
She pulled out the name and phone number she'd taken from the letter and debated making the call. Brenda -- Lora barely knew her, had never met her; they had mutual acquaintances, and Brenda was the point of contact Lora was given.
They were to hook up upon arrival in Toronto.
What a day it had been.
It started off at 2 AM when she got home from work (late) and finally sat down to read the previous day's mail. The note from Pen shocked her into action, though, and sent the disheveled redhead into an email frenzy -- notes to her cat sitter to take care of her cats, to her neighbor to come by every few days to change the tape in the VCR (heaven forbid she missed any of her programs), and to a few friends to let them know she'd be "unavailable" for a while. The airline reservations were easy and, once made, she knew when she had to be at the airport. Then came the packing -- another frenzy. Lora grabbed the emergency make-up kit, two pairs of black jeans, two pairs of white jeans, and bunches of white and black shirts, to keep it simple. The clothes mounded on the bed -- this was definitely going to need the big bag.
Next to the big bag was the specially made bag for the claymore; with a secret smile she snatched that up, then spotted a small jar on a shelf. Laughing, she grabbed that, too. She shoved things into the big bag as neatly as she could while trying to remember where she put the paperwork on the sword.
Fortunately, it was with her birth certificate -- a necessity when traveling to Canada -- and placed that in the carry-on. After a quick shower, she donned a third pair of black jeans and a black silk shirt, piled her hair on her head, fixed her face, repacked the makeup, and met the cab driver who would take her to the airport. Unfortunately, her plane had a two-hour delay -- so typical of her life. She wouldn't get to Toronto until well after midnight. Sleep was a problem -- she didn't get any until she got on the plane.
As the flight approached Toronto, she marveled at her own audacity. There she was, going somewhere she'd never been, without a clue of what was expected of her. All she knew was that some of her friends were in need. She glanced again at the phone number. "Might as well," she muttered. It was just after midnight.
"Brenda?" she asked the muffled voice who answered the phone.
"Who is this?" came the reply again -- slightly clearer this time.
"It's Lora, Brenda. We've never actually met, but you know Pen and Heather, right?"
"Umm. Pen? Heather? Sorry, I'm not tracking."
"The Glow Worms, remember? The Fiendish Glow?" Lora was getting worried.
Silence.
She tried again: "The FORKNI-L list?"
"Oh -- okay. Yeah."
"Did I wake you? Are you okay?" This was scary. Lora could hear something like machinery in the background. "Where are you, Brenda?"
"I'm on a bus," she muttered.
"A bus? Good grief, woman, you were supposed to take the train from New York -- what happened to you?"
Brenda's voice was filled with irritation and frustration. "%@*(&@^!! AMTRAK doesn't run a train from New York to Toronto, except by way of Indiana! It would take a whole nother day to get there. . . so I took the short route: train to Buffalo, then bus to Toronto. I'm regretting it already," she moaned.
"Okay, so when and where do you want me to meet you?"
Through much coaxing of the sleepy woman, Lora managed to get the arrival of Brenda's and told her not to worry -- she would be there to pick her up. They also exchanged descriptions, but from what Brenda said about her luggage, Lora wondered if she shouldn't look for a mound of bags rather than a woman in jeans and a T-shirt. She also knew she would need to get a station wagon-type cab, just for Brenda's stuff!
After Lora hung up the phone, though, she worried; she was running late, Brenda was running late, and neither of them could contact their fellow Glow Worms to let them know about it.
The Glow Worms was a new faction, nonaligned, independent, decidedly neutral.
Many of them barely knew one another, most hadn't met, but they had one definite bond -- none of them tanned.
Lora ran a finger along one pale forearm. All her life that pigmentation trait had branded her an outcast -- the sun was her deadly enemy, a trait she shared with the vampires she so loved. Among these new-found friends, these Glow Worms, she had a home. She was no longer alone.
On a crowded bus somewhere was a fellow Glow Worm -- a name taken on because of the iridescent glow their skin often took on -- upset and bedraggled. Lora's maternal protective instincts reached out to Brenda. She would find her and make sure she was okay.
Lora intended to volunteer for security duty at The Fiendish Glow, where she and Brenda were headed -- which was why she brought the claymore. Their friends -- Pen, Heather, and Nyx -- would need a hand in the next few weeks. From what Pen's note had said, they would need it.
She closed her eyes and tried to catch a few more moments of sleep before the plane landed.
[midnight, Friday 4/25/98 into Saturday 4/26/98]
Blame it on fatigue.
Brenda had been running on an average of three hours' sleep a night for the past month, and had a tendency to fall asleep on trains, buses and subways, in cabs, and cars, to make up for it. Somehow, she'd always managed to wake up within a subway stop or two of her destination, shrug off the fatigue as best possible, head to home, work, or her boyfriend's, and chug large quantities of coffee or Coca-ColaTM.
As such, she didn't remember getting to Penn Station, boarding the AMTRAK train to Buffalo, or transferring to the bus that would bring her to Toronto. She didn't even remember where she was heading, or why -- only that she was being marched off a bus, told it was the Canadian border, and would she please show some proof of citizenship. Drowsily, she reached into the hidden compartment of her wallet and removed her tattered birth certificate.
"What time is it?" she asked, checking her watch. "It's kinda dark for. . . " then it hit her: the Canadian border? Midnight? Where the hell WAS she??? "I'm sorry, sir," she said to the Customs agent, "I must have really dozed off. The last thing I remember was boarding the subway headed in to work this morning."
"Is this your bag?" he asked her, pointing at the blue TargusTM Notepac perched between her legs.
"It looks like mine," she said tentatively, checking the front pocket for the various cards and cables she usually stored there. "Yup, it's mine," she told him.
The customs agent helped her through the procedure of determining what she had to declare and not, and how to fill out a copy of the munitions self-certification form she kept on her hard drive against the possibility of bringing her laptop -- its Web browsers equipped with 128-bit, US-only, encryption -- across international boundaries.
"Next stop, Toronto!" the bus PA chimed. . .
She shook her head vigorously. Toronto??? Something about that tickled her memory -- and it wasn't friends, family, or work. Or a computer show. It was too early in the year for Toronto TREK -- and besides, she and Frank would have driven up, together, for that. No other possibility came to mind. . . though the strains of the Silly Wizard CD she'd managed to borrow from her sister filtered through her almost-forgotten DiscmanTM.
"Are these yours?" the Customs agent asked her, handing her a sheaf of e-mail printouts that had fallen from her Bonnie Brae canvas tote bag. She flushed as she sheepishly accepted them from him and rifled through them, checking against anything she could use as a clue. It wasn't until he asked if she would open a large rolling duffel bag that it hit her. . .
Brenda squeezed back into the too-narrow seat, trying to keep her large CoachTM handbag and her Bonnie Brae bag on her lap instead of her neighbor's. It was a losing proposition. Her camera bag, computer pack, and the computer bag with her printer already overflowed the overhead stowage area. It was more than most sane people would consider carrying -- but she doubted that most civilized people would consider her sane. After all, she did design the a series of vampbears, and was known to hold conversations with stuffed animals.
She groaned as the latest shift of baggage aggravated her already-sore back. "Caffeine and MotrinTM -- a killer combination," she grimaced, searching for the bottle of analgesic and the dregs of her most recent bottle of Coca-ColaTM. The caffeine only increased the pain, but she needed some semblance of wakefulness. Nevertheless, it was scant moments before the sugar and the pain put her under again.
She blinked hard and shook her head. Where was she?
Brenda followed the sound to her flip-phone, picked it up, and pressed the SEND key.
"Hello?"
"Brenda?" came the garbled reply.
"Who is this?" she asked.
"It's Lora, Brenda. We've never actually met, but you know Pen and Heather, right?"
She tried to recall, but her mind kept coming up blank.
"Umm. Pen? Heather? Sorry, I'm not tracking."
"The Glow Worms," Lora crackled. "Remember? The Fiendish Glow?"
Still a blank slate.
"The FORKNI-L list?"
Light began to dawn. . .
"Oh -- okay." She finally placed the name. "Yeah."
These were fellow Forever Knight fans -- and what's more, fellow Celts.
Pale Celts -- paler than the palest shade of Hallowe'en "vampire" make-up -- so pale that they were said to be bioluminescent. They were about to embark upon a joint business venture, underwritten by an unknown philanthropic organization: a pub which served Celtic and Mexican cuisine, and live Celtic music. Lora was supposed to meet her on the way up to the pub's grand opening.
"Did I wake you?" Lora asked, sounding a bit panicked. "Are you okay?"
A pause.
"Where are you, Brenda?"
"On the bus from Buffalo," she replied.
"On the bus? Good grief, woman, you were supposed to take the train from New York -- what happened?"
"%@*(&@^!! AMTRAK doesn't run a train from New York to Toronto, except by way of Indiana," she replied sarcastically. "It would take a whole nother day until I got there -- so I took the short route: train to Buffalo, then bus to Toronto. I'm regretting it already," she moaned, as another spasm of pain ran through her back.
"Okay, so when and where do you want me to meet you?"
"The bus is supposed to arrive at oh-one-forty-six. So far, it's actually managed to keep on schedule. Meet me at the bus depot -- I think the line is called 'Thruway Motor Coach'? Oh, and we'll have to hail a cab. I've got way too much here to carry on the Metro." Brenda hated wasting money on cabs, but by now she was too tired, and in too much pain, to care.
1:55 AM. The bus finally pulled into the depot, and the passengers began to debark.
"Computer, handbag, printer, camera bag, Bonnie Brae bag, rolling duffel." Brenda counted each bag as she positioned it over her shoulders or around her neck. Finally, she took a few tentative steps, hefting the weight and distribution of her luggage. Carefully, she waddled into the dingy, dirty bus depot and started looking for a person she would recognize only by the faint luminescent glow of her ultra-pale skin.
Lora frowned as she glanced at the clock across from her. "Put the petal to the plastic," she advised the cabbie. She hated being late, she hated speeding, too, but what could she do. Her flight into Toronto was late. At least she could get some cash at Toronto's bus terminal with her Bank of Glowwing card to pay for the added speed.
The cabbie leaned forward and revved the engine. Lora was pushed back by the force of gravity. She was able to regain her composure when the cab pulled up to the bus station. She slid out of the left side door.
"You want me to wait here, miss?" the cabbie leaned out of the cab as Lora took off jogging for station entrance.
The tall, black-clad woman stopped abruptly, her massive hair covered her face as she quickly turned her head to face him. Lora took a moment to move it to the side before fixing a smile on the cabbie that nearly melted his socks. "Uh, yeah" replied Lora, looking over her shoulder. "I ll be just a minute." Lora hoped Brenda would have a better idea of where the Fiendish Glow could be.
Lora opened the door for the bus station and stopped. The place was packed with fellow travelers. Lora shook her head at the thought of trying to find Brenda here. She brushed a few more errant strands from her face as she walked up to look at the arrival times displayed on a 20-inch screen. Lora realized in horror that she was thirty minutes late. She hoped that Brenda had not left already. She stopped at the information desk to page Brenda.
[20 minutes earlier]
Brenda sighed as she looked at her watch. She was growing weary of waiting for Lora. How on earth would she even be able to recognize her? She began pacing once again, dragging all of her bags with her. It was an excellent way to work off all the bad coffee. Besides that, she worried about the transients shuffling around the station. She would never be able to escape a possible onslaught with this mound of luggage. With a wry smile, Brenda realized that in comparison to the her, the average bag-lady would look absolutely carefree. She judged them with a wary eye and wondered where her glowing friend might be, and wondered if Lora could possibly recognize her under all the bags. She yawned wearily and continued dragging her luggage, hoping that soon the coffee and coke would kick in again.
Brenda shuffled through her bags and brought out a small card that appeared mysteriously a few days earlier.
She remembered the talk about how Pen, Nyx and Heather were concerned that there was no place in all of Toronto with really good Mexican and Celtic cuisine. Where would they go to lean back, relax and drink with their fellow vamp lovers in (hopefully) peaceful neutrality? The threesome decided to invest in an old, three-story building that was centrally located between all the faction headquarters. Pen didn't mention at all what kind of shape the building would be in. That worried Brenda a great deal.
Five minutes later, Brenda got up to go to the little girl's room. She walked into the lavatory, making faces at the smells at surrounded her, and contemplating the insurmountable task of finding a toilet that was not wet and had toilet paper. She began to wash her hands and removed her glasses to clean them as well. She whirled around when she heard a scurrying sound to her right. Brenda ran out of the lavatory, visions of super-rats in her mind, when she heard her name over the loudspeaker. Or at least, it sounded like her name. She whirled round-about, luggage swirling, and headed for the information desk.
Lora wandered around the information desk, nervously playing with her hair. In her mind's eye she could picture a kaleidoscope of events befalling Brenda. Suddenly, she became aware of a mound of luggage moving toward her. Within the luggage was a woman who appeared to be half asleep.
"Brenda?" asked Lora.
Brenda shrugged off the majority of her luggage to get a better look at this suddenly smiling woman before her. All the Glow Worms had kind of a luminescent glow about them. Brenda's grin joined with Lora's as they put their arms side to side and compared the glow.
The two, with the help of the cabbie, managed to get Brenda's luggage into the vehicle and, using the address on Brenda's card, found The Fiendish Glow.
No one was up, so they used the side entrance -- one findable only if one knew where to look. Lora stuck her arm against the scanner marked with a Celtic knot, which was next to the scanner marked with a cactus; the door made a quiet clicking sound, and the two stepped in.
Nyx scurried around the basement pub area in a cleaning flurry; she'd just finished the cantina section, but the pub section was a mess. The cleaning was the easy part, but the redecorating aspect was going to be the pits.
She didn't have time to think, though, just do. Pen had promised her help before she left for the Golf tourney, but none had shown yet, and Pen still wasn't back. Worse yet, she'd just found out she got a new job and she and her family were going to relocate to California. She'd been away from them too long already, and knew she had to get back, but what was she to do? The Fiendish Glow had to be ready for the health inspectors Monday. . . and with War coming to town, had to open sooner than originally planned!
Originally, there had been no rush -- but Heather had been kept in Texas, first nursing her boyfriend, and then putting in ridiculous amounts of overtime at work; Pen had been back and forth to California with her job; Lora and Brenda had each been caught in her own version of "job slave" as well. The work had piled up, and piled up. . . and it all had to be ready if the health inspectors were to issue the necessary operating permits. Already they were losing income from the various factions.
She paused to take a few breaths and looked around at her, Pen's, and Heather's acquisition. They'd had such fine plans for the place -- neutral territory, a gathering place for those Torontonians who enjoyed a little Celtic or Mexican entertainment, or just wanted a change of pace from their usual atmosphere. OK, so she had no idea where Pen and Heather pulled the funding from -- some mysterious Celtic heritage foundation, they said -- but the building had more than enough space for both a pub and a cantina, and she and Pen really didn't want to have to travel too far for their tequila. . .
Unfortunately for the accelerated schedule, neither Brenda and Lora showed last night. Pen was still stuck in California, and now Heather got called away to the Shrine because of the War! She rushed behind the bar to rinse her rag and refill her bucket with clean water.
The security monitor console was blinking. "What's this?" she sighed, flipping on the screen to see what had gone wrong now. The annotation given her was that the emergency side door had been used -- a Glow Worm had entered at 2:30 this morning!
Nyx dashed up three flights of steps to check the bedrooms, praying that Brenda and Lora had managed to arrive after all. At the first room she was rewarded with the sight of a mound of luggage hiding one of the beds, and a sleeping figure clearly visible in the second.
Still breathless from her exertion, she tried to call out, "Bren-da, Lo-ra, way-ake up!" She knew she hadn't been heard, so took a few deep breaths and tried again, but still could barely get the words out. This time she figured she'd better seriously catch her breath first; she went to the upstairs coffee bar and poured two mugs for the sleepers, walked back into the room and stood between the beds. "Brenda, Lora -- WAKE UP!!" Nyx yelled at the sleeping figures for the third time.
"Omigod!" Lora yelled, bouncing up, then crashing back down as her legs crumpled under her.
"Wha-huh?" Brenda moaned, turning to face the source of the noise.
Nyx handed them each a mug of coffee. "Get coherent quick. Something's come up."
"Where am I?" she asked, unfamiliar with the location. "What day is it? What time is it?"
"It's 2 PM Saturday, and we have a lot of work to do. Get to it," she said, handing them each a mug of coffee.
Brenda pushed the coffee back into Nyx's hand. "Not before breakfast," she said, stretching and trying to get her eyes to open. Once she caught sight of the full sun, though, she was wide awake: sleeping in broad daylight was just not in her nature.
Lora sniffed the coffee. "Cream? Sweet 'N' LowTM?" Lora pleaded.
"Breakfast?!" Nyx laughed. "It's past lunch time!"
"No coffee until after food," Brenda insisted. "Preferably bagels and cream cheese. Donuts or muffins are acceptable. Biscuits will also do. . . if there's no meat on them."
"Cream? Sweet 'N' LowTM?" Lora repeated.
"Showers?" Brenda rebutted. "Towels? Closets?"
Nyx pointed to a linen closet and small bathroom just down the hall.
"CREAM? SWEET 'N' LOWTM?!?!?!" Lora screamed, thinking she was being ignored.
"One, or several?" Brenda asked, indicating the bathroom.
"One here, then the "caballeros" and "señoritas" in the cantina, and the "lads" and "colleens" in the pub. If the plumbing is working today," she growled.
"CREAM? SWEET 'N' LOWTM?!?!?!" Lora was becoming incensed.
"Sacrilege!" Brenda cried, finally acknowledging Lora's request for lightener and sweetener. To her, adding anything to freshly-brewed coffee was anathema. "Just drink it," Brenda growled as she stalked off to the shower.
Unfortunately, the coffee was far from fresh. Lora crinkled her nose and drank; she desparately wanted it creamy and sweet. She nearly choked on the bitterness of the stuff, but the caffeine worked. Her eyes nearly focused on the figure of Nyx before her, then realized she needed her glasses to read the sheaf of papers Nyx was shoving in her face. She fumbled around the area where she thought her pillow was, feeling for that precious couple of ounces of metal and glass that meant functional vision. Just as she reached under the bed for the fifth time, a sunbeam reflected a flash of green-tinted metal peeking out from under the crumpled pillow case.
"Is this what you're looking for?" Nyx asked, reaching across Lora's folded body to retrieve the green-tinted metal that was Lora's eyeglass frame.
"Yes!" Lora sighed with relief, unfolding her spectacles and placing the temples over her ears. As she read the papers, though, her expression changed from relief to anger to genuine concern. "Oh, no!" she groaned. "Is this what I think it is?" "Yup," Nyx said, quite sadly.
"Brenda, get out of there quickly!" Lora cried in the general direction of the bathroom.
The graying brunette peeked out the worn wooden door, her hair full of shampoo and her torso hidden by a towel. "What's the matter that it can't wait? Can't I take a shower in peace?"
"The factions are going to War," Lora snapped, the bad coffee hitting her intestinal tract like a ton of lead bricks.
"WHAT?"
"Yup," Nyx agreed, "And we've got to get this place ready -- the Grand Opening of the Fiendish Glow has now been pushed up to Monday."
"Aarrggh!" the soapy brunette griped. No sleep this weekend, she feared. "Let me rinse off and get out of here, let Lora shower, then we can talk."
"I'll shower later," Lora said. "After all, we're just going to get all hot and sweaty cleaning -- why waste the water?"
"Fine," Brenda shrugged, returning to the shower.
*******************************
NEXT
STORY: SPRUCING UP
*******************************