A Sweet Girl for Todd

MARK ONSPAUGH

“Here you go,” she said, handing him a brochure for a tanning salon.

It read Aztec Tan and featured a tanned and muscular jaguar warrior surrounded by pretty girls in bikinis.

Todd gulped. One of the beauties in the photo was standing before him.

“So, how about a tan?” she asked.

Todd was embarrassed by the attention, especially from a beauty with such large blue eyes. She wore a turquoise silk blouse, open just enough to tempt his gaze. He tried to concentrate on her blond hair, which shimmered in the sun like spun gold.

Like Sif, the wife of Thor, he marveled.

“Mama never let me go out in the sun,” he said. His mother had always made dire predictions about what would happen if he ventured outside, so he had grown up in a world of perpetual dimness. Then, three months ago, she had been installing new blackout curtains and had fallen off the ladder, breaking her neck. After she was gone Todd took his first tentative step outside. Once he discovered that he would not burst into flame or melt like a waxwork figure, he had reveled in the feel of sunshine and open air.

“No wonder you’re so pale,” she said, shaking her head sadly. Todd felt his heart break to see her unhappy while at the same time his spirit soared because she really seemed to care for him.

“I also had bad skin, but I’ve been using Skin-Alive and Chum-Scrub,” he said.

“I think your skin is beautiful,” she said shyly. “My name is Mandy.”

“I’m Todd.”

“You have family here in L.A., Todd? I can tell you’re from out of town by your accent . . . Chicago?”

“Detroit,” he said, happy she was interested. “No, it was just Mama and me, and she’s dead. I wanted to go someplace . . . sunny.”

“So now you’re here, seeking your fortune . . . And maybe . . . love?”

Todd blushed a bright crimson and felt it travel all the way from his cheeks to the tips of his toes. It was not an unpleasant sensation.

Mandy took his arm, and her touch sent a shock wave of electricity through him. He willed himself not to sway, lest she break her grasp.

“So, Todd from Detroit, how about that tan?”

“I’m . . . uh . . . too big for a tanning bed,” he said as if imparting a secret.

“Not ours,” she said sweetly.

Todd hesitated. He was six foot two and tipped the scales at just shy of four hundred pounds. Todd had come to learn that what might serve most men was either too small or too fragile for him. He was sure it would be that way with her tanning bed and wasn’t sure he could take the embarrassment.

“Tell you what,” Mandy cooed, “you try a tan and you can join me for dinner.”

“You mean, like a date?”

She giggled, and it was not the cruel laughter he had heard as he had waddled down Hollywood Boulevard, or the hateful snickers as he ate lunch at the House of Pies. No, her laughter was melodious and magical. Aphrodite might have made such a sound.

“Of course, silly. You think I’m going to let a handsome, robust man like you get away?”

Handsome! She found him handsome!

Was love beckoning to him? His mother’s voice, unbidden, reminded him that sunlight was bad for her little man and that he had a ticket back to cloudy Michigan.

Todd banished her from his thoughts, a first on this day of many firsts.

Mandy led him down the boulevard, and again he was struck by the dizzying array of colors and textures, of people from every country, some pierced and tattooed into tribal fetishes or creatures Conan or John Carter of Mars might have fought.

“First trip to Hollywood?” Mandy asked.

“My first trip anywhere,” he confessed. “I thought it would be like the Clark Gable days.”

Mandy giggled again, the sweet notes making his heart flutter. He suddenly caught her scent, flowery and clean with a hint of something animal underneath, and felt a strange stirring along his spine and down into his pelvis.

Maybe that’s love, he thought.

Mandy escorted him all the way to a strip mall down on Sunset near Vine. Even when his hand became sweaty from exertion, she didn’t let go, and Todd was sure he had found the sweet girl he had been yearning for since he first read of Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars.

The shopping center seemed deserted, and weeds had started to sprout in the parking lot. In amongst several failed businesses sat a cheery little storefront with a mural of a Mesoamerican pyramid and a smiling sun with sunglasses. The sign read “Aztec Tan, the Sun Experts!”

Inside it was cool and brightly lit, with posters of Mexico covering the walls. Todd was introduced to the staff, which included Lila the massage therapist and Derrick the “tan master.” This title was delivered by handsome Derrick with a self-deprecating smile. Todd envied Derrick his heroic muscles and dark curly hair. He looked like Apollo.

He might have been jealous, but Mandy introduced him as “my Todd,” and he again felt that pleasant heat suffuse his body.

Then Todd filled out a medical history (no illnesses, no next of kin) and a release (“in the unlikely event . . .”), which Mandy assured him was just for “those stuffy lawyers.” She shyly gave Todd a kiss on the cheek and that removed any fears he might have had.

After much coaxing, Todd stripped down to his shorts. While he drank a soothing herbal tea, Lila covered him in spicy ointments and buttery creams. By the time she was done, he smelled like Christmas morning.

They helped Todd into their largest tanning bed. Todd chose a recording of ambient forest sounds and they all bid him sweet dreams.

Night birds sang sweetly, but it was the crickets Todd found soothing, restful. He suddenly felt a longing for home and . . . and . . . But the feeling was gone as quickly as it had come, and he thought of sweet Mandy and their date when he emerged bronzed as a jaguar warrior.

As it grew toasty warm, Todd felt a sharp pain in his gut, and then along his spine. As he was about to panic, a warm calm settled over him, and he thought he remembered his father, lifting him high, high up in arms, long and strong.

Todd drifted off to the sounds of a tropical rainstorm, thinking of his father, his dinner with Mandy, and custard pies, his most favorite dessert. Something large and dark flew across his memory, and then was gone.

Soon Todd was asleep, and they could all hear him snoring, a ratcheting worthy of a frontier logging camp.

Derrick locked the tanning bed securely and turned the temperature up to 350°F. Mandy put out the “Closed” sign and locked the front door, then began setting the table in the employee lounge. Lila called the rest of the clan at various salons in the Valley.

They arrived quickly. Clients like Todd were all too rare, even in a big city like Los Angeles.

Like Mandy, Lila, and Derrick, they were all tanned and dark, with fine physiques and easy smiles. Contrary to popular legend, they weren’t bald, or scabrous, or pale. They didn’t lurk around cemeteries or avail themselves of raw flesh. Oh, they had certain cousins who practiced this, some even sophisticated enough to act as though theirs was a refined palate, like a Japanese noble dining on sushi.

Disgusting.

They played the old songs and games, and some moved off into other rooms for liaisons with cousins not seen in many months.

Soon Todd’s snores stopped, and a delicious aroma filled the salon. Everyone laughed when Mandy drooled on her new blouse, and she was the subject of good-natured ribbing for much of the afternoon.

Then came the ritual “Baring of the Teeth,” where they removed their carefully crafted bridgework to reveal strong white teeth filed to points. They played Slash Tag and Bite the Blindman for another hour, then got down to serious drinking and carousing.

Twelve hours later, with hula music playing and all the guests happily drunk, Derrick opened the tanning bed with a flourish.

Everyone stared.

Todd was gone.

In his place was a six-foot lozenge of copper-colored chitin, rounded with hemispherical protrusions at one end, tapered and segmented at the other. It looked like a kind of sarcophagus.

“What the . . .” Derrick exclaimed, but by then the pupa was splitting open, and new Todd emerged. Famished from his change, he devoured every screaming one of them, his stinger paralyzing them, then his razor-sharp forelegs and crushing mandibles more than equal to the task of devouring flesh and bone.

Todd saved pretty Mandy for last, her blue eyes wide with a terror that seemed to his new eyes like love. His venom turned her organs and bones into jellied confections, sweeter than anything he had ever tasted . . .

Even custard pie.