E.Godz

Edwina thought she'd done a bang-up job of guaranteeing that her daughter need never feel truly alone, but as far as Peez was concerned, Edwina's good intentions had backfired beyond belief. Ordinary teddy bears might not be more than glorified throw pillows, but at least they could keep all the secrets that their owners poured into their raggedy fake fur ears. Teddy Tumtum not only listened to Peez's secrets, he remembered them and could blab them to the whole wide world. Too bad Edwina hadn't stuck a discretion spell on the bear while she was at it.

"Never mind what my social life was like in high school," she told him, making a weak stab at rebuttal. "That was then." She set Teddy Tumtum down on her desk blotter.

"And this is now? Oooh, deep," said the bear. "I've got news for you, sugarpants, this is now and as far as your social life goes, now sucks even worse than then. At least in the olden days you had a few playmates who'd actually talk to you after class or even come by the house during school breaks sometimes. So what if they only did it 'cause their parents were trying to kiss up to your mother and her money?"

"My mother ..." In Peez's mouth the word did not reek of apple pie and chocolate chip cookies, but of ice and gall. "Maybe if my dear mother hadn't been so damn wrapped up in establishing the corporation, I could've had the chance to have a real childhood and make some real friends. But no. Instead I was dragged along like an oversized piece of baggage while she spent all those years knocking around the country with those dumb hippie pals of hers. And then, as soon as she could, she dumped me on one na

"Tsk. So ungrateful," Teddy Tumtum said, enjoying himself. "Your dear mamma got rid of the na

"Nothing," Peez repeated sourly. "That's the word for what she gave me. I had no roots, no stability, no fixed abode, no permanent mailing address, no one to care what I did with myself as long as it wasn't fatal or didn't impact the precious family business. The one thing I did have was a name that was so bloody ridiculous that the regular school bullies didn't even bother making fun of it. Too much like shooting fish in a barrel. But there were plenty of juvenile improv sadists who weren't above dragging me into the girls' room, dunking my head in the toilet, flushing, and telling me to visualize whirled Peez. Good gods, it's just a wonder that I turned out as well as I did."

The teddy bear snickered spitefully. "Yeah, those were the days. Remember back in the pre-na

Peez's pale, heart-shaped face turned bright red all the way up to her hairline. "At least it was better than what happened in the town we moved to after that."

"Right, I remember," said Teddy Tumtum, who remembered much too much of everything. "That was where you scored so badly on the standardized tests for your age group that they stuck you back a year and you had to be in the same class with your little brother."

"That was also the place where the teacher asked our class to draw a picture of our daddies for Father's Day." Peez was bitter. It had all happened a long time ago, but the sound of her classmates' rude laughter and ruder name-calling was still loud and clear in her ears. It didn't take a rocket scientist to tell that the drawings produced by Peez and her brother were of two radically different men.

"It wasn't so bad when the other kids just called us stupid," Peez said. "But then the teacher stepped in and tried to make things aaall better. Better! She went into that big song-and-dance about how some brothers and sisters from the same family can have different daddies."

"Sometimes two at once," Teddy Tumtum put in.

"This was a little too close to the Pleistocene for a public school teacher to talk about alternative life-style families," Peez reminded him. "Hell, she didn't even want to open the whole widowhood can o' worms in front of the kiddies—death was a big no-no—but she did mention divorce. That was when my genius baby brother had to go and ask, 'What's a divorce?' "

Teddy Tumtum nodded wisely. "And she told him it's what happened when mommies and daddies decided they didn't want to be married to each other any more. And that was when he told her that your mommy would never get a divorce because your mommy never bothered to get married to either one of your daddies in the first place."

Peez blushed a deeper shade of scarlet. Even after so many years, she was still sensitive about her mother's Olympic-grade amorous shenanigans. When most children learn where babies come from, the first thing they do with the information is to search for exceptions, escape clauses, loopholes, anything to keep them from thinking of their parents doing something like that. Gross. Peez not only had to contend with the image of her mother "doing it," but also with the inescapable knowledge that Edwina had "done it" with enough men to stock a small road company of The Mikado, chorus included.

All of which probably accounted for Peez's own scrupulously preserved virginity, although her official excuse was that staying a virgin meant she could have direct access to and participation in some of the more esoteric rites for the pickier sorts of gods. And if some of her clients chose to believe that she stood ready to offer herself up as an emergency virgin sacrifice—Do Not Use Except in Case of Imminent Volcano Eruption—there was no harm in letting them do so. Not while she also had access to a wide variety of speedy getaway vehicles, anyhow. Peez was all for building customer confidence, but she wasn't about to die for it.

Teddy Tumtum made a clucking sound of commiseration. It was about as authentic as a beauty queen's I-want-to-work-with-orphans-and-small-animals speech. "Po' ittoo Peezie-pie," he said sadly. "No friends then, nothing but business acquaintances now. No one you can really talk to but me."

"You are not the only one I can talk to," Peez insisted angrily, rising partway out of her chair. "My life is made up of more than just business acquaintances."

"Of course it is." Teddy Tumtum couldn't blink, lacking eyelids, but he still managed to project the effect of a Southern belle coyly batting her lashes at some helpless beau. "There's always your family."

Peez sat down. Hard. Her mouth became a hyphen. Teddy Tumtum smiled. "And how is your beloved baby brother these days?" he asked, letting syrup drip over every syllable.

"How would I know?" Peez shot back. "The only time I see him or hear from him is when we need to discuss the business. And that's the only time I want to see or hear from him, the self-satisfied, smug, egotistical, unbearable little jerk!"

The bear looked bemused. " 'Little'? The last time I saw him, he was taller than you by a head."

"An empty head," Peez gritted. "Not that it's doing him any harm in the Miami office. He could have a double lobotomy and still be sharper than half the population of South Beach." In spite of herself, Peez felt tears rising in her pale blue eyes. Furiously she tried to fight them back by shouting, "It's not fair, Teddy Tumtum!"