recently finding comfort in God after a ski trip to Aspen where she saw sun fall across the snow like a halo. And of course, she offered to drive Abby back to Oxford and maybe find Maggie and go out to dinner at City Grocery.
She could tell Abby was barely listening. The girl just sat there at the Grandma’s counter as eighteen- wheelers rolled by outside. Perfect decided to try the human-contact move. Basic shit. She reached over, spread her fingers wide, and covered Abby’s hand noticing overgrown cuticles. No manicure?
The trick was not to grasp the hand, but just to give a warm reassurance. Levi taught her that. Levi had taught her everything.
“How ’bout it?” Perfect asked, keeping her hand in place. “Leave that old truck here and come with me. Let’s just circle back, I don’t need to shop anyway. We’ll find Maggie. She’s so worried about you, Abby. She really is.”
Abby had barely spoken. Strange little bitch. She was petite and loose-limbed and had the same sleepy eyes Perfect had noticed from the family photographs. The girl didn’t wear makeup and kept an Ole Miss hat scrunched down in her eyes. Greasy hair. White T-shirt stained with old coffee.
A little stubble under her arms. Good Lord. The girl needed to be hosed off and shaved.
“How do you know my cousin again?” Abby asked. Still not looking Perfect in the eyes.
“One of her friends is big buddies with my boyfriend, and Jamie – that’s my boyfriend – throws these massive parties after football games. Last year he had this crawfish boil where we all just got sloshed and ended up fighting with those little buggers. Shells in my hair and in my ears. Maggie was there. Funny, I haven’t seen you at one of those parties, too.”
“Doesn’t sound like something Maggie would do,” Abby said. “She’d rather spend the night at Square Books reading Eudora Welty and drinking coffee than vomiting with a bunch of ex-frat boys.”
“C’mon, Abby,” Perfect said. Never give them the time to follow your eyes or reverse your flow. She gripped Abby’s hand in hers. “Follow me on back to Oxford. You need a decent meal and a warm bath. I’ve got buckets of bath beads and this big old copper tub with claw feet. You can soak away everything. Please. If I left you and saw Maggie later I’d just die.”
Abby pulled away and looked down at her hand as if it had been infected. Her fingernails were cut close and her hands dry and chapped. Moisturizer.
“Well,” Abby began, staring at the purse that Perfect had by her side, a Navajo-print bag slightly open. At the top edge, a handgun’s muzzle poked out. Son of a bitch.
Perfect covered up the edge of the gun, politely smiled, and said, “Woman has to watch out for herself.”
Perfect then rolled her eyes like it was the silliest thing she’d ever done in her life and again cupped Abby’s hand in hers. “C’mon, let’s go.”
A bby excused herself and walked back to the bathroom where she brushed her teeth with a portable toothbrush and twice had to push away the urge to vomit. Just the thought of having to face the fucking town again made her sick.
Since she left the house that morning, she couldn’t even bring herself to look through her father’s files. The thought of seeing his signature or any bit of his work made her feel the decay of his body. Some kind of direct connection to the physical presence she knew was rotting away.
She felt the bile rise in her throat and threw up a thick wad of the cheeseburger into a brown-stained sink.
When nothing else would come but dry heaves, she brushed her teeth again, stepped into a stall, and changed into a long-sleeved gray T-shirt and clean underwear. At the sink counter, she carefully folded her dirty clothes on top of the duffel bag and stared at her reddened eyes.
For a few moments she cried until a hillbilly-looking woman, who didn’t have a neck and kept a slight moustache, came in and sat down on a toilet. The door was wide open.
If it got too bad, she could always get Maggie to take her back here. Abby grabbed her bag and decided she’d leave with Ellie.
On the way out, she paused and looked down the long hallway. Some video games plinked nearby in a desolate video arcade. A long row of lockers with orange turnkeys lined a far wall.
Abby emptied the duffel bag into a small blue locker and filled it with her old T-shirt and panties. She dropped in her remaining four quarters and turned the key.
Chapter 8
The Golden Lotus oozed with sex and tired Chinese food. Just sitting in the parking lot with the sound of my Bronco’s motor ticking in my ears, I could tell that the vegetables would be overcooked, the snow crab frostbit, and the egg rolls soggy. Of course, the patrons probably didn’t give a shit. The little cinder block building topped with a pagodalike tile roof near the airport also offered table dances with your egg foo young and a shower show with your moo goo gai pan.
I shut off my engine and walked to an ornate red door guarded by a teenage girl in a bikini top and hip- hugger jeans. She wore stiletto heels with rabbit fur straps, and an angoralike sweater hung loose off her bony shoulders. She smiled briefly at me, remained perched on her barstool, and took a five buck cover.
Her fingers slowly traced a vertical scar that ran from her navel to the clasp of her bikini top as her gaze drifted to a long black row of clouds rolling across the flat land of the airport where a 727 rumbled overhead.
Inside, the floor was concrete and the room smelled of clove cigarettes and cherry air freshener. There were three amoeba-shaped elevated stages throughout the shadowed bar pumping with a slow Ann Peebles song. Couldn’t stand it, baby, if you said we were through. That’s what you keep on doin’ to me. Heartache. Heartache. Heartache.
A brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty wearing only pearls looped in a knot like a man’s tie stooped to the floor of the center stage and pulled off a balding patron’s glasses. She crushed the frames between her breasts and placed them back on his head upside down. Throughout the bar, there were only six guys – most eroded businessmen with wrinkled shirts, slightly untucked – watching the matinee show. Pink and green neon glowed in the dark cave while a soft gray rain began to patter the sun-bleached parking lot framed by the open door.
I lit a cigarette and took a seat at the long bar and ordered a cup of coffee. The waitress was about my age, somewhere between thirty and forty. She had short brown hair, not boy short, but cut just below the ears and tosseled in her eyes.
“Mr. Cook around?” I asked.
She shrugged. She had a sharp nose and full lips. I could tell she worked out by the shape of her biceps as she poured the coffee and firmly shoved a cracked mug before me.
“Could you check?”
“Why?” she asked.
Her man’s ribbed tank top didn’t quite touch the edge of her dark blue jeans held together with a Western belt.
“Health inspector,” I said. “Somebody found a G-string in his wonton soup.”
“That’s funny,” she said. She chewed gum, keeping her eyes trained to a soap opera. The television was muted and suspended by chains from the ceiling. “I never heard shit like that before.”
“It’s true, and the other day someone reported the indecent use of a fortune cookie.”
“How would that work exactly?” she asked. She turned away from the television and wiped off the angry head of the dragon carved into the cherrywood bar. The bartender’s eyes were deep blue and the whites had the clarity of someone who didn’t drink.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I bet it could be done.”
“You want to tell me what you want, or do I just introduce you as the funny guy at the end of the bar?”
“The funny guy works.”
I smiled. She smiled back.
The song ended and the naked woman plopped off stage and took a seat next to me. She was sweaty and out of breath and played with the pearls around her neck like a rosary.
