she hadn't found Rick so alien and fascinating and the best lover a girl could ever dream of, then she would not have put up with his bullshit machismo or started helping him with his stolen-goods operation. If she had not realized that Tony Verducci was using Rick and her for his own ends on the last job. If she had not figured out how to outsmart Tony Verducci-if, if a lot of things.
The last item she found in the box was a tube of lipstick. She pulled off the cap and discovered to her delight that the wine-red color was absolutely perfect, and she went into the bathroom and put it on. Thank you, Melissa W., she whispered into the mirror, for you know not what you have given me. Now she had lipstick, a dress, the pumps. In the dresser lay her one decent pair of pantyhose, the black mail-order bra that fit well enough, a pair of matching black panties, a cheap little handbag with the inside lining torn, and some of Mazy's prison perfume. She would look-well, she wouldn't look great, but she also wouldn't look like someone who'd woken up in Rikers that morning. In the handbag she put her hairbrush, two of Melissa Williams's condoms, the perfume, the lipstick, forty- three of her remaining sixty-three dollars (wedging the last twenty-dollar bill under the wooden slat of her bed in case anyone came in while she was gone), and her new keys. Then she went downstairs and stepped out into the street, as free as she had ever been.
Six hours later she lay in darkness seventy blocks uptown and thirty stories above the street, and having endured all manner of comments, solicitations, come-ons, gestures, jokes, offhand remarks, earnest questions, unasked-for confessions, and, finally, a sequence of stiff drinks that became a rather nice swordfish dinner, she remembered an old trick and slipped her fingers down between her legs, felt the guy's penis, and made a tight circle around it.
'Oh, wow,' he moaned, his breath full of vodka and nachos and some kind of hazelnut liqueur they had shared that was just about the best thing she had ever tasted. He was a boy, really. Twenty-five, maybe. The bars of the Upper West Side were full of boys, boys in suits. He didn't know anything about fucking, that was sure-or what she remembered of it. He had climbed and clawed and writhed around on top of her, never settling into the kind of long hypnotic driving that she remembered-remembered Rick for, unfortunately. As far as this guy was concerned, the sex was about him, not about her. But that didn't matter now-it was time to finish. She squeezed her fingers and whispered the absolutely dirtiest thing she could think of into his ear-it was a little exciting-and he grunted in fervor and came dramatically, banging at her in self-congratulatory frenzy, the stubble of his chin brushing her forehead. Then, as if gored by an ax-swinging assailant, he toppled off her and fell onto the sheets. She rubbed the guy's head. He wasn't so bad, just too young, really, didn't know anything. Too young to protect her from Tony Verducci.
'I'm going to pee,' she whispered.
'Yass, 'kay.'
She stood in the bathroom examining her breasts in the mirror. They might have fallen a little while she was in prison. Just a tiny bit. Her nipples were swollen from the guy's mouth, her neck blotchy where he'd snuffled Mazy's perfume. She opened his medicine cabinet, didn't see anything in there interesting, except some kind of toothpaste that made your teeth whiter. I started the day in prison and now I'm naked in some guy's bathroom, she thought. That was something. What exactly, she wasn't sure. She sat on the toilet. The next part was not good, but she had to do it. The guy had bragged to her that he had earned three hundred thousand dollars last year, including his bonus, so, from a Marxian perspective, her crime was merely going to be a redistribution of capital to one who didn't have it.
She flushed the toilet and tiptoed back into the bedroom. He was on his back, Melissa Williams's condom still on him, a droopy hat. A good thing, too-her mother always said the two of them, mother and daughter, were 'built the same,' which meant Christina could get pregnant if a boy 'went by in his underwear.' Amazing that she'd never gotten pregnant with Rick, considering. Now she watched the guy roll over. He was good-looking, like an underwear ad, but she'd felt nothing, despite grinding herself against him while straddling on top. Not even close to an orgasm. Why? She used to have jillions of them. But now she was out of practice and had been a little nervous. Also, he had been clumsy, too slow sometimes, too fast others. The whole thing was like a bad ride at the amusement park- looked fun beforehand, but you were glad when it was over. He had no clue who she was. Thought she was a graduate student in history.
'Hey, urban professional guy.'
'Yeah-ahh?'
'You okay?'
He flopped around, loose-armed, drunk. 'Thas was-I'm telling you, I jus' am fucking kinda knocked out here…'
She knelt on the floor and found his pants. He'd used a credit card at the bar, but she was sure she'd glimpsed some cash in the wallet.
'Roll over, I'll give you a back rub.'
He did. He was a guy. Not so bad, really. He'd tried his best. If they screwed a few more times, she could train him to do a few things right. She pressed a hand into his shoulders and then along the spine. A great smooth back, wide as a door. No woman had shoulders like this. A good butt, too. Mazy had been right. Christina would go back to men; she might just go attack them, in fact. She moved a hand across the guy's shoulder blades, listening to the deepening of his breath. Her other hand found its way into his wallet. Not much. She slipped four or five bills into the front of her panties.
'You had kind of a long day.' She kept her hand moving.
'Yass, I did, yassir,' he gurgled. 'Very big day. Many things happened. How about you? You have a big day?'
'Not much, except for you.'
He smiled into the sheet. 'You had a good time? I'm a okay guy?'
'Yes.' She gave him a meaningless little kiss on the back of his neck. 'But I have to go.'
'Oh, no.'
'Oh, yes.'
'Girls-they always want to stay.'
'Which girls?'
'All the girls I ever knew.'
She rubbed his neck, kissed it. He was all right. 'Maybe you never knew anybody like me.'
'That's right, hey. Goddamn fuck like a pony.' He threw a sleepy arm at her, pressed his hand as artlessly against her breasts as a man applying stucco to a wall. 'Can I call you?' he breathed. 'Gotta call you.'
'I wrote my number down.' For believing this lie, he deserved just one more kiss, maybe three or four, right along the backbone. She wanted to fall asleep on top of him. Don't, she told herself. Go now.
'I'll get up, call a cab,' he said.
'No, you're tired. I'll just slip out. Give me a call in the late morning, if you want.'
He sighed into the pillow. 'Oh, I want. You can take that to the absolute bank.'
I'll be taking something else, she thought, but you'll find that out soon enough. Five minutes later, with her little black dress back on, each clever button in its clever little place, and with his bills in her handbag, she stepped out to the street, holding a cardboard laundry box. The bills, she discovered in the cab, were hundreds, five of them, which the taxi driver might not take. But she had her own remaining cash for the fare. She pulled open the stapled laundry box as the taxi flew downtown. The box contained exactly what she had hoped for, ten tailored shirts, freshly starched and pressed-and no monogram. She'd get at least ten bucks each for them from the guy in the clothing store. Six hundred bucks-and dinner. Not bad. She reminded herself to have the taxi stop a block from her apartment house, in case someone asked the driver where he'd taken her. Stealing was something she hated herself for, probably, or at least usually, but it was also what she needed to do, to get a start-and without a start, she told herself, especially on a day like today, you don't get anywhere.
604 Carroll Street, Brooklyn September 11, 1999
Dawn, the rush of traffic-and nobody had killed him in the night. He lurched up, looked in the rearview mirror.
