“No.”
“I think it is.”
“I said it isn’t.”
“It isn’t Tanedrue you want, it’s the monkey.”
“I just like it. I’m not hooked.”
“That’s what they all say.”
She held her stomach.
I said, “You hungry?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s start with the idea that you are.”
“Sometimes, I try to eat, I throw up.”
“That’s the drugs, or …”
“I’m not pregnant. I been careful about that.”
“So, you do have some common sense. Damn, girl. You don’t have to do this, live like trash.”
“You a social worker?”
“No. Unlike social workers, I really care.”
She took a long time to respond again. That was okay. I was getting used to it.
“Tanedrue, he said he was gonna quit dealing, soon as he got us a nest egg.”
“A rotten egg.”
“He meant it. He loves me.”
“You are young, aren’t you?”
“You don’t know everything.”
“I don’t know anything. Older I get, less I think I know. But I know this, and I’m going to be crude to make my point. What Tanedrue has is a dumb bitch he can screw and lie to and feed drugs to, and when he’s through with you, when you get so fucked up you can’t tell the difference between a fat mouse and a full-grown elephant, he’ll get rid of you, kid. You won’t be fresh meat to him no more. You won’t be pretty, and you won’t be nothing but a whining whore with a habit. Maybe just some dumb dead bitch in a ditch somewhere.”
“I ain’t no whore.”
“You will be. That’s how it’ll work. He’ll turn you out, baby. So he can make a few more bucks off his horse before it dies. He’ll tell you how you’re doin’ it for the two of you, and it don’t mean nothin’, not really—”
“Shut up! You don’t know everything.”
“You said that already, and I even agreed with you.”
Leonard opened the door, said, “Give me some gas money.”
“You pay”
“I haven’t got any money.”
I gave him some money, hesitated, said, “Let’s get some coffee. Gadget here, she might could eat something.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
“Then watch us drink coffee,” I said. “And if you run off, we’ll just chase you down. We don’t care how it looks or what anyone thinks. We are wild and crazy guys.”
“What if Tanedrue and the rest of them come and find you?” she said.
“That would be bad for them,” Leonard said. “Didn’t you just hear Hap say we were wild and crazy?”
10
I parked us near the garage between some yellow lines and under the overhang. The rain plunked on the aluminum above us like buckshot. The guy who had been reading
Inside the joint we got the same table as before and the guy who waited on us before came over, said, “You must like it here, back in the same day, and now with a friend.”
“We don’t like the fries, just want to go on record with that,” Leonard said. “But the hamburgers do the alligator rock. And she’s not a friend.”
“What?” the waiter said.
“He likes the hamburgers,” I said. “He doesn’t like the fries. The girl is not a friend. She’s a friend of a friend.”
The waiter didn’t look at me. He studied Leonard for a moment. Leonard smiled. There was always something about that smile. It was less like a smile and more like a snake trying to grin up a frog right before it struck and ate it.
