The Chosen

in a short ponytail—an absolute clash to the fine clothes and jewelry. Twelve hours ago, he was merely a weird-looking squat stranger; now he was her boss. She felt she could even consider him a friend. “Thank you for giving me this chance, Mr. Feldspar. I won’t let you down.”

“I’m quite certain that you won’t. But before you go, might I make one very trifle suggestion?’’

“Sure.”

“Get some shoes. Soon.”

Feldspar actually laughed as she got out of the sleek car. Vera laughed too, waving as he pulled onto West Street and drove away. Yes, she’d have to get some shoes—she’d have to get a lot of things. But far more important was what she already had—or in fact had been given: a chance at something big.

She stood before The Emerald Room, looking out into the busy thoroughfare. Passersby paused to gape at her, this tousled woman standing in freezing weather with no shoes and mussed hair. The wind slipped around her, but now she felt warm.

A second chance, she mused. That’s what this was, really. She had a good job here but no longer a life to go with it. It hurt to think of Paul, and of love in general. Love was supposed to be ultimate emotion between two people, the ultimate truth. Where was her truth now? It was all gone, it was all a lie and always had been. How could she live with that?

I know.

Very slowly, her left hand raised in the cold. The big engagement ring gave a crisp glitter in the sun. She slipped the ring off her finger and threw it into the middle of West Street.

Eventually a mail truck ran it over.

Time to move on, she thought.

— | — | —

^{CHAPTER FIVE}

“Hey, Jor! Split-tail at twelve o’clock!”

The Blazer slowed. It was one of those big four-runners, souped up, with Binno Mags, Bell Tech springs, and tires that looked about a yard high. All the rednecks drove them; it was status. Jorrie Slade’s eyes thinned at his friend’s announcement—or, to be more accurate, his eye thinned, since the left one was glass. He’d lost it one night when he and Mike-Man were rucking it up fierce with some Crick City fellas out behind Duffy’s Pool Hall. Didn’t matter all that much to Jorrie, though; the right eye worked just fine, and that backwoods peter-licker who’d poked out the left one had wound up losing a lot more than an eye. Try his ears, his lips, and his balls. Jorrie was good with a knife.

Mike-Man, Jorrie’s best rucking pal, swigged on his can of Jax. “I say, ya see that, Jor?”

“I see it, all right, Mike-Man, my man. Looks like we’se gonna have our dogs in some decent poon after all. Shee-it.”

The Blazer’s high headlights and floods glared forward. A van sat stalled on the opposite shoulder, and stooping over the opened hood was one buxom full-tilt brick-shithouse blonde the likes of which neither Jorrie nor Mike-Man had ever laid eyes on—or eye, in Jorrie’s particular case. Beautiful long blond hair swirled in the wind. Her tight, broad rump jutted as she bent over, diddling with wires.

“Now I say, a pair of gentlemanly types such as us could not never ignore such a woman in distress,” Jorrie pointed out to his friend. “I mean, on a wicked night like this? Goodness, the poor thang could catch her death of cold, now couldn’t she?”

“That she sure could,” Mike-Man replied in full agreement, “and it just wouldn’t be Christian-like for two strong young fellas such as