but she knew I didn’t need anything like that, any kind of show.
I gave her the other cigarette and said hello.
“Hi,” she said, smiling, and we kissed.
I put my arms around her and lifted her off the ground, sat her on the edge of the bed. Her slippers fell off in the process. I buried my nose in her hair and told her she smelled good. She said thank you.
“I saw you yesterday at the Elroy’s, Alice.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“You should’ve said something.”
It was probably a lie, but it was exactly what I wanted to hear, and she knew it. “What’s new, girl?”
“Nothing much,” she said. “Saw my mom a couple days ago.”
“How’d that go?”
She blew smoke, looked down. “Nothing changes. I’m worried about her.”
Her mother must’ve been loaded.
I ran my fingers through Alice’s hair and said, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry.”
“I am, though. It’s a shame things …”
“What?”
“It’s a shame the woman never saw what an angel she had.” She smiled.
“And it’s a shame that family has to hurt,” I continued. She took my hand and pressed it to her face, kissed my fingers. My rod shot up like the lighter end of a seesaw. “Is she healthy?”
“She’s never been healthy,” Alice said, “but she’s been with this guy lately who … I don’t know. He is not a good influence.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, lying. “But let’s not talk about that now.”
“Sure,” I said. “Later.”
“How was your day?”
“Oh, you know. Same shit, different day. No surprise there.” I put my hand around the back of her neck and caressed her. She purred.
“I’m not the most terribly interesting man in the world.”
“You don’t have to be.”
I took her cigarette and put it out in the green glass ashtray. Mine too. I put my hands on her face and felt her, felt the warmth come off her.
She bent forward and undid my pants. She took it in her mouth. I exhaled.
After a few seconds of getting lost in my head, I gently pulled her head back by the hair and pushed her down on the bed. I bent over and pushed the nightgown up to her navel. I kissed her knees, and then ran kisses up her smooth thighs. Her head went back into the soft bed, and she scraped her fingers through my hair.
“Alice,” I said between kisses.
“Marley,” she said.
I couldn’t say what I wanted to say.
I parted her legs and licked her until she quivered, and the taste of her became heavy in my mouth, inside me. I got on top of her, kissed her like there was no tomorrow, and placed myself inside her.
In the morning, we awoke as the sun struggled to make a new day happen. We smoked a couple of cigarettes and talked. She talked about what kind of shopping she had to do. That was all I could get out of her that was real, but it would have to do.
I dressed. She watched from the bed as I slipped a stack of bills under the ashtray. It embarrassed me, paying for her like she was a tool, a product, anything other than the beauty she was. I tried to smile, and she told me not to worry. That was something she had to tell me often. I kissed her good-bye, and then went to work.
It felt like I was leaving home for good. It always did.
SIX
I took a quick look in the Evelyn white pages to see where Alice’s mother lived. It sounded to me like the woman needed a visit from the tooth fairy.
It would be proper for me to tell you here that there once was a time in which I happened to see Alice’s Honda on the road late at night. At the time, I doubt she knew what my truck looked like—seeing my truck once would brand it in your brain like a picture of a dead body—so I decided to follow her home. Just to make sure she got home safe.
She went about as far north as you could get in this town, to this house that was almost as small as mine, but much nicer. She parked in the driveway, and I passed her and parked on the corner. She got out of the car, set the alarm, and went in through her front door.
About an hour later, she turned off the bedroom light. That’s when I got out of the truck and went back to see her name on the mailbox.
Halliday.
So that’s how I knew her last name.
I checked the white pages, and there was Alice, over on Perry Street, and the only other Halliday in the book, I presumed, was her mother, Rebecca.
Rebecca seemed to live over on the east side, about a mile north of my restaurant. Now that I knew that, I knew what I’d be doing once the sun went down.
When I got home from work I ate a dinner that consisted of two boiled hot dogs sliced up like a banana into a can of tuna. I polished it off with a half a pot of coffee and a dozen crackers. Everything a growing boy needs.
Once I did my dishes—or should I say my
I stored a bunch of odds and ends in there that I didn’t want out in plain sight. Not that anything was incriminating, and not that I had ever let anyone through my front door, but I just did not believe in leaving stuff out for people to see or know about.
I rummaged about for a few minutes and finally came out with an old pair of sunglasses and a Redskins cap.
From my bedroom closet I took out a beige sports jacket I had never worn but had found at a thrift shop once for a dollar. You never knew when you’d need such a thing, and now I needed it.
I put my hair back in a ponytail and then wound it up under my cap so it looked like I had short hair. Then I put on the jacket, put the sunglasses in my pocket, and got in the truck.
I drove to the east side, stopped at a Laundromat I’d never been to before, and picked up a roll of quarters. Given the proper life circumstances, a roll of quarters could be a man’s best friend.
Rebecca Halliday lived in a shit-ass apartment complex on a bad block. Two doors down was a no-tell motel, and on the northern corner were a pair of drug dealers who whispered slang names for drugs (trees, chronic, crazy train) to the pedestrians as they walked by. Most didn’t respond. Those who did shook hands quickly with the dealers and then took off like bolts of lightning. There was a kid on a bicycle going up and down the block who I suppose was the lookout for the police.
I parked the truck two blocks south, put the sunglasses on, and then walked back the rest of the way to the apartment building. When I got to her building, I saw that the front door was locked. There were buzzers up on the wall, one for each apartment, but I didn’t want anyone to know I was there. I looked over my shoulders to make sure no one was watching me, then I pushed the door hard, and the cheap lock gave.
I went up to 3G—Rebecca Halliday’s apartment—and put my ear against the door. I heard a woman crying, and the deep voice of a man telling her to shut up. I knocked.
I heard footsteps coming closer. I stepped to the side so I couldn’t be seen through the peephole, and I slipped the roll of quarters into my palm and squeezed it tight. I didn’t know what to expect.
