souvenir, a promise from her to add to the pictures in my head.
At work, she acted like I was just another creep.
I’d watch as she danced for the other men, waiting for her to come back to me. She wouldn’t even look my way. I’d stay up late after coming home from work, eating chili or tamales from a can that I’d heat over a hot plate. I played my tapes low as I ate. Roy Orbison sang “Mystery Girl” and I would mouth the words along with the song, running the slideshow of Valerie real slow, timing it to the music. She had once danced to “Mystery Girl” for me, before, when she used to come over. I always thought of it as her song.
Of course, it worked.
I had one of the other dancers give her my message.
I was in. I would help her teach Big Shot Cooper a lesson.
I waited in the Desert Sun Motel’s parking lot. Cooper and Valerie had a ground-level room, across from the empty swimming pool. The doors to the rooms were painted blue. Arizona-sky blue. Highway blue when the clouds are the only things that break and fall into infinity. Cooper’s Lexus sat in front of their door. I’d seen them park there, having followed them from the Bikini Lounge.
No one had meetings in a dump like this, unless it was with a hooker or a dealer. Cooper had to be naive, stupid, or both to come here with Valerie to do business. This was going to be too easy, I thought.
“Wait for me,” she’d told me. “I’ll leave the room to get ice and leave the door open. You will come back to the room with me and take the jewels. No problem. Got it?”
It seemed simple enough. That was all I had to do. Go back with her and take his swag.
I waited in the darkness of my car, thinking about how she and I would celebrate later. Thinking about the way she danced for me—until I saw her open the door to their room.
I got out of my car. She looked at me and nodded, an empty ice bucket in her hand.
I went up to the door and waited for her to return with the ice.
“It’s about time.” Cooper stood up from the bed. A gym bag sat on the corner of it, next to him. He looked at me for a moment, confused. “Hold on a sec. He’s that guy from the bar. What the hell is this?”
I heard the door close behind me, the chain sliding on the lock.
“Take it easy, Cooper,” Valerie said.
“No,
“Take it easy, Cooper,” I repeated.
“Screw you, man!” Cooper dove to the bag and wrenched a small gun from it. He pointed it at me. I don’t know shit about guns. I just know that you don’t want to get shot by one, no matter how big or small they are. They fuck you up. His gun soaked up the wan light from the lamp. It was small and black in his fist. A woman’s gun, I thought, a chick’s gun. I could see the barrel tremble.
“You think I’m going to just sit here and let someone rob me? You think I’m stupid or something?”
“Cooper, put the gun away. You’re not going to use it.” Valerie reached out, as if to calm him. “You said yourself the jewels were insured. Put the gun away.”
“Forget it. I’m not a fucking chump! And I’m not letting no cheap whore and her goon-boy rip me off!”
Cooper pointed the gun at her.
I jumped him then, hitting him just as the gun went off. The gun sounded simultaneously with the shattering of the lamp. The room went dark. My ears rang from the shot.
I held onto Cooper’s wrist, twisting it, punching him with my free arm as we rolled off the side of the bed. Cooper landed beneath me, the bag spilling beside us.
Cooper yelled then, unintelligible words in the darkness between the bed and the wall where we struggled. I grabbed a loose pillow and crammed it against his face, stifling the noise and trying to keep the gun away. Valerie pounced on us, pulling at the gun in Cooper’s fist. It happened before I knew it. Cooper’s muffled screaming ended the instant she fired the gun into the pillow. Cooper’s body collapsed beneath me. My vision tunneled. The small room filled with the smell of shit, gun powder, and burnt pillow foam.
The light from above the sink came on. Valerie stood above us, the gun in her hand.
I saw a cut across her right cheekbone. A thin line of blood trickled from it, leaving a teardrop’s path.
That’s the one I told you about before. The last one of her.
“Karl.” I could barely hear over the dull ringing from the gun. “Karl, we have to get our asses out of here, now!”
The phone started to ring.
“Don’t answer it,” she said.
Valerie above me. Yeah, that shiny streak of blood on her cheek. I could crawl to her to lick it off …
I scrambled away from Cooper’s body.
She kicked his legs to the side and searched his pockets, pulling out a set of keys and his wallet. She ripped the wallet open and pulled out the cash, stuffing it into her jeans. She threw the wallet back against his chest.
The ringing stopped.
The pillow remained over Cooper’s face.
A dark stain spread on the cheap carpet beneath him.
She went to her knees and grabbed the bag. She threw the gun into it along with the items that had spilled from it in the struggle.
“Karl, we gotta go now!” she said, getting to her feet.
Valerie pulled at me.
“You’re hurt,” I said.
“I’ll live.” She shoved me toward the door. “Move!”
Her fingers fumbled with the chain, finally pulling it off. She pulled the
“Worst thing, I figured, is maybe we’d have to smack him around a little, you know. That’s it.”
Her in the car next to me. The light at Fifteenth Avenue and Grand had turned red. Through the windows of the boxing club, I could still see the kids working out in the ring.
“Stupid fucker. Why’d he have to bring a gun?”
“All the jewels are in the bag?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
She ran her fingers down my shoulder. I reached a hand up toward her face to touch her, stroke her hair.
She leaned back and lit a cigarette, using the dash lighter.
“You got another one of those?”
She pulled another butt from the pack and handed it to me. I used hers to light it.
I sucked in deeply and exhaled. It’d been a long time since I’d smoked. I’d forgotten how good it felt.
“No one saw you? The desk clerk, anyone like that?” I asked her.
“No one. He got the room. I waited in the car.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I’m sure. No one saw me. I stayed in the car.”
“Okay then,” I said at last. “Where do we go now?”
I tried not to think about what she’d done to Cooper back at the hotel. She’d pulled me into this mess and I didn’t know how to get out. I felt no closer to her for it. She sat there smoking, thinking about what, I had no idea. About me? About where we’d go next? I was half tempted to just drive her to the bus depot and leave her there.
Be done with it.
No tail was worth it.
Then she put her hand on my leg.
I could smell her body, closer to mine now.
“Your place?” she asked.
I drove, imagining how she’d look in my bed. It had been too long since I’d had a woman in my bed. Okay, she’d just killed a guy and didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about it, but Cooper had it coming to him. He should have
