Pain Management

she didn’t say anything, I handed her my card.

She chewed her lip. “You want to play some one-on-one?”

“Do I look like a basketball player to you?”

“Basketball players don’t look like anything in particular,” she said. “People think if you’re tall you can play basketball. But that isn’t necessarily true.”

“You can, right?”

“I had to teach myself,” she said quietly. “It didn’t come naturally or anything. It was a lot of work.”

“I respect that,” I said. Telling the truth.

She bounced the ball a couple of times, stepped off, and launched a long jumper, goosenecking her wrist to guide it home.

Nothing but net.

“An easy three,” I congratulated her.

“They’re never easy,” she said. But a smile teased at her lip.

I went quiet, waiting for her decision.

“Rosie is the most . . . moral person I know,” she said, finally. “She wouldn’t do anything wrong. I don’t mean she wouldn’t, you know, break the law. If she thought the law was . . . immoral. Like civil disobedience. But she wouldn’t do anything . . . unethical. Like cheat on a test. Or even tell lies. She didn’t drink and she didn’t do drugs. . . .”

“Her father said she smoked pot.”

“I never saw her do that.”

“Maybe he got it wrong.”

“He probably did. He doesn’t know her.”

“Fathers never know their daughters, do they?”

“Mine doesn’t,” she said, the smile gone from her voice.

The next day, I went back to the school, walked the corridors for a while. But it was pretty much cleared out for the summer. When I came back outside, a girl was perched on the front fender of my Ford. She was auburn-haired, wearing blue-jean shorts with matching suspenders. They were strapped over a white T-shirt as flimsy as the excuses she’d probably been trafficking in since she was thirteen. Her mouth was a wicked slash of dark red, and she was licking a green lollipop like she was auditioning for a porno movie. I couldn’t tell if she was sixteen or thirty-three.

“You’re the guy, right?” she greeted me.

“What guy would that be?”

“The guy looking for Little Miss I’m-All-That.”

“Oh! You thought I was looking for you. Sorry, young lady. You’ve been misinformed.”

“That’s cute.” She shrugged her shoulders against the off-chance I was confused about her not wearing a bra. “You know who I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her, taking out a cigarette.

“Give me one,” she demanded, holding out the hand without the lollipop.

“You’re not old enough.”

“Get real. People don’t have to be as old as you to smoke.”

“People don’t have to be as old as me to be retired.”

She gave me a long look. One that apparently required her to arch her back deeply.

I kept my eyes on hers.

She put the lollipop back in her mouth, then bit down on it, hard. I could hear the crunch as the lollipop fragmented. She pulled out the empty stalk, tossed it away.

I lit my cigarette, took a drag. She reached over, plucked it out of my hand, took a drag herself. She didn’t return it to me.

“What’s it worth to you?” she asked, crossing her meaty thighs to emphasize the ambiguity.

“To stand around in a parking lot and play games with a kid? Nothing.”

“I’m not a kid. I’m a girl. A bad girl.”

“Congratulations. You look as if you put a lot of effort into it.”

“Look, I know you’re not a cop.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. I heard you were asking around. About her. I figure someone hired you to do that. So maybe you want to hire me.”

“Hire you to do what?”

“Help you. Like, be your assistant. For what you’re trying to find out, you’re too . . . I don’t know . . .”

“Old?”

“Scary. You already scared some people. Nobody’s going to talk to you.”

“If they don’t know anything, what’s the difference?”

“They might.”

“Sure.”

“What’s your name?”

“Hazard. B. B. Hazard.”

“You didn’t ask me mine.”

“That’s right, I didn’t.”

“You don’t care?”

“No. I don’t play with kids.”

“My name is Peaches.”

“Uh-huh. Is that what it says on the birth certificate? You know, the one that says you’re twenty-five.”

“Twenty-two. And it’s not a phony.”

“Right. And you’re a schoolmate of the person you think I’m looking for? How many times were you left back, exactly?”

“Why do you have to be like this? Bobby Ray told me you were looking for this Rose girl. I didn’t say I knew her or anything. But I could help you find her. If you paid me.”

“Who’s Bobby Ray?”

“He works for Project Safe. You know, like an outreach worker. He’s out there every night.”

“Red-haired kid, freckles? About my height, wears a Raiders jacket?”

“That’s him!”

“I don’t know him.”

“But you just said—”

“I ran across him. That’s all. He can’t vouch for you.”

“Ask him, okay? I mean, you can check him out, can’t you? Where he works and everything? So, if Bobby Ray tells you I’m cool, that would be enough, wouldn’t it?”

“Look, kid—”

“I’m not a kid. And I could help you.”

“Let’s cut to it, okay? You know where the girl I’m looking for is, we can do a deal. Name your price, I’ll run it past the people who hired me. They go for it, and you turn her up, the money’s yours.”

“How do I know you’d—”

“You tell me you know where she is, I’ll let your pal Bobby Ray—you know, the guy you trust—I’ll let him hold the stake.”

“I don’t know where she is. But I could help you find her.”

“No sale, kid.”

She hopped off the fender like it was a glowing griddle. Denim is a restrictive fabric, but the curve of her rump imposed its will anyway. I watched her walk away . . . just to see what car she got into. But she turned the corner of the building and disappeared.