Pain Management

was impossible to tell. Driving up the rutted dirt road, obeying the signs that said “5 Miles Per Hour!!!” in self- defense, I had mentally placed the trailer about midway up the prestige scale in that particular park. The whole place looked like an insane breeding farm for kids, dogs, and satellite dishes.

Ann said, “We’re right up the road,” into her cell phone.

When we approached the door, it opened before she could knock.

“About time!” a tall, wasp-waisted woman with shoulder-length, improbably red hair yelled at Ann, grabbing her in a hug hard enough for me to hear the air pop out.

“I told you we’d be here,” Ann said, as soon as she could get her breath.

“This him?” the redhead asked.

“B. B. Hazard, meet SueEllen Hathaway.”

“Hmmm . . .” she said. “What’d you look like before you had your face rearranged?”

“I was so good-looking, women used to give me presents.”

“Is that right?” she said, flashing a grin. Her teeth were way too perfect for a trailer-park diet.

“Yeah. But the clinic always had a cure for it.”

“I’ll just bet,” she said, laughing. Then, over her shoulder to Ann: “And, honey, that’s SueEllen Fennell now.”

“You went back to your maiden name?” Ann asked her.

“Always do, child. Always come back here, too. This address makes it a lot easier for my lawyers to squeeze the max out of my exes.”

“Don’t they make you sign a pre-nup?” I asked her.

The redhead fired a killer smile at me, instantly shifted to a sexy pout, put her hands behind her back, bowed her head, thrust her hips a little forward, said, “Oh, baby, you don’t love me at all, do you? Not one little bit, you don’t! You just like what I . . . do for you. Like I’m some mangy whore, after your money. I mean, who’s in charge, Daddy? All this,” she whispered, cupping my balls like she was testing them for weight, “or those nasty little lawyers? Don’t they work for you, sweetheart?”

I laughed. Couldn’t help myself.

“It’s not funny,” she said, still mock-pouting. She turned and walked off. The back pockets on her jeans danced. I could see where a rich old man wouldn’t have a chance.

Ann plopped down on a sagging bile-yellow couch, patted the spot next to her. I took a seat. The redhead perched on the arm of a chair, crossing her ridiculously long legs. She was wearing white spike heels . . . like putting whipped cream on coconut cake.

We’d been touring around for days, and I thought I had it figured out by then. “Who was it for you?” I asked her.

“My brother,” she said, no hesitation. “My little brother Rex. They named him right. He was a king. My mother wasn’t worth crap, and my father made her look like a goddess. I took care of Rex from the time he was born. Anything he ever needed, anything he ever wanted, I got it for him. I was his big sister, and I could do anything. I did all kinds of things to be able to do that. Never bothered me. Rex was my precious.

“When he got sick, I could see it in his eyes. ‘Big Sister, you got to fix this for me.’ And, Christ knows, I tried. I looked for the Devil to sell him my soul. But he wasn’t around. Or maybe he figured mine wasn’t worth it, I don’t know. Rex was always a delicate little boy. He wasn’t much for standing pain. When it came, he . . . I died a thousand times every time he . . . hurt. His pain was so real to me, I could feel its . . . texture, like a piece of cloth against my skin.

“And the pain, it took everything from him. It . . . degraded him. He had no dignity. They wouldn’t give him what he needed. Kept telling me what the ‘dose’ was supposed to be—like he was a fucking gas tank and they were reading a gauge to know when he was full!

“Well, Big Sister, she knows how to play that. I got him what he needed, right to the end. ‘You always watch out for me, SueEllen,’ that’s what he said, just before he left. And I been snake-mean ever since. It just sucked all the honey out of my heart. Before it . . . happened, I never thought about much. I was a party girl. Just having fun. And taking care of Rex. After he went, I got to thinking. How many other boys there were, dying like that. No dignity. So I looked around until I found Ann.”

“Without all the money you put up, we’d never have been able to—”

“Oh no you don’t, missy,” the redhead snapped at her. “I am in on this. That is what you promised. I want to do it with my own hands this time.”

“I said—”

“I don’t care what you said. If you just came for financing, you came to the wrong place, this time. You want my money, you got to take my body, too. How’s that for a twist?” she laughed, looking at me.

I gave her a neutral half-smile, kept my mouth shut.

The redhead kept her green eyes on me. “Ann thinks she’s been around. And she has. But not around men. Me, I have. Plenty. And I’m not dumb enough to think every ex-con’s a tough guy.”

“I didn’t say I was—”

“Which?”

“Either.”

“Oh, you been in prison, baby. Or someplace bad. What I want to know is, did it make you bad?”

“Some say I was born bad.”

“And SueEllen Fennell says nobody’s born bad. That’s one of those Christian lies. Nothing but a damn fund- raiser. Answer my question.”

“Ask Ann,” I told her. “I’m going for a walk.”

The trailer park wasn’t designed for tourists. I found the DMZ between the whites and the Mexicans—a ditch filled with something liquid. I sat down on the bank, in a spot from where I could keep an eye on SueEllen’s trailer, slitted my eyes against the sun, and breathed shallow. After a while, my mind drifted to where it always goes when I need to figure something out.

When I came around, my watch said it was almost an hour later. And the math I’d been doing kept coming out to the same total, no matter how many times I added it up.

“Some of those ‘gatekeeper’ nurses, they’d be happier working at Dachau,” the emaciated man in the wheelchair told me. “When they see you coming, they look for the pain in your eyes. It gets them excited, the dirty little degenerates.”

“Douglas . . .” Ann said.

“But you know what really gets them off?” he said to me. “When they get to tell you ‘no.’ “

The small house was modest, but in pristine condition, its fresh coat of blue paint with white trim set off against a masterful landscaping job that used boulders for sculpture. The ’Vette’s big tires crunched on the pebbled driveway. In the carport, an ancient pink Firebird squatted next to an immaculate Harley hard-tail chopper, its gleaming chrome fighting iridescent green lacquer for attention.

The man who answered the door was big, powerfully built, with dark, intelligent eyes. He looked past Ann to me. “I told Dawn we were coming,” Ann said.

He nodded, stepped aside.

The living room was dominated by a rose-colored futon couch. And the striking strawberry-blonde who sat on it. She was a pretty woman, but you could see she’d once been gorgeous. And way too young to have aged so much.

Ann went over to her. They exchanged a gentle hug and a kiss. The man who’d opened the door took up a position behind the couch.

“Tell him, Dawn,” Ann said.

The woman’s gaze was clear and direct, azure eyes dancing with anger. But her voice was soft and calm, almost soothing.

“I’ve got MS,” she said. “When I was first diagnosed, I set out to find out everything I could about it. Kind of ‘know your enemy.’ Back then, the medical establishment would go into this ‘Pain is not usually a significant factor