'Guess pepper spray wasn't a good idea,' Lula finally said.
I blew my nose in my T-shirt and tried to blink my eyes clear. I didn't want to touch them with my hand in case I still had some spray left on my skin.
Martin was nowhere to be seen. The wrapping was in a heap on the sidewalk.
'You don't look too good,' Lula said. 'You're all red and blotchy. I'm probably red and blotchy, too, but I got superior skin tone. You got that pasty white stuff that only looks good after you get a facial and put on makeup.'
We were squinting, not able to fully open our eyes, my throat burned like fire, and I was a mucus factory.
'I need to wash my hands and my face,' I said. 'I have to get this stuff off me.'
We got into Lula's Firebird, and Lula crept down Stark to Olden. She turned on Olden and somehow the Firebird found its way to a McDonald's. We parked and dragged ourselves into the ladies' room.
I stuck my entire head under the faucet. I washed my face and hair and hands as best I could, and I dried my hair under the hot-air hand dryer.
'You're a little scary,' Lula said. 'You got a white woman Afro thing going.'
I didn't care. I shuffled out of the ladies' room and got a cheeseburger, fries, and a bottle of water.
Lula sat across from me. She had a mountain of food and a gallon of soda.
'What's with you?' she wanted to know. 'Where's your soda? Where's your pie?
You gotta have a pie when you come here.'
'No soda and no pie. I'm off sweets.'
'What about cake? What about doughnuts?'
'No cake. No doughnuts.'
'You can't do that. You need cake and doughnuts. That's your comfort food. That's your stress buster. You don't eat cake and doughnuts, and you'll get all clogged up.'
'I made a deal with my mother. She's off the booze as long as I'm off the sugar.'
'That's a bad deal. You're not good at that deprivation stuff. You're like a big jelly doughnut. You give it a squeeze and the jelly squishes out. You don't let it squish out where it wants and it's gotta find a new place to squish out. Remember when your love life was in the toilet and you weren't getting any? You were eating bags of candy bars. You're a compensator. Some people can hold their jelly in, but not you. Your jelly gotta squish out somewhere.'
'You've got to stop talking about doughnuts. You're making me hungry.'
'See, that's what I'm telling you. You're one of them hungry people. You deprive yourself of cake and you're gonna want to eat something else.'
I shoved some fries into my mouth and crooked an eyebrow at Lula.
'You know what I'm saying,' Lula said. 'You better be careful, or you'll send Officer Hottie to the emergency room. And you're working for Ranger now. How're you gonna keep from taking a bite outta that? He's just one big hot sexy doughnut far as I'm concerned.'
'What are you going to do about Willie Martin?'
'I don't know. I'm gonna have to think about it. Taking him down in his apartment doesn't seem to be working.'
'Does he have a job?'
'Yeah, he works nights, stealing cars and hijacking trucks.'
I drained my bottle of water and bundled my trash. 'I need to go back to Morelli's house and get out of these clothes. Call me when you get a new plan for Martin.'
'You mean you'd go out with me again?'
'Yeah.' Go figure that. Truth is, it was getting pretty obvious that being a bounty hunter wasn't the problem. In fact, maybe being a bounty hunter was the solution. At least I'd acquired a few survival skills. When trouble followed me home I was able to cope. I was never going to be Ranger, but I wasn't Ms. Wimp either. There were a bunch of cars parked in front of Morelli's house when Lula dropped me off.
'You sure you want to go in there?' Lula asked. 'Looks like its still Guy Day.'
'I don't care what day it is. I'm beat. I want to take a shower, get into clean clothes, and turn into a couch potato.'
I straggled into the house and found five guys slouched in front of the television. I knew them all. Mooch, Tony, Joe, Stanley Skulnik, and Ray Daily. There were pizza boxes, boxes of doughnuts, discarded candy bar wrappers, beer bottles, and chip bags on the coffee table. Bob was sound asleep on the floor by Morelli. He had orange Cheez Doodle dust on his nose, and a red jelly bean stuck in the fur on his ear. Everyone but Bob was eyes glued to the television. They all turned and stared at me when I walked into the room.
'Hows it going?' Mooch said.
'Looking good,' Stanley said.
'Yo,' from Tony.
'Long time no see,' Ray said.
And they turned back to the game.
