'Where are you two going?' Quinn heard himself ask. He thought he sounded casual, only remotely interested. Tried, anyway.
Must have failed.
Lauri clouded up again. 'Look-'
'Zero down,' Wormy said good-naturedly to her. 'We're gonna take in a band down in the Village, Lauri's dad. Some band thinks it's better'n mine, if you can believe it. No drugs, and no…drugs.'
'You didn't say no-'
'Dad!'
Quinn knew he was helpless. He willed his stiff facial muscles to arrange themselves in a smile that couldn't have fooled anyone. 'So have a good time. You got a key?'
'Got my key,' Lauri said. Impulsively, she came to him and pecked his cheek, grinning up at him. 'Don't worry so much about me, Dad, really.'
'I'll try not to.'
'She's with me,' Wormy said reassuringly.
'I'll try not to,' Quinn repeated.
Then they were gone into the world, his little girl and the human worm, and the door was swinging closed.
'I like your dad,' Quinn heard Wormy say, just before the latch clicked.
Some kind of telepathy, Quinn thought. May and Elliott lived all the way on the other side of the continent, and still May chose that night to call Quinn.
'How's Lauri doing?' she asked, after they'd traded hellos.
'Doing well,' Quinn said. I hope. He hadn't gone to bed and was slumped on the sofa, worrying while watching four lawyers on a quarter-split TV screen argue over a murder that had happened in some other state, maybe Minnesota. The victim had been an attractive young woman. He'd muted the lawyers but hadn't been able to stop watching.
'New York hasn't corrupted her, has it?'
'I won't let that happen,' Quinn said. 'Besides, she's more grown-up than I imagined. She's smart.'
'Not street-smart. You don't get that way here in the burbs of LA.'
Quinn wondered if May read the papers. If you were a teenager, anyplace you were had the potential to make you wiser but sadder-or worse. His gaze wandered back to the attorneys jabbering silently on the muted TV. 'I think she's taking care of herself pretty well. She's got a job.'
'You're kidding. The Lauri I know couldn't hold down a job.'
'She's held it down so far. She's a waitress at a restaurant down in the Village.'
'Servers, they call them now, Quinn. And I'm not sure I like it that this place is in the Village.'
A dapper gray-haired man who used to be the chief medical examiner in New York was on the screen now, holding up a chart with a skeleton printed on it and using his manicured forefinger as a pointer.
'The restaurant's Pakistani,' Quinn said, watching the former ME point at the skeleton's pelvis. 'At least it claims to be. The food seems kind of eclectic to me. Lots of barbecue.'
'You've been there?'
'Damned right.'
May laughed. 'Good. That's comforting. She's still working there, so you must have thought the place was okay.'
'It's a job,' Quinn said. 'A start.'
'Can I talk to her?'
'She's not home right now.'
'It's eleven-thirty, Quinn.'
Damned Worm! 'She's on a date.'
May didn't say anything for a moment. Then: 'Oh. It didn't take her long to get into circulation.'
'She's a beautiful girl, May. Like you're a beautiful woman.'
'Spare me the Irish bullshit. Who's she going out with? Another of the food servers?'
'A musician from the band that's playing at the restaurant. There's a bar there, too, with live music.'
'Pakistani music?'
'For all I know,' Quinn said, remembering the high-decibel onslaught of 'Lost in Bonkers.' 'I've met the guy. He seems…safe.'
'Is that what your cop's instincts tell you?'
They tell me what to tell you. 'He's a scrawny young kid, looks like he's never had real sex. If you could see him, May, you wouldn't worry so much.'
'What's his name?'
'Wormy.'
'God! Is that a nickname?'
'I don't know. I think it's French and I might be pronouncing it wrong.'
Quinn heard noises in the hall, then the key ratcheting in the lock.
The door opened and Lauri came in alone. A vague, S-shaped shadow behind her writhed and flitted away in the hall.
'She just got home,' Quinn said, trying to sound reassuring. He mouthed to Lauri, You're late.
'Close, though,' she whispered back.
Quinn studied her. Clothes not too mussed, lipstick unsmeared, pretty much the same Lauri who'd left with the human worm.
'She all right?' asked the voice from California.
'Fine, fine…' Quinn held the phone out toward Lauri. 'It's your mother. She wants to talk to you.'
Lauri seemed to think about that, then shrugged and walked over to where Quinn sat on the sofa. He handed her the phone, then stood up and diplomatically left the room.
In the kitchen, he opened a cold Budweiser and for a brief moment considered listening in on the extension, then thought he'd probably be caught at it.
Sitting at the table, sipping his beer, he couldn't make out the contents of the conversation in the next room, but it didn't take long, and Lauri's tone was curt.
After a few minutes of silence, she appeared in the kitchen doorway.
'Your mother still on the line?' Quinn asked.
'No. I guess she didn't have anything more to say to you.' She smiled at him. 'I'm going to bed. Unless you wanna chew me out first for being forty-five minutes late.'
'You were close enough,' Quinn said. 'Besides, eleven-thirty wasn't a promise, it was just something Wormy mentioned.' He took a sip of beer. 'You like that guy?'
'Not nearly as much as he likes me.'
Quinn tilted back the bottle for another sip. 'You'd better get used to that kind of thing.'
Lauri looked at him. 'Fatherly wisdom, along with a compliment. I like that. Thanks.' She waved languidly to him. ''Night.'
''Night,' he said, not sure whether she was kidding.
He sat for a while absently peeling the label from the beer bottle, trying to sort through how he was feeling, not getting anywhere. Probably like a lot of fathers of teenage girls. Unknowing. Unsettled.
He decided he'd ask Pearl to talk with Lauri, to just sort of get acquainted. Maybe she could figure things out and enlighten him.
Then maybe Lauri could explain Pearl.
22
