Explosive Eighteen

I moved to the bathroom. Medicine chest stuffed with over-the-counter decongestants, pain pills, laxatives, antacids, sleep aids, diet aids. Some makeup scattered on one side of the sink. Hairbrush, hairspray. Electric toothbrush. A second toothbrush, small tube of toothpaste, razor, and travel-size shave gel on the other side of the sink. Man stuff. Toilet seat up. Damp towel on the floor in front of the tub and shower. Definitely a guy here.

The second bedroom was being used. Bed unmade. Laptop on the bed. Men’s flip-flops on the floor, along with tropical-themed boxer shorts. Backpack in the corner, partially stuffed with clothes. Nothing hanging in the closet. Nothing in the small chest of drawers.

“Somebody living with Brenda,” Lula said.

“She has a twenty-one-year-old son. Jason. I’m guessing he’s visiting. Doesn’t look like he’s planning an extended stay.”

“That’s nice he’s visiting his mama, though. It’s gotta be hard when your kid grows up and leaves.”

I looked over at Lula. She never talked about kids.

“Would you like to have kids someday?” I asked her.

“I don’t think I can have kids,” Lula said. “Remember, I was hurt when I was a ’ho. I would have died if you hadn’t found me and saved me.”

“You could adopt.”

“I don’t know if anybody’d let me.”

“You’d be a wonderful mom.”

“I’d love the shit out of a kid,” Lula said. “I’d try real hard. I never knew much about my own mom. She was a crackhead ’ho, and she overdosed on heroin when I was young. I was a better ’ho than her, on account of I never did the drugs like that.”

I walked out of the bedroom, past a closet that held a washer and dryer. A few more steps down the hall, and I came to another door. I opened the door and peeked in. Garage. It looked like there was a car under a tarp. I switched the lights on, lifted the tarp, and gave a low whistle.

“That’s a Ferrari,” Lula said. “It’s no ordinary Ferrari, either. It’s one of them special-edition ones. This is a majorly expensive car. I bet Brenda has a orgasm drivin’ this car.”

“She doesn’t drive this car,” I said. “It hasn’t got plates.”

“Then I bet she has a orgasm sitting in it in the garage.”

We grabbed our buckets and mops, I locked Brenda’s house, and we got into my truck.

“I’m tired of fooling around with this,” I said to Lula. “This is bullshit. I’m going to Brenda, and I want answers.”

“Wham,” Lula said. “Kick ass.”

I motored out of Brenda’s neighborhood, took Route 1, and turned into The Hair Barn’s parking lot.

“I’m coming with you,” Lula said. “I don’t want to miss anything.”

“There won’t be much to miss. I just want to talk to her.”

“Yeah, but if she won’t talk, we’ll rough her up.”

“We will not rough her up.”

“Jeez Louise,” Lula said. “It’s no wonder you go around in the dark all the time. You got a lot of rules.”

Brenda was sitting in her styling chair when I walked into the salon.

“You came back,” she said. “You decided to get something done with your hair, right?”

“Wrong,” I said. “We need to talk.”

“I don’t need to talk anymore. I don’t care about the photograph. You can keep it.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Well if you did have it, you could keep it,” Brenda said. “It’s not important to me.”

“What about Ritchy?”

“Who?”

“Your dead fiance.”

“Oh yeah, poor Ritchy.”

“Talk to me about poor Ritchy. What was he doing with the photograph?”

“He just had it, okay? And then he didn’t have it, because he gave it to you.”

“Why did he give it to me?”

“That’s a real good question. I think the answer is that he was an idiot.”

“There’s more of an answer.”

Brenda stood. “I can’t talk to you with that hair. It’s disturbing. Look at your friend. She has amazing hair.”

I glanced over at Lula. She looked like she was wearing a giant wad of tutti-fruiti-colored cotton candy.

“I take real good care of my hair, too,” Lula said.

“You don’t take care of your hair,” I told her. “Every four days, you dye your hair a different color. You have indestructible hair. If you set your hair on fire, nothing would happen to it.”

“I can’t believe you two hang out together,” Brenda said.

“It’s embarrassing sometimes,” Lula said. “She don’t know much about dressing, either.”

“Sit down here,” Brenda said to me. “I’ll get you fixed up. I don’t have any clients for the rest of the day.”

“Gee, thanks, but I don’t think so,” I said.

“On the house,” Brenda said.

“It’s not the money,” I told her. “I sort of like my hair the way it is.”

“Honey, your hair is no way,” Brenda said. She cut her eyes to Lula. “Am I right?”

“Yep,” Lula said. “You’re right.”

Brenda ran her fingers through my hair. “First thing, you need highlights. Big, chunky highlights.”

“About the photograph?”

“Put a cape on and sit down while I mix this up,” Brenda said. “We can talk when I come back.”

Heaven help me, I was going to have to let her give me highlights to get her to talk.

“I don’t trust her,” I said to Lula. “She’s crazy. What if she poisons my hair?”

“I’ll go watch her,” Lula said. “I know what I’m doing when it comes to hair and pharmaceuticals. You just sit in the chair and don’t worry about nothin’.”

They both came back after a couple minutes, and Brenda streaked gunk into my hair and wrapped it in foil.

“It’s no big deal about the photograph,” Brenda said. “I thought I needed it for a business transaction, but turns out it wasn’t necessary.”

“What about your brother? Am I off the hook with him, too?”

“You know about Chester?” She shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on with him, except he’s an asshole. I’m not talking to him. He’s only my half brother anyway. We found out my mother was doing the butcher.”

She picked up a different bowl of glop and streaked and foiled new gunk alongside the previous gunk.

I bit my lip and said a Hail Mary.

“I can see this isn’t gonna be as interesting as I hoped,” Lula said. “Bitch slapping’s unlikely, so I’m gonna go sit and catch up on all your trashy magazines.”

“You still haven’t told me anything,” I said to Brenda. “Chester hired two guys to follow me around. Why? Who’s the man in the photo?”

“The man is no one. It’s a composite. You know, somebody’s nose and someone else’s eyes. It’s done on a computer.”

“Tom Cruise and Ashton Kutcher!”

“I don’t know. I never saw it,” Brenda said. “Anyway, it’s real clever. It looks like a photograph, but it’s a computer program. You scan it into a computer, and the computer breaks the picture up into little itty-bitty thingies and sees a code. And then you can use the code to do things. Like open a car.”

“I don’t get why that’s so special. You can open a car with a key. You can open a car with a remote.”

“Yes, but this opens cars that have fancy doohickeys like GPS and security systems. You don’t necessarily have to own the car to be able to unlock it, if you get my drift.”

“You could steal a car with this?”