Kicking It

because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” “It’s no use carrying an umbrella if your shoes are leaking.” The last you don’t hear much unless you travel, but it is as wise as the others—worth remembering. But on and on it goes. Full of good intentions, these kinds of sayings are. They’re something to guide people who have no common sense or thoughts of their own, my mama liked to point out. My mama—well, I’d long stopped fighting it—my mama was rarely wrong. Sometimes a tad misdirected, but wrong? I can’t say that she was.

When it came to shoes and sayings, I had a favorite by a brilliant man who had enough thoughts for twenty people. Mark Twain said it as he said and wrote many things, not many of which I could disagree with, not offhand. He knew the hearts and minds of humanity and the lack that lay in most. It was my new client’s shoes that made me think of this particular saying of his, a delicious one: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

It was particularly outrageous and apt to describe this client—oh she was a liar, a talented one of spectacular degree. Her lies were a thing of glory that put the blue, blue heavens to shame.

And her shoes were almost as fabulous.

* * *

I lived in Las Vegas for several reasons, but one of them was it let me work. It let me do. And I needed to do, because if you don’t do, then how can you know you even exist? Boredom is the name of the game. Other people call it Russian roulette. You just keep pulling that trigger, click, click, click, and feel the excitement ramp up higher each time, all the while hoping that one of those pulls doesn’t propel boredom through your brain. Boredom was worse than any bullet for people like me. Adrenaline junkies—we couldn’t stand it when the fun stopped. When the fun stopped, life stopped, and boredom was that all over.

So I settled in Vegas, if only for a while; I wasn’t one to put down any permanent roots. I bought a bar for the background noise, the legal life, and then I did my true work.

I was never bored.

I could’ve gone to any city in the world and found clients, but Vegas is a shining star. People are so hungry there . . . for everything. I didn’t sell everything. I’m a businesswoman who knows her limits, but what I did sell went faster than spiked lemonade at a family reunion. Information was mainly what I offered, but there was guidance, too. You could call me a guidance counselor for adults if you wanted, or . . . I know: a life coach.

Now, sugar, don’t laugh like that. It’s unseemly.

Not to mention unhinged and a mite bit deranged.

Shoo with yourself and let me finish.

The bar paid the taxes and I made the real money sitting at a table with a beer or if I was feeling frisky, a mango margarita. I told those who needed telling; I steered those who’d lost their compasses; I offered relief to blistering souls. I had a fine and undeniably smug time doing it, too. Mainly it takes only the right word, a tiny nudge, and a whole lot of patience. Life had taught me how to manage all that plus more, and my mama taught me to hone it to an occupational skill.

But this time I didn’t think words would be enough. I was going to have to give over a little more than that. I might even lose more money than I made on this job. But that was all right. Sometimes you had to be the bigger- picture person and give to get. Let no one say that at the end of the day I wasn’t about the giving.

“Trixa Iktomi?”

I looked up at my brand-new client and gave her a smile as wide as the Mississippi River and pleased as punch on top of that. Holding out my hand to her, I said, “That’s me. Sit down, honey. As amazing as your shoes are, they’re not made for the sidewalk out front. I’m surprised you didn’t break an ankle.”

It was true. The strip of concrete in front of my bar, Trixsta, was a health hazard of cracks, splits, and the crumbling of time. The expensive snakeskin shoes she was wearing had four-inch heels and were made for anything except actual walking. They truly were gorgeous, though, even if the snake missing its hide would likely sorely disagree on that particular fact.

I loved shoes my own self. Whether they were spike heels, ass-kicking boots, or bright red sneakers when running was necessary—and in my business it occasionally was. I had a closet full, not counting the black spike- heeled boots I was wearing today, the ones my best friend said made me look like Catwoman on a bad-hair day. Wasn’t that hateful for no reason? I didn’t have bad-hair days. I had unique-hair days.

Of course this same friend described his last date’s strawberry blond hair as “orange.” Men. You couldn’t breed taste or tact into them for love nor money.

I should’ve known better than to ask him about anything as important as shoes.

“They are indeed something, aren’t they?” She took her measure of the bar—one regular passed out in a corner booth, one silently flickering TV, wood floors that had stains older than the legal drinking age—and then took my hand before sitting down opposite me at the tiny table. She extended one long leg to contemplate the black- and-white beauty of one of the shoes I’d admired. “Revenge for the whole apple thing, I like to think.”

The serpent and the apple . . . oh, I was going to like her.

Her smile was as bright as mine and more amused. “The husband that bought them for me would think that was blasphemy. He was a devout Catholic with no sense of whimsy, but a kind man. Very, very kind.” The amusement faded. “Even after a year I miss him. I miss everything about him.”

It was all I could do not to wriggle like a child watching her first magic trick. She told the best lies—a dark slice of night sky wrapped in a dazzling blanket of moonshine glitter. She was my kind of people and I’d known it: I surely couldn’t help but like her. Mrs. Elizabeth Rose Burke-Lane, and despite her name it wasn’t Shakespeare that made her smell just as sweet.

She sat with perfectly manicured nails the color of pearls resting on the table, discreet diamonds and a ruby the size of a pigeon’s egg on her left hand. Because that’s the way it was. If you flashed a big diamond, you were common trash and might as well park your mansion in a trailer park. But with the colored stones, you could show off. Who doesn’t want to show off what they’ve earned—am I right? No matter how they’d earned it.

Rich brown hair lay long and far past her shoulders, so obediently straight that my own halo of black curls without a doubt made my head look as if it had exploded. I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind Elizabeth Rose’s explosion, either. Hers was different from mine. Mine was cosmetic—hers was internal. Genuine. It boiled inside her, searching for a way out, any way it could find. And if it couldn’t be free, then it would be as happy to pull something in. Something or someone to keep it company. No one, inside or out, wanted to be alone, did they?

It was in her large gray eyes, drinking you in as if you were the sun in her sky, her smooth, pale skin that defied the Vegas sun, the bird-in-flight eyebrows that were a Michelangelo arch of beauty. Her mouth shaded that perfect deep red that said expensive and secret instead of slutty. If I was to try that brand and shade, I would somehow manage to turn it into Bozo the Magic Clown crimson, but I still didn’t care. She was such a treat, such a perfectly hidden package of dishonesty and predatory energy wrapped in silk and shine, that nothing could ruin this day. I couldn’t wait to puzzle out what I could do for her.

People thought I hated liars. Wouldn’t I have to since I was so excellent at nosing them out? Wouldn’t it bother me to know that someone was lying to my face?

People thought . . . But the trouble is, people don’t think. Lying is an art. Poorly done, of course, that’s a shame and annoying as hell. But brilliantly done, bless, you just have to stand back and applaud the artist.

Elizabeth Rose was an artist. I’d heard the lies on the phone when she made her appointment with me, referred by a past client. Elizabeth Rose, with a husband one year in the grave, had said she needed my help. Not information, which was simple, but my help, which was something not many asked of me. I wanted to do right by her for that alone.

For asking, for being interesting, for chasing away the boredom, and for giving me a chance to watch an artist at work—for all that, I would definitely do my best to do right. If the money was good, that would just be a big, fat, juicy cherry on top.

Elizabeth I-am-certainly-not-boring Rose deserved my best.

“Elizabeth”—I didn’t do formal with any of my clients; that they could take or leave—“would you like a drink before you tell me about your situation? I can whip you up anything from a brandy to a mint julep, but unless you’re