“Might, yeah.” The way she said it, so matter-of-fact, had me worried all over again.
“Shower first,” she said, stripping down to panties as soon as we got in the room.
But Jeri had me trained, so I didn’t feel too guilty when I got a good look at her.
Holiday turned at the doorway to the bathroom. For an instant I saw her and Jeri riding bicycles like that, side by side. According to Jeri, even panties were optional. Either way, they would cause a riot.
“We could save water,” Holiday said.
“How’s that?”
“Showering together, of course.”
“Hey, yeah—speaking of things that aren’t going to happen.”
She looked at me for a moment. “Your loss.” She disappeared. Seconds later water started drumming. I sat on a chair and opened my book. I believe it’s a sign of maturity that I got to page eight and was actually following the story by the time she came out rubbing her hair with a towel.
“Your turn,” she said. “Coward.”
I set the novel down. Vapor issued from the bathroom. I looked inside. The mirror was fogged over. I went in and started to shut the door when Holiday stuck her head inside. “You’re gonna shower with your clothes on? How interesting. Mind if I watch?”
“If I want to shower fully dressed, I will. And, no, you can’t.” I pushed her head out and eased the door shut on girlish laughter.
In recent months, showering had become an iffy undertaking. Not long ago—post IRS—I was showering when a gorgeous dance instructor named Kayla popped in with me and things got sudsy and almost got out of hand. Many people—none of them prudes—would say things got out of hand because nothing got out of hand. Now I was ready to repel any and all boarders should it become necessary, which it didn’t, so I took a leisurely shower with the bathroom door locked and got clean.
I came out in pants and a shirt. Holiday was at the table in jeans and that T-shirt with the cryptic equation on it, feet bare, nose in a textbook, an industrial-size calculator nearby, notebook, pens, and a nerdish look of concentration on her face. I didn’t want to sit at the table and disturb her, so I set up pillows and stretched out on a bed, turned on a bedside light, and went back to my novel.
Two hours later I was on page ninety-one and she hadn’t gotten up, hadn’t produced a sound other than rustles of turning pages and little sighs of frustration or delight from time to time, all of which deeply impressed me and gave me new insights into this girl.
All that sitting around finally got to me. The drive to Bend had been a long one. I felt stiff. I wanted to get out, move around, walk somewhere, so I got up, put on shoes, and headed for the door.
“Goin’ out,” I said.
“See you,” she said, an automatic response almost unrelated to my leaving.
That was how she would be in a library. Focused, able to shut out distractions. Almost a 4.0 student. A one-in-a-million girl with that brain and that body. A living reminder to the rest of the world that life isn’t fair, that luck plays a part, that God throws darts and chuckles at the results.
I walked a mile and a half down the main drag, came back on the other side of the street, and . . . there was a FedEx drop box at a temporary parking spot at the curb, a white steel box with the distinctive FedEx purple and orange lettering on it.
I stopped and stared at it.
Sonofagun.
If I was going to ship a dishonest politician’s hand to Mortimer Angel, I would stuff it in a box just like that. I might come walking down the sidewalk, whip the collection box open using gloves, drop the package in, keep on going. Two seconds, max. And I would do it at midnight. When a guy is a presidential candidate, all kinds of FBI scrutiny would rain down on the place from which his senatorial body part was shipped. That scrutiny might not zero in as successfully on a box like this as it would at the shipping facility on Jamison Street.
I checked the box under the streetlight. Pickup was at 7:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., and 7:00 p.m. I read the instructions. For payment, a FedEx account was needed, or a major credit card number on the shipping label. Good to know.
I’d been gone for over an hour by the time I got back. Sarah looked as if she hadn’t moved an inch, except that she was punching numbers into her calculator.
I sat on the other chair at the table and read my novel, best one I’d read all year. Sarah looked at the calculator, wrote down some numbers, then punched a few more buttons. I would never, ever trust a hooker again, no matter how beautiful. The girl might be a nuclear physicist out on the town, letting her hair down. Her IQ might be thirty points higher than mine. I’d thought hookers were fun, if you didn’t take them too seriously. Sarah might think johns were fun, if she didn’t take them too seriously, which she probably wouldn’t find hard to do.
She called it quits a few minutes before midnight. Tossed her pen on the table and stood up, stretched her back and said, “Holy crud, it’s late.”
“Yup. I haven’t seen anyone concentrate like that since Einstein said, ‘Well, Martha, it’s either MC-squared or MC-cubed and I can’t figure out which one. Maybe booze will help.’”
“He never said anything like that.” Sarah took off her T-shirt and tossed it in my lap.
“Sure he did. Guy got confused like all the rest of us.”
“Are you confused?” She rubbed her breasts for a moment, a job I would’ve enjoyed, but I am a rock, I am an island, then she went into the bathroom and
