“Where are you?” she says.
“Corner of Landmark and Trace. Heading north on Landmark, right side of the street. Make it fast!”
“Give me two minutes.”
I hang up, check the street below me, and notice several structures have been decimated.
But why?
I mean, why here? Why now? Nothing in the immediate area remotely resembles a terrorist target.
I’d love to investigate the scene, try to work it out, but within minutes the cops will be swarming the area, and I need to be long gone by then. Whatever role the driver of the white van played in all this, I doubt he’s planning to hang around to deal with me. I carefully work my way down the back side of the building, thankful the blast hasn’t done too much damage.
A couple minutes later I’m in the passenger side of Callie’s black Mercedes CL65 AMG.
“Sweet car,” I say.
“You’re not bleeding, right?” she says.
“Not that I know of.”
She turns right, makes the block, begins heading back to her place. Says, “If I knew you were this filthy, I’d have stolen a car.”
“Sorry. I was lying on something nasty just now.”
“You really need to upgrade your taste in women.”
“I was talking about a nasty rooftop.”
“Still.”
I sigh. “There was a woman, though.”
“Of course there was,” Callie says. Then adds, “What happened to her?”
“You know how some people in Vegas lose their heads, and some lose their asses?”
“Yeah?”
“She lost both.”
3.
I’m in Callie’s penthouse condo now. The lovely Gwen has changed her hair to platinum blond, and it’s working for her. She sees me and races toward me, as if she’s about to give me a big hug. But as she gets close, she stops short and wrinkles her nose.
“You smell,” she says.
“I know.” To Callie I say, “Can I shower in your guest bedroom?”
“Of course,” she says.
I enter the guest bedroom and pause to look at a group of items lined up on the dresser.
“What’s all this?” I call to Callie.
“Oops,” she says from the living room. Then adds, “When you called, Gwen and I were about to have a sex marathon. We set some things out we planned to use.”
“Really?” I say.
She and Gwen enter the room.
The three of us look at the items on the dresser. There’s a scarf, a vibrator, lipstick, a deck of cards, a condom, three bullets, and a bird cage.
Callie gives Gwen a look I can’t decipher.
Gwen shrugs.
I study the items another minute, then say. “It makes sense.”
Callie says, “It does?”
“Except for one item,” I say.
Callie laughs. “The birdcage?”
“Nope.”
She looks surprised. “No? Then what?”
“The condom.”
Callie frowns at Gwen, then says, “But you understand the birdcage.”
“I do.”
“And the bullets?” she says.
“What about them?”
“They make sense to you?”
“Of course.”
“But not the condom.”
“Not the condom.”
She shrugs, looks at Gwen again. Says, “He doesn’t understand the condom.”
Gwen says, “Go figure.”
I look at the items again.
“Ah!” I say.
“Ah?”
“The condom goes on the vibrator!”
They look at each other.
“Go take your shower,” Callie says.
4.
Two Weeks Earlier… Maybe Taylor.
Maybe Taylor crosses the street and enters the park without attracting attention. No surprise there, she rarely attracts attention, though she’s above average cute. Her body has slimmed down this year, thanks to her strict diet and four-hour-a-day exercise regimen. Still, if she’s being honest-and she usually is-a couple pounds of teenage belly fat continues to cling to her five-five frame as tenaciously as puke on a drunk’s beard.
Maybe entered the world a natural blond, but age has darkened her hair to the point that now, at age twenty, it matches mission brown on the wood stain color chart at Harvey’s Hardware, Jacksonville, Florida.
Maybe wants to be prettier, but lacks the angular face and high cheekbones common to classic beauties. Her eyes are nice, she always gets compliments on those. People seem to be drawn to blue-eyed girls, even when there’s nothing else particularly special about them. Maybe’s breasts would be picture perfect…if they didn’t fan out in opposite directions. But they do, and it embarrasses her when boys do a double-take, like they weren’t expecting her nipples to be practically under her arm pits. No one looks better in a bra than Maybe. But when the bra comes off, the breasts fly wide right and left, like a field goal kicker with the yips.
Like the rest of Maybe’s physical package, things could be much worse. A flat-chest, for example, would be ten times worse. Still, there’s no single feature she’s exceptionally proud of.
Wait…
Her ass is nice.
She wouldn’t change her ass. Not that she goes out of her way to stare at it, but it must be pretty special, or the boys who’ve seen it wouldn’t make such a fuss. Not that she’s shown it to many boys.
She hasn’t.
Anyway, it’s not Maybe’s ass that’s caused her problems. It’s the other private place. And that part has had a huge effect on her. How huge? It’s basically turned her into a mental patient.
Maybe walks to the area of the park where giant rocks protrude from a hill, and climbs to a spot from which she can see all around her. When she’s confident no one can hear her conversation, she presses a button on her phone. When the man answers, she says, “Hi Daddy, it’s Maybe.”
