“Not bad. By quiet, I meant no problems.”
“Chicho know you’re gone?”
She shrugged her shoulders and turned up her palms. “I don’t know. I doubt he’d care this time of night. The johns are all gone except for the all-nighters, and they never cause trouble. Any luck with whatever you’re working on?”
I mimicked her don’t-know gesture.
“You know, you never told me what you were after in all this.”
“That’s because it keeps changing.”
“What’s the latest?”
“I’d settle for catching the bastard who did this to me.” I waved my right arm. “That, and stopping Mota.”
“What about expanding your protection business?”
“That can wait.” Despite my promise to Maggie, I couldn’t bring myself to say I was giving it up. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure that was a promise I could keep. “What do you know about the doctor?”
“No more than you already know.”
“Keep away from him.”
“Her.”
I shook my head. “She’s a he.”
“Really?”
“Stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“He works with Mota.”
“On what?”
“No idea, but don’t trust him with your sister.”
“Where else am I supposed to get the work she needs?”
“I’m sure the johns love her just the way she is.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, absent sincerity. She unstrapped her shoes and kicked them off. “Can I use your shower?”
“Help yourself.”
She stood and disappeared into the bathroom. A knob squeaked and pipes clanked somewhere under the floor before I heard the sound of sputtering, drizzling water.
I didn’t want her getting any ideas when she came out. I picked up my pants, and after thinking on it a bit, decided to try the lying-down method of pulling them on. A minute’s labor proved the method promising.
I brought the phone back to Deluski, woke him up to tell him we were leaving in an hour.
Back in my room, I reached for my shirt when Maria came from the bathroom, towel wrapped around her, wet hair slicked back, her cheeks stripped of rouge, her lips bare. She crinkled up her brows in disapproval, like she was upset I’d dressed. “You have a comb?”
I shook my head no as I pulled on my shirt. I sat on the bed and started on the buttons. Why so many?
She took a seat at the end of the bed and combed her hair with forked fingers. Free of her high hair and her makeup mask, she looked like a different person, loud features turned plain, muted. I put my eyes on my buttons.
“You were married for a long time, weren’t you?”
I gave a slight nod, a bare-minimum response for a subject I didn’t want to discuss.
“Did you love her?”
I looked at Maria. She’d stopped combing. With no makeup to cover it, a faint mark from one of my knuckles still showed on her cheek.
“It was complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“It just was.”
“Knowing how it ended, if you could, would you trade away your time together?”
I didn’t know. I suspected I never would.
“Would you?”
A larger truth came to mind. “If I could, I’d trade my whole life away.”
She combed her hair again, her fingers catching on a knot. She worked at it with two hands until she pulled it free. “You’re a strange man.” She held her hand over the floor and shook a couple strands off her fingers. “Never heard of anybody taking over a group of brothels, but not going for freebies.”
I went back to the buttons. Stupid things were tricky as hell.
“Christ, will you let me do that?”
“I got it.”
She tugged on my sleeve. “Get over here.”
I stood and stepped in front of her, smelled shampoo and hints of perfume trapped in her hair.
“You didn’t line ’em up right. It’s all out of whack.” She undid the misaligned button. And another one. She reached inside my shirt, her hand warm against my chest.
“You don’t want me,” I whispered. “I’m damaged.”
She slid her hand down my stomach, tingles drifting south.
“I’m damaged,” I repeated. “Broken.”
She touched my arm. “It’s okay. I’m damaged too.” She freed the towel, terry cloth falling down to her waist. Her hands were back on my chest, wandering downward, as were my eyes.
Now I understood why she’d quit hooking. Why she had to quit hooking. I wanted my sunglasses. I needed a shield, needed something to dim this painful reality.
She took my good hand, put it on her right breast. “You can’t tell when you can’t see.” She waited for me to say something, her fear-filled eyes tottering at the edge of a cliff.
I answered with my hand, fingers touching, squeezing, caressing, as if her breasts weren’t scarred. As if she hadn’t let some cheap, back-alley plastic surgeon hack her up. I touched them with my lips.
As if they were normal.
I touched with my half-arm.
As if I had a hand.
A clique of girls came into the library, voices at volumes only teens could achieve. Plaid skirts, SJD Academy embroidered on matching white blouses. Upon spotting the librarian’s stern stare, they silenced themselves, faces contorted with suppressed laughter. They dropped books on the counter and busted back out the door, laughter like shattering glass. Maggie watched them go, a quirky smile on her face.
“Remind you of your school days?” I asked.
“The early days.”
“Before your father died?”
She nodded, eyes sobering, the smile unquirking. “Find anything?”
“Not yet.” I went back to the holo-pics, jumping one-by-one, holo after holo, Franz Samusaka’s former schoolmates flashing by. Zits and chin fuzz. Slicked-back hairdos and caterpillar mustaches. Two more years of senior photos to go and so far, no sign of Lizard-man.
“Thanks for coming,” I said.
She responded with silence, its barren emptiness ballooning in my chest. I couldn’t do anything right. I said what needed to be said anyway. “Your help means a lot to me.”
She didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, she pretended to be interested in checking her earrings, like she thought they could’ve fallen out since we’d been sitting here.
I groped for something to say, desperate to find something that could penetrate the wall standing between us. “Where’s Josephs?”
She drummed the table with her fingers. “Sleeping in. He said he’d meet up with us later.”
“Does he know we’re going to Yepala later?”
“I thought we could surprise him.”
