“I doubt his girlfriend would keep him around for long if that was the problem,” Karen said.
“Doesn't matter. Now whenever I see any guy over forty-five with a sports car I always think, 'Sorry about your thing.' Driving a hot car isn't worth it if everyone's laughing at you behind your back.”
“Would be worth it to me,” Arthur said as he chopped celery. “Hell, I'd have a personalized license plate with'Flaccid' on it, if I could have me a Jag.”
Karen laughed and stole a cherry tomato from Arthur's salad. “You’re probably right, Terri. The new car is overcompensation for other areas. Don’t you think?” Karen asked Will.
“I think this is a good conversation to steer clear of.”
“Smart man,” Arthur said. “Good luck finding your stripper. If worse comes to worst, Karen, Cait can always move in with us till you get out of prison.”
“You’re a peach, Arthur,” Karen said. She picked up her purse. “But my backup plan is actually to flee to an obscure island in the South Pacific if necessary.”
Pam Way clutched her books tight to her chest and trudged across campus. She knew she had flunked that test. She didn't get Chemistry and never would. But still, seeing a 45 in red ink across her Scantron was humiliating.
What was she going to do? She was flunking out already and it was only the middle of October. She wanted to hide under her bed. She wanted to cry on someone's shoulder. She wanted to go home.
She fought back tears as she made her way across the quad. To top off everything, her shoelace broke and now she had to hobble all the way back to her room, change shoes, grab something for lunch, and make it back to English class in forty-five minutes.
Clarissa, a girl from her Chemistry class who lived on the floor above her, met her at the door on her way in.
“That was brutal, huh? I totally tanked.”
“Me too,” Pam said. Clarissa was cool. Already she'd made lots of friends and was trying out for the basketball pom squad. Pam had only worked up the nerve to take a part in the parent's weekend presentation the dorm was putting on this weekend, and she considered that much a major triumph.
“I have to decompress. A bunch of us are going to the Pour House for lunch and a beer. You wanna come with?” Clarissa's blonde curls bounced as she walked.
Pam was so stunned to be invited that she simply stared for a second. She couldn't possibly make it back in time for English if she went with them. And she wasn’t old enough to drink yet. A lot of the kids had fake ID’s that allowed them to get beer, but she certainly didn’t. Even if she did, she’d never have the guts to use it.
She frowned. “I have a class at 1:50.”
“So? They don't expect you to actually go to all the classes, you know.” Clarissa laughed.
Pam felt like a dork. Everyone skipped class. Everyone except the nerds who followed every rule and guideline by the book. Like her.
And look where it was getting her. She was totally toeing the line and she was still flunking out. How much more fun would it be to join a big group for lunch and forget about things for a while? To have the college experience that everyone talked about?
“Come on. Come with us and let your hair down for a while. It'll do you good.”
How many times had her mom told her she hoped she'd have fun and make lots of friends, really enjoy college life? She was constantly telling Pam to relax and have fun with her life, that she took things too seriously.
She clenched her jaw. Fine, Mom. You want me to have fun, I'm going to have fun. Let me throw my life and education and future away. Big deal. Who even cares, anyway?
“I have to change my shoes,” she told Clarissa.
“Cool. I'll meet you back here in ten.”
Pam followed Clarissa into the Pour House, so nervous she didn't know what to do. Already sitting at a table she saw two of the hottest football players on their team, three cheerleaders, and the student body president. It was as if she'd gone straight from the dungeon of college loserdom to the upper echelons of high society. The altitude change left her a little dizzy.
“Hey, there's Chad Morgan,” Clarissa said under her breath, waving to the group at the table. “Have you seen him in his football uniform? Yummy.”
She had seen him in his uniform. Well, a picture of him, anyway. In the school paper, looking like some kind of warrior, tough and reckless and strong.
He was laughing now, his hair shaggy and sexy and his teeth brilliantly white. Her knees went a little weak.
“Look, the chair next to him is empty. Go sit by him.”
“Oh my God.” Pam forgot about acting cool. “I couldn't possibly. You sit by him.”
“I'm actually going after the guy on the end. He plays guitar. Go sit by Chad. You are totally his type. He'll love you.”
Pam walked like a robot over to the noisy table, but for the life of her she couldn't bring herself to sit beside Chad Morgan. He would take one look at her and either sneer or die laughing.
“Hey,” Clarissa said as she dropped her purse beside the chair at the end. “This is Pam. We're here mourning the 4-point average we will never see in Chemistry. Sit down, Pam.”
To her amazement, Chad scooted out the chair beside him. “Have seat. I'll buy you a beer and commiserate with you.”
“Thanks.” She remembered to smile as she dropped into her seat. “But it's no big deal, really. I'm failing almost everything else, too.”
He laughed. God, he had a beautiful laugh. She wanted to stare at him, to take in the golden highlights of his hair, the sharp cheekbones and full lips. At the same time, he was so brilliantly beautiful it hurt to look at him.
So she studied the menu in front of her almost as hard as she'd studied for her chemistry test. She smiled vaguely and nodded as if she was listening to what was going on, but her mind couldn't seem to get past the fact that she was there, that Chad Morgan was sitting beside her. It was completely an out-of-body experience. She wished Cait were here so she could see.
The waitress came around and Pam ordered a turkey sandwich and a Diet Coke. She heard Chad order a beer, but she didn't realize it was really for her until the waitress came back, and he slid it over to her. “You're a freshman, right?” He rested his elbows on the table and focused on her, smiling that beautiful smile like she was the only other one there. “I ordered for you, in case you didn't have an ID.”
“Thanks,” she said, smiling at him. Now what the hell was she going to do? She couldn't drink it. She hated beer. She'd tried it once at a party a year ago, and it tasted like something that had been left in a tight bottle in the sun too long. But he had been nice to buy the beer for her, and it would be rude to refuse it.
She darted a look around the room, certain that if she so much as touched the beer, undercover cops would pounce on her and drag her off in handcuffs.
“It's cool,” Chad said softly. She looked up into his dreamy blue eyes, the way they crinkled at the edges when he smiled. “Nobody cares, I promise. We do it all the time. As long as the person who orders is legal. And I am.”
Of course he was. He was a senior. She, on the other hand, was a twelve-year-old.
She couldn't seem to take her eyes from his as she lifted the huge glass of beer to her lips. It wasn't even that bad. In fact, she found that if she opened her throat up and swallowed a lot at once, she almost immediately felt relaxed.
Chad watched her, smiling, and grinned when she did. “See,” he said. “Flunking's not such a big deal, is it?”
She realized it wasn't. Sure, she'd be happier if she could say she was acing every class. But so what?
“Hardly fatal,” she said.
“Right. Life goes on.”
“Exactly.” She raised her glass in a mock toast. “As long as there is beer, life will go on.”
He laughed and raised his own glass, chugging back half of it. “As long as there is beer, everything will be okay.”
Pam lifted her glass, sloshing a little ont
o the table. “Long live beer!”
“Oh yeah, that’s Cat.”
“Cat? The guy at the station said her name was Kitty.”
“Whatever. That’s her. Her mom was an old ho that worked over there, remember, on Avenue L and…” Bear twisted his beard/braid and trailed off. “Nah, you prob’ly don’t remember that. Anyway, that’s her. She’s a stripper, I know that much.”
“I guess the bachelor party was just a little freelance work,” Karen suggested.
“Do you happen to know where she lives?”
“Last I heard she was shacked up with that old boy that drives the brown El Camino. Except he got sent to the pen about six or eight months ago. She might still be staying at his place, though. An old white L-shaped house on Thirteenth? Or maybe it was Fifteenth? I get those two mixed up. Whichever one that runs behind Taco Joe’s.”
Will nodded as if he were following it all. Karen found herself, once again, mesmerized by the sheer size and bizarreness of Bear and had trouble keeping up with what was being said.
A white L-shaped house on Thirteenth wasn't difficult to find although it could hardly be called white anymore, showing more gray clapboard than chipping white paint. An old El Camino with three wheels sat in the yard, along with a metal chair with the back missing and a bucket with a handle.
Music blared from the house when they got out of the car. Karen stood behind Will, fighting the urge not to clutch the back of his shirt as he walked up the concrete porch and rapped on the door. She did not want to go in that house. She was almost certain there were crazy people with guns in there. Crazy people with guns who would love to shoot a woman with a Dolce and Gabbana handbag and Victorious Woman Flawless Perfection pores.
No one answered, and Will opened the screen door.
Karen grabbed the back of his shirt. “Wait! You can't just go in someone's house.”
“I knocked first.”
“But –”But he was already gone. And she certainly wasn't going to stand around out here on the front porch by herself. Someone would probably come by and try to sell her drugs.
The inside of the house was dark, and the music was deafening. A man lay asleep on the couch, a thirty pack of beer at his feet.
Karen sniffed. It smelled funky in there.
“How can he sleep through this?” Karen asked, but her words were swallowed up by the music.
Will looked around, then reached to turn down the stereo. He tapped the sleeping guy on the knee, then shook it hard.
After Will shook him so hard he almost slid off the couch, the man opened his eyes. He didn't seem surprised at all to see two strangers standing before him.
He sat up and blinked. Karen saw then that he only had one hand. The other arm had been cut off halfway down his forearm.
Will smiled at him and held his palms out to show he meant no harm. “We're looking for Kitty. Is she here?”
The man gestured toward the back of the house.
“Okay if I go back?” Will took a step toward a hallway, his eyebrows raised.
The man nodded and smiled. Then he closed his eyes and sank back onto the couch.
Will motioned for Karen to follow him. The place had small rooms, water spots that ran from the ceiling down the walls. There was junk everywhere. Clothes on the floor, dishes on furniture, unmade beds and junk strewn so that Karen gave up trying to pick her way gingerly through the quagmire and tromped after Will.
Will poked his head into the bathroom. “Look,” he said softly to Karen. “Someone just flushed. I’ll bet whoever it was thought we were cops and flushed the evidence.”
Karen nodded like she faced people who ran from the law on a daily basis. She wrinkled her nose and followed Will further down the hallway. One more bedroom led to what looked like a laundry room. There was no washer or dryer there, just more piles of junk. Karen stepped over a book sporting a large closeup of female genitalia on the cover.
Well…this was certainly more interesting than making muffins for the Rockridge Neighborhood Association fundraiser.
The back door stood open to a screen door, with the bottom half of the screen gone. Will stepped across cracked linoleum to look out at the back yard. He muttered a very rude word. “I think she ran.”
Karen stepped beside him and leaned out the door. The back gate swung on one hinge. “Are we going after her?”
Will looked down at her open-toed sandals. “Why don't we go back to the car and circle around?”
Karen looked at the back gate, already feeling their chance at catching the girl slipping away. Going back to the car, circling around to the alley, it all seemed like too much wasted time.
She pushed through the screen, thinking about the look on Terri’s face just half and hour ago. She had to find the girl if for no other reason than to prove she wasn’t off her rocker…all prison considerations aside. “You go get the car. I'm going after her.”
She ran down the back steps and through the yard, hearing Will pound after her. Ugh. Her heels sunk into the soft mud as she ran. Yuck.
The yard was bad, but the alley was worse. Her right sandal came off within three yards, and the left one slipped down until it was just an appendage flapping along beside her foot. She started to turn around and go back. But then she got a glimpse of blonde ducking down behind an abandoned car.
“There she is!” she screamed. “Get her.”
She ran with all her might, but Will ran faster. She saw flashes of denim and pumping arms as he ran past her and down the alley.
Thank God. She slowed her steps a little. He was ahead of her, she could quit pretending to be in shape. She trotted after him, stopping for a second to tear off the sad remnant of what was once a very cute pair of sandals. She left it in the mud and tried to catch up to Will.
She took off down the sidewalk, stepped on a rock that felt like a dagger in the bottom of her foot, and hopped on one foot, chanting, “Ouch, ouch, ouch” until she made it to the corner.
Will stood in the middle of the street, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun, his lips thin.
“I lost her.”
“You got closer than I did.” She peered down the street. “Where did she go?”
“There was a guy driving by in a pickup. She yelled at him and he stopped. He took off with her.”
“Man.” She lifted her foot and looked at the bottom. It was brown and nasty. She decided she really didn't want to look at that any more. “Well, we tried. What's next?”
“Let's go back and talk to the guy on the couch.”
But the guy on the couch wasn't talking. He was conscious only in the loosest sense of the word.
Will pulled up a sagging ottoman and shook the guy's knee again. The guy finally roused himself and smiled at Will with a smile that said everything was good in his little world.
“We're looking for Kitty.”
The guy pointed back the way they'd come.
Will shook his head. “She's gone. Do you know where she hangs out?”
The guy just smiled and shook his head. He shrugged.
“Habla Englis?” Will said.
More smiles and head shaking.
Will rattled off something in Spanish that Karen couldn't decipher. The guy nodded and fired something back. The two went on in that fashion while Karen looked idly around the room, wondering if those little pellets she saw in the corner were what she thought they were.
Will handed the guy a business card, then stood. “Okay, let’s go.”
Karen waited till they were outside to ask where they were going. But Will wasn’t listening
“Son of a bitch.” He stopped dead on the front porch.
Karen stepped around him to see what he was upset about. She didn't see anything, though. Just a dirt driveway littered with junk. And then she realized.
“Umm…didn't we have a car?”
Will was too busy swearing and looking like he was ready to punch something to answer.
Karen sighed a
nd reached for her purse. Which, of course, she'd left in the car. “Damn.”
Will shook his head. “I'll bet that witch doubled back here and stole my car.”
“Should we call the police?”
Will shrugged. “I guess so. For what good it will do.”
Karen would have offered the use of her phone, except Kitty was probably using it to call her drug dealer right at that moment. Will took his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and flipped it open. “I wonder if there's a department of pointless reports.” He dialed 911.
While he talked Karen walked to the sidewalk and looked down the street to see if she could see his car. As if it might have just rolled a little way down the block. She didn't see the car, of course. She saw an old woman in a housedress sweeping her porch. The woman pointed her finger at Karen and told her to turn her ugly face around before she came over there and slapped the ugly off it for her. Karen went back to stand beside Will until the police came.
She thought they just might be in an episode of Punk’d when the patrol car pulled up, driven by the chicken-chested officer who'd led Bjorn on a leash yesterday.
Will just sighed, looking as if he expected nothing else.
The cop spoke into the radio handset clipped to his shoulder and opened the car door. “Well,” he said, looking grim. “This looks familiar.”
“My car was stolen,” Will said, his voice flat. “I want to make a report.”
The officer nodded. “Sure, we can do that. No problem. What are you doing over here?”
Will blinked at him, remaining silent.
Another officer pulled up then, and Chicken Chest went out to speak to him.
“Do they take classes in swaggering at the police academy?” Karen asked.
Will turned to her. “Listen, if they even look for the car I'll be surprised. But I have to have a report to file for the insurance. I know that little smartass is going to do everything he can to bait us. Just keep quiet, I'll state the facts, we'll get the report and get out of here. Do you understand?”
Karen frowned. What was she, stupid? “Of course I understand. I can keep my mouth shut.”
Her Something Impetuous Page 13
