Page 81 of Slow Burn

“Stop it!” she shouted, and slapped wildly, connected with skin. Robby pulled back. “Goddamn it, stop that!”

Robby slapped her back hard enough to bring tears to her eyes and numb the whole side of her face. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. In the next few seconds her bruises woke up yelling, and she put her hands over her face and doubled over, moaning.

Something smacked the floor next to her feet. She looked over the tips of her fingers and saw a newspaper. Her face looked ghostly and wasted, a beat-up hooker with dreamy-dead eyes. Her first thought was,God, he could’ve used a better mug shot than that.

Robby said, “They put Jim in the hospital looking for you. It’s just a matter of time before they find both of us, and God help us then.”

“J-Jim?” Velvet wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked up at Robby’s face. Robby had stopped crying, but the look in her eyes was just as bad. “Jim? Wh-what happened?”

“They broke his hands,” Robby whispered. “His hands.”

I’m sorrysounded so lame when she tried it that she covered up her mouth with Scotch-damp hands. Sorry. Sorry. Always so fucking sorry, sorry about Amy, sorry about life, sorry for poor little Velvet. She was sick of being sorry.

Then don’t keep fucking up, some part of her whispered. She gulped back tears and reached for the Scotch.

Robby moved it out of the way. Their eyes met.

“You have to get out of town,” Robby said, very clearly. “Tomorrow at the latest. Do you have any money?”

“At—” Velvet bit her lip, did it too hard because of the Scotch, and tasted blood. “Shit. Had a stash at my apartment, but it’s gone.”

“Anything?”

“Not much.” That was the truth. She’d had money at some hazy, earlier point, but there’d been cab fares and meals and a couple bottles of booze and things she didn’t remember that had seemed real important at the time. “Not enough.”

Robby looked around at her living room as if seeing it for the first time—the stereo, the CDs, the leather furniture.

“I can sell some things, but not tonight. How much do you need?”

“You—you’d sell your stuff forme?” Velvet pulled back, stunned and suspicious and strangely angry. “How come?”

Robby stood up and walked over to the stereo cabinet, opened it and touched the black components inside, little sad touches of her fingers.

“How come?” Velvet demanded again, leaning forward. “What the fuck makes you my social worker?”

Robby steadied herself with one hand on the cabinet and turned to look at her. Her eyes were blind with tears.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

It was gymnastics to stand up, ballet to keep from falling over. Velvet pulled herself as upright as the alcohol would let her and pushed her tangled hair back from her face.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m getting the hell out of here, and I won’t be coming back.” She took two steps and her foot went limp as a noodle under her. She pushed herself straight off the back of a chair and tried for an exit again.

“Take anything you want,” Robby said when she’d reached the hallway. Her voice sounded so strange, so faraway. “I’ll have to leave it all behind anyway.”

By the time she got to the bedroom door, Velvet was so angry she was sick. She limped to the closet and threw back the doors, yanked clothes off the hangers and tossed them on the floor, on the neon blue bed, anywhere they’d fall. Tans. Off-whites. Browns. Muted this and pastel that, little fucking girl clothes, Jesus, didn’t she have—

At the end of the closet, shoved behind a pair of threadbare blue jeans with bleach stains, hung a butter-soft leather jacket with long threadlike fringe. Velvet slid it off the hanger, and it collapsed like a pet in her hands, purring. There was a skirt, too, short, slit up the side. She laid them reverently on the bed, staring.

She touched the fringe the way Robby had touched the stereo components, gently, like someone petting a friend’s show dog. God, it was beautiful. She’d never seen anything so beautiful.

From the doorway, Robby said, “Take it. I don’t need it.”

When Velvet turned around, jacket clutched tight in her arms, Robby wasn’t there. She listened, but she didn’t hear any footsteps.

Another fingernail split as she fought the buttons of her flannel shirt, the tight zipper on the pants. She kicked the dirty clothes off to mix with the clean ones she’d thrown out of the closet, and slowly, so slowly, slid the skirt up over her hips.

The zipper sounded like a whisper. The fit was perfect. Velvet kept her black front-close bra and slid the jacket over it, silk lining cool on her skin and warming up, leather a thick soft cushion around her.

---