Page 84 of Slow Burn

“How much?”

“One thousand.”

She’d intended it as a starting point, the rock bottom price being five hundred, but he only said, “Fine,” which made her feel a little nervous, but not enough to pass up a thousand bucks. One last fling in Dallas. Might as well make it a big one.

“Where do I go?” she asked. He fumbled the telephone and dropped it. She sighed and tapped her pencil on a pad of paper. “Yo, buddy, you there? Where?”

“Meet me in the street behind the Spaghetti Warehouse downtown. You know where it is? Across from the Alley?”

“I know where it is. Look, the weather’s pretty—”

“I’ll pay extra,” he cut in. She wrote downalley spaghetti $.“I’ll send you something special to wear.”

“I have my own stuff.”

“But these clothes are very special.” His voice cranked a step or two higher on the tension scale. “Where can I send them?”

“Whatever. Send them to 2212 Ross. Leave them hanging in the lobby.” That was the building across the street. She’d watch until the delivery guy was gone before going over. “When do you want me there?”

“At three.”

“Three?” Velvet checked the clock over Robby’s blood red sink. “Jesus, it’s already one-thirty.”

“The clothes will be there in thirty minutes, I promise.” Mr. Parriott giggled like a breathless teen-aged girl. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Me too,” she breathed, and poured herself another slug of Scotch. “I can’t wait to see you.” She hung up while he was still giggling, stared at the phone, and said, “Jesus, what a prick.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

She whirled around, forgetting the fuck-me pumps and her general lack of balance, and almost pitched face forward to Robby’s Purina tile floor. Robby—pale and narrow-eyed and sporting a bruise like a rose tattoo on her chin—grabbed her arm and got her steady before reaching past her for the Scotch bottle.

“Do what?” Velvet asked innocently. “Hey, I was using that!”

“Too bad.” Robby took a glass from a cabinet and poured herself a tall drink. She tossed it back in two gulps, hardly pausing to make a face. “Mary Mother, that stuff’s awful, where’d you get it? Somebody’s bathtub?”

“All that Irish crap rotted your taste buds.”

Robby held the bottle out to her and said, “You don’t have to meet him. I told you, I’ll give you the money as soon as I can sell a few things.”

There were about seven drops of liquor left; Velvet tipped the bottle and got rid of them. Before she could practice her three-pointer skill, Robby grabbed the bottle and dumped it carefully in the trash can. She rinsed out the two glasses and put them in the dish-washer.

“If I’d wanted your money, I would have taken your shit while you were gone,” Velvet said, and straightened the hang of her black leather jacket. “Snazzy. So, you get this as a gift or what?”

“A friend talked me into it. God knows I would never wear it, so you might as well. You’re going to meet this man at three? No matter what I say?” Robby looked sick in the white fluorescent light, green around the eyes.

“Yep. You might find this hard to believe, but I don’t want to fuck you up any more than I already have. Look, I know all this is my fault—if I’d kept my mouth shut the way everybody wanted, none of this would have happened, Jim wouldn’t have got beaten up, people would still be—anyway, the best thing I can do is get the hell out of here, now, to-night. I spend the night with Mr. Prick and pick up enough cash to travel, and tomorrow I see a new sky-line. It’s no big deal. I did it before.”

More than once, new towns and new Mings and bruises that never quite healed. But with a little money in her pocket—

Who was she kidding? A little money in her pocket would be gone in a week, and she’d be moaning in the backseat of a car, only the cars would get cheaper and the guys would get meaner, and pretty soon—

What was it the fake Agent James had said?Ten buck a fuck whore?

Robby was mopping up little smears on the countertop with a neatly folded rag. She looked ready to drop.

“It’s the only way they won’t come after you,” Velvet finished, and walked over to watch out the window for somebody bringing clothes to the building across the street.

Chapter Thirty-six

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