Page 56 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

“What?” I ask.

“The cookies! I have to know. You have to tell me.”

“What about the cookies?” I tease.

“Come on! What was so offensive about them?”

I give her a confused look, trying not to smile.

“It looked to me like that guy was about to kill somebody over cookies. And you’re all like, yeah, those cookies.”

“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat.”

“Oh, come on.” She grabs my shirt and tugs on it playfully. “You have to tell me!”

I roll my eyes, enjoying her curiosity in spite of myself, drinking in the way the pale blue dress kisses her curves. “It’s an old Albanian superstition. Cookies in the shape of a circle are bad luck during somber or dangerous occasions. You would never serve them during funerals, for example, or the day a person dies, or when you’re marching into a dangerous battle.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“The idea behind it is that the circle symbolizes a cycle or repetition.”

“Wow.” She nods. “That’s why he mentioned Good Friday being soon. The death of Jesus.”

“Exactly.”

She studies my face. “Doyouthink they’re bad luck?”

“I think if you think something’s bad luck, then it will be.”

Her gaze sharpens. “So when you were all, ‘Circle cookies, what the fuck!’ at the table, you were playing along with your guys?”

“That was more for you,” I say.

“Oh my God!” She gives me a playful push.

I laugh, chest light and free, like something in me unwound. And this is when I know that things have gone far enough. “We’re done.”

She blinks, studying my face.

“For the night.” I drag her back out. The guys are talking sports again. It wasn’t even an hour that we were in the bathroom, but it seemed like longer. Like we went on a journey in there.

She grabs her coat. I tell her to text her address to the dry cleaners, and they’ll send it.

She stills, clutching her purse. She doesn’t want to reveal her address, it seems, even for the dry cleaner to send her dress. “I’ll pick it up later,” she says. “Polkov, right? I’ll google them.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I say.

“What? Why can’t I pick it up?” She turns to me with a big frown. “Is Polkov Dry Cleaners a secret, criminal dry cleaner? Are they located next to the criminal Costco?”

“I brought you here. All that happens is my responsibility—mine and mine alone.”

“Oh, I should’ve known; it’s aminething. The standard-issue criminal mindset. Mine.”

I step in close to her. “You got a problem with it?”

“No, but Johnny Law does.”

“Johnny Law.Who says that?”

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