“Is this the first time you’ve done Tina?”
“No.” It was.
“Here, have another hit.”
“Oh no, I’m fine. This is plenty.”
I wasn’t feeling a whole lot yet. Well, obviously I was kind of nervous about what I would be feeling.
“So, you can afford Tina just by cutting hair?” I asked.
“Most of the time. I mean, I don’t do it, like, every day.” I had the feeling that might be a lie. “And if you PNP the other person brings some too. Sometimes they bring all of it.”
“Sorry,” I said.
Apparently, I wasn’t up to speed on my druggie etiquette. Except maybe I was. I had the feeling what he meant was that the pretty one didn’t have to bring anything and sometimes, possibly even most of the time, he was the pretty one.
He accepted my apology by pulling me into a kiss. My heart was starting to race. I was acutely aware of Denny’s hands on my arms, his lips on mine, the intense smell of his aftershave, his tongue…
I was beginning to see why people did this.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Of course, not everything that starts out well ends well. Especially when it comes to sex. To be honest, sex with Denny didn’t even middle well. The problem was probably Tina. The stronger the high got, the less I cared for it. It made me jittery and nervous. My heart felt like it was running a marathon the rest of my body had not been invited to, and I may have even hyperventilated at one point—which Denny mistook for enthusiasm, offering me more meth. I turned it down. Or tried to.
Afterwards, as we were pulling up our pants, I asked him, “You heard about Reverend Hessel, right? The sheriff thinks he was killed by someone trying to get money for drugs.”
I mean, that had been the whole point of asking him to meet me in the pole barn, right? Unfortunately, even in the pitch black I could tell he’d tensed up.
“I thought we were having fun.”
“We were. We are,” I lied.
“I don’t steal.”
“Okay. Well, I didn’t mean you personally. Do you know—”
“I don’t know people who steal.”
“Okay.”
“But—”
“But what?”
Now we might be getting somewhere.Unfortunately, he continued, “Well, there’s all sorts of vacation homes around here. They’re empty most of the time, even in the summer. If you need money, you just go in and take DVDs and CDs. Shit like that. People barely even notice.”
When he left—finally—I went inside and took three Oxys just to come down. While I waited for them to take effect, I tried to figure out if I’d learned anything at all. Not much, really. I mean, some guys like to get high and have sex. I knew that already. So what had Opal wanted me to figure out? And did she know something she wasn’t telling me?
I guess Denny could have been lying. He certainly seemed to know a lot about stealing for someone who didn’t steal. But then, what he did know suggested he was too smart to have broken into the church at all, since there were easier pickings elsewhere. And he knew it.
Plus, I got the definite impression that between cutting hair and hooking up with guys who’d give him Tina, Denny wasn’t having any trouble getting what he wanted. Which didn’t mean there weren’t other tweakers who weren’t getting what they wanted and might not be smart enough—
The next morning, I had a wicked headache and the feeling the world was likely to end before lunch. All I really wanted to do was take a few more Oxy and spend the day locked in my room. But what I wanted even more than that was to go home to California and that meant I needed the money I’d been promised. I just had to figure out a way to get it.
I’d finally gotten around to calling and scheduling a new physical therapist who was scheduled at eleven. If I left around ten and planned to be back by one, I’d have three hours which would not be leaving Nana Cole alone for too long. At quarter toten, I slipped out of the house. As soon as I got into the Escalade, I called Opal.
“Meet me at Cuppa Mud at ten-thirty. I want to show you my haircut.” Two can play the cryptic game.
