Page 82 of The New Year's Party
Well, it’s not like I was sure of anything. It was just amusing, if shehaddone it, to let her know I was a tiny bit onto her. Of course, if she felt I was onto her for real... would she murder me next?
“You have nothing to worry about from me,” I add. Might as well cover my ass. “My interest in justice is minimal, to say the least. My interest is purely intellectual. Hey—did you ever readEncyclopedia Brownas a kid?”
“Ted,” says Allie, pursing her lips. “Half the time, I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Fair, fair. In that case, what’s next for you and Phelps? My guess is, you won’t be answering his texts?” I blow out a stream of smoke and address the sky. “If he’s persistent, you might eventually tell him you met someone new. Tactfully. One of your younger, cuter friends. Say, a Jason. Or... a Bridget? It won’t be hard for him to move on though. So don’t worry.” I glance back at her. “Now, whether or not he realizes he’s been used—”
“What are you getting at?” she says sharply. Oooh, hit a little nerve, have we? She holds her cigarette up like a dart, pinched between her thumb and index like she might jab it at me.
“I said it all at the dinner table.” I take a long relaxed drag. Aaaah. The nicotine is finally hitting and I feel pathetically grateful. In hell, you take what you can get. “Jenn was a crazy bitch. I say, fuck her. It’s too bad Doug is going to rot in jail for it, but on the bright side, maybe this will free Hellie up to find a more deserving partner. I’d say it worked out just about perfectly. Not justice, exactly, but...”
Allie stares at me, her lips slightly parted. I love making girls look at me like that. No one ever expects the drug dealer to be the smartest one in the room.
I grin. “Hey, you want to get a drink with me sometime?”
“Bye, Ted.” She stomps away from me with no further ceremony, heels clacking, and tosses her cigarette aside. It curves through the air like a piece of flaming confetti and lands two inches from my foot. She climbs into her car. Slams the door.
I grind her cigarette with the toe of my shoe.
Well, in the end... maybe she was just really fucking into Phelps.
I finish my final cigarette just as Phelps comes out, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He clearly thought he was the only one of us left, because when he notices me standing here in the driveway, he curses.
“You’re still here?” he says. “Go home, man. Go to bed.”
“Where areyougoing?” I say. “Is there an after-party I don’t know about?”
“My house is a crime scene, Ted. I’ll stay with my ex.”
He doesn’t say which ex, and I don’t ask.
“Well, good times,” I call out as he climbs into his car, which is parked at the end of the driveway.
Phelps’s headlights flick on, momentarily blinding me.
The lights make it feel like I’m the last one onstage, about to speak the very last line of the play we’ve all been part of. Sadly, I have no idea what the last line should be.
Oh, well. I check my phone for ideas of where to head next, because it isn’t going to be home. I have a few texts. One from Sarah from about an hour ago. Sarah is one of my best customers—a forty-five-year-old fitness instructor with a healthy heroin habit. Huh, looks like a bunch of them are at The Grunge over in La Porte. Meh, I could stop by... shuffleboard table... cheap beer... and if Sarah’s feeling frisky, we could do it in the bathroom. I have a thing for sex in confined spaces, and Sarah has a thing for me. It’s as good an option as I’m going to get, with the night half-spent.
I start the car, knowing a moment of regret for the flushed drugs.
As Phelps’s house disappears in the rearview mirror, it strikes me that Jenn may have been Michigan City’s first murder of the year. Maybe the state of Indiana’s first murder. The year 2020 sure has started off with a bang.
At least it can only get better from here.
Chapter 35
Bunny
It was a straight shot to Tennessee on I-65, and Bunny was going to do it in one fell swoop.
Okay, with bathroom breaks. And a stop in Kentucky for bourbon, if she could find a place that was open and if they’d let her buy it that early in the morning. She never drove through Kentucky without picking up a bottle.
She stopped for her first bathroom break ten minutes after leaving Phelps’s house. She might as well get gas too, while she was there. And grab a coffee. It was three thirty in the morning, and if she armed herself with enough caffeine and was liberal with the gas pedal, she could be home in seven hours.
She bundled her scarf around her face before exiting the car. Damn, the pump was freezing. She couldn’t wait to get back to warmer climes. Just as she was fitting the nozzle into her car, her phone dinged.
Can I crash with u at ur hotel 2nite?
