“Show me the money, honey. I need to know you’ve got it.”
“Suspicious little thing, aren’t you? You’re hurting my feelings.” He reached into a back pocket and fished out a wallet. Flipping it open, he riffled through the bills for her. She saw four or five twenties, maybe more; shit, she shouldn’t have settled for sixty. But maybe she could squeeze another twenty out of him, once she had him revved up. All johns had a special itch, she’d found, and they’d usually pay extra to have it scratched. The trick was to find the itch without giving away the scratch. He plucked a twenty from the wallet, held it in front of her face. “Here. Earnest money. I’ll give you the blow—the blow’s what you want, right?—once we get there. You get the other forty bucks once you’ve made me happy.”
He wasn’t bad looking—not bad at all—and built, too. Strong looking, clean-cut. But that worried her: muscles and a short haircut. “You aren’t a cop, are you? You look like a cop. How do I know you’re not a cop?”
“Search me,” he said, and laughed at his joke. “Too late, anyhow—you’ve already offered me sexual services for money. If I was a cop, you’d be busted already. But I’m not; I’m a soldier. Navy SEAL, just back from Iraq. Operation Desert Storm.” He showed her his right forearm, which was tattooed with what looked like a bird of some sort—an eagle, she guessed—clutching a three-pronged spear. His other arm had a tat, too—what was that, a snake? God, she hoped not; Desirée hated snakes. “You oughta do me for free,” the guy said. “One patriotic service person to another.” He laughed again, and acted like he might take away the twenty.
“You serve your country for free, soldier boy?” She plucked the bill from his fingers and tucked it into her bra, then settled back in the seat and closed her eyes, anticipating the hum of the cocaine. She needed it—not just to quiet the jangle in her nerves, but to dull the ache in her tooth, too: a big abscess at the base of a molar, getting bigger and hurting like a sonofabitch. Jamming a bit of blow into the hole—down the hatch, that’s what she thought now every time she tamped in the powder—would put out the fire in her jaw. Dull the jagged, broken-glass edge of the pain, at least for a while.
It was a long five minutes. She felt the car make a couple of stops and a few turns, but mostly it was thrumming along a straightaway, the tires singing and the exhaust pipes purring like a big cat. When the car stopped, she opened her eyes. Straight ahead she saw tree trunks and leaves, the greens and browns washed-out looking in the glare of the headlights. Closer, between the car and the woods, rusting I beams reared from the ground; leaning forward, she saw a billboard looming over them. COMFORT INN, the fading letters read, but there was no hotel in sight. Off to the left, through the driver’s window, she saw four lanes of cars and semis whizzing along a freeway, their headlights and taillights dimmed by the window’s deep tint. Through a glass darkly, she thought. Bible verses still popped into her head sometimes, even after all these years. Always in her daddy’s voice, big as God’s, booming down from that pulpit. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. She turned to see his face. “Where we at?”
“Cahaba Lane.”
“Where the hell’s Cahaba Lane?”
“Right here, darlin’. Right here. Come on, let’s go.” He opened his door, and the rushing sounds and harsh lights of the freeway traffic pressed in upon her—hundreds of people streaming by, close at hand yet worlds away, oblivious within the cocoons of their cars and trucks. He got out and came around to her side of the car and opened her door, almost like he was her real boyfriend. But she felt a chill—maybe the coolness of the night, or maybe something else—and she didn’t move. “Come on,” he said again, not so cheerful sounding this time. “Let’s go.” He reached in and took hold of her elbow, pulling and lifting. He was strong. Her hand slid out from under her thigh, and her shirt rode up, exposing her lower ribs and the tuck of her waist and, below that, the jutting hipbone and shadowy hollow where her hip curved into her belly. “You want that other forty, don’t you, darlin’? And that snowflake, too. I know you want that.” He reached his left hand toward her, too—shit, the tattoo was a snake, and the head of the snake was in the hand that opened its jaws and then clamped down on her arm. He was pulling her with both hands now—dragging her—with a strength she was helpless to oppose. She came out of the car sideways, her knees and the fishnets raked by the pavement and a few shards of glass, before he raised her up, set her on her wobbly heels, and led her up a path that threaded between the I beams and up the slope.
Up into the woods.
Down into the darkness.
CHAPTER 13