“That’s not right, him pushing you like that,” Eldon said. “Not right at all.”
He had a nice smile. Not huge. Just the corners of his mouth coming up, like he wasn’t just smiling, but he was thinking about why he was smiling. He did odd jobs for Gary, dope runs up from the city, upkeep on the Kickstart. The heavy-duty stuff, like when someone from the other gang in town started cutting in on your territory, and you had to go out and teach somebody a lesson, beat the shit out of somebody, blow up a car, that kind of thing, Eldon gave that a pass. Let Zane do it. Or Eldridge. They were fucking crazy. They were made for that kind of work.
Eldon thought it was great that Candace was going to take a course to better herself. “You got a car? If you don’t, I could drive you up to the college in my Toyota, you could check it out, this financial stuff. On days that you have a class, I could take you there, bring you back, we could get something to eat after.”
So he drove her up. She didn’t have the marks, or the money, to enroll full-time, but she was able to take a couple of courses. She was a natural. She’d dress real plain, bulky sweaters, try to look like someone else, in case some of the male students recognized her from stripping at the Kickstart. Eldon would come by when her course was over and drive her home. “Stop here,” she’d say along the way. “I gotta go in and buy the new issue of Money.”
She said to Gary—they called him Pick behind his back sometimes but not to his face—he could save some money by changing around some of the bartending shifts, he had too many people during the slow parts of the day, she could draw up a better schedule?
“The fuck you talking about?” he said. She explained it to him. He said, “Shit, you’re right.”
She had other suggestions for him, how he could negotiate better deals with his restaurant suppliers, how the girls upstairs could charge more for certain things some guys really liked. What the hell, as long as she didn’t have to do it. She told him how he could be putting his money from prostitution, and the cash from dispensing dope, in legit investments, make it look like it came through the Kickstart legally.
“How you know all this shit?” Gary wanted to know.
She shrugged. “I like this stuff.”
“Math,” Gary said, shaking his head. “I don’t get it.”
And he didn’t. Miranda figured that if he had to rely on profits from a legitimate business, he’d go tits up in no time. It was only because the markup on drugs was so high, the profits on prostitution so huge, that he managed to keep his head above water.
“You’re amazing,” Eldon said. “I’m gonna talk to Gary, see if he’ll put you in the office full-time, you won’t have to take your clothes off anymore.”
She took them off for him, though. He wasn’t the first man she’d ever slept with. But he was the first she slept with more than once. Was this what it was like for her sister and Don? How many men were there out there who weren’t total assholes? Had she and Claire found the only two?
Claire phoned her. Their dad had come out of a bar, looked the wrong way crossing the street, got flattened by a tractor-trailer hauling pigs to a plant where they’d be turned into bacon.
No shit. She had to laugh.
10
WHEN WE GOT HOME , I went straight for the phone book, hunting down the number for the city health department. I was rattled and having a hard time finding which section of the book it would be in.
“I just want it on the record,” Paul said, “that I did actually get a job, and that I lost it through no fault of my own. Okay?”
I found it under the listings for municipal government departments, then dialed the number. And got a recording. The offices were closed for the day. So who did you call when a health emergency occurred after business hours?
“So, like, do you expect me to get another job now? Are you and Mom going to gang up on me again?”
The fire department? The police?
“And what do you want me to do with this?” Paul asked. He was holding the Styrofoam container that contained my cheeseburger and fries. When I didn’t immediately answer him, he opened the cabinet door under the kitchen sink, where we keep the garbage bin.
“No!” I shouted. “We may need it for, I don’t know, evidence, to give the health department. Put it in the fridge.”
Paul screwed up his face. “What if somebody eats it?”
I opened the kitchen drawer where we keep all the odds and ends we didn’t know what to do with, like keys to unknown locks, bread bag clips, and batteries we aren’t sure are dead or still have a bit of juice in them, and picked out a thick-point Sharpie marker. I tossed it to Paul and said, “Put a note on it.”