“Nicer.”
“Because I’m high. Because I just saw your tits. Because…those goddamn bruises around your neck.”
Again I reached up and felt them like they were still pounding against my skin.
“You’re a stripper?” I asked and she stared at me blankly, and I wondered if I’d offended her. Or if she didn’t want people to know. “You mentioned The Velvet Touch. I don’t want to make assumptions…”
“Yes, Sherlock Holmes, I’m a stripper.”
I ran out of courage for what I had intended to ask.
“You got something else you want to ask, you should ask,” Joan said.
“That guy…in your trailer the first time I met you.” What the hell was I doing? My mom would kill me for asking these questions. For prying. She used to yank on the end of my ponytail when I started asking too many questions. “Never mind, this isn’t my business.”
“Spit it out.”
“Are…I mean…do you?”
“Fuck men for money?”
I blushed so hard my eyes hurt.
“No. I fuck them for pleasure. But some of the girls do at the club. There’s one of those old-school comfort rooms in the back.”
“Oh.” I had no clue what an old-school comfort room was. No clue. And I was suddenly on fire to know. But I wasn’t about to ask her. I didn’t have quite enough courage to reveal my total ignorance.
We sat in silence for a minute.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Too long,” Joan said.
“It seems nice.”
Joan’s silent laugh made her breasts shimmy. “Depends on context, I guess.”
“Oh,” I said, “you’re from someplace wonderful?”
“No.” Joan shook her head and then slid her sunglasses down over her eyes. “I’m not.” She stretched out on her back and didn’t say another word.
After a minute I got back on my mower and rode through the weeds, avoiding the sticks marking unseen hazards.
After locking up the mower and the rest of the tools, I followed the scent of something delicious being cooked over to Ben’s garden.
Part of me insisted that I heed both Dylan and Joan’s warnings. But a larger part of me was tired of taking other people’s warnings as rules. I was done having my mind made up for me by someone else.
Joan had an unforgiving view of the world if she could be angry at Tiffany for being a victim. I wasn’t about to take her word about Ben. And Dylan…I didn’t know enough about him to know his worldview, other than that he was both kind and controlling. I’d never known the two qualities to live in sync like that.
Perhaps Joan and Dylan weren’t looking past the tattoos. Perhaps they were caught up in some black-and-white idea that I wasn’t interested in. Maybe Ben had never given them tomatoes.
I found the old man sitting in front of a fire inside the half-built shell of his brick oven.
“You’ve made a lot of progress,” I said. Through the unfinished top of the oven I could see a cast-iron skillet over a crackling fire.
“Just about done, but I got impatient,” he said. “Thanks for what you finished the other day.”
“No problem. I didn’t want that cement to go to waste. What are you making?”
“Here,” he said, pulling out the pan. Inside, bubbling in oil, were little yellow plants. “Zucchini flowers.” He set the pan down in the grass and pulled off the mitts he’d used to protect his hands.
“My ex used to make ’em,” he said. “She was part Mexican. Fucking amazing cook.”
With a metal fork he grabbed one of the flowers and put it down on a piece of napkin he had with him, and the white paper immediately went clear with grease.
“Want to try it?”
I nodded and took the napkin, still so hot I shifted the little flower from hand to hand so my fingers didn’t burn.
He lifted the other flower out and put it down on his knee.