“All you need is ammunition and a reason,” he said. “You might want a license, I don’t know. I’ve never looked into it.”
He was vain about his hair, was always patting it to make sure the thin yellow swirl covered his bald spot. He had deep creases at the corners of his eyes, but his body was as pink and clean as a boy’s, fine golden hairs spun on his chest. She liked to play with that fine down, was pleased by the silky feel of it. Silk and gold always came to mind when he was stretched out naked beside her. Silk and gold and lead.
Ten days before Christmas, she climbed into the Lambo after work, believing he was going to drive her to the range. Instead he drove her to the Coconut Milk Bar and Inn, twenty miles south of St. Possenti. They had a suite on the first floor under the names Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, which she sensed was one of Rog’s jokes. She was well practiced at smiling blandly and indulgently to keep him from realizing she didn’t get the reference. His conversation was sprinkled with lines from movies and music she knew nothing about: Dirty Harry and Nirvana and MTV’s The Real World—old stuff like that, not even worth googling.
He carried a black Teflon bag with him, the handles padlocked to gether. She’d seen him move jewelry in that kind of bag but didn’t ask questions.
The old woman behind the counter looked from Becki to Rog and back and made a face like she had a bad taste in her mouth. Becki met her bitchy stare with calm indifference.
“Isn’t it a school night?” the clerk asked when she pushed their key across the counter.
Becki took Rog’s arm. “I think it’s so great that places like this hire old folks to give them something to do besides play bingo in a senior center somewhere.”
Rog laughed his hoarse smoker’s laugh and swatted Becki on the rear. To the old woman with the tinted orange hair, he said, “You’re lucky she didn’t bite. She ain’t had her shots. You don’t know what you might catch.”
Becki chomped her teeth together at the offended old bitch behind the register. Rog took her by the elbow and steered her down a corridor with thick white carpet that looked like it had never been walked on. He led her past brick arches that opened onto an outdoor patio, built around three swimming pools, each on a different terrace, waterfalls splashing between them. Couples sat on wicker chairs flanked by tall patio heaters, columns of caged fire. The palm trees had been done up for the holiday, the fronds hung with emerald Christmas lights, so they looked like fireworks frozen forever in spectacular mid-explosion. Becki shut her eyes to better hear the sound of ice clinking in glasses. You didn’t need to drink to get drunk. That sound alone made her feel intoxicated. She didn’t look around until he stopped at the door to their suite.
The sheets were slippery silk, or something like silk, the color of vanilla frosting. The bathtub in the enormous bathroom had been hewn out of a hunk of lava rock. He put the chain on the door while she sat on the edge of the king mattress.
He carried his bag to the bed. “This is just for tonight. Everything goes back tomorrow morning.”
He popped the lock, unclasped the wire jaws of the bag, and poured out a heap of treasure. Gold hoops and freshwater pearls on silver ropes, bracelets crusted with diamonds, and necklaces hung with brilliant stones. It was as if he had dumped a bag full of light onto the opalescent sheets. There was white powder, too, in a crystal bottle like one you might fill with perfume. It might almost have been crushed diamonds. Rog had taught her to like a little coke before sex. It made her feel good and dirty, made her feel like a degenerate aiming to do something criminal.
She was almost breathless at the sight of all those gems, all those shining threads.
“How much . . . ?” she asked.
“About half a million dollars. Go on. Wear it. Put on all of it. I want to see you chained in it. Like a sultan’s concubine. Like I bought you with all this.” Rog used words better than anyone Becki knew. Sometimes he sounded like a lover in an old movie, tossing off poetic dialogue in a clipped, indifferent way, as if it were the most ordinary thing to talk like that.
Amid the pile of treasure was a bra-and-panty set, gold straps speckled with rhinestones. There was also a long box wrapped in metallic gold paper, bound in a silver ribbon.
“The loot has to go back to the shop tomorrow morning,” he said, and pushed the gift box toward her. “But this is yours to keep.”
She grasped the wide, slippery package. Becki loved presents. She wished Christmas came every month. “What’s this?”
“A girl doesn’t wear that much bling,” Rog told her, “unless she knows she can keep it.”
She tore away the paper and ribbon and tugged open the box. It was a .357 Smith & Wesson with a satin-white grip that looked like pearl, the stainless-steel finish of the barrel engraved with fleurs-de-lis and curlicues of ivy.
He tossed something at her, a web of black leather straps and buckles, and for an instant she wondered if they were moving in a bondage direction that evening.
“That goes on your leg,” he said. “If you wear the gun on the inside of your thigh, you could walk around in a pencil skirt and no one would know you’re armed. I’m going to shower off. You?”
“Maybe later,” she said, standing up and rising onto her toes to kiss him. She bit his lower lip, and he took the front of her tight black slacks and pulled her against him. He was playing it cool, but he was already hard, poking her through his khakis.
The shower was blasting for fifteen minutes. Time enough to drop her clothes and drape herself in a small fortune. The gun went on last. She liked the way the leather straps cinched around the high part of her thigh, liked the silver buckles and the black lines against her skin. She knelt on the bed in chains, diamonds sparkling between her breasts, a silver choker around her throat, and practiced aiming at herself in the mirror.
She was waiting when he came out in a towel, his chest glittering with beads of water. She lifted the gun in both hands.
“Drop that towel,” she said. “And do exactly what I say if you want to live.”
“Point it somewhere else,” he said.
She pouted. “It isn’t loaded.”
“That’s what everyone thinks, right up to the moment someone’s cock gets blown off.”
She opened the cylinder and spun it clickety-click, so he could see for himself it was empty. Then she slapped the cylinder back into the gun and pointed at him again.
“Get naked,” she said.