“I do.”
He adjusted his glasses and looked a little wistful. “Maybe that’s what she did, you know? Just moved on.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t sound convinced, even to myself. “Why here?”
He laughed. “Roses.”
“Excuse me?”
“The town got its name from the Basque word for rose. There are wild rose bushes all over the hills out here.” He glanced out the window at the tail end of the train and the blowing snow that chased after it, almost as if the flakes were afraid to be left behind. “Not that you’d know it from recent temperatures.” His eyes came back to mine. “She said she looked up exotic dancing clubs and saw this one and decided it was a sign.”
“Any other name . . .”
The grin spread on his face. “Would smell as sweet.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
He shrugged. “Not really; I try not to pry into people’s business—a lot of them are here for that same reason, trying to disappear.” He glanced around. “Not that it’s going to last much longer anyway.”
“What’s up?”
“This office is scheduled to be closed next year, so I’ll be out of a job.”
“Can’t you just transfer to another office?”
He shook his head. “Too much of a free spirit; I don’t think I can take orders anymore.”
I smiled. “Me either.”
I picked up the basket and started toward the door, booting it open and ushering Dog out. “I’ll get the bin back to you before you close up for good.”
—
I dumped Dog and the young woman’s mail in the Bullet and trudged along in the hardened snow that was crusted on the side of the road toward the sign for the strip club.
I pulled my hat down a little harder and flipped the collar of my sheepskin coat up around my face in hopes of cutting off some of the wind.
As I got closer to the main building, I could see that it was one of those steel prefab ones with two windows and a small mudroom that gave a break to patrons before they entered the main structure.
There was a string of trailers behind it, an odd assortment mostly the size that hunters took to the mountains. Someone had sprayed letters on the doors, the first one marked B. I wondered where A was.
I cut off from the parking lot and waded my way toward the trailers and was about to reach the first one when a voice called out from the back of the brown steel building.
“You lookin’ for something?”
There was an enormous individual in the doorway, almost as big as me, heavily muscled—the kind of muscles you get in a weight room, or a cell block. A black T-shirt spread across his chest as he held the door open with one hand and studied me.
“I’m looking for 4661-A?”
He did the white-guy hair flip, and his long, blond locks flew away from his face. “Gone.”
I looked around as if he might’ve misplaced it. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced back at the nearest trailer with the B on the door. “What happened to A?”
“Burned.” Realizing I wasn’t particularly intimidated, he stepped out, still holding on to the door. “You know the whole alphabet?”
“My numbers, too.”
He nodded. “Good, that’ll make it easy for you to find your way out of here.”
I ignored him and continued toward the B trailer.
“Hey! Hey, I’m talking to you.”
“Yep, and I’m ignoring you.” I kept walking. “And unless I’m mistaken, that door in your hand is like the one at the back of my office, which is not a pass-through, which means if you let it close you’re going to have to deal with me in that T-shirt and then walk all the way around the building to get back inside.”
As I advanced on trailer B, I heard his voice just as the door closed. “Fuckin’ hell.”
I raised a hand to knock, but a frighteningly skinny young woman smoking a cigarette yanked the door of the rickety trailer open before my knuckles grazed it, leaving a shattered, etched glass storm door between us.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Hi, I’m looking for Jone Urrecha?” I threw a thumb toward the large building. “She was a dancer here?”
She pulled a polyester blanket from just inside, draped it over her shoulders, and inhaled. “Gone. You her dad or something?”
“Or something.” I smiled. “Do you have any idea where she might’ve gone, or—”
“Look, Mac, she’s gone, or something. Okay?”
I could hear footsteps crunching behind me and figured I’d better finish up before he got to me, so I gave her a wave. “Thanks for your help.”
The door closed in my face, the second in two days, and I turned just in time to see a fist roundhousing its way into the side of my head. I leaned back in the nick and watched as the big guy, who had put on a blue and gold letterman’s jacket, followed through and swung past, his momentum and a quick push from me sending him sprawling into the snow.
He recovered and moved faster than I thought he would and swung an elbow at me as he stood, but I palmed it over my head and gave him my best shot in the side, figuring that if that didn’t knock the air out of him, I was dead.
He collapsed sideways and fell awkwardly, and it was about then that I felt something very hard hit me in the back of my head. I pushed my hat back up straight and turned to look at the skinny woman with the cigarette between her lips who had been in the doorway but now was holding a cast waffle iron. “Ouch.”
She studied me. “You’re the first one to still be standing after that.”
I rubbed the knot at the back of my noggin. “I’ve got a hard head.”
She held the waffle iron at the ready. “Leave Thor alone.”
“Thor? Really?” I glanced at the big guy, who, having rolled over, was sitting up holding his ribs but showing no sign of wanting to stand, and then looked back at the woman. “He started it.”
“Yeah, well I’m finishing it.”
I held a hand out to the man on the ground. “Help you up?”
He brushed the blond hair away again and frowned. “Can’t—my knee went out.”
—
“I never understood why they called us offensive tackles; I mean, we weren’t allowed to tackle anybody.”
Sitting on a stool in Dirty Shirley’s bar, I tried to explain the nuanced aspects of our shared football position. “It’s from before, when eleven-man squads used to play offense and defense.”
He massaged his kneecap and manipulated it in hopes of getting the thing to go back into alignment. “Before my time.”
I sipped the can of iced tea the skinny woman from the trailer had given me as she polished glasses behind the bar and carefully watched me. “Mine, too.”
“And where’d you play?”
“USC.”
“Leather helmets?”
I sighed. “Back in the sixties.”
“Wow. What was your record?”
“Undefeated, my freshman year.” I took my hat off and rested it on the bar brim up to make sure whatever luck was there stayed there. “Beat Wisconsin 42–37. Then we didn’t win another big one till the year after I graduated.”
“Oh.”
Curtis “Thor” Hansen was from North Dakota and looked like he’d fallen off the road-show truck for Li’l Abner, aside from the Viking haircut and the acne on his neck. I’d thrown his arm over my shoulder and limped him around the building and back inside where he’d offered to buy me a beer. “What about you?”
“The Fighting Irish, Notre Dame—even had a tryout with the Seahawks.” He gestured toward his knee. “Then this thing blew out on me.”