“Umm,” she said.
“Bad.”
She held his hand there, his finger in her mouth, with both of her hands. They stared at each other. When all the cocaine was surely long off the finger, she took it out, and giggled. “Wow,” she said. She looked down at the last of the pile. “Getting low.”
“Thing is,” Alphonse said, “if we could just score a loan.”
“They don’t loan for that.”
“But think. Maybe two hours the whole thing takes. That’s all we need is some bread for two hours.” Alphonse sipped beer again, then brought the bottle down in mid-drink. “Hey!” As though he’d just thought of it. “Your old man.”
Linda shook her head. “He’s not into stuff like that.” With the rush and all, feeling pretty good, it was hard for Alphonse not to laugh. “Maybe he wouldn’t have to know. He could front it and never know it.”
“Like think it was something else?”
“Maybe you ask him for a down on a car, like that?”
“Six months ago, maybe. Not now.”
Alphonse looked down, disappointed. Now play this one cool, man, here is the punch line. “You think he got anything at the office?”
“The office?”
“Yeah, you know, petty cash, like that.” Linda shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Sometimes, but…”
“Worth lookin’?”
“I don’t know. It’s…”
“Hey, it’s gone two hours, if it’s there. Who’ll know?”
“Like where, though?”
“He got a safe or something, or what?”
“Yeah, sure, in the back behind his desk.”
“We check it out, what do we lose?”
“What if he’s there?”
Alphonse looked at her. “He been there all week?” He reached over and touched her face again, like a reminder. He tapped her cheek. “We look, huh? Nothing there, no big deal.”
“We’d have it back…”
“Hey, like tonight even. He’d never even know.”
Linda, still unsure. “He just wouldn’t have that much in the safe.”
“Hey, but if he does…”
“Why would he, the way the business is going?”
“Shit, girl, I don’t know. Maybe he’s saving to buy his cute piece o’ honey something-don’t want her to find out.”
Linda stopped arguing, looked down at the table, ran her own finger through the last of the pile and rubbed it in against her gums. “You’re right,” she said, her voice suddenly gone husky, “it can’t hurt to check, can it?”
“You know the combination?”
“I know it’s under the blotter on the desk.”
But it wasn’t.
So they spent about forty minutes looking for it, until Alphonse got on the floor and pulled out the elbow rest or writing pad or whatever it was that was stuck in the desk with a little groove on the bottom that you could put your finger in and then pull out.
“He always kept it under the blotter.”
“Hey baby, it’s cool. The main thing is we got it now.” He whistled. Five numbers, up to eighty. “You ever open the thing?”
She nodded, sliding off the desk where she’d been sitting, sulking, coming down very hard. “You got any more blow?” she asked.
Alphonse had a few lines, as always, and he hadn’t poured them out back at Linda’s on the general rule that you don’t tap out. But, he figured, now was tap city or bust.
This be the table, jacks. He felt it, and as he’d earlier proved, he was on a roll. “Maybe a line, two.” He smiled his bright smile. “And the man be dealin’.”
He was careful, pouring the cocaine onto the wooden desk, cutting it cleanly into four lines with his pocket knife, the one he’d used on Sam. It was a sharp knife.
They made a game out of it. “Right two,” Alphonse said, and Linda, on her knees with her ass sticking out-was she doing that on purpose?-and her tits-and Alphonse loved tits-big and firm-looking held up under the T-shirt, just turned that little dial. “Left, eighteen.”
“Daddy’s gonna shit we don’t get this back.”
“We’ll get it back. Right seventy-seven.”
“Sunset strip.”
“You wanna?”
She giggled.
“Right nine,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Left-don’t go past it-sixty-three.” He expected they’d go at it nine, eleven, forty times, but goddamn if the thing didn’t open just like a refrigerator.
Linda, wordless, reached in and pulled out one of the packets of hundred-dollar bills, tied with a banker’s ribbon on which was written, in red felt-tip pen, “$10,000.”
Alphonse eased his ass off the desk and made himself go slow the fifteen feet across to her. She just held it out, like, “What is this?”
He took it, riffled it, realizing deep in his heart that it was the real thing, that this was the number-one end of the line roll to end all rolls.
He crossed back to the desk. The packet of money fit easily into the front pocket of the camouflage pants. “Goddamn,” he said, surprised at the high end to his voice. He turned to look at Linda, still kneeling by the safe. “God-damn! You hear me? God… god-damn.”
He felt like he had to go to the bathroom. “How much is there?” Linda asked, her voice small now behind the cavernous roaring rush in Alphonse’s ears.
He didn’t even hear her. Over at the desk now he saw the knife and maybe a quarter line of powder and, knowing he’d just busted the house, he leaned down and scraped it into a small pile, licked his finger, ran it over the wood and then popped it hito his mouth.
“How much is there? Enough for your deal?”
He turned around. What was she talking about? She was still kneeling by the open safe, which seemed to be filled with packets like the one in his pocket. And she was crying.
“Is that enough?” she repeated.
It was like he couldn’t understand what she was saying. He crossed over to her, took her face in both his hands.
“Hey.” Going to kiss her, but she turned away. Again, “Hey.”
Her eyes came up to him. “It’s all for her, isn’t it?” she asked. “He saved all this for Nika.”
What?
“What are we gonna do, then?” she asked. Alphonse didn’t know what she was talking about, but he understood the literal question. “We gonna walk outta here,” he said, pointing inside at the stack of money, “with that shit.”
“No,” she said.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no. It’s not ours. Just to borrow.” She went to close the safe door. He remembered the lesson then, the slap that had made her somebody he could control, and he slashed out.
What he forgot, just for that second, was that he still held the knife, razor sharp, open in his right hand. And the next thing he knew there was blood all over him, the floor, everywhere.
Linda just opened her eyes wider, as if wondering what was going on. She opened her mouth, but no words came out, just more of that blood.
Alphonse looked down at the knife in his hand, remembering.
He dropped it, grabbed at his shirt, couldn’t rip it, and so pressed Linda’s shirt up against her neck as she collapsed into him.
“Hey, girl, it’s all right. It’s all right now,” he said. He patted her head on his lap, but the blood was getting out everywhere, spreading in a stain across the floor. He backed himself out from under her, cradling her head in his hands, then laying it gently in the pool that had formed under it.
He leaned back on his heels. “Shi…”
But the blood was spreading over to where he kneeled, and he thought he already had enough on him, so he slid back, then forced himself up. “What’d you go do that for?” he said. He didn’t know, though, who he’d asked.