“He always brags about his jewelry business. How he’s a big entrepreneur,” Valerie had told me. We were in Mel’s Diner on Grand, after her shift. She stirred sugar into her coffee. She put lots of sugar into her coffee, I noticed. She sipped it quickly as she spoke. I wished she’d finish it and we could go back to my place.
“He’s just another guy full of shit,” I said. I was sick of hearing about Cooper already. “Phoenix is full of guys like Cooper. Forget about him.”
“Is Karl jealous?” She put her mug down, smiling on one side of her mouth.
“Karl’s tired,” I answered. “Karl would like to take you home.”
“And do what?”
“You’re a smart girl, Valerie. I’m sure you can figure that out.”
“Dance for you maybe?” That crooked smile again. “You’d like Valerie to dance for you again tonight?”
“Sure.”
“Maybe dance, maybe more than dance?”
I wanted more than the dance. She knew it. “Like I said.”
She sipped from her mug. That’s the snapshot of her when I first compared her hair to the color of coffee. “I like dancing for you, Karl.”
“Yeah?”
She got up from her side of the booth and slid over next to me, her short denim skirt high up her thighs.
“Do you wonder why I tell you about Cooper?”
“You already said it. To make me jealous.”
“He wants me to quit dancing. Work for him instead. I can make more money working for him, he says, selling his jewelry designs.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“He carries jewels around with him. He wants to get into the jewelry-design business. He buys from designers and sells them as his own. I asked him once where he gets his jewels. He tells me people who owe him money sometimes pay in jewels. I think he buys jewels with his father’s money. Maybe you’ve seen his father’s commercials on TV. His father is that car dealer from California. He marries beauty queens from Texas.”
“Again, why are you telling me this?”
“Cooper carries around jewels with him. He shows them to me. I tell him I know people he can sell jewels to maybe. Clients with money. I meet them doing escort jobs. Cooper wants to fuck me like a big shot. He is like a fucking teenager. But a teenager with too much money.” I could hear the Eastern venom in her voice.
The door opened and a pair of Phoenix PD came in. Young and athletic looking; ASU Sun Devils material. They both threw brief glances at us before taking a booth near the corner. I heard a cough of static from one of their radios.
Valerie smiled at them.
I looked out the window, at the fenced-in used car lot across Grand. I waited for her to get on with it.
It came with a flicker of hot tongue against my ear. A voice so low, hypnotic; a razor blade coated with the scent of coffee and cigarettes.
“Maybe Karl and Valerie teach the big shot a lesson.”
More snapshots of her for the slideshow then. Ones of her dancing for me at my place, swaying to the Roy Orbison tape on my cassette player, wearing nothing by the end of the third song. Then, only in my apartment, would she let me touch her as she danced.
But touching only, nothing else.
That would come later, she promised me.
Until then, she would do other things for me.
Sometimes, afterward, sitting in the chair by the window, she’d talk about her escort jobs, the blue smoke from her cigarettes drifting out into the night. But mostly she talked about Cooper. How he was growing impatient with her. When would she quit dancing and work for him. And when was she going to let Cooper meet with her people. He had big plans and wouldn’t wait on her and her people for long.
Then she stopped coming over to my place.
No reason why.
After the last night there, I found her spangled thong under my pillow. It glittered in the light from the window like dreams from the Emerald City. I didn’t notice when she left it, but knew she’d left it for me as a souvenir, a promise from her to add to the pictures in my head.
At work, she acted like I was just another creep.
I’d watch as she danced for the other men, waiting for her to come back to me. She wouldn’t even look my way. I’d stay up late after coming home from work, eating chili or tamales from a can that I’d heat over a hot plate. I played my tapes low as I ate. Roy Orbison sang “Mystery Girl” and I would mouth the words along with the song, running the slideshow of Valerie real slow, timing it to the music. She had once danced to “Mystery Girl” for me, before, when she used to come over. I always thought of it as her song.
Of course, it worked.
I had one of the other dancers give her my message.
I was in. I would help her teach Big Shot Cooper a lesson.
I waited in the Desert Sun Motel’s parking lot. Cooper and Valerie had a ground-level room, across from the empty swimming pool. The doors to the rooms were painted blue. Arizona-sky blue. Highway blue when the clouds are the only things that break and fall into infinity. Cooper’s Lexus sat in front of their door. I’d seen them park there, having followed them from the Bikini Lounge.
No one had meetings in a dump like this, unless it was with a hooker or a dealer. Cooper had to be naïve, stupid, or both to come here with Valerie to do business. This was going to be too easy, I thought.
“Wait for me,” she’d told me. “I’ll leave the room to get ice and leave the door open. You will come back to the room with me and take the jewels. No problem. Got it?”
It seemed simple enough. That was all I had to do. Go back with her and take his swag.
I waited in the darkness of my car, thinking about how she and I would celebrate later. Thinking about the way she danced for me—until I saw her open the door to their room.
I got out of my car. She looked at me and nodded, an empty ice bucket in her hand.
I went up to the door and waited for her to return with the ice.
“It’s about time.” Cooper stood up from the bed. A gym bag sat on the corner of it, next to him. He looked at me for a moment, confused. “Hold on a sec. He’s that guy from the bar. What the hell is this?”
I heard the door close behind me, the chain sliding on the lock.
“Take it easy, Cooper,” Valerie said.
“No, you take it easy.” Cooper’s voice cracked with fear. “What the hell is he doing here? You set me up!”
“Take it easy, Cooper,” I repeated.
“Screw you, man!” Cooper dove to the bag and wrenched a small gun from it. He pointed it at me. I don’t know shit about guns. I just know that you don’t want to get shot by one, no matter how big or small they are. They fuck you up. His gun soaked up the wan light from the lamp. It was small and black in his fist. A woman’s gun, I thought, a chick’s gun. I could see the barrel tremble.
“You think I’m going to just sit here and let someone rob me? You think I’m stupid or something?”
“Cooper, put the gun away. You’re not going to use it.” Valerie reached out, as if to calm him. “You said yourself the jewels were insured. Put the gun away.”
“Forget it. I’m not a fucking chump! And I’m not letting no cheap whore and her goon-boy rip me off!”
Cooper pointed the gun at her.
I jumped him then, hitting him just as the gun went off. The gun sounded simultaneously with the shattering of the lamp. The room went dark. My ears rang from the shot.
I held onto Cooper’s wrist, twisting it, punching him with my free arm as we rolled off the side of the bed. Cooper landed beneath me, the bag spilling beside us.