"What do you have in mind?"
"I was thinking about what you said last night."
"About what?"
"About a man needing to eat pussy."
She smiled in that way that all women have, that way that says it isn't going to happen.
"That was last night, Mickey. Tonight it's a whole new world."
She slid off the stool and came around the table to me. She kissed me on the cheek the way I had just seen her kiss the big donors, the schmucks who had put twenty-dollar bills in her garter.
"Take care, baby," she said.
She started to glide away from the table.
"Wait a minute. What about the privacy booth? I thought maybe we could go back there… "
She looked back at me.
"It takes money to go back there, sugar."
"I still have the money you gave me last night "
She paused for a moment, her face hard in the red light bouncing off the mirrors in the club.
"Okay. Then let's go make Tommy happy."
She came back and took hold of my tie. She led me toward the back rooms and the whole way there I thought that there was no doubt that she was going to be a better lawyer than she was a stripper. One day she was going to be a killer in court.
AFTER MIDNIGHT
He hated the job but loved the drive home at night. The streets were always empty and a lot of the time shiny from rain. Steam would rise like intrigue off the asphalt. Just like in the movies, the old black and whites his father liked to watch on the tube. It seemed as though the city did not even begin to cool off until this time, until after midnight. Cruising along the beach with the windows down he would always encounter stragglers. Girls older than he but still just girls, making their way home or to last call at the fast bar on the circuit. Some would flag him down, ask for a ride. Sometimes he would stop and oblige, the thrift of being with a stranger smelling of beer and suntan oil in the dark overcoming the potential of danger — and embarrassment. They were always surprised at how young he was. How young he looked. Some of them even laughed, thought he was thirteen years old and out joyriding in a stolen car.
At the end of the beach cruise he would turn inland and head over the drawbridge and toward home. Toward a shower and bed, maybe a talk with the old man if he was still awake and sober.
It was coming over the drawbridge and heading home one night when he encountered the running man. The boy had worked a double shift that day and was tired. It was a night for no riders. He had cruised the beach quickly and was heading west on Sunrise Boulevard. Close to home. He had just cleared the bridge but caught the traffic light by the closed gas station. He stopped at the deserted intersection and waited for the green. He knew no one would know the difference if he ran it but he waited for the green anyway. His father had taught him that the rules were in place whether anybody else was there to watch or not.
And that was when he saw him. A man running. A big man with a big beard and long hair. He cut across the dark parking lot behind the gas station. He came right out of the darkness and headed for the bridge. He was no jogger. He wasn't running for sport or fitness. The boy could tell that. The man was fully clothed — open lumberjack shirt over a T-shirt, jeans, work boots. No, he wasn't just running. He was running to something or away from something.
The boy studied the darkness from which the man had come. His eyes peered into the parking lot behind the gas station. Nothing moved there. Nothing was recognisable. Farther down the street he could see the dim glow of the Kwik Mart, but nothing else.
The traffic light turned green. Ready to dismiss what he had seen — maybe the guy was just trying to make last call at one of the beach bars — the boy turned to take a final glance at the running man. He immediately noticed that the man no longer wore the outer shirt. He had removed it while running. And at the moment the boy glanced back he also saw the running man slow his pace just long enough to shove the red lumberjack shirt into the hedge that lined the sidewalk before the bridge. He then kept going.
The light was still green. But the boy sat there in his beat-up Volkswagen and thought about what he had just seen. He had a decision to make. Pop the clutch, press the gas pedal and move on toward home. Or turn the car around and check it out. Why had the running man stuffed his shirt into that hedge?
The boy was on the edge of manhood. Not in physical size or development — he had always been small and was stopped regularly by police who thought him to be too young to be driving. But inside, in thinking about his life and his options and in the way he studied the girls that walked the beach road at night. Inside, where it counted. His father kept the chorus going, all the time chiding him for his mistakes. It's time to be a man.
The light turned yellow. As if he was out of time and desperate, the boy hit the gas and dragged the bug into a squealing U-turn. He drove back toward the bridge. The running man was gone now, having gone up and over the bridge, dropping down past the span toward the beach. The boy stopped at the curb near the hedge. He left the car running and got out. He went to the hedge and saw the spot where the branches had been freshly disturbed. He reached in for the shirt, the interior branches scratching at his arm.
As he pulled his arm back he felt something hard and heavy buried in the shirt. Slowly he unwrapped it and looked down at its contents. A blue steel revolver as shiny as the wet streets was in his hand. He felt a little thrill go through him, coming all the way up from his testicles.
A gun. The boy had never held one before, had never even seen one this close. His father had a rule, no guns. He picked it up with his hand and hefted its weight. It felt warm to him. He put his nose to the barrel and sniffed. A sharp, bitter odor invaded his nostrils. Was that gunpowder? Was the gun warm because it had been fired?
He quickly wrapped the gun in the shirt again and took it back to the car. He stuffed the shirt and gun into the glove box and closed it. He then pulled away from the curb and drove back over the bridge. It only took him a minute to catch up to the running man. He watched as the man stopped before he got to the beach and turned right into the street behind the big white hotel. The boy drove by, turned right on the beach road and then took the next right. He came to the same street the running man was on but a block further down. The boy dropped the clutch and slowed. He saw the running man was now walking. He finally came to a stop and then calmly stepped through the front door of a bar called The Pirate. It was a place the boy knew about from the outside. A rough place. Motorcycles always parked out front in a line. He knew that the men that came out of that bar had a habit of coming out mean.
The boy picked up speed and kept his car moving. He made his way back to Sunrise and once again headed west to the bridge and home.
But as he crested the bridge his eyes were greeted by all of the lights. Blue and red and yellow. Police lights, seemingly everywhere. A spotlight from a helicopter cutting through the parking lot behind the gas station. The traffic signal was red again. He slowed to a stop and looked back at the spot in the hedge. He could still make out the place where the manicured wall of leaves had been disturbed. He knew he had another choice to make.
A car pulled up next to him. A police car. Just as the boy turned to look the bright beam of a flashlight hit him full in the face. He could see nothing. A voice sounded from behind the light. 'Hey, kid, are you old enough to drive?'
'I'm sixteen,' he responded. 'I have a license.'
'Where are you going?'
'Home from work.'
'Pull into the gas station when the light changes.'
'Okay.'
He turned away but was still blind. He tried to focus on the traffic signal. When he finally could see it, it was green. He pulled forward and then turned left into the closed station. The patrol car followed him.