“You have one.”
“I need another.”
The bartender poured a vodka for her and a scotch for me, and nudged them our way. Suzanne downed half of hers in front of the bar.
“You alright?” I asked.
“He should know better than that. He does know better.”
I looked around. “Who?”
She shook her head and took my arm again, leading me around the perimeter of the room. “Damon. That woman he brought. She’s an outsider. She’s not one of us.”
“Does that…matter?”
She was speaking in hushed tones. “Yes. In a way, it does. It’s in poor form, and he knows that.”
“She seemed nice.”
“That’s not the point, Julian.”
I looked around the room. “So all these people are on some sort of approved list?”
“Not all things can be simplified into one sentence, as you often try.”
I shrugged. “Okay. But, wasn’t it about a month ago when I was an outsider?”
“It’s different,” she said. “It’s not the same thing, to enter our circle as you did, as to show up at the Ball unannounced.”
I took a drink. “Okay then.”
The lights had dimmed and the music slowed, and from the crowd emerged a woman. She was tall, tan, and, blonde, and she walked toward us. We made eye contact, I think, but that was incidental. Her loose curls fell down to her mid-back, a tangled web of highlights and lowlights and midtones. A gray dress stopped at her knees, displaying her legs. The woman’s heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she walked.
She walked and walked until she finally reached where we stood. And she and Suzanne embraced.
“So wonderful to see you,” Suzanne said, smiling broadly.
“Pleasure’s mine, girl,” the woman said.
“It’s been weeks.”
“You know how it is,” the woman said. Her voice was deep, a touch husky. It had command. “Sometimes business calls.”
“Adeline,” Suzanne said, “this is Julian.”
She turned to me and extended a hand. Her fingers were long, like the rest of her, and her nails were painted deep red.
“Julian,” she said, “it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard so much.”
I shook her hand. Our eyes met and stayed for a moment, looking. Looking. Her eyes were where it all came together. They were blue or green or maybe hazel; I don’t remember. The color didn’t matter.
I released her hand because I had to. I could smell her perfume. She fell back and said something to Suzanne. Her eyes were captivating—dark, light, then dark again.
I heard Suzanne’s voice. It sounded like I was under water.
“Julian?” she said for the second time.
“Yeah?”
“I said Adeline is Vince’s partner.”
“Partner?” I asked, still stuck between water and land. “Like, business partner?”
They both laughed. “I’m Vince’s girlfriend,” Adeline said, in that voice, with those eyes. She had to be nearly six feet tall.
“Julian occasionally likes things to be said in common vernacular,” Suzanne said, rolling her eyes.
Adeline laughed again, but it was a kind laugh. Polite. She looked at me again. Stop, I said to myself. Stop looking at me.
23
There were four runs the next week, each just as easy as the first. A drive to Grand Junction with Damon, then picking up a vehicle and driving it back. Sedans each time. Money was always delivered in an envelope the next morning. With every run, the nerves died down, and in the place of nerves grew curiosity.
That night at the Ball, we partied until dawn and slept again in the last bedroom in Vince’s hallway. My thoughts stayed with Adeline. For the entirety of the night, from when I met her until Suzanne crawled on top of me in bed, I thought of Adeline. I followed her eyes across the room all night, until I got too drunk to follow. Our interaction was short, but it was enough. When I looked at her, when I smelled her, when I heard her speak, my mind wandered.
She was Vince’s girl, which meant she was untouchable. Furthermore, I had been slotted as one half of a couple already, and whether it was my doing or not, that’s how we were thought of. The “royal couple,” as Vince said, and while I wasn’t sure what that meant, clearly we were considered an item. I didn’t particularly like it; I wanted to be able to control the perceptions of my relationships. To decide when I was part of a couple or a relationship, or something different, or nothing. But terms were defined by others, and that was the way it was.
I hadn’t spoken with Megan in nearly a month. At first, I’d thought of her numerous times a day, hoping she was all right, wishing I could check up on her, hating myself for hurting her. Now, days passed when I forgot she existed. I told myself she would contact me if she needed money. I told myself she would be fine. She had a Brent or another guy, and fuck that guy. The only times I was reminded of the love we had shared were when I thought of her with another man and the anger bubbled up inside of me. Brent. Fuck her for whatever relationship they had had, and fuck him for existing. In thinking of Megan, I was always led back to finding the two of them in my apartment that afternoon, and this temporarily allowed me to believe I was not the worse of the two of us.
Adeline. I saw her face when I woke up the morning after the party, and every morning thereafter. I wondered where she’d been up to that point. Why she seemed to materialize from nothing. I thought of her with a curious reverence reserved only for those we know nothing about. She was Vince’s girl, and she was untouchable. Anyone’s girl should have been untouchable. That was how it was supposed to work. But there were rules, and rules could be bent, and often times even the thought of bending those rules could be enough. Just thinking about it would do the trick. But with Vince’s girl, even thinking about bending the rules was crossing the line.
Suzanne held my arm tighter, slept closer. She showed up at my apartment more often. These things were becoming problematic. I wondered, on more than one occasion, if it was me she was infatuated with, or just what I represented. A new man, fresh blood, rolling in to town from the east coast and mostly clueless. Someone she could convert, someone she could shape. Someone tall and dark, who knew how to comb his hair and cut a cigar. Someone different. Someone.
On the fifth run, I began asking questions.
“Why do we always do these at night?” I asked Damon from the passenger seat of another mystery vehicle, pointed west toward Grand Junction.
He shrugged. “Always been that way. Something about the timing of the deliveries, probably.”
I scratched my chin. “But who would need something delivered in the middle of the night?”
“No clue.”
“And you don’t wonder?”
“Used to. But I learned a long time ago not to ask questions.”
“Why not?”
“Why not ask questions?” He looked my direction.
“Yeah.”
He looked back at the road. “Just doesn’t get you anywhere. Guys start asking questions, they get booted. Vince doesn’t particularly like it.”
“Yeah, but why? What’s so bad about knowing what you’re hauling?”
“See, this is what I’m talking about,” he said. “It never goes anywhere good from here. Way I see it, it’s his choice to run his business how he wants.”
I nodded. It never goes anywhere good from here. He didn’t know anything.
We parted ways in that industrial parking lot and, as always, stepped into separate vehicles. Mine this time was a Chrysler sedan. I turned on the lights and the engine and watched Damon drive down the road and disappear into the night.