The blonde shrugged. “I’ll talk as dirty as you want, I’ll make you soak right through to the seat, but I have to see some green first.”
Vera was mortified. “I just want to talk to you, you know, just talk. Don’t you remember me? A couple of months ago? Paul Foster? Westwind Apartments? You and some redhead—”
“Oooooh, yeah,” the blonde slowly acknowledged with a nod. “You’re the chick who walked in on us. What, you’re his girlfriend?”
I thought you were his girlfriend now, Vera thought, puzzled. “I was his fiancé, until you and your red-haired friend got hold of him.”
“Oh, now I get it. Well, don’t think about starting any shit with me. None of that was my doing.”
Vera’s scowl felt hot. “Whatever it was you weren’t doing, you sure as hell seemed to be enjoying it at the time.”
“Look, honey, a trick’s a trick. I don’t ask questions when the money’s on the table.”
This was even worse than what she’d always thought. “You mean Paul paid you for sex?” The idea crushed her, it made her feel suddenly more inadequate than she’d ever felt in her life. Was I that bad? Was I so lousy a lover that he had to go out and solicit prostitutes?
“Not the guy,” the blonde said. “The trannie.”
“The what?”
The blonde’s chuckle darkened. “The redhead. You know, the girl with the cock.”
The transexual. Vera began to understand less and less with this conversation; she pulled in front of the first available meter on West Street and parked, her sensibilities in knots. “I still don’t understand. You mean—”
“Hang on, all right?” insisted the blonde. She scratched absently at the cross tattoo. “A person like me, you know, whether I’m fucking or eating pussy or just talking, it’s all the same. It’s time. And you know what they say about time, don’t you?”
Yeah, time is money. What a bitch! Vera passed the woman a couple of twenties. “Now, explain to me. You’re saying it wasn’t Paul who paid you, but the redhead?”
“That’s right,” answered the blonde, who quickly slipped the cash into a pocket. “I was trying to hustle down off Clay Street and she walks up. She said she wanted me to help her with something, and right off the bat she offers me a grand.”
“A thousand dollars!” Vera outraged. “For what?”
“She told me there was some newspaper writer named Paul she wanted to fuck with.”
“But why?”
The blonde shrugged. “I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. When someone drops a grand in your lap, you don’t ask questions.”
Vera’s mind swam in all this confusion. “Well let me ask you something. Is Paul still seeing this—” Vera gulped. “—this trannie?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. She didn’t seem interested in him at all once we were done. I figured it was just some guy she wanted to fuck over for some reason.”
But what was the reason? Vera wondered.
“This is how it went,” the blonde went on. “She gives me a grand to play along. Wants to put the make on this writer guy who’s gonna be at the bar that night. Just wants me to pretend I’ve heard of him and act interested. She also says there’ll be plenty of free blow.”
“Cocaine,” Vera muttered to herself.
“Naw, this stuff wasn’t coke, but whatever it was it was really top. One line and I was flying, and the stuff made me hornier than all of the Kennedys wrapped up into one. I’m telling you, just one toot and I didn’t give a shit about anything except getting it on. I didn’t even know who I was while I was on the shit.”
Vera paused. Paul had said essentially the same thing.
“It was probably some new designer dope, wish I could get my hands on more,” the blonde said. “Anyway, back to the story. Me and the redhead go to the bar and sure enough, there’s this Paul guy sitting there by himself. So we start talking, drinking, and all that, and after a while we put the make on him.”
The knots of Vera’s confusion tightened maddeningly. All right, the girls put the make on him, she thought. But that was still no excuse, was it? “And he obviously went along with it.”
The blonde lit another cigarette, glancing at her watch. “No, actually he didn’t. I mean, me and the trannie were working this guy over pretty good, but he wasn’t biting. Said he was engaged, he just wanted to talk to people, wasn’t interested in any partying.”
This, too, made even less sense. It infuriated Vera. “Yeah, well he must’ve changed his mind real fast, because what I saw going on on the bed looked like one hell of a party.”
“You got that right. But let me tell you how it happened. It was the trannie. This guy Paul wasn’t going for it, says he wants to be faithful to his fiancé or some shit. So the guy gets up to take a piss, and the trannie says to me “After I hit him with some of this, he’ll forget all about his fucking fiancé.”
Vera felt numb. “I still don’t understand,” she croaked, but part of her thought she was beginning to.
“The trannie spiked his drink,” the blonde said.
“You mean—”
“That’s right. While he was taking a piss, she put some of that blow into his beer, and after that he did anything we told him to do.”
— | — | —
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Vera, you’re being ridiculous,” Donna attested.
Vera sat nervously on the edge of Donna’s bed; she was biting her nails. “It’s not ridiculous,” she insisted between bites. “My God, I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
Donna fussed with her hair in the mirror as she continued to tear Vera’s fears apart. “You’re too impressionable. It’s too far-fetched to even consider, and you know it.”
“Donna, everything Paul said was verified by the blonde. Every last detail! Sure, I thought it was bullshit too when Paul said it, but the blonde?”
Donna’s reflection frowned back. “Listen to what you’re saying, Vera. Just because Paul and some street junkie had the same story doesn’t mean it’s true. Look at the sources, for God’s sake. Paul obviously instructed the blonde to tell you the same shit he told you at the apartment.”
“Oh, that’s impossible. How could Paul have known I’d see the blonde on the street? He didn’t know I was going downtown after I left.”
“Vera, you’re being so naive I can’t believe it. Paul and the hooker probably followed you, then he dropped her off at a corner he knew you’d have to pass to leave town. He knew you’d see her, he knew you’d remember her, and he knew you’d stop and ask her about what happened that night. Then she took it from there. You’re letting these people make a fool of you. Christ, you were supposed to tell Paul off to get him out of your system, and now look what’s happened. You’re worse off than before you went.” Donna, next, began to change lace bras in the mirror, appraising each one. What she wore down below were scarlet panties of the edible variety. “Look, I know how things can be sometimes. When you’re with someone for two years, it’s hard to let go. But you’re believing what you want to believe, Vera. That’s not going to do you any good at all. Paul cheated on you with a couple of dope-addict whores.”
Vera meandered forward, as if to make an enfeebled plea. “But he wasn’t really himself,” she attempted without much conviction. “The blonde verified it—they coerced him. They put—”