"China's something real fragile. Could break." His expression altered slightly and that same kind of recognition that had passed between me and the cop in the patrol car seemed to pass between us now in Priscilla's stinking kitchen.
I glanced at the rotting hamburger on the counter and suddenly it didn't look like rotting meat any more than the man standing in the doorway of Priscilla's bedroom looked like another junkie, or even a human being. He tilted his head and studied me, his eyes narrowing, and it all seemed to be going in slow motion, that underwater feeling again.
"If you ain't in some kinda big hurry, why don't you hang around," he said. "Here all by myself. Not too interesting, nobody to rap with. Bet you got a lot of stuff you could rap about."
Yeah, he was probably craving to find out if I'd read any good books lately. I opened my mouth to say something and the stink hit me again in the back of the throat.
"Whaddaya say, you stick around here for a while. I don't bite. 'Less I'm invited to."
I wanted to ask him what he'd bitten just recently. He touched his lip as though he'd been reading my mind and shrugged. I took a step back. He didn't seem awfully junked up any more and it occurred to me that it was strange that he wasn't with Priscilla instead of here, all by himself.
Maybe, I thought suddenly, he was waiting for someone. Maybe Joe was supposed to be here after all, maybe he was supposed to come here for some reason and I'd just arrived ahead of him.
I swallowed against the stink, almost choked again, and said, "Hey, did Priscilla tell you she had a friend coming by, a guy named Joe, or just a guy maybe? I mean, have you been waiting for someone?"
"Just you, babe."
I'd heard that line once or twice but it never sounded so true as it did just then. The kid's words suddenly came back to me. This is Priscilla's. I was here last night . Farmer must have run right over after I'd seen him, to tell her I was looking for Joe. So she decided to send me on a trip to nowhere, with Farmer and the rest of them in on it, playing out the little charade of meeting her today so I could ask her about Joe and she could run this ramadoola on me. But why? What was the point?
"No, man," I said, taking another step back. "Not me."
"You sure about that?" The voice was smooth enough to slip on, like glare ice. Ice. It was chilly in the apartment, but he didn't seem to feel it. "Must be something I can help you with."
Outside there was the sound of a train approaching in the distance. In a few moments, you wouldn't be able to hear anything for the roar of the train passing.
I turned and fled out to the porch. The dead-meat smell seemed to follow me as I galloped back down the stairs and woke the kid still hanging in the banister. "Let's go, let's get out of here."
The train was thundering past as I shoved him back into the car and pulled out.
"You find Joe?" he shouted as we bounced across the parking lot.
"Yeah, I found him. I found the wrong fucking Joe."
The kid giggled a little. "There's lots of guys named Joe."
"Thanks for the information, I'll keep it in mind." I steered the car on to the street again, unsure of what to do next. Maybe just cruise around, stopping random junkies and asking them if they'd seen Joe, or look for the white Caddy or whatever it was. A white luxury car would stand out, especially if a pretty blonde woman were driving it.
The junkies were starting to come out in force now, appearing on the sidewalks and street corners A few of them waved at the car and then looked confused when they saw me at the wheel. It seemed to me there were more new faces among the familiar ones, people I didn't even know by sight. But that would figure, I thought; had I really expected the junkie population to go into some kind of stasis while I was away at college? Every junkie's got a friend and eventually the friend's got a habit. Like the jailbait in the back seat.
I glanced in the rear-view mirror at him. He was sitting up with his head thrown back, almost conscious. If I were going to find Joe or at least his lady friend, I'd have to dump the kid.
"Wake up" I said, making a right turn on to the street that would take me past Foster Circle and down to Streep's. "I'm going to leave you off at the restaurant with everyone else. Can you handle that?"
He struggled forward and leaned over the front seat. "But we ain't found Joe yet."
" 'Haven't found Joe yet.' What's the matter, do you just nod out in English class?"
He giggled. "Yeah. Don't everyone?"
"Maybe. I can't be hauling your ass all over with me. There's no end-of-class bell around here. You're on your own." I took another look at him as he hung over the seat, grinning at me like God's own fool. "You don't know that, do you?"
"Know what?" He ruffled my hair clumsily.
"Quit that. You don't know that you're on your own."
"Shit, I got lots of friends."
"You've got junkies is what you've got. Don't confuse them with friends."
"Yeah?" He ruffled my hair again and I slapped his hand away. "So why are you so hot to find Joe?"
"Joe isn't my friend, he's my brother."
"Jeez, no kidding? I thought you were like his old lady or something."
How quickly they forget, junkies. I was about to answer him when I saw it, gleaming like fresh snow in the afternoon sunlight, impossibly clean, illegally parked right at the kerb at Foster Circle. George had been right — it was a Caddy after all. I looked for a place to pull over and found one in front of a fire hydrant.
"Wait here," I said, killing the engine. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, you're free to go."
"Uh-uh," the kid said, falling back and fumbling for the door handle. "I'm coming with you."
"Fuck off." I jumped out of the car and darted across two lanes of oncoming traffic, hoping the kid would pass out again before he solved the mystery of the door handle. The Caddy was unoccupied; I stepped over the low thorny bushes the ex-mayor had chosen for their red summer blooms and look around wildly.
At the time, it didn't seem strange that I almost didn't see her. She was sitting on a bench fifty feet away looking as immaculate as her car in a thick brown coat and spike-heeled boots. Her pale blonde hair curved over her scarf in a simple, classy pageboy, like a fashion model. More like an ex-fashion model, from the careful, composed way she was sitting with her ankles crossed and her tidy purse resting on her knees, except the guy on the bench next to her wasn't material for the Brut ad campaign. It was Farmer. He still looked pretty bleary but he raised one arm and pointed at me. She turned to look and her elegantly made-up face broke into that sort of cheery smile some stewardesses reserve for men who drink heavily in first class.
She beckoned with a gloved hand and I went over to them.
"Hello," she said in a warm contralto. "We've been waiting for you."
"Oh, yeah?" I said casually. "Seems like there's always someone waiting for me these days. Right, Farmer?" He was too busy staring at the woman to answer. "I thought you didn't know how to find her."
"I don't," Farmer said and smiled moonily at the woman, which pissed me off. "She found me. Kind of."
"At Streep's ?" I didn't look right at her but I could see she was following the exchange with that same cheery smile, completely unoffended that we were talking about her in the third person.
"Nah. After you left us off, I left everybody at Streep's and came down here, figuring maybe I could find somebody who'd get in touch with Joe for you."
"Sure. Except Priscilla told me Joe was at her place. Only he wasn't. What about that, Farmer? You wanna talk about that a little? Like how you were there last night?"
Farmer could have cared less, though it was hard to see how. "Yeah, we was there. She wouldn't let us in, said she'd meet us today like we planned." He shrugged. "Anyway, I came down here and there was her car going down the street, so I flagged her down and told her you were looking for Joe. So then we came here. I figured you'd look here sooner or later because this was there I told you I saw her and Joe. And, you know, Streep's, shit, it's not a good place."