A Better Goodbye (29 page)

“Does Coco know you're doing this?” Mark asked.

“She's the one that asked me to come down,” Nick said.

It was hard for him to look at the wounded expression that came over Mark's face. Even if the guy was a pest and a creep and everything else Nick suspected he had it in him to be, he was devastated. It seemed like all he could do to drive away. Nick watched until he was out of sight, then headed back to the apartment, trying to forget the way the guy looked when his fantasy came undone.

Nick wasn't all the way through the door before Jenny asked, “Is everything okay?”

“Well, he didn't seem too happy.”

Jenny felt her stomach do a flip. “You mean you beat him up?”

“That was what you wanted, wasn't it?”

Nick looked so serious, Jenny thought she was going to have a heart attack.

“No, I just wanted you to, you know, like scare him, make him quit bothering me. I never said anything about—”

She stopped babbling when she saw Nick grin.

“Go ahead,” she said. “I deserve it. But he is gone, right?”

“Yeah. To tell you the truth, he didn't seem like such a bad guy.”

“He wasn't. He just got a little carried away.”

Nick nodded. “I hadn't run into anyone like that before. Just a couple drunks or druggies, whatever they were, and a guy that didn't have an appointment. Otherwise, you hardly need me except for cleaning up.”

“You've got no idea,” Jenny told him. “The last place I worked, two girls got raped and robbed. I was the one who found them.”

Nick let the silence settle around him and Jenny. “That's not gonna happen here,” he said.

The job had taught Jenny not to believe men, but when she looked into the dark eyes beneath Nick's scarred brows, there was something besides sadness in them, and in that moment, she knew she could believe him.

As soon as Scott arrived, he threw open the sliding doors to the terrace. The hell with how cold it was outside. Down in the fifties, he guessed. Like fucking Alaska. At ten at night, there wasn't anybody around to bitch and moan as he let fresh air in and the smells of perfume and potpourri spray out.
Jesus Christ! Somebody has been toking up.
Probably Cookie. A couple times he'd dropped by when she was working the early shift and her eyes were already red at noon. He'd have to tell Nick to stay on her ass. The last thing he needed was a neighbor getting a whiff of weed and calling the cops.

But the money was where it was supposed to be, in the security box, and Nick had left his accounting of the day's action. The guy never fucked up plus you could read his writing. Scott didn't understand how that could be, given all the times Nick had been hit in the head. Then he remembered it was Nick who had hit the other guy in the head too much. Now he was playing for Scott's team, making sure nobody cheated Scott out of his money.

Sierra was still raking it in, but Coco was the day's big earner, the way she was almost every day she worked. And tomorrow was Friday, always the busiest day of the week, guys needing to get off before they went home for a long weekend with the wives they were sick of and the girlfriends they didn't have the guts to dump. Scott shook his head, glad he hadn't turned the little bitch down for denying him his God-given freebie but still determined to get himself a piece. Who was the fucking boss anyway?

Then he resumed feeling sorry for himself. He'd been like this since
Mercs
blew up, assuming it was his privilege when he had to come up with the rent for two apartments, alimony for the ex he should have divorced before he knocked her up, and child support for kids he didn't care if he ever saw again. Now there was talk that the makeup cunt was going to sue him for sexual harassment. His monthly nut was already the size of Dolly Parton's knockers, and he had no idea how much longer he could handle it even without somebody new piling on.

There was no counting on Hollywood coming to his rescue again, and the only other real job he'd ever had was moving furniture back in Missouri. For a moment, he wondered if the massage business might be his salvation after all. Maybe he could branch out into escorts, big-ticket whores, and become a twenty-first-century version of Ben Gazzara in
Saint Jack
. (Or was it John Cassavetes? He always got them confused.) But
Saint Jack
was set in Thailand or Burma, one of those places where nobody called you a sinner for peddling pussy. Over here, even in L.A., it got your ass thrown in jail sooner or later. Just thinking about it sent Scott back into his tailspin. He was wondering if Cookie had left any of her dope around when DuPree called and asked, “What up, dawg?”

Dawg? Scott couldn't believe it. DuPree had gone such a long time without calling him dawg, the ultimate in street affection, that Scott had thought it would never happen again. Now that it had, though, he couldn't sound giddy about it.

“What,” he said, “you call me up so I can listen to you talking to that pit bull of yours?”

“No, he's my white motherfucker,” DuPree said. “You're my dawg.”

It was then that Scott knew the tectonic plates in his life had shifted. Exactly how, he wasn't sure. But something was changing. DuPree would get around to it in his own time, on his own terms, cool as shit. Scott was ready for whatever it was, criminal or civil. It was like he'd always told himself: You want to survive in L.A., you got to be ready to reinvent yourself.

Typical Friday. Brianna bailed before her shift was over and Jenny was booked as soon as she got there. She barely had time to throw on her sheer red mini dress before her four o'clock buzzed from downstairs, five minutes early. He turned out to be a barrel-shaped guy who talked nonstop about a writer's need to find “the emotional center of dramatic situations.” It sounded like he'd read some of the same books she had, and a lot more she intended to read now that she had some time away from school. When he was on the futon in the second bedroom, he shifted to a rambling monologue about his struggle to maintain his “artistic palette in the face of the corporate vultures.” She wondered which studio he was talking about, but he didn't say and she didn't ask.

She knew he'd unwind after she jacked him off, but she wasn't sure he was ever going to give her the chance. When he rolled onto his back, he started telling her about the chemist who figured out the structure of the benzene ring. She had no idea what the benzene ring was, but there wasn't any stopping her gasbag client to ask for an explanation. “This chemist had a dream in which a snake swallowed its tail,” he said, “and they told him, ‘That's kind of easy, you just fall asleep and figure something out.' And he replied, ‘Visions come to prepared spirits.'” Then it was time for the gasbag's hand job.

He gave Jenny a hundred-dollar tip and called her “a very bright young woman.” She accepted the tip and the compliment while she was trying to determine whether his story fit into her life somehow. She would have asked him for guidance—he didn't seem like someone who denied many requests—but he was more interested in meeting the other girls. So it was that Cookie, finished with her shift and headed to an outcall, and Sierra, who had shown up late, both received fifty-dollar bills, big hugs, and sloppy kisses on the cheek from their manic benefactor.

“He ever stop talking?” Nick asked when it was safe for him to step out of the master bedroom.

“I don't think so,” Jenny said.

“Even when he came?” Sierra asked.

“I didn't notice,” Jenny said.

Sierra laughed. “Concentrating on his dick?”

“No, thinking about something he said.”

The ringing phones saved Jenny from having to explain about visions and prepared spirits. L.A. seemed to have an endless supply of horny guys with money to spend. One of them was Barry, who asked Jenny if he could have her last appointment. She would have preferred a real date, but she still had a lawyer to pay. She'd see him at eight.

Scott showed up half an hour before Barry was supposed to. Jenny didn't think much of it. He was probably just starting his weekend early. If he had something else on his mind, Sierra was there. She'd seen her last client of the day, and she was the only one of the girls who could tolerate Scott on a regular basis. Jenny couldn't remember the last time he'd said anything to her except hello. That was fine with her.

Ten minutes later, DuPree walked in, nodding his head, eyes like ice, talking in the monotone that Jenny had learned to find so terrifying. He had a dog with him, straining to get out of its leash and explore its new surroundings. At least that was all Jenny hoped it wanted to do.

“Hey,” Scott said. “You brought White Fang.”

“Name's Blanco,” DuPree said.

Jenny tried to think of what kind of dog it was. She'd always preferred cats, would have had one, in fact, if her landlord allowed them, and this dog—squat, thick chest, pink eyes, undershot jaw—was butt ugly. Even with its tongue dangling happily from the corner of its mouth, she couldn't help thinking it must have been a candidate to be drowned at birth.

“Does he bite?” Sierra asked.

“Pet him and find out,” DuPree said.

“Oooh, I don't think so,” Sierra said, forcing a giggle.

That was when something in Jenny's head clicked. “It's a pit bull, right?” she said.

“You one smart little China girl, ain't you?” DuPree said, turning his eyes on her for the first time, his face devoid of emotion.

Jenny thought he was making himself sound ghetto to frighten her, to remind her of their time alone. But she still found it in her to say, in a voice she hoped was loud enough for him to hear, “I'm Korean.”

“That mean you ain't smart?” DuPree was smiling now.

“I recognize what kind of dog Blanco is, that's all.”

“Then maybe you want to pet him. You know, since you're the dog expert.”

Silence smothered the apartment.

It was the smirk on DuPree's face that pissed Nick off more than anything, that haughty I've-done-time-and-you-haven't look that thugs always seemed to fall back on at moments like this. The dog just added to DuPree's sense of menace, scarred by the cruelty that warps too many pit bulls. He could hurt you bad, even kill you, and DuPree was using the pit's reputation the way he would have a gun in a robbery.

Nick took a deep breath and said, “Knock it off. She's not interested in the dog.”

“That so?” DuPree looked at Coco. “The man speaking for your true heart, Miss Saigon?”

“I'm a cat person,” she said.

No one laughed but her.

“Sorry, I just am.”

DuPree kept his eyes on Nick standing by the room divider. “How about you? You a cat lover too? Or you just like pussy?”

“You're missing the point,” Nick said.

“Yeah? What point is that?”

“I don't like assholes.”

DuPree's eyes narrowed. “Say what?”

“You heard me.”