A Better Goodbye (27 page)

There was some planning to do, of course, no matter how bad DuPree's itch needed scratching. He'd check the place out next time he dropped by, talk to Scottie about how the business worked, what the big days were, which girls were the best earners. DuPree hoped that Oriental bitch was one of them. He'd kick the punching bag's ass, flat out devastate the motherfucker, and he'd take everybody's money, and then he'd bind and gag the other girls while he ripped Miss Saigon up good. Just thinking about it made his dick hard.

For the first time he could remember, Nick slept through the Mexican gardeners' wake-up routine. He hadn't expected that, as pissed off as he was about Coyle's broken promise, false promise, whatever the hell it was. But there was no tossing and turning, no lying there staring into the darkness, not even any Alonzo Burgess flashbacks. It was as if the cool of Coco's hand the day before had banked the fire in Nick's mind.

The next thing he knew, he had fallen asleep again, and when he awoke this time, he was already late for work. He didn't bother checking the messages stacked up on his cell phone, and he didn't call to say he'd be there as soon as possible. For one day at least, he was on his own damned clock.

Sierra and Coco were waiting in the lobby when he got to the apartment, Sierra in a short skirt that made her look like she wore a price tag even off duty, Coco curled up against the wall with her nose in a book. “Jesus Christ,” Sierra said, getting loud about it. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Pipe down,” Nick said.

The surprised look on Sierra's face nearly cracked her makeup. It was all she could do to paste her scowl back on when they got upstairs and he held the door for her. From Coco he expected something else, a little smile and a shrug at the very least. Instead she gathered up her book and her backpack and hurried after Sierra without looking at him.

Nick tried not to be obvious as he watched Coco check her messages. She put on a little performance for her own amusement more than anyone else's, frowning at the hang-ups and empty promises to call back, smiling broadly at the clients who asked her to get back to them. She said, “Oh, Mark, Mark,” too, and shook her head wearily at her most devoted admirer's bullshit. There was one message, however, that appeared to mean more to her than all the others. It threw her into another gear as she hurried around the apartment, making sure Sierra didn't have a session scheduled so she could use the master bedroom and spending more time than usual fixing herself up for her noon appointment.

After the guy called from the lobby, Nick and Coco walked to the door together and waited for the doorbell to ring so Nick could check him out through the peephole.
A little on the slick side
, Nick thought;
certainly nothing to set off alarms
. He nodded his approval to Coco, expecting her to respond with the usual signs that this was all just a game, a roll of the eyes or a wiggle of the eyebrows. Instead, she looked eager to see the guy.

Nick retreated behind the room dividers and discovered that Sierra must have gone off to the second bathroom; she spent a lot of time there, doing her makeup or coke. He used her absence to pause just out of sight and listen as Coco opened the door, imagining how she was staying behind it so no neighbor would catch a glimpse of her in her sheer black slip dress. Then he heard the door click shut and her noon appointment said, “I thought I recognized your voice on the phone.”

“I missed you,” Coco told him.

He was as handsome as ever. The corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled and everything about his clothes was just so: black knit shirt, olive slacks, and a houndstooth sport coat that pulled it all together. It had never crossed Jenny's mind before, but he seemed distinguished. In a low-key way, of course. Maybe it was how he carried himself, or maybe it was the black leather briefcase he always had with him. It told anybody who noticed it that he was important. And important was a nice fit with distinguished, right? Maybe the Rolls really was his.

“You look great,” Barry said.

“So do you,” Jenny said.

“In case you're wondering, I haven't had any problems with my convertible top.”

“I'm glad we got that out of the way.”

And then, laughing, she did something she never did with clients, even her favorites. She hugged him before the massage, right there by the door. Didn't wait until they were in the privacy of the bedroom and didn't care if Sierra and Nick saw her. If Barry was surprised, it didn't show. He hugged her back with the kind of sincerity she never felt from clients, no matter how smitten they were with her. Come to think of it, she never felt it from most of her boyfriends, either. It made her want to kiss him, but she pulled away before she did, saying, “Come on,” and taking him by the hand and leading him into the master.

It wasn't until they were inside that she realized she had forgotten to ask for his donation, the two hundred dollars he was supposed to leave on the counter so Nick could put it in the security box. She was trying to think of a clever way to ask for it when he handed her two crisp hundred-dollar bills. “Here,” he said. “Better not get the boss upset.” She liked him more than ever for that.

They had a lot of catching up to do once they were naked on the bed, Barry lying on his stomach while Jenny slathered him with lotion and tried her best to approximate a real massage. She maneuvered around him on her knees, and when she brushed up against him with a breast, he stirred with pleasure. What, she wondered, would happen when she straddled him to work on his back? One thing for sure: If she got close enough, he'd know exactly how excited she was.

“Mazzy Star, right?” Barry asked.

“What?”

“The music. Sounds like Mazzy Star's still your favorite.”

“You remembered.”

“I did better than that—I bought the CD.” He raised his head and looked back at her. “I wasn't sure I'd see you again.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He lowered his head back onto his hands. “When I called to see you again over in Sherman Oaks, the phone was disconnected. Your ad was gone from the Internet, too.”

“Things got a little bit crazy.” It was as close to the truth as she dared go.

“You didn't get busted, did you?” he asked.

“No, there was, like, a problem with a couple of the girls, so I thought I'd take some time off. To concentrate on school.”

“Is that what you're doing now? Going to school?”

“Pretty much. My last poetry paper is due next week, and then I've got a final in my Vietnam War class. After that, I'll try to decide what to do next.”

“Any idea what it might be?”

“Well, I've been at a two-year school and I'd really like to go to UCLA.”

“Sounds like a splendid idea to me.”

“Me, too.”

Jenny was ready to tell him she wanted to major in English when Barry said, “You know, I must have called every Asian masseuse in L.A. to see if you were working anywhere. Nobody ever keeps the same name, do they?”

“Not too often, no.”

She hoped she didn't sound surprised by the change in the conversation's direction. And she wondered how many girls he had seen, and if he liked any of them as much as he seemed to like her. It was a dumb thing to think about, the kind of petty competitiveness she hated in other girls. She wanted to erase it from her mind right away.

“I'm glad you kept looking,” she said.

He would have known how glad if he had seen her the day before. There was something savage about DuPree, and she realized how close she had come to experiencing the full force of it. If Nick hadn't been waiting when she walked out of the bedroom, she would have fallen apart. But she couldn't help wondering about Nick. Such a tough man but such a sad one, too.

And then Nick and DuPree ceased to matter when she heard the voice she thought was Barry's. He was calling about an Internet ad for Coco, and he left a number with a 310 area code. She wondered if it was the same number he had before—a cell phone, probably—and got mad at herself for not hanging onto it. No, wait a minute. She'd never done anything except scribble his number on a piece of paper even though she really liked the guy, and it was still there when she ran out the door on that horrible afternoon. She hoped it hadn't gotten him in trouble.

There had been no way to know on the phone. She had played it strictly as Coco when she returned his call, and he had gone along with the charade. He politely scheduled an appointment and left her to spend the night wondering if he had connected her voice to the Suki who used to work in Sherman Oaks.

Now he was here with her, and she wasn't going to bring up leaving his number at the other place unless he did. It didn't seem likely judging by the smile he was giving her.

“I really missed you,” he said.

“You did?” she said.

He twisted around to look at her. “Yes. I wasn't lying when I told you I've been trying to find you.”

“I'm glad.”

“Glad I wasn't lying or glad I missed you?”

“Both.”

“In that case, I'll gather my courage and ask if you ever go out with clients.”

Jenny was surprised. Barry wasn't waiting until after what the more discreet girls called the release. In fact he was shifting to lie on his side, keeping his left leg bent to cover himself, and she wasn't massaging him anymore because it would have distracted her from the conversation.

“Not very often,” she said. “Like almost never.”

His smile disappeared. She hoped he'd made it go away to tease her.

“That's a pretty cautious answer,” he said. “You're not under oath here, you know.”

“I know,” she said. “It's just that you live in Santa Barbara, I think you told me, and that doesn't seem very practical. For a date, I mean.”

“I get it,” he said. “You're one of those L.A. women who dates according to her area code. So what are you, a three-ten? A three-two-three? Certainly not an eight-one-eight—the Valley's so un-cool even if we did meet there.”

She couldn't help laughing. “Come on, do I really come across that shallow?”

“No,” he said. “That's why I'd like to take you out.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for the compliment. But there's still the fact that I'm here and you're in Santa Barbara.”

“I don't live there all the time.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Right now I'm renting a house in the hills. Up by Appian Way.”

“I kind of know where that is.”

“Maybe you can visit sometime. It's not a castle, but it's got a pool and a nice view. I'll be there a lot for the next year, while I'm taking care of some business down here.”

“Cool. I'd like that.”

It was as close to a formal acceptance speech as she could offer, and she assumed that Barry got the message. She was about to cease being the fantasy he knew as Coco and Suki and start being Jenny Yee and all the good and bad that entailed. She would make the transformation expecting answers to the questions she had from the last time they were together. Was he married? (He didn't wear a ring and didn't have the marks left by one he had taken off, but that didn't mean anything.) If he was married, did he always go back to his wife when he was done fooling around? (Jenny was weary of guys like that.) Even if he was in a lousy marriage, were there kids involved? (Once was enough for that.) And what did he do for the business he was never specific about? (The answer had to be in his black leather briefcase.)

Still, if everything she heard from him was wrong, even if he refused to say anything at all, Jenny knew she was going to sleep with him. It wouldn't be during working hours, though, with people in the same apartment. It would be someplace she could enjoy the experience without embarrassment or the gossip it would generate. Someplace special. Okay, Barry's place. She was already thinking about it when she put some oil in her hand and told him to lie back and relax.