7. Crash
SEVEN
CRASH
PHONE HOME.
The message is from my sister, Sarah Jane.
I call my wife straightaway.
“What’s going on, Jess?”
“Nice to hear from you, finally,” Jess answers in a tone which suggests I’m the last person on earth she wants to hear from. “Ruby is sick, by the way.”
“Sick how? Did you get medicine?”
“I forgot,” Jessica sighs. “It’s nothing serious, anyway.”
“Take her to the doctor.”
“I’m busy .”
“ Busy with what ?”
“When are you coming home?”
“Please take Ruby to the doctor, Jess, damn it.”
“Ruby has to learn I won’t always be there to coddle her. By the way, Freddie came over. They just let him out of jail so we’re going to get drinks.”
I pull onto the shoulder rapidly. A grandma in a mini cooper throws me the finger. “Don’t tell me you brought your fuckin’ brother into my house, Jessica.”
“Fuck you! Freddie’s innocent!”
“Keep him away from Ruby or I will murder him with my bare hands. Do you read me?”
“I’m sick of this baby bullshit,” Jessica snaps. “Everybody’s got a motherfucking opinion on what I’m doing. She’s not even your kid, Crash. But I’m her mother. I can decide who comes around my kid.”
“Under the law she is my kid,” I say though I know the law won’t do shit. Jess is so protected out in Florin because her Pa is on the take from the hillbilly overlord Roman McCall.
The man I’m now working for.
A part of my reason for doing this job is Roman’s favor. If he applies pressure I can get Jess out of the picture, legally, sooner rather than later.
“Leave Ruby with my sister. I’ll give you money, alright? How much do you want?”
“You think I can’t take care of my baby?” Jessica screeches.
Ruby starts crying in the background.
“OH MY GOD! QUIET!”
“Don’t yell at the kid!” I bellow.
The line goes dead, and I immediately call my sister .
“Crash? What’s wrong?” Comes my sister’s even, stable voice. “I always know when something’s up with you. What do you need?”
“Sis, I need a favor.” The knot of stress in my back tightens. I swear Jess has tested every drop of my honor and patience. If she was standing in front of me there’s no telling what I’d do.
“What’s wrong? Is it Jess again?” My sister says with her usual mind-reading powers.
“SJ, I need you to get Ruby from my house.”
“Damn it, Crash, I’m about to go to church,” my sister sighs. “And Jack-Jack just puked everywhere. BETH! Get the bucket of water, will you?”
“Yes mommy,” says my niece in the background. “Is that Uncle Crash?”
“Yes, but we’re having an adult conversation, so go get that bucket like I told you babygirl. Okay, Crash. What’s going on?”
“Jessica’s bringing her brother around Ruby. I need you to get her or I swear to God I’m going to jail when I get back.”
“ Pedo Freddie ?” Sarah Jane cries. “Are you kidding me? Crash, where the hell are you?”
“Oklahoma.”
“Oklahoma?” Her voice dips low. “Is it true you’re out to get Roman’s gold back?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Oh— just in church.”
“Christ, there’s so secrets in our town is there?”
“Nope.”
The last thing I need— vultures circling my kill. But I expected this.
“I really need this money, SJ, or trust me I’d be home right now making Jess kick rocks.”
“Well, I’ll get some people and we’ll get Ruby out of there,” my sister promises. “But you better hurry home. I can’t keep somebody else’s baby, Crash. The law gets funny about them things. And that girl will make trouble, sure as daylight.”
“I know.”
“Always got to be the hero. You can’t see something hurtin’ and just walk away.”
I think of Trina and her bambi eyes. “Let me know when you get Ruby. And thanks– a million.”
“You owe me. A big one,” my sister says.
“I know.”
Trina isn’t in the room.
A quick sweep of the building leads me to the vending machine. She jumps as I turn the corner.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
She’s so short, she barely reaches up to my chest. Her hair is wet. I guess she must have showered while I was out.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay in the room?” Easy. It’s not Trina’s fault I’m stressed out.
“No,” Trina corrects. “You said not to let anybody in the room. Which I did not.” She frowns at the machine. “Should I get chips or cookies?”
“Neither. Eat some real food.”
I wonder if Sarah Jane is right about me– if that “savior complex” is the only reason I agreed to help Trina.
The machine groans and Trina bends over to get the cookies.
Yeah. The only reason.
She’s pretty. Give her that. She has more hair than a woman ought to have, curly as all-get-out, flying all over her face and back. I could take handfuls of it and still have extra. Her skin is so dark, like the surface of a river at night. Her eyes are slanted, but when she looks up at me– and she always has to look up at me– I see two moons. These fool notions jump in my head at the worst moments, like when she so innocently offered to rub my back earlier and I had to stand under a freezing shower to get my head right.
“We need to talk,” I tell her.
“About what?”
“About me taking you to California.”
I follow her back to the room.
“What about it?” she says cautiously as I shut the door.
“Look,” I tell her, feeling like a scumbag, “Something serious is going on back home. I need to head back to Virginia sooner than I thought.”
“What about your job? That thing you’re doing out here.”
“I...I’m not sure.”
“Okay,” she says tensely.
Fuck.
I know I don’t owe Trina a damned thing. She might be beautiful but she’s a stranger. Her situation is nothing of my doing. For crying out loud I just met the girl two days ago.
And she doesn’t have an address for this grandmother, which is the cherry on top. Not even a name. I can’t go trawling the streets of L.A. for some old lady that might no longer live on this earth — in every sense. What was that about being a hippie? Say the old lady’s mad as a fruit bat, getting high as a kite on some four-syllable drug. And then what? Leave Trina to join her? I can’t allow that.
So then what?
“Trina,” I tell her, “I’m gonna need a way to find your grandmother. A name. Something I can go on.”
Her face falls. “But I really don’t have anything, Crash.”
“Trina, listen. My wife–” Fuck. Don’t say it like that.
“It’s complicated,” I finish lamely.
Her eyes widen. “I don’t want to hurt your marriage. That was never my intention.”
I can’t with this chick. Her sweetness isn’t a put-on at all, which makes this even more painful.
My stomach suddenly growls, giving me the perfect excuse to delay this.
“Hey– let’s talk about this over some food.”
I’ll give myself until nine to make a call. If Sarah Jane can get my daughter away from Jessica, then I’ll stay in Oklahoma and finish the job. I know Sarah Jane would never agree to help me if she wasn’t sure she could handle herself against Jessica.
But if something happens, if I don’t get a call, then I have to go back to Florin immediately, Trina or no Trina.
“Let me just change,” says Trina.
I look over her shoulder. Something about the room feels different.
“Did you clean up in here?”
“I replaced the sheets because I spilled some coffee,” she says, laughing nervously.
The room smells good, too. But when I say so, she gives me another strange look before her eyes jump to the TV.
“Can we go eat, Crash? I’m starving.”
Before we head out she grabs the XL Gray hoodie I got her from Walmart, and a foolish regret jumps to mind that I didn’t get her something nicer.
Something shorter. Tighter.
To hell with these thoughts.
Trina catches my eye. “What?”
“Nothing. Hurry up.”
“So pushy,” she grumbles, walking ahead of me.
I force my eyes off her ass.
We go to the fanciest restaurant in town— Applebee’s.
Me and Trina get plenty stares, but nobody says a word. I admit the perv at the gas station surprised me. Along this road you get some rough customers, but try being the size of a Redwood, with a mug like a Rottweiler, you get clearance.
Traveling with a honeypot like Trina is another story.
We pass a table of old hunched over cowboys, and one of them has the brass to shake his head at me and spit into his dip can.
If this was Virginia I’d make him drink it, but this ain’t Virginia.
I ignore him and push Trina on ahead.
She sighs. “This place is so different from Tippalonga.”
The only thing different here is the color of the dirt. “Yes, night and day,” I tell her. “I need to take a piss— ah, go to the gentlemen’s. Get a table for us.”
When I come out of the can, one of those old cowboys is looming over her, and we still haven’t been seated.
I place myself between the rusty spur and Trina. He backs up a step.
“Nice lil’ bit you got there,” he wheezes. “In my day, you’d get run out of town for it.”
“Move along,” I warn him.
He shuffles away. Trina looks rattled.
“Nobody come up to serve you? Why are you still up here?” I demand.
She hisses, “ Sorry. I was busy trying to get rid of Robert E. Lee over there. He kept calling me a beautiful chocolate drop. And these serving ladies won’t even look at me.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“I have no idea. I don’t speak redneck!”
The servers are all gossiping in a pod near the bar. I slam my hand down on the little podium. Immediately one of them breaks off and comes over. “Um, yes?”
“We’d like a table for two,” says Trina, speaking up, luckily, before I do. “With somebody that isn’t afraid of me.”
“Um,” says the girl. “Right this way.”
I order a steak, mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli and Trina gets chicken fingers, a salad and a chocolate lava cake. I have to talk her out of ordering a large black coffee or she’ll be climbing the walls all night.
“I can’t believe in this day and age people are still racist.”
“Ignorance thrives where people allow it,” I shrug. “We’re all human beings at the end of the day. Don’t bother me, I don’t have a problem with you. I wish everybody thought like that, but what can you do?”
She raises an eyebrow over a spoonful of chocolate cake. I never saw somebody eat dessert before a meal.
“What if we had kids, and somebody started bullying them in school? Calling them the N-word?” She presses me.
“If we had kids.”
“I mean, you know. Say your wife was black or something…”
“And I woke up in another dimension…”
“I’m serious. What would you do?”
“I’d handle it, or I’d make him handle it, depending on the situation.”
She takes a big bite of cake. “So what do you think about the election?”
I grin. “Hard pass.”
When the real food comes it’s like we both lose our appetites. Trina picks at her salad as I tell her why I have to get back to Virginia.
“It starts with my friend Zacky,” I explain. “Going back a decade or so.”
She nods.
“Zacky and I were from the same town. We joined the service together. He came from a good family– real uptight army folks. His dad was a Colonel, had all these medals– damn proud of it, too.”
“You were in the army ?”
“Yeah,” I say, hoping she doesn’t bombard me with questions. “We were stationed, er, somewhere together, me and Zacky, which was lucky, both bein’ from the same town. We’d always been cool with each other, playing on the basketball team in school, all that.”
Trina nods.
“I can’t tell you the details of the mission,” I say carefully, “But Zacky and I were called to a special task force involving a high profile manhunt.”
Trina’s eyes get huge. “Seal Team six? bin Laden? ”
“Ah, no.”
“Oh.”
“During the mission shit went sideways, and while under heavy fire Zacky saved my life but was badly wounded. He spent about a month in our ICU, and they tried to send him home but he insisted he was better. He didn’t want to face the disgrace, you know, with his family. They put a lot of pressure on him to finish his tour.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yep. Not long after he was supposedly healed, he got busted for stealing pills. Painkillers. Morphine. A bunch of other shit. Worst of all, he was dealing to other Privates.”
She’s quiet, watching me.
“To make a long story short, they decided that despite his pedigree, or maybe because of it, they had to make an example of him. So he was court martialed, sent home, and his family disowned him. I tried to find him after that, but he dropped off the face of the earth. And I was still on tour.”
“Do you think he blamed you for getting hurt?”
“No. He wasn’t that kind of man. If anything he blamed himself.” Now for the rest of it. “Once I got back home out of nowhere Zacky called me up. He tells me he married a girl from high school– Jess. And she’s pregnant. We get back in touch, he seems like he’s doing alright…he’s doing construction, getting paid…Happy about the kid…”
Trina’s eyes soften with pity.
“Not long after Jess gave birth to their daughter, Zacky overdosed. Turned out he never kicked the habit. While he was in the hospital, he asked me to forgive him. Nobody came to see him. Nobody cared. I gave him my word that I would take care of his kid no matter what. He had no one, Trina.”
“Oh, Crash, that was so—”
“Please don’t,” I cut her off.
I don’t want pity or I’m sorry – not from her. “Just telling you the facts.”
“So your wife…Jessica?” Trina says, picking up quickly.
I nod. “I got military benefits. She and Ruby would be set for life. What I didn’t know was that Jessica was picking up where Zacky left off with the drug habit. That was how they met.”
“Oh,” says Trina, wide-eyed.
“Because of that, Ruby wasn’t born healthy, and then when I found out, shit basically hit the fan. I offered to pay for Jess’s rehab, but she wasn’t interested. She started taking Ruby and running off. I’d call the police, they’d say I needed a court order. I put in a court order, it went nowhere. Jess’s daddy is a Judge. He daddy offered me ten thousand dollars to let the whole thing drop and give up Ruby as a ward of the state.”
I told that pompous bastard where he could put his ten thousand dollars, but I don’t tell Trina that.
“Didn’t Zacky’s family want anything to do with the baby?” Trina asks in horror.
“They tried, but Jess won’t cooperate. I keep in touch with them sometimes. They never much liked Jess and they seem to think of Ruby as a painful obligation.”
“That poor baby girl.”
“I know. I need the money for court, to get Ruby away from her mother. That’s why I’m out here — uh — working.”
Trina bites her lip. “Can I see her?”
“Ruby? Sure.” I show Trina a few pictures.
“She’s mixed!” Trina exclaims.
“Yeah. Zacky was Black.”
“Oh…wow.” Trina sighs. “What a cute little girl. Is she with her mama now?”
“Unfortunately,” I admit. “I didn’t have a choice. There’s not much I could do short of kidnapping. I just need to make sure Ruby is okay. Everything else is secondary. That’s why our little adventure…” I take her hand. “You understand, darlin’?”
Trina stares down at our linked hands. The light of a red sunset glows on her small face through the window. When she looks up, she’s composed. “You’re right— you should go back and make sure the baby is okay,” she says firmly.
She takes a deep breath. “I can make my own way.”
Our waitress passes our table with a mango margarita in a glass damn near the size of a bucket. “Excuse me, what is that?” Trina asks her, pulling her hand gently from mine.
“Mango marg, honey. You want one?” says the waitress, looking at me.
“Um,” says Trina.
“Yes,” I tell the woman.
“ID?”
Frowning, Trina fishes out her expired ID. The waitress barely looks at it before handing it back and smiling at me again.
Christ.
“One Mango Marg, coming up, honey.”
“If I had a new one I could just fly to Cali,” Trina sighs, flipping the ID between her fingers.
“Yeah. Batting your eyes won’t work all the time, I’m afraid.”
“I can’t believe I have to show my ID just to get some juice. Is that normal?”
“When you’re buying alcohol, yes.”
“Alcohol?”
“That’s what a margarita is. Tequila and some other shit.”
She stares at me blankly.
“Please tell me you knew that,” I groan.
“I did know that,” she says quickly.
I like Trina. The thought comes out of nowhere and it hits me all wrong.
“You never went out with friends?” I ask her. “What did you do all day?”
She hesitates. “I ran the bible study at church. I did a lot of crafts. Quilting with the womens’ circle. Calligraphy. I made the schedules. I sang in the choir, and I prayed. I slept a lot. Sometimes when I had nothing to do I would sleep all day long.”
She was lonely.
“You didn’t use the internet?”
“I used it to schedule the church events.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I– no. Not really, I didn’t. Jermaine did.” Every time she mentions her brother she gets that look, like she’s watching something cute and fluffy get run over by a tractor.
“Who’s the president right now? Do you know what year we’re in?” I tease.
“Very funny. I’m willing to learn anything.”
“Good,” I tell her. Nobody writes the story of your life. Nobody controls your destiny but you.”
“And God,” she says faithfully.She smiles at me. “Thanks.”
The wholesome Disney schtick is awkward coming from a guy like me.
“What was it like? Traveling with the military– seeing the world?” Trina asks suddenly.
I watch the waitress approaching and I see hollowed-out buildings and hungry children, and I smell blood and brains soaking into shit-colored sand. Gunfire.
The mango margarita arrives and I realize I haven’t said a word.
“For the happy couple,” the waitress says.
“I’ll share it with you,” I say out of pity as Trina’s eyes widen. The thing is the size of a damned mop bucket. Anyway, I can’t exactly have her lush.
“Just so we’re clear, this never happened,” I say, unwrapping a straw. “You never saw Crash Walker drink a mango margarita with a straw.”
“You’d prefer a whiskey?” she teases.
“Naturally, but it ain’t that kind of party.”
She finishes half the damn drink as people filter in and out, coming to watch the Rangers game. Darkness falls outside. In the back of my mind I know that tomorrow we’ll go our separate ways.
But I can’t leave her here.
“What’s Virginia like?” Trina asks.
“Greener than here. I live in the mountains, not the coast.”
“Do you hunt?”
“You mean for food? Sometimes.”
“Is there a black side of your town, and a white side?”
“Yeah. But things have changed. This one family, the McCalls– cousins of mine– used to run folks out of town for race mixing. Then all the sons married black women. Imagine that.”
Trina’s mouth pushes to the side and she looks me up and down. “You look mixed, you know. Like, maybe a little bit.”
“My ma was Italian.”
“I knew it!” Trina pushes the straw between her lips.
And suddenly, I’m hard.
Ah.
“Crash,” she says, dabbing her mouth with the napkin. “I really like this drink, but it’s making me feel funny.”
“Funny how?” I stare at her lips.
“Like…I just want to talk and talk.” She laughs.
“We should head back to the motel. Tomorrow we have to have our heads on.”
“I don’t want to think about tomorrow.”
“Don’t bury your head in the sand,” I say harshly. “It’s coming anyway. Might as well think about it, deal with it.”
She’s quiet as I pay the bill and we walk to the parking lot. I was an ass, but Trina brings it out of me. I want to treat her like a little sister, but I can’t. She’s hooked herself into some part of me, somehow, that would hurt like hell to tear loose. I don’t know how she did that.
She’s sweet, innocent and kind. Gorgeous. She’s also got the street smarts of a moth. I can’t take her to California, I can’t leave her here, and I can’t bring her to Virginia.
Can’t I?
When she looks up and the light from the diner is in one eye, the moon in the other. Her skin is dark like velvet, her face full of hope.
“So what are we going to do about tomorrow?” She asks quietly.
“If you came back to Virginia, you couldn’t stay with me,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says, though I see disappointment in her eyes. “That wouldn’t be appropriate anyway. You have a family.”
“Then there’s getting you some money to live on. If we can’t find your grandmother, if it takes too long…”
“I can take care of myself,” she says firmly.
I doubt that.
“I wouldn’t have a problem letting you crash with me. But there’s Jess.”
Her head drops a little. “Right.”
“I’ll have to get a place for you. Somewhere you could stay while we try to find your grandmother. You could fly out to meet her, once we sort your ID out…” It’s a stupid plan. Bring Trina home? Nobody would believe I wasn’t fucking her. It would destroy my reputation and hurt my chances getting custody of Ruby.
And, of course, I’m supposed to be putting cuffs on Sebastian McCall right this very minute.
Getting paid.
Roman.
If I show up in Florin without his man, I don’t know how the Boss will take it.
Not well, I’m guessing.
“I’ll make sure you get your money, Crash,” Trina says, bless her. “I promise. And when I promise something, I mean it with my whole heart.”
“Don’t worry about all that,” I say gruffly.
“I know God sent you. I prayed for you to come– this was meant to happen,” she says fervently.
When she talks like that I don’t know what to think.There’s nothing Godly about the way I’ve been thinking about her.
Reason says it’ll wear off.
My gut tells me it won’t.
She’s different.
There’s something about her that I’m obsessed with.
What happened in the shower after she offered to rub my back is proof of that.
“Get in the car,” I tell her.
“Why did you park in that dark creepy corner anyway?”
“Just laying low.”
“Don’t worry,” she reassures me. “The cops in Cimarron hate the Tippalonga PD. They won’t turn us in across county lines.”
“Yeah. Uh— that’s comforting.”
It’s not the Cimarron Police I’m worried about. The tracker in McCall’s car shows it’s still in Tippalonga. But it doesn’t hurt to be careful. This county is small enough for foreigners like me to stand out even to other foreigners.
I have a mission to complete but instead I’m out here fucking around with Trina. If I don’t get the money, I won’t have a shot in hell getting Ruby away from Jess. I have to pick between helping Trina and getting my bag. The choice should be simple, but it’s not.
Fuck.
I let her walk ahead so I can adjust my hard-on. Should have dropped her while I had the chance. But Jesus, I’m not made of wood.Look at her…Even right now–there– when she turns her head over her shoulder and pretends she isn’t watching me…
Can’t blame you, sugar. Hey, I’ve done my fair share of staring. The way she’s so short, but stacked like pancakes, soft, smelling like roses…I go to dangerous places, places unbefitting the gentleman who’s taken it upon himself to be her knight in shining armor and take her to California.
The truth is, she’s too innocent.
She crosses to the passenger’s side, then stops. “Can I drive?”
“I don’t think so, Miss Expired License.”
“I still passed the test!”
“And you drank a half a gallon of tequila, so I think not.”
“So did you,” she points out.
“I’m twice your size.”
“Are you?” She stands next to me and starts measuring. Fun fact about Trina, her hair not only looks amazing, but it smells like a damned bouquet.
Danger.
“Back up,” I tell her.
“Why?” She sniffs herself. “Do I smell like hot wings? Everything sticks to this— whatever the hell this is.” She pulls at the hoodie and makes a face.
“Guess you’d rather heels and a bikini.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She smirks. “Is that why you made me wear this ugly thing?”
Fuck.
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Just get in the fucking car.”
“Don’t cuss at me,” she says. “And can you speak English and not Caveman?”
“You’re a woman, and I’m a man. Enough said,” I growl. “Don’t make them type of suggestions.”
A murmuration of common starlings duck and weave against the sun-streaked purple sky. I stare at them instead of at Trina…for all of five seconds. She has some really thick eyelashes. She’s so pretty it doesn’t make no sense.
“Are you suggesting you can’t control yourself around me?” She whispers, eyes going round as silver dollars.
“Get in the car, Trina.”
She turns away, folding her arms like a spoiled child. “You think it’s easy for me, Crash?”
It hits me we might both be a little buzzed. Buzzed off an Applebee’s Mango Marg. I’ll take that one to the grave.
“It’s not easy for me. I know how you feel,” she continues.
“Oh, do you?”
“For one thing, I’ve never kissed a man. You know, ever . The Reverend put his mouth on mine, but that wasn’t kissing.”
“I should have gutted that dirty old fucker. Don’t talk to me about kissing.”
“You know, every girl at my school had done it already? And it was a Christian school. I was the only one who saved myself. I wanted to be right with God. And where did that get me?”
“Trina, stop.”
“I don’t want to be so– naive,” she says recklessly. “You of all people should understand what it’s like to want something but not be able to–”
“What do you mean, ‘ me of all people ’?” I demand, catching some insinuation.
Her guilty look turns to saintly innocence at the speed of light. “I went through your things. I couldn’t help but notice your book,” she confesses.
Ah.
Ah, hell.
“You interfering–”
“I commend you for your sacrifice of carnal pleasure,” she babbles nervously. She should damn well be nervous. “I imagine it hasn’t been easy controlling your sinful urges.”
“How dare you go through my shit?”
She lifts her chin. “I was making sure you weren’t a serial killer!”
“Your continued existence wasn’t proof enough?”
“Celibacy is nothing to be ashamed of,” she says primly.
“Women convince me of that daily.”
She flinches, but she needs to get a tongue-lashing and probably a real lashing across those pretty brown thighs.
Trying again she goes, “You aren’t alone, Crash. I also had to give the pleasure of intimate sin up for God. I know my body should be only for the pleasure of God and my husband. But sometimes— ”
“Don’t tell me you fucked that sloppy bastard.”
“No! Didn’t you hear me? That’s not what I meant.”
Fuck that visual. Wilson climbing on top of her like a dog, thrusting. Christ! I move closer to Trina, fighting the urge to grab her.
“Did he touch you?”
“I made him stop. I already told you that a hundred times.”
“So you’re still a virgin. Not like I give a fuck.”
“What? N-no, I’m not a virgin,” she lies. “And stop cussing at me!”
“Thought you said you’d never been kissed?”
“It’s not something we should be talking about!” The tip of her nose is darker, and I reckon that’s as close as she can get to a blush. She suddenly backtracks, “It’s not your business.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Don’t go through my shit or any deal we have is off. Clear?”
She looks like an owl with her feathers all ruffled. She deserves it. I think I have her stitched up, but just like a woman she needs to have the last word.
“I’m sure you’ve had a lot of women, anyway. You people of the world revel in promiscuity,” she sniffs.
“Let’s not go there.”
“I bet you can’t even remember their names.”
I look her in the eye. “Actually, I remember every single one.”
“You’re disgusting!”
“Sugar, you don’t know the half.”
“You’re the worst!”
Jess always says that to me. You’re the worst! You make me sick!
She started this, and now she’s panicking. I’m reminded why I avoided these holy-roller women. Women in general.
“You through?” I ask her.
Trina gets in my face. “You make me sick!”
“If I was the worst, I’d make you trade ass for a ride to Cali,” I tell her cruelly. “Forty dollars a fuck, how does that sound? Go talk to those girls on the corner, princess. Do the math. If little Trina has no money and no ID, how many cocks does she have to suck to get out of Oklahoma ?”
She slaps me with full force. I grab her wrists.
“Don’t ever hit me again.”
“You could never afford me,” she hollers. “You’re a dirty, common, low-class redneck.”
“And you’re pretty as a Magnolia, and just as brand new.” My heart is thumping. There’s a change between us now and I don’t like it. It’s like she’s struggling to push me off and pull me closer at the same time. I release her. “Go rub it off, Trina. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Rub what off?”
I just look at her until her eyes widen. Oh, she gets it. Not so innocent are we?
“You— you — ”
“Bastard?” I suggest.
“Go to hell!”
I need a smoke. Something to distract. Any second now and I’ll say something stupid or do something worse.
Just as I get my hand in my pocket, she lunges up and kisses me.