old thing. Lorna and Mrs Keesler and that other lady.’ Nice grin. ‘You know, there are books.’
‘I’ll find a new angle.’
‘Good luck with that.’
‘I have to. It’s my job.’ He slaps his wallet on the counter: business as usual. ‘Now if you’ll just.’
‘We’ll put you down as business,’ she says smoothly, scrawling in the showy red leather register planted like a stage prop on the marble counter next to the brass telephone with its standing mouthpiece and a receiver that you have to point at your ear. ‘But I need to know how long you’re going to be in town.’
‘Good question,’ he says.
‘There’s a rate break if you rent by the week.’
With grin that doesn’t quite come off, he repeats the line written for him by the boss he probably no longer has. ‘For as long as it takes.’
‘OK then.’ She makes a tick next to his name. ‘Now, print your name in the book while I run your plastic. Folders with maps and tourist attractions over there in the rack. Nice handwriting.’ She hands back his card. ‘I have you on Five. Anything else I can do for you?’
‘Not right now, not that I can think of. Well, one other thing.’ He takes it and turns to go. Then need overwhelms reason and he pulls out his picture of Lucy, snapped in front of her house. ‘So. Can you tell me where this is?’
‘Sure,’ she says, now that his card has cleared. Leaning over the counter, she shifts position, letting out a wave of sunscreen and perfumed deodorant compounded by body heat. ‘Always happy to help.’
‘I mean, this house?’ She’s squinting so he slides the snapshot closer adding, ‘For. Uh, an architectural piece?’
That blind, vague smile tells him that she’s one of those women who can’t see without glasses but is too vain to put them on. Handing it back, she rests her knuckles on the counter. ‘Sorry.’
He says, ‘About . . . Old Florida?’
‘Sorry, I can’t help you.’ She shrugs, rearranging her cleavage.
What is she, coming on to me? Damn, all his statements come out with question marks. Damn, he should have slept on the plane. ‘So. You don’t know the house?’
She isn’t looking at the snapshot, she’s watching him. ‘Not really. Is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘So,’ he says, ‘I have this other picture?’ Knowing she’ll need glasses he says tactfully, ‘The faces are pretty small.’ He slides it across the counter.
She may not recognize faces, but she knows shapes. Jessie slaps on her glasses and looks again. Dan is too distracted to pick up the change in her as she says, carefully, ‘No, I don’t know these people. From the looks of the car, that’s from the dark ages. I’m a lot more recent than that.’ She takes off the glasses with her foxy, jagged grin.
‘OK then.’ He puts it away. ‘If I can just have my key?’
Odd. It’s like a study in stop motion photography. Woman, arriving at a conclusion. Click. Click. Click. Let’s get this done. She pulls a big brass key off the hook. ‘Room 51. I’m alone at the desk today. You can find it, right?’
‘Yes Ma’am.’
She does not say, It’s Jessie, please! She dismisses him. ‘OK then.’
‘OK.’ Dan lingers just long enough to be sure she’s done with him. What did I do wrong? At the elevator, he turns and looks back. Jessie is doubled over the register, squinting at his entry. Then he sees her reach for the glasses again. As the elevator doors open he sees her snap open her phone. The woman who could have cared less about the snapshot stabs a number with her fingernail. She looks up with a sweet, distracted smile just as the steel doors snap shut on them.
6
Jessie
She didn’t need glasses to know that was Chape Bellinger’s old Jeep or name the others: Bobby Chaplin, Buck Coleman, Stitch Von Harten. Fucking Brad Kalen, God damn his eyes.
The minute the elevator doors close on the kid, Jessie hits 8 on her speed dial. She entered the number in a blinding rage when she re-entered Fort Jude. Given that she wants to smash her fist into that big, wet smacky mouth of his, she’s avoided Kalen ever since. In spite of the fact that Jessie Vukovich from Pierce Point is now a member of the Fort Jude Club in good standing and last year he was the fucking Commodore, she’s managed, but now . . .