“Oh, I think it is,” she said, walking over and sitting on the bed. I didn’t see a cigarette in her hand. I guess I’d been expecting one.
I stood there, waiting.
“You’d rather try it your way?” she finally asked me.
“I’d rather look at those books. Only, you don’t seem to want me to.”
“I didn’t say that. What I was talking about was trust, remember?”
“I remember. But I got no answers for you. I don’t know how deep Solly trusts me, and I damn sure don’t know how it was between you and Albie.”
“Albie’s not here.”
I felt ice under my feet. Thin, slippery ice. I knew if I said the wrong thing I’d either fall down or fall through. But I didn’t know what the right thing was. And if I just waited, I’d freeze to death.
She smiled like she could see the trap I was in.
“You trust me?” she said, real soft.
“I don’t know you.”
“Now you’re getting the picture, Wilson.” She looked at the clock next to the bed, one of those digital ones; 9:19, it said, a little picture of the moon next to it. “You’re not going to find him tonight, anyway. You need new clothes, a clean phone, and—what else?—some protection you can carry around?”
“No.”
“Think that last one over. This isn’t New York. I can ID you up without ever leaving this house. Then you just walk into a gun shop and pick out one you like.”
“They don’t print you for that?”
“Uh, you think any broad with plastic tits, she’s got to be stupid, is that it?”
“I didn’t say—”
“You think I wanted you to walk into a gun shop? All I was saying, that name you’re under, that person would do it. Get printed. And those prints, they’d come up clean as a vultured body after a month in the desert. Your picture, his prints. Jesus!”
“I don’t know what you know, that means I’m calling you stupid?”
“Forget it. Maybe I’m just … super-sensitive since Albie’s been gone. Anyway, travel throws your rhythm off. You don’t want to be working unless you’re sharp, yes?”
“I’m sharp enough.”
“Just sleep on it, okay? We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Just like prison. I couldn’t keep that out of my head. They’re always telling you that you made bad choices. And then they put you in a place where all your choices are bad.
That digital clock said 11:24, with a little blinking picture of the sun next to it. I’d been sleeping a long time. But except for that little clock, there was no way to tell.
I took a quick shower, put on clean clothes, and walked down to where the kitchen was.
She was there. Sitting on one of those padded bar stools, watching another flat-screen. I didn’t know there even was one in there; you had to open a couple of the cabinet doors to see it.
I took some more of her special water out of the refrigerator, sat down, and drank from the bottle, mixing it with bites of three power bars. Chewing real slow, like you’re supposed to.
“You people eat special food?”
“What ‘people’?”
“You know, like weightlifters or bodybuilders or whatever you are.”
“I’m not any of those.”
“That body built itself?” She kind of sneered, as she cupped one of her boobs and jiggled it.
I closed my eyes. Kept chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing.
“I hurt your feelings?”
“No,” I told her. “But you’re a bad listener.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you answer your own questions.”
“That’s what happens when nobody else will.”
“You actually want to know? You really give a rat’s ass about me not being a weightlifter or a bodybuilder?”
“I always want to know things. New things, I mean.”
More fucking word games, I thought. But I figured, if I want to ever get a look at Albie’s books, see if the one Solly wants is in there, I have to go along. So I told her: “A weightlifter, he’s trying for the most he can lift. He don’t care how he looks. Could have a belly on him like a wrecking ball, it wouldn’t matter. Power-lifters, they’re pretty much the same, only they do different kinds of lifts. It’s all about how much weight you can rack up, not how many times you can do it. But bodybuilders, all they care about is how they look. Weightlifters, they talk about leverage, position, driving the bar. Bodybuilders, it’s all about definition. The look. How you’re cut. Vascularity.”
“What?”
“The more the veins pop out, the better. That’s why they shave.”