and yet, despite all that, loves his country décor. Amish hexes and cornflower blue curtains and on the breakfast nook table a little porcelain cow creamer.
“Guy?” she asks. Nothing. Just the muted bass of the music. Doom. Doom. Doom. The little cow creamer trembles with each deep beat.
She pulls her head back out—then hears something above her.
A shadow out of the sun—a hand appears, in it the silhouette of a blocky pistol—Atlanta gasps, staggers backward, almost loses her shit and goes bristles over broom-handle—
It’s Guy. He’s up on the roof of the trailer. Eyes hidden behind wrap-around mirrored shades.
“Yo! Atlanta.” He waves at her with the gun, like it’s no big thing. “Ladder’s on the far side. Come on up, girl.”
She has to check herself, make sure she didn’t accidentally pee. Shaking her head, she goes around the long side of the trailer and, by the little window that must overlook the kitchen sink she sees a steel ladder leading up.
On the roof, Guy’s got a boombox. He shuffle-dances over, turns it down. Atlanta spies a beach chair and smells coconut suntan lotion. Weirder still, she sees a small stack of paperbacks sitting next to the chair. Authors she’s never heard of (not that she likes to read much). Meg Gardiner. Patricia Cornwell. Margaret Atwood.
“What?” he asks, obviously catching the look on her face. “I fuckin’ like to read, you know?”
“Look like chick books.”
“And you’re a chick, so what’s the problem?”
She laughs. “Well, you’ve got beans-and-franks, or so I assume.”
“Hey,” he says, suddenly all serious. “Reading books by female authors does not limit my masculinity. Plus, bitches write the best characters, man. It’s like they get people, you know?”
“I’m just saying, this goes against my image of you as a displaced drug-peddling thug. Though, that pistol you keep waving around is starting to move the needle back the other way.” She cocks an eyebrow. “What is that, anyway? Looks like a .45. M1911?”
Guy sits on the edge of his beach chair. Kicks over an old plastic roof tar bucket and flips it over so she can have a seat. “This? Nah. It’s a fucking Daisy. Pellet gun. I just keep it up here in case I want to try to shoot squirrels or groundhogs or some shit.” His voice suddenly gets all faux-tough. “Or if some nosy bee-yotch comes poking her better-dead-than-red head in my damn trailer.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just messin’ with you. So whassup? Been a while, girly. Heard you got into some shit.”
“Who’d you hear that from?”
“Word gets around when you tangle with the town Nazis.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
Guy’s face suddenly falls. “Oh, shit, you know, I didn’t say to you—I didn’t say sorry. And, uhh, what’s the word? Condolences. For your friend. The gay kid.”
“Chris.”
“Yeah. Him. That sucks.”
“It’s pretty much the definition of suck.”
“He killed himself?”
“Yes.” She pauses. “No. I don’t know.”
“So, ahh, whatchoo need? You need pills, I don’t have anything right now that’s up your alley. I got a little weed if you want it, and between you and me I got some sugarcubes if you like acid—did you know that the penalty for selling LSD is like, ten times worse than if you were selling heroin and shit? That’s what I hear. That’s fucked up. Anyway, you don’t seem like the trip-out kinda girl.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to feel my brain melt, no. I was hoping you had some Adderall.”
“My hookup at Geisinger’s gotten all paranoid. I think he’s using what he takes and it’s making him a little fucking loco, you know? I need to find a better connect there. Sorry, Burns.”
“There’s something else.”
“Sup.”
“I need to know about dog fighting.”
Guy leans back. Opens his mouth, waggles his tongue back and forth over his teeth. “Who told you that?”
“Who told me what?”
“That I could help you with that.”
“Nobody. Well—Shane had an idea—“
“Who’s Shane?”
“What? He’s my—you know, what the hell just happened here? One second we were talking and now you’ve gone all squirrelly on me. I just asked—“
Guy stands up. Puffs his chest out and tucks the gun under his armpit. “Who the fuck is Shane?”
She stands up to meet him chin to chin. “He’s a friend who thought you might know people who know people.”
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“Do what?”
“The fights.”
“The dog fights?”
“Yeah. I don’t do that anymore.”
“You used to be involved in that shit?”
“Isn’t that why you’re asking?”
She gives him a hard shove. He staggers backward. Guy’s ankle clips an exposed duct and suddenly his arms spin like a pinwheel in