Before Chloe can say anything, and before she even thinks of it, Heather says, “Do you think Gina and Nate would like to have it?”
Actually, Chloe realizes as they walk back toward the waiting room with the tape sticking out of her purse, her first thought had been how to justify buying Heather a VCR.
6
Encounter
JASON
“The way I see it, it’s like a puzzle,” Jason tells Brandi, his brother’s girlfriend. They’re sucking off smokes outside, ’cause Penny’s trying to quit.
Brandi stares bug-eyed up at the sky, scratching at her arms. The rain’s on a break, steel-colored clouds blowing past. They’ve been here a week, and Jason can’t figure out if she’s constantly high, or just stupid. Jason stretches his legs out in front, trying to ease the pain in his back, so bad sometimes it travels down to his heel even.
“Every piece is a fact; I store them up here,” he goes on, taps his freshly shaved head. “Fact: Dried-up rich lady wants to buy our baby so bad you can smell it on her, Eager Beaver, stink of desperation. Fact: Social worker wants it to happen, probably gets a fat piece of the action.”
Fact (he thinks to himself): They have sixteen dollars to get them to the end of the month, and Penny’s making him nervous, talking too much about the baby.
“Smoke outside!” she’d yelled, waving the carton warning in his face. “It’s no good for Buddy.”
Fact: He has no idea how to pull this off. Doesn’t even know what he’s trying to do, only to make it right. Penny’s the best thing that happened to him. He owes her.
“I’ve fucked up in the past,” he says to Brandi, who flicks her stubby butt into the mud at their feet and scratches at her legs through her pants.
The three biggest mistakes of his life:
The DUI that cost him his trucking license in ’96
Getting mixed up with Des’ree and that crank crowd in Wyoming
Letting Penny take the fall for the check thing in Drain
He does not count the baby in this list.
“But this,” he says, lighting Brandi another smoke; it’s her pack. “I won’t fuck up. Just got to wait, study the pieces, figure how to get me and Penny what we deserve.”
He sees her then, Chloe Pinter, coming from the parking lot across the way.
“Speak of the devil,” he says, rubbing his palms together. Brandi looks down to his bare forearms, where the dragon tattoos twist. He’s going to show her how it’s done.
“Hey!” he yells. Chloe jumps, skitty little thing, drops the folders under her arm into the mud so she has to scramble to pick them up. Jason smiles. But then she looks at him, nods, and disappears into the place across the way. Like she couldn’t be bothered with the likes of him.
Brandi makes a bleating noise beside him, like a question. Stupid bitch, picking at her arms, meth mites no doubt.
“It’s all part of the plan,” he tells her. “Agency bitch in her fancy SUV.”
Behind Chloe it’s the hot blonde from across the way with the kid, and shit, he’d never noticed before under those clothes, but she’s fucking pregnant too. How many of them has Chloe Pinter got out here? Now he sees it: they’re all her ponies, and Felony Flats is her little play stable, she stops by to feed them turkey and stuffing, takes them out to exercise, to the vet, but in the end, she’ll take the money and run.
Jason jumps up, jerks Brandi with him. She stumbles, laughs like a coyote, high as a ponderosa pine; he knew it.
“Come on.” He lifts her by the arm—she couldn’t weigh a hundred pounds even, but the pain shoots on down his back, his hip, his leg. “I got to use your phone.”
7
After-Dinner Drinks
CHLOE
At home, Chloe finds the house dark, though Dan’s bike is chained to a peeling post on the front porch. In the spring, she thinks, they should paint, give the house a face-lift from the street, poor old girl. Years of frat-boy abuse had left her damaged, but you could see what a gem she used to be. Chloe had spent every spare moment working on her, scrubbing and retiling the downstairs bathroom (if a little lopsidedly) and painting every room, from their red dining room to the neutral khaki master bedroom. One day, after they’re married, she and Dan will buy the house from the landlord, fix up the little nook at the top of the