masses by the glass.
She moved in our direction. Some women got closer and dropped from dimes to nines to eights, kept falling like the stock market. She never lost a point. She had on a long, black leather skirt, the kind that had a split and showed off her legs. Her heels were the kind that made her legs look good and her feet feel bad. Her straight hair had deep brown highlights.
Wolf grunted. “Driver, rat’s last meal. Starts with A ... ends in NIC ... seven letters.”
My eyes were anchored to the new girl, watching her move her baklava glue around the room. She saw me admiring her. I nodded. She held onto her business face, made a motion that asked me if I wanted to challenge her on the table. I shook my head, motioned at an empty seat next to me. She shook her head, moved on, found a sister who had money to burn.
“Rat’s last meal ... starts with A ... ends with NIC,” I mumbled. “Arsenic.”
Wolf scribbled in the answer, smiled like a kid who was done with his homework, and checked his watch. “I smell like two beers and fried fish from Geraldine’s. Lisa’s gonna pitch a bitch. Talk to you tomorrow, Driver.”
“No you won’t. I’m off tomorrow. Don’t even think about ringing my phone.”
“You ungrateful fuck. What you got planned?”
I told him that TNT was running a lot of movies I liked tomorrow, old noir movies like Act of Violence. Last Train from Gun Hill. The Set-Up. The Big Heat. The Killers.
Wolf said, “The Killers. I liked the first one with Ava Gardner. It was cold-blooded how those men marched up those stairs and killed that man without a thought.”
“Yeah, they did. Without a thought. They sure did.” I cleared both my mind and my throat, mumbled out my thoughts. “Lancaster and Gardner.”
“He loved her. And she played him. All for the money.”
I nodded.
Wolf went catatonic, like his inner voice was talking to him, telling him things, or maybe the alcohol was catching up to him. Either way, Wolf blinked out of his stupor, ran his hand over his goatee, and nodded like he understood something. His barstool screeched the floor when he stood up. Wolf took a final sip of his beer, whistled, and put his suit coat back on.
He asked, “You staying?”
A wave of tiredness rolled over me. That was my cue. I told him to hold up while I finished my beer. My sinful night was about to end, my peaceful tomorrow already planned.
He asked, “Heading to Strokers to watch Panther strip and dance the pole dance?”
Panther. A woman who had a Southern accent and schoolgirl smile like my ex-wife’s.
I paused, smiled. “Nah. I’ve given Panther enough of my paycheck. Gonna call it a night. Maybe make a few phone calls on the way home. Stir up a midnight snack of my own.”
Baklava Glue moved her hair from her exotic face, glanced my way again. A fresh dime in a room filled with old nickels, a few the size of a quarter, none that could be runner-up to Miss Barstow. A woman like that could walk into a church on Easter Sunday and ten minutes later somebody would have been shot, stabbed, or drowned in sacrifice as a show of affections.
I touched Wolf’s shoulder, told him, “I’m gonna try my luck with Miss Baklava Glue.”
Wolf held up and watched her for a second.
In the end he said, “She’s a cure for what Viagra is trying to fix.”
I winked at my employer, my friend, teased him, “Unless you want to holla at her.”
“High-maintenance women like that are why I’m in the condition I’m in today. Alimony and child support on an ex-wife who decided she didn’t want to be married anymore, then moved to Las Vegas just to make my visitation hell, and a now a new wife who won’t stop shopping.”
I asked, “That bad?”
“The wife went out for coffee at Starbucks and came back in a brand-new red Hummer.”
“I saw it in the parking lot at work. Ugly-ass SUV looks like an armored car.”
“And costs just as much. She’s killing me. Last thing I need is to meet another pretty woman who would take advantage of my cheating heart and gum up the works.”
I threw my hands up. “Told you to keep away from the high-end women.”
“Not my fault. They come after me.”
“Because you’re rich.”
Wolf set me straight, said, “Because I’m hung like a horse and they all want to