more calls. I’d been making calls all day, trying to see how much money I could round up. If I could add three or four, maybe five large to what I had, maybe I could get a good faith payment to Lisa, get her off my back before this got any uglier.
The calls were a waste of cell phone minutes; everybody was two paychecks behind. With all the strikes, people didn’t have enough cash to put a bag of M&Ms on layaway.
Fifteen large. It might as well have been a billion.
I closed my eyes, tried to think, but felt like a dead leaf tumbling in the wind. I didn’t know which way to go, so I stayed where I was, hissing almost every time I inhaled, watching a room filled with moneyed people numbing themselves to their own realities.
I looked down at my suit, my shoes, my silk tie, my cuff links. When I’d been released from jail I had on two-year-old clothes, a prisoner’s paycheck, and seven dollars in my pocket. No prospects for a real job. No opportunities meant no future. Times stayed hard long enough and a man became susceptible to things that offered either pleasure or promise. Lisa had given me both. It was all about self-preservation. Then Wolf had offered me a better way. Still about self-preservation. Along the way I’d made a lot of sacrifices that added up to nothing.
Everything that was wrong in my world was bum-rushing me right now.
Sade had come back downstairs, a book in her hand. Almost didn’t recognize her. Her braided hair had been let down, flowed like waves over her shoulders, cascaded down her back. Saw her in the lobby warming up by the fireplace. I don’t know how long she’d been there. She was beautiful but something about her made her unnoticeable. She made her way over to the bar, looked surprised when she saw me posted up. Her energy changed. She smiled.
“Cheers, Driver.”
I raised my cup. “Coffee. Black. Straight. No chaser.”
“Afraid I need something a little stronger. Might have to get rat-faced.”
“It’s your face.”
Sade sat a barstool away. Did that like she didn’t want to sit by people she didn’t know, she didn’t want to get in my space. Or didn’t want me in hers. I could tell that because she rested her purse on the barstool between us, made sure it was comfortable, like it was her friend. The purse was chocolate-colored leather, looked as smooth as warm butter. Her passkey and wallet were in the side pocket facing me. Her wallet matched her purse. She was careless. Where I came from somebody would lift that wallet without a thought. But we were on the opposite end of Pico, where the land met the ocean, not where ghetto birds were a way of life.
I said, “Sheets okay?”
“Huh? Oh. Wonderful. Everything is well done. Brilliant.”
“Cool.”
“How long does rush hour last here?”
“Around eight, maybe ten hours.”
“They should consider having a congestion charge here, like they have in London.”
“What’s that?”
“You pay to go into the city during peak hours. Around five pounds. It would cut down on traffic considerably. The traffic we were in today ... simply horrible.”
“First chance I get, I’ll write Governor Schwarzenegger about that.”
The bartender came over. A pretty Italian woman. Reddish-brown hair. Tanned skin. Freckles. Her name tag read DANIELA. Sade spoke to her in Italian, did that without a thought.
She pressed her lips together, then softly asked, “Che martini mi consigli?”
Daniela answered, “Dovresti provare i miei martini al cioccolato. ”
Sade paused, put a finger up to her lips in a thinking pose. “Sono buoni?”
“Grandiosi. Come bersi una tavoletta di cioccolata. ”
“Aa, il mio genere di drink. ”
Daniela the Bartender made a chocolate martini for Sade, then put it in front of her with a smile, like an artist who had created a masterpiece.
Sade sipped, made a sensual sound, and gave her two thumbs up. “Perfetto.”
Daniela’s expression said she was impressed with Sade. “Your Italian is excellent.”
Sade smiled with love. “Si, il mio primo amore era un meraviglioso uomo Italiano.”
“That is who you are here with?” Daniela motioned at Sade’s ring. “Your first love?”
Sade shook her head. “Ha sposato una meravigliosa donna Italiana.”
“Life goes on.”
Sade raised her glass. “Life goes on.”
Daniela walked away, went to tend to the other empty souls filling this ocean-scented oyster-and-calamari world. Sade kept sipping her sweetened vodka and letting out soft moans. She was like a smoker who finally got to hit a cigarette. She dropped her class-conscious grin,