it takes more alcohol than that to impair my good judgment.”
“Uh huh.”
“Third, I’m not a whore. I might look young, but I’m not easy or naive. ”
My lips moved up into a one-sided smile. Hers did the same.
Checkmate.
I asked, “It’s still early. Barely after midnight. What time you have to get up?”
“Hustlers set their own hours, you should know that.”
“That’s bull. I’m a hustler.”
“You’re a working man. True hustlers don’t have a nine-to-five. Real hustlers never think about getting a nine-to-five. We’re too busy trying to take a nine-to-fiver’s money.”
She pulled out a bar napkin from her cute little purse, wrote down a phone number in red ink and handed it to me. Area code 818. Hollywood and parts of the San Fernando Valley.
She told me, “I have connections with access to flat screens. Fifty-inch. Electronics for twenty-five percent. Jewelry for twenty percent. A referral gets you a small kickback.”
She sounded as smooth as a politician. I’d bet that everything she had on had fallen off a truck. Her connections made her the woman to know. I handed her my black and gold business card. It was actually one of Wolf’s business cards with my cellular written in at the bottom.
She said, “Want to help stimulate economic growth in our depressed economy, hit me.”
“What about stimulating other things?”
She waved the business card I had given her. “Then I’ll hit you.”
Her tight eyes were devilish, her skin innocent, almost angelic under the streetlights. She traced her fingers over my chest, down my shoulders, to my biceps, over my forearms, then her fingers lingered across my palm. I caught her fingers for a moment, then let her go.
She took sugary steps away, blew me a kiss. “I’m already late for my date.”
“I see.”
Arizona headed toward a BMW. Silver. Convertible. New. She let the top down, then looked back at me and winked, did that in a way that sent me a message, told me she wasn’t bullshitting about the business. That chump change she had lost inside wouldn’t be missed.
The streetlight turned red as soon as she pulled out of the lot. Arizona pointed something at the streetlight and—I don’t know if it was real or my Jack Daniel’s talking to me—the streetlight changed right back to green.
She vanished into the night.
I crawled into my car, shaken and stirred.
3
Ten minutes later I was fighting traffic in the strip mall that held Magic Johnson’s Starbucks, Fatburger, and TGIF. It was late, everything had closed hours ago, but out of habit I rode the lot to see what kind of stragglers were still hanging out. Parking lot was empty.
Arizona had me restless, my mind in a bear hug. Could’ve kissed her until sunrise.
She’d driven away and left me aroused, my insides on fire. Erotic thoughts and a nonstop movie of us played in my head. Another tease. Look at me. Forty going after a twenty-something that looked like a brand-new dime. Had to get off Fantasy Island. I pulled over and whipped out my cellular. Women with complexions from cream to coal had come and gone and would be happy to come again. Thought about calling Panther, maybe swing by Strokers, donate a few bucks to her college fund. But that movie starring Arizona played in my head again.
The alcohol in my blood told me to take my ass home and call it a night.
My spot was down on La Cienega between Centinela and the 405, a beige stucco building sitting on the edges of Inglewood, Westchester, and Los Angeles, right in the middle of at least two miles of apartment buildings, none that could pass for the Taj Ma hal. California was twelve percent black; this had to be the epicenter of Los Angeles’s contribution to those demographics.
I lucked up and found street parking within a quarter mile of my place, an apartment-dweller’s equivalent of winning the lottery. As soon as I got out of my car, that familiar red Hummer whipped up next to me. If I hadn’t been thinking about Arizona all the way home I would’ve looked in my rearview and saw that my boss’s wife was stalking me.
Lisa let the passenger-side window down, sang out her sarcasm, “Playa, Playa, Playa.”
The way she said that irked me like fingernails across a chalkboard.
My heart sped up and I gritted my teeth, wondered how psycho she was going to get.
“Somebody sad because his PYT didn’t come home with him? What, you didn’t offer her enough money? She looked young. You should’ve given