THE MARSHAL I needed to sweet-talk out of her warrant was female, so we got to split a hotel room. Marshal Laila Karlton was five-six and built solid. I don't mean she was fat, I mean she was all muscle and curves. In too much clothing she looked like it might be fat, but when you saw her just in a T-shirt and jeans, you realized the "bulk" was half curves and half solid muscle. It wasn't lean muscle and that was the reason it could fool the eye, but when she picked up her backpack of vampire-hunting gear, which probably weighed the same fifty pounds that mine did, her biceps bulged, and you realized it was all camouflage for the fact that she was strong. She didn't see it that way, though.
"God, you're tiny. I bet I can put my hands around that little white-girl waist, and you still have boobs and an ass. That is not fair, girlfriend."
She'd taken the I'll-cut-myself-down-and-compliment-you-beforeyou-beat-me-to-it tack. I had the choices of ignoring it, complimenting her in some way, or agreeing that I looked good without complimenting her back. The last choice would make her dislike me more. She'd already let me know, nicely, that my being a few sizes smaller than her made her predisposed not to like me. One of the good things about working with men was that they didn't do this shit.
I tried, but I sucked at these games. "I know men who prefer your body type to mine."
"Bullshit," she said, and was ready to be angry.
"I hang around with a lot of older vampires. They don't like the really thin girls. They like women to look like women, not preadolescent boys with boobs sort of stuck on as an afterthought."
"You don't look like that," she said, her voice a little less angry, but still not friendly.
"Neither do you. We both look nice and curvy the way God intended grown-up women to look."
She thought about it and then grinned at me. It lit her whole face up, and I knew we'd be okay. "Ain't that the truth. But that booty is not white-girl booty."
"I'm told I look like my mother, except paler. She was Hispanic."
"That explains it. I knew you were too round in the right places to be white bread." She laid out her clothes in a neat line on the bedspread, and then said, "What do you mean, ‘told you' you look like your mother?"
"She died when I was eight."
"I'm sorry." And she sounded like she meant it. In fact, there was an awkward pause as we each unpacked on our side of the room. I had the bed nearest the bathroom and farthest from the door. We hadn't discussed it; I'd just entered the room first.
"It's okay," I said, "it was a long time ago."
"What about your dad?"