The Odds - Jeff Strand Page 0,37
“Hey, sexy.”
The skinny guy laughed. “Don’t go getting any ideas. She’s not free.”
“I’m free,” she said. “Just not free, if you know what I mean.”
“He knew what I meant.”
“I didn’t even know what you meant.”
“I’m really not in the market for that,” said Ethan. “I swear, I’m just here for the clue.”
“You sure?” the skinny guy asked. “I’d tap that ass. She’s pretty much clean.”
She took a swing at him. “Shut up, dickhead.”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I mean, you’d wear a rubber, obviously, and you’d run out and get a shot of penicillin as soon as you can, but other than that, she’s clean. We’ll give you a good rate. We’ll pretend you have a Groupon.”
Everybody around them laughed.
Ethan tried to stand up, but the girl wouldn’t get off his lap.
“Again, I’m not here for anything like that. I guess I have the wrong address.”
“Naw, dude, you’ve got the right address. Look at her! She’ll do anything you tell her to!”
“Not anything,” she protested.
“Anything that don’t leave marks.”
“That’s true.”
“You might catch some of the smaller diseases, but it won’t be anything that kills you. She’s worth getting a shot for. Trust me.”
The girl licked the side of Ethan’s face. He immediately got up, almost causing her to fall onto the floor. “I have to go.”
A bearded guy sitting on the couch sniffed something off the back of his hand. “You like games, huh?”
“I used to. Not anymore.”
“You like Russian Roulette?”
“No.”
He held up a revolver. “I’ll play you some Russian Roulette right now.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Who’s in for some Russian Roulette?” he asked everybody in the room.
Nobody indicated that they were, though several of them laughed.
“I’m trying not to die tonight,” said Ethan.
“That’s fair.” The bearded guy pressed his palm against the barrel of the gun. “What about hands? We see who gets a hole shot in his hand first?”
“You can shoot off your hand if you want,” said the skinny guy, “but I ain’t taking you to the hospital, and you’re cleaning the blood off my couch.”
“This little gun couldn’t shoot my hand off. It would go all the way through, yeah, but I’d still have a hand attached to my wrist.”
“I don’t want to see anybody’s hand come off,” said the woman who’d been sitting on Ethan’s lap.
Ethan needed to get the hell out of here. He didn’t even want the clue anymore. He couldn’t imagine that they would’ve taken the time to carve an address onto Tammy’s arm and get it wrong, but this was going nowhere.
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” he said, taking a step toward the door.
“No, don’t go,” said the skinny guy. “I’m intrigued. You’re an intriguing guy. Am I using that word right? Intriguing. I think I’m right. I didn’t even know how to pronounce it until a couple of years ago. I thought it was in-tree-gyoo-ing. What a dumbass, huh? You need to party with us. You don’t have to go all wild and stuff. Let’s have some fun.”
“Russian Roulette!” said the bearded man.
“Put the damn gun away.”
“Who’s gonna make me? I’ve got a gun.”
Ethan tried to move closer to the door, but the skinny guy stepped in his way. Ethan was confident that one punch would solve this problem, yet while he was sure he could kick this guy’s ass, he could not kick the asses of everybody in the house, especially when at least one of them had a gun.
Should he lay him out and run?
He wasn’t sure he could make it to the car before the others got him.
And if the address was correct after all, this would make it a lot more difficult to get the clue out of them. He just needed to leave the house, call Rick, and beg for some kind of guidance.
“I need to go out and make a call,” said Ethan.
“Make the call here. None of us will listen.”
“Let me leave, okay?”
“Don’t you like us? Don’t you think we’re friendly? I offered you the chance to tap some ass. That’s pretty friendly. You would have had an enjoyable time. I don’t even know you, and here I am trying to make sure you have a pleasant night, and yet you’re being anti-social. I don’t appreciate it.”
It was obvious that Ethan needed to try a different approach. He needed to pretend to have infinitely more courage than he was actually feeling right now. He had to assume that these people were just messing with him, that they didn’t actually intend to keep him here