Triptych

CHAPTER NINE

John hadn’t slept well, which was nothing new for him. In prison, nighttime was always the worst. You heard screams, mostly. Crying. Other things he didn’t like to think about. John had been fifteen when he was arrested, sixteen when he was incarcerated. By the age of thirty-five, he had lived in prison more years than he had slept in his parents’ home.

As noisy as prison was, you got used to it. Being on the outside was what was hard. Car horns, fire engines, radios blasting from all over. The sun was brighter, the smells more intense. Flowers could bring tears to his eyes and food was almost inedible. There was too much flavor in everything, too many choices for him to feel comfortable going into a restaurant and ordering a meal.

Before John was locked up, you didn’t see people jogging in the streets, headphones tucked into their ears, tight spandex shorts clinging to their bodies. Cell phones were in bags like big purses that you carried over your shoulder and only really wealthy people could afford to have them. Rap didn’t exist in the mainstream and listening to Motley Crue and Poison meant you were cool. CD players were something out of Star Trek and even knowing what Star Trek was meant you were some kind of nerd.

He didn’t know what to do with this new world. Nothing made sense to him. None of the familiar things were there. His first day out, he had gone into a closet in his mother’s home, shut the door and cried like a baby.

“Shelley?” Art yelled. “You gonna work or not?”

John waved his hand at the supervisor, pushing his mouth into a smile. “Sorry, boss.”

He walked over to a green Suburban and started wiping water off the side panel. That was another thing that had shocked him. Cars had gotten so huge. In prison, there had been one television that got two channels, and the older inmates got to decide what was playing. The antenna had been ripped off and used to pluck out somebody’s eyeball well before John showed up, and the reception sucked. Even when the snow cleared and you could halfway see the picture, there was no sense of scale with the cars on screen. Then you wondered if what you were seeing was real or something just made for a particular show. Maybe the series was really about an alternative world where women wore skirts up to their cooches and men weren’t beneath sporting tight leather pants and saying things like, “My father never understood me.”

The guys always got a laugh out of that, shouting “pussy” and “faggot” at the set so that it drowned out the actor’s next line.

John didn’t watch much TV.

“Yo, yo,” Ray-Ray said, bending down to sponge silicone onto the Suburban’s tires. John looked up to see a police cruiser pulling into the drive of the car wash. Ray-Ray always said things twice, hence the name, and he always alerted John when a cop was around. John returned the favor. The two men had never really talked, let alone exchanged their life stories, but both knew on sight what the other was: an ex-con.

John started cleaning the glass over the driver’s door, taking his time so he could watch the cop in the reflection. He heard the man’s police radio first, that constant static of the dispatchers speaking their private code. The officer glanced around, pegging John and Ray-Ray in about two seconds flat, before he hitched up his belt and went inside to pay for the wash. Not that they would charge him, but it was always good to pretend.

The owner of the Suburban was close by, talking on her cell phone, and John closed his eyes as he cleaned the window, listening to her voice, savoring the tones like a precious piece of music. Inside, he had forgotten what it was like to hear a woman’s voice, listen to the sort of complaints that only women could have. Bad haircuts. Rude store clerks.

Chipped nails. Men wanted to talk about things: cars, guns, snatch. They didn’t discuss their feelings unless it was anger, and even that didn’t last for long because generally they started doing something about it.

Every two weeks, John’s mother had made the drive from Decatur down to Garden City to see him, but as glad as John was to see her, that wasn’t the kind of woman’s voice he wanted to hear. Emily was always positive, happy to see her son, even if he could tell by looking in her eyes that she was tired from the long drive, or sad to see that he’d gotten another tattoo, that his hair was in a ponytail. Aunt Lydia came, but that was because she was his lawyer. Joyce came twice a year with their mother, once at Christmas, once on his birthday. She hated being there. You could smell it on her. Joyce wanted to be out of that place almost more than John did, and whenever she talked to him, he was reminded of the way the black gangbangers and Aryans talked to each other. You fucking nigger dog. You fuck-eyed white motherfucker. I’ll kill you soon as I get the chance.

His father came to see him twice in all the time he was locked up, but John didn’t like to think about that.

“Excuse me?” The woman with the cell phone was beside him. He could smell her perfume. Her upper lip was a little bow tie, gloss making her mouth look wet.

“Hello?” she said, half-laughing.

“Sorry,” John managed, shocked that she’d gotten this close to him without him even noticing. In prison, he would be dead right now.

“I said ‘thank you,” “ she told him. She held a dollar in her hand and he took it, feeling cheap and dirty at the same time.

John made a show of putting the bill in the communal tip box, knowing every eye in the place was watching him. He did the same thing when a customer handed somebody else a tip. No one trusted anybody around here and for good reason. You didn’t need a college degree to figure out why a bunch of middle-aged guys were working for minimum wage plus tips at the Gorilla Car Wash.

Art came out of the office, yelling, “First shift, lunch,” as he walked over to the cop standing by the vending machine. Shit, John hadn’t noticed that, either. The cop had come outside, had been watching him, and he hadn’t seen it happen.

John tucked his head down as he went into the back, clocking out and grabbing his lunch off the shelf. He had a soda in the refrigerator, but there was no way he was going back out there until the cop was gone and Art was back behind his desk counting his money.

Chico, one of the other workers, was sitting on the cement wall under the shade of a big magnolia tree that grew in the strip of grass in back of the car wash. John liked to sit there under the tree, enjoyed the solitude and the shade, but Chico had beaten him to it today. This sort of thing wouldn’t have happened in the joint. Taking a man’s space was like fucking his sister up the ass. Nothing happened in that place that didn’t have some kind of price attached to it.

“How’s it going?” John said, nodding at Chico as he walked past him to the carport that served as a detail shop. The detail guys went out for lunch. They made enough money to afford the luxury.

John sat on the ground under the canopy. He took off his ball cap and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. November used to mean winter, but now it meant you were lucky if the jacket you put on in the morning didn’t have you sweating by noon.

Christ, even the weather had changed without him.

He glanced around before pulling a piece of paper out of his back pocket. The credit report. Part of him had wanted to shove it back in the trash bag last night, just let it go. So some motherfucker was pretending to be him. What did that mean to John Shelley? Obviously, the poser wasn’t running some fraud. Why would he pay off the credit cards every month for six years? John had heard about all kinds of scams in prison, and though he hadn’t really had access to any computers, he knew that the Internet was the best way to run an identity fraud. This, though. This was nothing like that. You took the money and ran. You didn’t stick around and pay your monthly bills on time. It was like that old joke of ordering fifty pizzas to somebody’s house, only you paid for them yourself with your credit card.

He folded the report and tucked it back into his pocket. He should leave it be. No good would come out of any of this. What John should do is exactly what his parole officer said: Concentrate on rebuilding your life. Get a steady job. Show people you’ve changed.

It bothered him, though. Like a splinter that wouldn’t come out, he had picked at it all night, trying to see the angle. There had to be an angle. Why else would someone do this? Maybe somebody with a past was using John’s vitals as a cover. Could be some escaped ax murderer or blue-collar guy was on the lam and John Shelley seemed like a good cover.

He laughed at this idea, taking a bite of his peanut butter and banana sandwich. You had to be pretty desperate to assume the identity of a convicted murderer and registered sex offender.

The peanut butter caught in his throat and he coughed a couple of times before getting up and going to the coiled hose on the ground. John turned on the spigot and took a drink, watching Ray-Ray talking to some woman over by the vacuums. John could tell the other man was doing his usual jive, trying to work his magic on the woman. Judging by the way she was dressed, Ray-Ray could have saved some time and just given her some money. Most of the guys around the Gorilla availed themselves of the local talent. Straight up Cheshire Bridge Road, you ran into the Colonial Restaurant, a meat-and-potatoes kind of joint with hookers a plenty trolling the apartments behind them. John had often heard the guys arguing Monday mornings about which was best: get them early when they were fresh and pay more, or go later when they were sloppy and pay less.

Street economics.

“Fuck off, asshole!” the hooker screamed, slamming her hands into Ray-Ray’s chest.

Ray-Ray growled something and pushed her back until she fell on her ass.

John’s first impulse was to stay exactly where he was. You didn’t get involved in other people’s shit. That was how you got yourself killed. This was a woman, but she worked the streets. She knew how to take care of herself. At least it seemed that way until Ray-Ray hauled off and punched her square in the face.

“Damn,” Chico muttered, ringside at a championship wrestling bout. “Didn’t even give her time to stand up.”

John looked down at his shoes, which were soaking wet. The hose was still on. He could get into trouble for that. He went back to the spigot, turned it off, forgetting for a minute that it was righty-tighty and turning it lefty-loosey. He coiled the hose back in place. When he looked back up, Ray-Ray’s foot was in the air, sailing down toward the hooker’s face.

“Hey!” John said, then, “Hey!” again when Ray-Ray’s foot made contact.

John must have run over to them. He must have said something else along the way, something loud that called even more attention to the situation. By the time his brain caught up with his actions, John’s fist hurt like a hornet had stung him and Ray-Ray was splayed out on the ground.

“What the fuck,” Art yelled. He barely topped five feet on a good day, but he stopped about two inches from John’s chest, screeching up at him, “You fucking monkey!”

They both looked down. One of Ray-Ray’s teeth was on the sidewalk swimming in a puddle of blood. The guy looked dead, but no one was dropping to check his pulse.

The cop stood in the doorway. Slowly, John let his eyes trace up the man’s thick black shoes, following the sharp crease in his pants, skipping past his gunbelt where a large hand was resting on the butt of his gun and forced himself to look the guy in the face. The screw was staring straight back at John as he turned his radio down, the calls from the dispatcher turning to a whisper. “What’s going on here?”

It took everything John had in him not to just assume the position right then and there. “I hit him.”

“Well, no shit, asshole!” Art barked. “You are so fucking fired.” He prodded Ray-Ray with his foot. “Jesus Christ, Shelley. What’d you hit him with, a fucking hammer?”

John’s head dropped, and he looked at the ground. Oh, Jesus. He couldn’t go back to prison now. Not after all of this. Not after everything he’d been through.

“I’m sorry,” John said. “It won’t happen again.”

“You’re damn right it won’t,” Art snapped. “Christ.” He looked at the cop. “This is the thanks I get for giving these guys a second chance.”

“I apologize,” John offered again.

“Hey!” the hooker yelled. “Somebody wanna give me a hand?”

All of the men looked down, shocked, like they had forgotten her existence. The whore had a hard face, the kind that told her life story in the millions of lines wrinkling her skin. Blood poured from her nose and mouth where Ray-Ray’s foot had done its damage. She was propped up on her elbows, a filthy white feather boa wrapped around her scrawny neck, a purple plastic-looking miniskirt and a black tank top that showed the bottom of her sagging breasts barely covering her wasted body.

Nobody wanted to touch her.

“Hey, Knight in Shining Armor All,” she said, shaking her hand toward John. “Come on, stallion. Help me the fuck up.”

John hesitated, but then he reached down and pulled her up. She smelled of cigarettes and bourbon, and had a hard time standing on the spike heels of her shoes. Her hand dug into his shoulder as she steadied herself. He tried not to shudder in revulsion, thinking about where that hand had been. In the sunlight, her skin was sallow, and he guessed her liver was desperate enough to shit itself out of her navel if it was ever given the opportunity. She could have been thirty, she could have been eighty.

The cop took charge. “You wanna tell me what this is about?”

“He wouldn’t pay me,” she said, tilting her chin, indicating the prone Ray-Ray. Her voice was like loose rock rolling in a cup of phlegm. What words she didn’t slur were probably not worth hearing.

“You gave him one on credit?” the cop asked, not bothering to hide his incredulity. The man had a point. John wouldn’t sell Ray-Ray a petrified turd on credit.

“We was in there,” she said, meaning the Port-a-John behind the building. “He tried to sweet-talk me, the lousy fucker. Said he was get-tin‘ paid tomorrow.”

The cop’s eyebrow shot up. “You gotta be shittin me.”

“He followed me out here, trying to make a deal,” she continued, clutching John’s arm again as she swayed. “Like it’s double coupon day at the fucking Kmart. Stupid cocksucker.” She lifted a patent-leather heel and kicked Ray-Ray in the arm.

“Hey, hey, now,” Ray-Ray said, groaning as he rolled over onto his back. John figured the asshole had been playing possum and wanted to beat him again for causing all of this.

The cop prodded Ray-Ray with his shoe. “You try to get a freebie, you stupid mope?”

Ray-Ray put his hand over his eyes, shielding the sun so he could look up at the cop without being blinded. “No, no, man. That ain’t the thing..Ain’t the thing at all.”

“Get up, you fucking idiot,” the cop ordered. “You.” He pointed at the whore. “Where’s your drag?”

She was busy wiping the concrete off her elbows. “Up by the liquor store.”

There was a crash of static from the cop’s radio, then, “Unit fifty-one, fifty-one?”

The cop clicked the mic, said, “Check,” then pointed to John, talking over the information the dispatcher gave but obviously still listening. “You. Prince Charming. Make sure she gets back home safe. You,” he pointed to Ray-Ray. “Don’t make me tell you one more fucking time to get the fuck up or I will run your ass in so quick your P.O. won’t even have time to call you a cab back to the pen.” Ray-Ray jumped up and the cop clicked on the radio and said, “Roger, I’m there in ten minutes.” As an afterthought, he asked Art, “You okay with all this?”

Art frowned, his forehead sloping into a V. “Yeah, whatever,” he finally agreed. “Shelley, take the day off. Come back with your head in the right place tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” John said, so relieved he could have cried. “Thank you, sir. I won’t disappoint you.”

The respect brought him some back. “You want me to get rid of this stuttering freak?” Art asked John as he jabbed his thumb at Ray-Ray.

John thought about it for a good second, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for this asshole. “We’re fine,” he said. “Right, Ray?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ray-Ray said. “We cool. We cool.”

“Shut up,” Art said. “I don’t want to see you back here until Wednesday morning, you got that?”

Ray-Ray nodded. Twice.

Art gave the prostitute a scathing look, then told John, “Get her out of here before we start losing customers.”

John didn’t think he had a choice. The whore had grabbed on to him again, her bony fingers pressing into his arm just above the elbow. He started walking alongside her because something told him if he didn’t, she’d end up face-first in the street.

Traffic whizzed by as they walked up Piedmont Avenue. John saw about a zillion SUVs and sports cars going up and down this road every day. With Buckhead at one end and Ansley Park at the other, the only crappy cars John saw on the road belonged to the maids, landscapers, pool boys and all the other hapless souls who made their living doing the shitwork rich folks didn’t have to do.

“Fucking asshole,” the pross muttered as they waited for the light. Her bony fingers pressed deeper into his flesh as she tried to steady herself on her ridiculously high heels. “Hold up a minute,” she finally relented, keeping her grip on him as she took off one, then the other shoe. “Fucking heels.”

“Yeah,” John said, because she was obviously expecting an answer.

“It’s red,” she told him, jerking him into the street as traffic stopped for the light. “Christ, my feet hurt.” She looked up at him as they reached the other side of the intersection. “I gotta loose tooth, you know? From where he kicked me.”

“Oh,” John said, thinking she was either stupid or crazy if she thought he had the extra money to send her to the dentist. “Okay. Yeah. Sorry.”

“No, you dumb prick. I’m saying I can use my hands but you can’t put it in my mouth.”

John didn’t realize he was clenching his teeth until his jaw started to ache. “No,” he answered. “That’s okay.”

“Lissen.” She stopped, dropped her hand, and started swaying like a raft in the middle of a tsunami. “You can head on back, Romeo. I can make it the rest of the way myself.”

“No,” he repeated, this time taking her arm in his hand. With his luck, she’d fall into the street and the cop would pin a manslaughter charge on him. “Let’s go.”

“Whoops,” she breathed, her knee buckling as she slipped on a broken section of sidewalk.

“Steady,” he told her, thinking she was so thin he could feel the bone in her arm moving against the flesh.

Out of the blue, she told him, “I don’t take it up the ass.”

John couldn’t think of which was worse: the thought of her mouth or the thought of her asshole. A quick glance at the sores on her arms and legs made him taste the peanut butter and banana sandwich from lunch.

“Okay,” he said, not knowing why she felt like sharing and wishing to hell she’d stop.

“Makes me shit funny,” she told him, giving him a sideways glance. “I thought I should tell you if that’s what you were planning.”

“I’m just going to make sure you get back,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about that other stuff.”

“Nothin comes for free,” she told him, then laughed. “ ‘Cept maybe this time. Of course, the walk-now, if you consider that your payment, it ain’t exactly free.”

“I was going this way anyway,” he lied. “I live down here.”

“Morningside?” she asked, referring to one of the wealthier neighborhoods backing onto Cheshire Bridge Road.

“Yeah,” he said. “Three-story house with a garage.” She stumbled again and he kept her from falling on her face. “Come on.”

“You don’t gotta be rough, you know.”

He looked at his hand around her arm, saw immediately how tight he was holding it. When he let go, there were marks where his fingers had been. “I’m sorry about that,” he told her, and really meant it. Jesus, he was thinking about women all this time and he didn’t even know how to touch one without hurting her. “I’m just going to walk you back, okay?”

“Almost there,” she told him, then mercifully fell into silence as she concentrated on navigating the bumpy path where the sidewalk ended and dirt took over.

John let her take the lead, keeping two steps behind her in case she fell over into the street. He let the enormity of what had just happened wash over him. What had he been thinking? There was no reason to get himself involved in Ray-Ray’s troubles, and now he was losing a day’s pay so he could take this pross back to her strip, where she’d probably make more money in one hour than he made in three. Christ. He could have lost his job. He could’ve been thrown back in prison.

Art got a nice stipend from the state for employing a parolee, plus extra tax breaks from the feds. Even with all that-all the so-called incentives that were out there-finding somewhere to work had been almost impossible when John had gotten out. Because of his status, he couldn’t work with kids or live within a hundred yards of a school or day-care center. Legally, employers couldn’t discriminate against a felon, but they always found a way around the law. John had been on nineteen interviews before finding the car wash. They always started out, “How you doing/we’d love to have you here/just fill this out and we’ll get back to you.” Then, when he called the next week because he hadn’t heard from them, it was always, “We’ve filled that job/we found a more qualified candidate/sorry, we’re cutting back.”

“More qualified to pack boxes?” he had asked one of them, the shipping manager at a pie company. “Listen, buddy,” the guy had answered. “I’ve got a teenage daughter, all right? You know why you’re not getting this job.”

At least he was honest.

The question was standard on every application. “Other than misdemeanor traffic violations, have you ever been convicted of a crime?”

John had to check yes. They always ran a background check and found out anyway.

“Please explain your conviction in the space provided.”

He had to explain. They could ask his P.O. They could get a cop to run his file. They could go on the Internet and look him up on the GBI’s site under “convicted sex offenders in the Atlanta area.” Under Shelley, Jonathan Winston, they’d read that he raped and killed a minor child. The state didn’t differentiate between underage offenders and adults, so he came up not as a person who had committed this crime when he was a minor child himself, but as an adult pedophile.

“Hello?” the hooker said. “You in there, handsome?”

John nodded. He’d been zoning out, following her like a puppy. They were in front of the liquor store. Some of the girls were already working, hoping to catch the lunch crowd.

“Hey, Robin,” the hooker yelled. “Come on over here.”

The woman who must’ve been Robin came over, doing a better job on her high heels than John’s companion had managed.

Robin stopped ten feet away from them. “What the hell happened to you?” She looked at John. “Did you get rough with her, you motherfucker?”

“No,” he said, then, because she was digging into her purse for something that would probably bring him a great amount of pain, he said, “Please. I didn’t hurt her.”

“Aw, he didn’t do nothing, baby girl,” the hooker soothed. “He saved me from that jackass down at the car wash.”

“Which one?” Robin asked, her anger still well above ballistic. The way she was looking at John said she hadn’t quite made up her mind about him and her hand was still in her purse, probably wrapped around a can of pepper spray or a hammer.

“Which one? Which one?” the hooker said, a good imitation of Ray-Ray. “That skinny nigger that says everything twice.” She looked up at John, batting her eyelashes. “You like ‘em a bit younger, don’t you, honey?”

John felt his body stiffen.

“No, I don’t mean it like that,” she said, rubbing his back like she was soothing a child. There was something almost maternal to her now that she was back in her fold. “Lissen, Robin, do me a favor and give ‘em a half-and-half. He really saved my ass.”

Robin’s mouth opened to respond, but John stopped her. He held up his hands, saying, “No, really. That’s okay.”

“I always pay my debts,” the old hooker insisted. “Kindness of strangers or whatever the fuck.” She followed a car with her eyes as it pulled into the parking lot. “Shit. That’s my regular,” she said, using the back of her hand to wipe the blood off from under her nose. She waved at John as she jumped into the man’s car, yelling something he couldn’t make out.

John watched the car leave, feeling Robin’s eyes on him the entire time. She had the same steely stare as a cop: what the fuck are you up to and where do I have to hit you to bring you to your knees?

She said, “I’m not her fucking stand-in.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, throwing up his hands again. “Really.”

“What?” she demanded. “You too good to pay for it?”

“I didn’t say that,” he countered, feeling his face turn red. There were five or six other hookers openly listening to their conversation and the amused expressions on their faces made him feel like his dick was getting smaller and smaller with every second that ticked by.

He added, “And she didn’t say anything about paying for it, anyway.” When Robin didn’t jump in with something else, he said, “I was just doing her a favor.”

“You didn’t do me any favors.”

“Then don’t do me any,” he said, turning to go.

“Hey!” she screamed. “Don’t walk away from me.”

Without thinking, he had turned back around when she yelled. She was obviously playing to the crowd. He felt himself shrink another few centimeters.

He tried to moderate his tone, asking, “What?”

“I said don’t walk away from me, you stupid prick.”

John shook his head, thinking his day couldn’t get much worse. “You wanna do this?” he asked, reaching into his pocket. He had saved twenty bucks a week for the last three weeks just to make sure he could swing the payments on the TV. He had fifty bucks in his pocket and seventy tucked into the sole of his shoe. John doubted the girl made even half that during the lunch rush. Hell, he barely made that in a day.

Her chin went up in defiance. They must have picked up the gesture in hooker school or something. She asked, “How much you got?”

“Enough,” he said. What the fuck was he doing? His tongue felt thick in his mouth and he had more saliva than he knew what to do with. Flashing the money had worked, though. The peanut gallery had shut up.

Robin stared at him another beat, then nodded once. “All right,” she said. “You want dinner and a drink?”

John chewed his lip, trying to figure out how much that would cost him. “I just ate lunch,” he told her. “If you want something to drink…”

“God,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “Are you a cop?”

“No,” he said, still not following.

“Half-and-half,” she told him. “Dinner and a drink.”

John looked over at the other women. They were laughing at him again.

“Shut up,” Robin barked, and for a minute John thought she meant him. “Come on,” she said, grabbing his arm.

For the second time that day, John was being led down the street by a hooker. This one was a hell of a lot better than the last one, though. She looked cleaner, for one. Her skin was probably soft. Even her hair looked good-thick and healthy, not stringy from too many drugs or covered with some cheap wig. She didn’t smell like a smoker, either. John’s cellmate had been a chain-smoker, lighting one off the last. The guy couldn’t even sleep for more than an hour without waking up to have a smoke and there were some days he smelled worse than a wet ashtray.

Robin pulled him into the woods behind the Colonial Restaurant, tossing over her shoulder, “You got enough for a room?”

He didn’t answer, couldn’t believe this was actually happening. She was holding his hand, walking him through the woods, like they were on a date. He wanted to hear her voice again. The tone was soothing, even though she was obviously in a hurry to get this over with.

She stopped, still holding his hand. “Hey, I asked if you have enough for a room.” She indicated the woods. “I don’t do it outside like some fucking animal.”

He had to clear his throat so he could speak. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he could feel his shirt moving. “Yeah.”

She didn’t move. “You’re sweating.”

“Sorry,” he said, taking back his hand, wiping the palm on the leg of his jeans. He felt a stupid, uncomfortable smile on his lips. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

She was giving him that hard look again, trying to figure out what he had in mind. Her hand was tucked into her purse. “You okay?”

John looked around, thinking no matter what she carried in her bag, it was a real mistake for her to be taking strange men into the woods. “It’s not safe here,” he said. “I could be anybody.”

“You’ve never done this before.” She wasn’t asking a question, just stating the obvious.

He thought of Randall, that kid at the rental store, the way his Adam’s apple had bobbed in his throat when John crowded in on him. John could feel his own throat clenching, making it hard for him to talk.

“Hey,” she said, rubbing her hand on his arm. “Come on, big boy. It’s okay.”

John noticed that her voice had changed. He didn’t know why, but suddenly, she was talking to him like he was a human being instead of something she had to scrape off the bottom of her shoe.

“I didn’t want to do this,” he told her, realizing his tone was different, too. Soft. Real soft like he was trusting her, sharing something with her. Without warning, his mouth opened, and out slipped, “Oh, God, you’re so pretty,” like he was some kind of pathetic freak. He tried to make it better, adding, “I know that sounds stupid, but you are.” He scanned her face, trying to come up with something else to say, some proof that he wasn’t some kind of freak she should pepper spray.

Her mouth looked soft, the kind of mouth you could kiss forever.

No, he couldn’t talk about her mouth. That was too sexual.

Her nose?

No, that was stupid. Nobody talked about pretty noses. They breathed, they ran sometimes and you blew them. They were just there on your face.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Your eyes,” he blurted out, feeling like even more of an idiot than before. He’d said the words so loudly that she’d flinched. “I mean,” he began, lowering his voice again. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking that your eyes…” Christ, she was wearing so much makeup it was hard to tell. “I think you have nice eyes.”

She stared at him, probably wondering how fast she could get the Mace out of her purse and douse him, maybe wondering if she could snatch his money when he went down. “You know,” she finally said, “you don’t have to woo me. Just pay me.”

He tucked his hand into his pocket.

“Not now, baby,” she said, nervous suddenly. He was doing something wrong. There was a way to do this and John didn’t know.

“I’m sorry-” he apologized.

“You pay me in the room,” she told him, waving for him to follow her. “It’s just over here.”

He stood in place, his feet refusing to move. Christ, he felt like he was a pimply kid again trying to get to second base.

She finally sounded annoyed. “Come on, big boy. Time is money.”

“Let’s stay here,” he said, and when she started to protest, he talked over her. “No, not like that. Let’s just stand here and talk.”

“You wanna talk? Get a shrink.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“This some twist for you?” she asked. “I start talking and you jerk yourself off? No way.”

She was walking back toward the road and he scrambled to get the money out of his pocket. Some of the bills flew out of his hand and he dropped to the ground, picking them up. When he looked up, she was still moving away.

He said, “Fifty dollars!” and she froze.

She turned slowly, and he couldn’t tell if the offer had made her more annoyed or just plain angry.

“Here,” he said, standing up, walking over to her and putting the cash in her hand. There were a lot of ones, a couple of fives-all part of his take from the tip box back at the car wash.

He said, “I’ll keep my pants on, okay? No funny stuff.”

She tried to give him back the money. “Don’t fuck with me, okay?”

“I’m not,” he told her, hearing a tinge of desperation in his voice. He was going to scare her away again and this time no amount of money would get her back. “Just talk,” he said, pressing the money back on her. “Just tell me something.”

She rolled her eyes, but she kept the money. “Tell you what?”

“Anything,” he said. “Tell me…” Jesus, he couldn’t think of a damn thing. “Tell me…” He stared at her, willing her face to give him a clue- anything that would keep her here a little longer. He looked at her beautiful mouth, the way it was twisted with irritation and maybe something that looked like curiosity. “Your first kiss,” he decided. “Tell me about your first kiss.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.” He took a couple of steps away from her, held his hands out to the side so she could see he wasn’t going to do himself. “Just tell me about your first kiss.”

“What, you want me to say it was with my sister? My father?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Please don’t lie.”

She crossed her arms, her eyes giving him the once-over. “You’re giving me fifty bucks to tell you about my first kiss?”

He nodded.

She looked behind her, then looked back at him. She counted the money out, crisp bills tugged from one hand to the other as her lips moved silently. “All right,” she finally said, tucking the wad of cash down the front of her shirt. “Stewie Campano.”

He laughed at the name.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling for the first time. She had perfect, straight teeth. “Real Romeo, our Stewie.”

“You went out with him?”

“Hell no,” she said, insulted. “He was two years younger than me, one of my little brother’s friends. We were playing around one day.”

“Playing what?” Her brow furrowed and he quickly said, “No, I’m not looking for that. I just want to know what you were doing.”

“Swimming in his pool,” she said, hesitant, obviously still trying to see what John’s angle was. “That was the only reason I’d go over there with my brother, because Stewie had a swimming pool.”

John felt his smile come back.

She had decided to continue the story. “So, like I said, it was late one night, full moon and all that, and we were playing in the pool, just horsing around, and he looked at me and I looked at him and then he just leaned over and kissed me.”

“Real kiss or a kid kiss?”

“Kid kiss,” she said, a smile working its magic on her face. She was truly beautiful, the kind of dark-haired, olive-skinned woman that poets wrote about.

Her smile turned mischievous. “Then a real kiss.”

“Go, Stewie,” John said, creating the image in his mind-the backyard, the moon, the various floats and flotsam in a family pool. “How old were you?”

“Thirteen,” she admitted.

“So Stewie was-”

“Ten. I know.” She held up her hands. “Cradle robber. Guilty.”

John was amazed at the kid’s bravado. “God, I don’t even think I knew what a tongue kiss was when I was ten.”

“Yeah, well I was thirteen and I didn’t know,” she told him. Then she laughed, maybe at the memory or maybe at the absurdity of the situation. John laughed, too, and it was such a sweet release that for the first time in twenty-five years he honest to God felt like he was okay.

“Jesus,” Robin said. “I haven’t thought about that kid in years.”

“What’s he doing now, you think?”

“Doctor, probably.” She laughed again, a short, sharp sound of pleasure. “Gynecologist.”

John was still smiling. He said, “Thank you.”

“Yeah.” She pressed her lips together. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“John.”

She laughed like he was joking.

“No, really. John Shelley.” He made to offer his hand, and she took a step back from him. “Sorry,” he said, dropping his hand. What had he done? How had he ruined this?

“It’s okay. I just need to get back.” She checked over her shoulder. “My minder’s gonna be looking for me soon and I-”

“It’s okay,” he told her. He had put his hands in his pockets because he didn’t know what else to do with them. “I’m sorry if I-”

“No problem,” she interrupted.

“I can walk you back.”

“I know the way,” she said, practically bolting back toward the road.

All he could do was watch her go, wonder what he had said wrong that made her run. Fifty bucks. He could buy a lot with fifty bucks. Food. Rent. Clothes. Laughter. The way her eyes sparkled when she really smiled. That wasn’t something you could buy. Yeah, she had taken the money, but that laugh-that had been a real moment between them. She had talked to him, really talked to him, because she wanted to, not because of the fifty bucks.

John stood in the forest, rooted to the spot, eyes closed as he summoned up the memory of her voice, her laugh. She had a brother somewhere. She’d grown up in a neighborhood with a pool. Her parents had spent some money on orthodontics, maybe taken her to ballet lessons so she’d have that lean dancer’s body or perhaps she’d been like Joyce, the kind of girl who metabolized food so quickly all she needed to do was walk around the block to keep her figure.

From the road, a car horn sounded and John opened his eyes.

Why hadn’t he gone into that hotel room with her? Fifty bucks. That was a good day’s work for him. A full day of wiping cars, cleaning up people’s shit, waiting for Art to come out and inspect his work, point to some nonexistent smudge on a windshield so the customer thought he was getting his moneys worth.

Fifty dollars and for what? The memory of someone else’s kiss?

John snapped an overhanging twig as he walked back toward the road, careful to angle his path so he wouldn’t end up at the liquor store. He could be holding her right now, making love to her. He stopped, leaning his hand against a tree, his lungs feeling like he’d gotten the breath knocked out of him.

No, he thought. He would be doing the same thing in that room that he was doing now: making a fool of himself. The truth was that John had never really made love to a woman. He had never experienced that intimacy that you read about in books, never had a lover take his hand in her own, stroke the back of his neck, pull his body closer to hers. The last woman he had kissed was, in fact, the only woman he had ever kissed and even then, she wasn’t a woman but a girl. John remembered the date like it was seared into his brain: June 15, 1985.

He had kissed Mary Alice Finney, and the next morning, she was dead.