[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Even their dings had a mellow buttercream glow, and they were my size.I could see the number in faded print inside the lip.I found myself pausing, drawn, my cold feet aching.The only pair of boots I owned had kitten heels.They rested in my closet with strappy sandals and flats with bows, all the dainty accompaniments to Ro Grandee’s ruined wardrobe.Ivy Wheeler is a woman who wears cowboy boots, I decided.And I would know.After all, I’d just had a taste of what it might be like to be Ivy Wheeler, unmoored and unknown, eaten by a city.I squatted by the blanket.A dollar sign and the number 40 had been scrawled across an index card leaned up against the pointy right toe.Too much.I touched the card with one finger and said, “If they fit, I’ll give you half that,” to the tattoo boy.He sized me up, taking in my macramé bag, my ancient jeans, trying to read my money.I lowered my head, looking down at Ivy’s boots.He didn’t say anything, so I started to rise.Then he spoke up.“Gimme the twenty.Whether they fit ain’t my problem.”Most of my remaining wad was in a Ziploc bag in my underpants, but I had three twenties and some smaller bills tucked in different spots, each miniroll trying to look like all the cash I had.I chose the twenty in my bra, just to mess with him.Pulled it out slow.He cool-boyed it right to the end, and then his eyes shifted, taking an involuntary glance south.His gaze flicked back almost instantly, but I had one eyebrow up, waiting for him.He grinned at me, caught, the smile crinkling the blue star he’d inked on his cheek, and we liked each other for a second.I kicked off my flats and left them on the sidewalk like bits of shed skin.The boots slid on so easy, it was as if some other girl with feet shaped like mine had walked in them for a year, breaking them in for me, readying them for this moment.As I walked away, tattoo boy was already putting my flats on the blanket to sell to someone else who needed a change.My pace quickened.The porn place had clued me in: Arlene wasn’t living in the world’s best neighborhood.It was getting dark, but I didn’t have far to go.Jim Beverly was less than a mile away from me right now, maybe sitting down to dinner with her.I could picture him touching her dark hair, remembering the silkier feel of mine.The sun was gone by the time I found her apartment building.I saw her listed on the row of call buttons: Fleet—4B.I hit a button on the intercom, two numbers under hers.Nothing happened, so I went down one more and tried again.This time a male voice came through the speaker.“Yeah?”Arlene had failed to rinse the long taste of Alabama vowels out of her mouth, and I could sound like her, easy.“It’s Arlene Fleet, from 4B.I locked myself out.”A second later the door buzzed, and I pushed my way in.Her building had no elevator, and the door by the stairs said 1B.I was breathing hard by the time I got to Arlene’s floor, and my heart was banging itself against my rib cage, both from the stairs and from being this close to seeing Jim again.I paused, listening.Arlene was home.I could hear her rattling around inside 4B, her voice raised.She wasn’t alone.Her shrill yaps were punctuated by the sound of the deeper, male voice I’d heard behind her on the phone.I couldn’t make out any of the words through the old building’s well-made walls, but they both sounded angry.I pressed my ear against the door and a second later felt the wood shudder as something on the other side hit it hard and bounced off it.Arlene? In my mind’s eye I saw her slight body ponging off of mine, only an inch or two of wood between us.Was Jim hitting her? My Jim had laid heavy hands on me only once, when we were blind drunk together on that long, wrestling night in our green woods.If he was hitting her, then he was drinking.The male voice dropped in volume, going almost inaudible, and Arlene’s raised up, so strident and high that she sounded like an angry budgie.I pressed closer, as if yearning alone could melt oak and push me through it, trying to hear him.His words sounded clipped, sharp and fast like drumbeats, but he was very angry, and Chicago could have whittled down his accent.Was he drinking? I wasn’t sure that I should knock if he was.Jim drinking was not the Jim I wanted.I was surprised my banging heart didn’t do the knocking for me, an endless thudding gallop against the wood.Perhaps they did hear me, because the door flew open, spilling me all the way onto my ass.I landed face to crotch with a pair of knife-creased khakis.I went scuttling backwards crab style.When I saw the coffee dark skin of his hands, I knew he wasn’t Jim.I looked up at him.He was a tall black man with a trim waist and broad shoulders.He was better looking than Jim had ever thought of being, too, with a long, straight nose and sharp cheekbones and a full mouth.He was too good-looking for Arlene fucking Fleet, that was sure.I scrambled to stand up.He must have been a foot taller than me, but I wanted to take him on, punch his face in, for the crime of not being the right man.“What the—,” he said, and he stepped toward me.He was so big.I scrabbled in my purse for my pepper spray.I whipped it out and aimed it at him, pushing down hard on the trigger, but nothing happened.He stopped in his tracks, boggling at me.I pressed and pressed, and nothing came out, while he dared to keep on standing there, existing, and not being Jim.Not being a single thing like Jim, even.I’d come halfway across the country, spent most of my cash, only to be wrong.I pushed harder, wanting to watch him claw at his eyes while Arlene and I kicked the shit out of him.My new boots had steel toes.“I heard you yelling,” I said to Arlene.I sounded breathless.“Whoa,” the guy said.He put up his hands.“Calm down.”I said to Arlene, “You go for the soft parts.And then we run while he’s down.” I pressed again, and still no spray came out.I gave the can a fast, angry shake.Arlene Fleet wasn’t even looking at me.Her focus was all on her fella.She was talking to him now, continuing their fuss like I wasn’t standing pumping my finger up and down on the unresponsive pepper spray trigger, trying to blast him into blindness.He kept his hands up but turned to talk to her as if I wasn’t hardly there.As I watched their body language, my adrenaline began to leak away.This was Arlene’s mystery man, and she was serious about him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]