Ladies' Night (6 page)

A couple of Chinese kids on dates, eating cheap. An old guy.

A few tables down there was a brother with the twitchy kind of eyes that marked you for a booster, strictly small-time — hot watches, t-shirts, rings. That shit. He'd known some real good boosters in his day. One sister in particular who was so fucking good she could boost a full mink coat out of
Bendel's
or Bergdorf's, stuff it between her legs and walk right out of there.

None of it was trouble.

He nibbled his fries. He figured he'd wait till the booster drifted. You never knew. Could be somebody's boyfriend, one of the girls behind the counter, and you could never say when some
motherfucker'd
go all Bruce Lee on you.

You take your time
, he thought.

He sipped the shake and ate his burgers, the weight of the pistol reassuring at his side.

~ * ~

At the kiosk at 72nd Street Mary Silver handed the man his change. If the man knew her and could have read her smile, he'd have seen the contempt there.

She sold the shit but she didn't have to like it,

Screw
,
Playboy
,
Penthouse
,
Jugs
. They were all the same to her. Night after night she sat on the stool behind the newsstand surrounded by the stuff.

It was always a man who would buy. Never a woman. Not once. And always the contempt was there. Another guy in rut without a place to put it.

A woman in tights and Nikes handed her two dollars for a copy of the Sunday
Times
. She made change.

"Thanks," she said. This time the smile was genuine.

On Saturday nights it was mostly the Sunday
Times
and the Sunday
News
people were buying, and that made Saturday nights okay in her book. By six o'clock the front sections were delivered and she and the boys would put them together by nine — and after that most of her business was papers, not porn.

She could remember a time when it hadn't mattered. She'd even been curious enough to look at the stuff.

That was before the fat man with the scars on his neck and the breath that stunk of Dentyne gum and cigarettes who — in the process of raping her, while his big hands were on her breasts and her own on his cock, trying to get his sad deflated cock up so he wouldn't turn lunatic and kill her — had said she looked like something out of
Playboy
.

Playboy
.

Nice. It was supposed to be a compliment.

It was right after that that she'd decided to take the course in Dim
Ching
and Karate and started keeping the twelve-inch blade beneath the counter at night. And started hating pornography.

She'd discussed it with the women in her group. They all had reached the same conclusion. There was no excuse for porn other than to debase women. It was an instrument of terror, pure and simple — the patriarchal society keeping the girls in line by turning them into boy-toys. As far as she was concerned
Guccione
, Goldstein and the others were as bad as Hitler — freaks and genocides, all of them.

There was irony here.

The only reason she'd gotten into the business in the first place was that she'd looked around one day and realized that in all of Manhattan there wasn't a single newspaper kiosk run by a woman. She'd decided to change that. She'd . . . infiltrated.

She'd found that there were simply no profits in newspapers. It was all in cigarettes and magazines.

Skin
mags
were the biggest draw of all.

So she had herself a situation here. She'd decided not to buy the kiosk.

"Thanks," she said as yet another asshole handed her a ten dollar bill for a copy of
Penthouse
. She gave him back his change.

Most nights she could carry this off with some measure of philosophy. She had an application in as manager over at Barnes & Noble — this was just temporary. But tonight she was having a hell of a time. Her head was throbbing. She'd been popping aspirin all evening but it didn't seem to help. If one more creep eyed her breasts beyond the wall of newspapers she just might murder the bastard.

It'll pass
, she thought.

But it did not pass, as the night drew Mary Silver slowly down to morning.

~ * ~

"Five copies at $6.95," said Sheldon. "Three at $7.50." Lydia ticked them off on her check sheet.

Sheldon took a step down on the ladder to begin the next row of books — they were on the hardboiled section now in the back of the store — lost his footing, and damn near tumbled off the ladder.

"Sheldon! Watch it for god's sake!"

Sheldon just looked at her.

"Jeez,
Lyd
. I was the one who almost broke his neck here, you know?"

He was right. She was being testy. Inventory was almost finished.

Another hour or so and they could get out of there. She was exhausted, though. And nervous somehow. Keyed-up. She guessed that was the price you paid for a little extra enjoyment sometimes. She was supposed to have driven back to town early last night from her week in Davis Park but things with Ross had been so good she'd decided to stay the night and return this morning. Then they'd been sort of slow getting started — slow getting out of bed, actually — and there was that awful tie-up on Riverside Drive, and now they were running incredibly late.

Sheldon was good even to be there at this hour and here she was yelling at him.

"Sorry, Sheldon."

"It's all right."

It was the oddest thing, though. She could not get Ross out of her mind. The inventory was important — damned important when you were the owner and looking at another rent increase three months from now — but all she could think of was Ross.

She kept feeling him inside her. Actually feeling it.

She could close her eyes and see him naked and feel the strokes. God! were it not for the inventory she could've stayed where she was and at this very moment they'd be . . .

She felt faint.

And she felt regret.

But she could not have left the job to Sheldon. Sheldon was sweet but he was working here because he loved books, not money. He knew every book by John D. MacDonald and Elmore Leonard practically by heart but he could barely make change of a quarter. No head for figures at all. If left to him, the inventory would have been a shambles.

As it was she'd had to watch him like a hawk. He'd miss whole clusters of books, skip them over completely despite the bottle-thick glasses he was wearing, and Lydia would have to point this out to him. He'd blush beneath the blister of pimples. Sorry.

He was sweet but exasperating. Especially after five hours on the road and five more here in the store.

And these . . . images that kept distracting her.

Time for a break
, she thought. The last hour would probably go faster anyway if they had a little coffee in them.

"Come on down,
Shel
. Let's take five."

"Great." He climbed down off the ladder and wiped his dusty hands on his rumpled short-sleeve shirt.

Lydia took off her own glasses and put them on a pile of books beside her and rubbed her tired eyes.

Immediately the images returned. Ross inside her, his hands on her breasts. Her breasts actually tingled.

She blushed and turned away.

She poured them each some coffee and handed a cup to Sheldon and sat down.

Can he tell?
she thought.
Just by looking at me?

She felt that transparent.

He was eyeing her somewhat . . . appreciatively.

She was not what you'd call beautiful. Too short, for one thing, a bit too small on top and a bit too wide in the bottom, attractive but sort of plain-looking. She had spent a good portion of her life watching carefully for those appreciative looks — which rarely came. So she knew one when she saw it.

Could Sheldon have a crush on her?

She hoped not. For his sake.

Sheldon was just terminally gawky. And there was Ross.

She sipped the coffee.

Something stirred inside her, a memory that was only half a memory, Ross squirming sweating writhing deep inside her.

She heard the wall clock ticking behind her. She felt faint again, held on to the wooden stool she was sitting on until it passed and stared at the wall of books.

And for Lydia too, the night wore on.

MacInery's
was nothing special but he liked it there. The place was small and dark, about a dozen seats at the bar and twenty tables crammed together toward the back, serviced by a small kitchen.

There was a red brick fireplace opposite the bar which they actually used in winter and which even now sported half a dozen logs piled on the grate and an antique stand for the shovel, poker and tongs. There were cut flowers on the mantle over the fireplace and hanging plants over the tables along with low-slung green-shaded lights which made each table look as though there were a poker game in progress.

It was a comfortable place, relaxed. Even on a night like this with the crowd three deep at the bar.

He ordered a second scotch from Bailey.

Bailey was a friend by now. He'd known him for years. Closed the place up with him plenty of times and helped him stack the chairs while they had a couple on the house with the lights low and door locked behind them. When Bailey was drunk he just slowed down.

You could wait five minutes for him to finish a single sentence while he stroked that blonde-red Berserker beard of his and sipped his beer and took his time thinking things through — but when the sentence did come out it was not going to be stupid.

Tom had never seen him lose control.

He could not exactly say that of himself.

He leaned back against the fireplace and watched the waitresses shuttle back and forth from the kitchen. Every table was filled and Chris, Erica and Rita were obviously having a pretty busy night of it. Erica looked particularly beat. As beat as a woman that good-looking was ever going to look. He watched her toss her long, dark hair and slump exhausted at the bar at the waitress station, handing Bailey a check. You could almost read her mind. One more down and good riddance.

One of the cooks — Dom or Dominick, something like that — came trotting out of the kitchen and asked Bailey for a beer. Bailey poured him one, fast, and the man scuttled back toward the kitchen, wiping sweat off his face with his free hand.

He passed Erica serving drinks to a table of four, smiled and patted her once on the ass. She shot him a glance. The glance said it would be her great pleasure to skin him alive right then and there.

He guessed there was trouble again in the kitchen.

There was a woman he recognized standing by the jukebox. He'd seen her in here a number of times and wanted no part of her. She drank too much and turned ugly when she did. And she was already more than halfway in the bag. Something flickered across her face that was part scowl and part come-on as she ran her finger along the list of song titles. Somebody would take her home tonight — but it wouldn't be him.

There was a very pretty woman at the telephone and two more — just kids, really — talking beside him. Another pair at the bar and a thin blonde in a red sweater who appeared to be drinking alone.

Alone if you didn't count the scruffy guy in khaki who was drunkenly, clumsily coming on to her. He watched her shake her head no and smile. Great profile. Lovely pale complexion. The guy hung on a while, then shrugged and turned away. He saw his opening and made for it.

She was drinking Bloody
Marys
.

Her arms were slim, the hands graceful.

He stood beside her, talking to Bailey, establishing that he was known here, safe to talk to, finishing his scotch and ordering another. Bailey knew the drill. The fact was that a good bartender could do half your work for you. And Bailey was a good bartender.

She was listening. She couldn't help it. The guy beside her was listening too — Tom could see him sinking lower onto his stool in slow, alky oblivion.

Then Bailey pulled his usual masterstroke.

"Tom? Do you know Cindy?"

An introduction. She smiled and turned and they shook hands. Her eyes were deep blue and wide and absolutely gorgeous.

He owed Bailey on this one. He'd say so.

Later.

~ * ~

Bailey poured a Rum and Coke and watched Tom Braun laughing and talking to Cindy.
Good to see somebody having fun
, he thought.
The bar's a little weird tonight
.

He'd thought that maybe you'd have to have worked here night after night to notice it so he'd mentioned it to Erica. But Erica just gave him a look. So he'd thought,
well, maybe it's my imagination
—but he didn't really believe that. Since he'd come on at six, before the bar was even very busy, he'd been aware of some kind of thickness in the air, a kind of tension, a sort of manic strain to the conversation. Like the night was coiling up for something.