Nobody's Angel (27 page)

"I'm picking up a friend," she said, leaning over the front seat, pointing the way. She wore a black leather jacket over a flimsy western-style blouse.

I turned the corner, started the meter, then put the car in park in front of a two-flat. A party was ending. There was a circle of people milling about on the sidewalk.

"My friend should be right out," she said. She opened the back door but she didn't get out. I half turned in the seat. She was leaning back, eyes closed, one foot dangling out the open door. The dome light shone softly on her face. Her skin was pale and tinged with red. Her hair was dyed. Dark roots had started to show.

She opened her eyes and caught me watching. "Rough night?" she held my gaze for a long moment. Her eyes were a faded grey, speckled with dark green. Her cheeks were slightly sunken, her nose long and delicate.

"A little crazy," I agreed.

"Must be a tough way to make a living," she decided.

"Sometimes," I agreed. "How about you? How was your night?"

"Too much dancing," she said.

"Where you guys going?" I asked.

She sat up and then leaned over the front seat. "I'm not really sure," she said. "What do you think? Where should I go?"

"Somewhere far away," I suggested.

She smiled but didn't say anything. Her breathing had slowed down a bit.

"You smell nice," I said.

"That's probably the gin," she said. "When I was a little girl, I thought gin smelled like Christmas trees, a forest full of Christmas trees." She cupped her hands and blew into them, then sniffed the air. "So what do you think? Do I go home with him or what?"

I shrugged. I was a guy. I'd go home with anybody.

"See, it's our first date," she explained. "Well second, really. It depends how you count."

"One, two, three," I showed her.

She smiled and shook her head. "He's just one of those guys always gets what he wants. You'll see."

"Maybe he can give me lessons."

"I hate to be another in the long parade," she said. "But why am I here?"

The guy showed up a minute later. Another black leather jacket, his blond hair tied in a tight little ponytail.

"Sorry it took so long," he said to the girl as he slid in. Then he gave me an address; a highrise a few blocks south of the financial district. "Do you know how to get there?"

"No problem," I said. I headed to Clybourn then turned southeast.

A few minutes later, the guy asked, "Have you ever had your bare bottom spanked in the back seat of a taxicab?" He didn't bother to lower his voice.

The girl giggled and whispered something I couldn't hear.

"I suppose that means a blow job is out of the question," the guy said in that same loud tone.

A mile down we passed the rickety bench promising salvation. "Yolanica," I said under my breath, and I realized that when I'd had my dream, she was already dead.

I turned on Halsted and we went past Cabrini, under the Ogden Avenue Bridge and over the canal and the river. And then a faint but steady beat drifted up from the back seat, and out of the corner of my eye I could detect some pale object going up and down back there. Was that his hand? Was she really having her bare butt spanked in the back of my cab?

I'd have to buy one of those big mirrors, like the one Ken Willis had, which offered a panoramic view of the back seat. But if I really wanted to stop them, all I had to do was turn around and watch. That usually did the trick with all but the worst of perverts. But for some reason I couldn't turn my head.

The beat continued as I headed south.

At Lake Street I turned left and ran under the el and then down the ramp to the left lane of the highway. I had a half mile to make it over three lanes to the exit for eastbound Congress. There was a line of over-the-road trucks barreling through town in the middle lane.

Some night, I really would follow along.

I took the first lane, then sped up and jumped into the line. An air horn sounded behind me and I looked back. She was giving him head. Her blond hair bounced up and down in his lap, in a slow and steady cadence. And suddenly the whole cab smelled of leather.

The air horn continued to sound and the truck began flashing its brights.

I let a couple of cars pass, then looked back again to take the final lane. She was all the way down now. The guy had both his hands planted firmly on her head, holding her in place. But he wasn't paying any attention to the trucks, or to the air horn still sounding, or the flashing lights, or to the girl in his lap. He was looking straight into my eyes.

I drifted over one more lane and then up the ramp for the Loop. The expressway went right through the main post office, one of the city's many wonders, then ended just over the river. I made a right at the first light.

"We're almost there," I warned them as we passed an old factory that had been converted to lofts.

The girl opened the door the instant the cab stopped rolling and she never looked back on her way to the revolving door. Her backside was as shapely as I'd imagined while listening to that gentle beat.

The guy pulled out a fat roll, found a ten and a five and handed them over. "Thanks for the professionalism," he said, and I had a hard time meeting his eyes.

"Sure," I said, then waited until the door was closing. "Thanks for the show."

He did a little dance on the way into the lobby, lifting his arms above his head, snapping his fingers.

The girl was in there, waiting by the elevators, running her fingers through her hair.

I followed the highway back through the darkness of the post office and, when I came out the other side, the gleaming towers of St. Lucy's, a mile or so west, were almost blinding in the morning sunlight.

I continued on, past the exit for home, and as I got closer I searched for Relita's window; for that little black spot that I knew was there, hidden inside all that reflected sunlight, all that shiny glass and steel. But it was impossible to find.

The hospital lobby was quiet. The reception desk was empty. A sign read: Visiting Hours 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

I headed for the elevators and no one tried to stop me.

Upstairs, I could hear the laughter from a few doors down, a tight, hard laughter, and I assumed it was Relita's tough-as-nails roommate. But when I stuck my head in the doorway, the roommate was nowhere around.

Relita and another girl were sitting on Relita's bed.

Relita had her legs crossed, her elbows resting on her knees. Both girls were rocking back and forth, talking and laughing. It was amazing what a few days of rest and some hospital food could do. Relita was like a different person. One who was sure to survive, at least for a while.

When she saw me she smiled and waved me over. "Eddie, my man," she said, "This be Sharon."

"Hey," I said, but Sharon didn't say anything in return. She watched with glassy, bloodshot eyes, as I came around the foot of the bed and picked a spot by the window. "How you doing?" I asked Relita.

Relita shrugged her shoulders and nodded her head. "I cool."

The room was too bright in the sunlight. Too light and bright. It had looked better in the rain. And Sharon had probably looked better out on the street strutting her stuff.

She was about Relita's age, another skinny teenage whore. And it was obvious that she'd come straight from the streets. She was sitting on the bed facing Relita wearing a shiny, black vinyl skirt slit up to her waist, and a flimsy halter top.

"You look like a cabdriver," she muttered after a while, and I guessed that she was high on something or another.

"I be telling Sharon all about you," Relita explained.

"I get me cabdrivers sometimes," Sharon said. "Most of 'em be perverts." She spit out the last word and laughed.

"Now don't be calling no names," Relita said, but she was all smiles.

"Streets full of perverts," Sharon said, barking the word again, "and they all be out last night."

Relita imitated the howl of an animal, and they both laughed, rocking back and forth on the bed.

"Be the moon," Sharon said.

"It was crazy in the cab," I said just for something to say.

"We be friends, right?" Relita reached out her hand and I took it.

"Friends," I said. But we didn't hold hands. It was just a quick, awkward, handshake.

"You know what friends be for?" Sharon laughed.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Shut your mouth, girl," Relita said. And the two of them laughed some more.

"I better be getting home," I decided a few minutes later.

"Wait," Relita said, and she reached into the nightstand. "I got something for you. Here." She handed me one of Margaret Gallos' business cards. "I be moving soon but she know where I be. You call that number and she tell you, and you come and see me."

"Where're you going?" I asked.

"It be for vocational training," she said. "So I don't have to walk the streets no more."

This sent Sharon into another fit of giggles. "Girl, you a whore."

"No, you the whore," Relita snapped. "Look how you all prostituted up."

Sharon lifted her skirt and flashed some hot-pink panties.

"And you still be a whore when I'm a computer op-o-ra-tor," Relita said.

"Hey, that's a good job," I said. I mean, you couldn't go wrong with computers, right?

"First I learn keyboard." Relita sounded excited by the idea. "Then they move me to advanced school."

"That's real good," I said.

"Maybe you pick me up from school someday."

"Sure," I said, although I wasn't exactly sure what she had in mind.

"You a cabdriver," Sharon had the answer. "She want a free ride."

"Girl, you be so bad," Relita said.

On the highway heading home I pulled the business card out of my pocket. Gallos was going to have her work cut out for her, I decided. Relita had seemed right at home with Sharon, a couple of whores sitting on a hospital bed.

It was easier for me to imagine Relita working the streets with one tit, giving discount blow jobs, than it was to see her sitting in an office, words and numbers dancing across a computer screen. That was a leap I couldn't quite make. Like me picking her up from school and the two of us going for a malted.

I held the business card out the window and the wind whipped it out of my hand and it sailed away.

Betty must have been watching the street. Her door opened before I was halfway down the hallway. "Eddie, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I said.

Her hair was down. She was wearing a light summer dress without a slip. A patch of bright sunlight shimmered on the floor behind her. "I thought something happened."

"Just a long trip," I lied, but then I realized it was true. It had been a long trip to nowhere and now here I was, back where I'd started.