Coronado - Dennis Lehane [6]
It had happened more than once that Elgin had found himself thrusting in and out of Perkin’s wife and thinking, Take that, Perkin. Take that.
But this afternoon, Perkin didn’t have his salesman’s smile or aloof glance. When Elgin stopped by him and said, “Hey, Perkin, how are you?” Perkin looked up at him with eyes so wild they seemed about to jump out of their sockets.
“I’m not good, Elgin. Not good.”
“What’s the matter?”
Perkin nodded to himself several times, looked over Elgin’s shoulder. “I’m fixing to do something about that.”
“About what?”
“About that.” Perkin’s jaw gestured over Elgin’s shoulder.
Elgin turned around, looked across Main and through the windows of Miller’s Laundromat, saw Jewel Lut pulling her clothes from the dryer, saw Blue standing beside her, taking a pair of jeans from the pile and starting to fold. If either of them had looked up and over they’d have seen Elgin and Perkin Lut easily enough, but Elgin knew they wouldn’t. There was an air to the two of them that seemed to block out the rest of the world in that bright Laundromat as easily as it would in a dark bedroom. Blue’s lips moved and Jewel laughed, flipped a T-shirt on his head.
“I’m fixing to do something right now,” Perkin said.
Elgin looked at him, could see that was a lie, something Perkin was repeating to himself in hopes it would come true. Perkin was successful in business, and for more reasons than just his daddy’s money, but he wasn’t the kind of man who did things; he was the kind of man who had things done.
Elgin looked across the street again. Blue still had the T-shirt sitting atop his head. He said something else and Jewel covered her mouth with her hand when she laughed.
“Don’t you have a washer and dryer at your house, Perkin?”
Perkin rocked back on his heels. “Washer broke. Jewel decides to come in town.” He looked at Elgin. “We ain’t getting along so well these days. She keeps reading those magazines, Elgin. You know the ones? Talking about liberation, leaving your bra at home, shit like that.” He pointed across the street. “Your friend’s a problem.”
Your friend.
Elgin looked at Perkin, felt a sudden anger he couldn’t completely understand, and with it a desire to say, That’s my friend and he’s talking to my fuck-buddy. Get it, Perkin?
Instead, he just shook his head and left Perkin there, walked across the street to the Laundromat.
Blue took the T-shirt off his head when he saw Elgin enter. A smile, half frozen on his pitted face, died as he blinked into the sunlight blaring through the windows.
Jewel said, “Hey, we got another helper!” She tossed a pair of men’s briefs over Blue’s head, hit Elgin in the chest with them.
“Hey, Jewel.”
“Hey, Elgin. Long time.” Her eyes dropped from his, settled on a towel.
Didn’t seem like it at the moment to Elgin. Seemed almost as if he’d been out at the lake with her as recently as last night. He could taste her in his mouth, smell her skin damp with a light sweat.
And standing there with Blue, it also seemed like they were all three back in that trailer park, and Jewel hadn’t aged a bit. Still wore her red hair long and messy, still dressed in clothes seemed to have been picked up, wrinkled, off her closet floor and nothing fancy about them in the first place, but draped over her body, they were sexier than clothes other rich women bought in New York once a year.
This afternoon, she wore a crinkly, paisley dress that might have been on the pink side once but had faded