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By Root 866 0

had originally been painted or even what color it was now. Jack's heart sank because at first sight, the place looked abandoned, but then he saw a young woman come out the front door. She wore cowboy boots, jeans, a fleece-lined denim jacket over a ribbed turtleneck sweater. As he pulled up, she settled herself on the clapboard steps, shook out a cigarette, lit up. She watched him with gimlet eyes as he got out of his car, walked toward her. She had an interesting, angular face. Its slight asymmetry made her appear beautiful. She was slim and small. She appeared to be in her late twenties.

As he approached, he heard a train whistle. The tremor in the tracks built as the train thundered toward them. The unsettled air of its bow wave crashed over them like a hail of gunshots. The young woman, her long hair flying across her face, sat as calmly as if the only sound to be heard was the crunch of Jack's shoes on the pebbly blacktop. Smoke dribbled from the corner of her mouth, and now that he was closer, he could see the tattoos on the backs of her hands, either side of her neck: the four main phases of the moon. She must have dyed her hair black to match her eyes, but the tips were golden. She wore a silver skull ring on the third finger of her right hand. The skull seemed to be laughing.

In the aftermath of the cinder swirl, Jack flashed his ID, watched as her eyes tracked uninterestedly to the information. He began to wonder whether it was tobacco she was smoking.

"Do you work at S-and-W?" he asked.

"Used to."

"They fired you?"

"The world fired them. S-and-W is history." She jerked a thumb. "I'm just cleaning out the place."

Jack sat down beside her. "What's your name?"

"Hayley. Can you believe it? Ugh! Everyone calls me Leelee."

"How long did you work here?"

"Seven to life." She took a drag on her cigarette. "A fucking jail term."

Jack laughed. "You're a hard piece of work."

"It's self-preservation, so you can be sure I try my damnedest." She watched him out of the corners of her black eyes. "You don't look like a cop."

"Thank you."

It was her turn to laugh.

"How far along are you with the—" He jerked his thumb. "—you know?"

She sighed. "Not nearly far enough."

"I'm trying to track down a customer of S-and-W's," Jack said. "He's a tattoo artist who mixes his own pigments. I'm hoping he ordered logwood from you."

"Not too many of those," Leelee observed. "It's why S-and-W was overtaken by history. That and the fact that the owner never came around. The fucker stopped paying his bills altogether—including my salary. If I wasn't hired by the mail-order company taking over the building, I wouldn't even be here now." She shrugged. "But who cares? Odds are the new company'll go belly-up, too."

"Do you know something your new bosses don't?"

"That's the way the world works, isn't it?" She stared at the glowing tip of her cigarette. "I mean, we're all sheep, aren't we, persuading ourselves that we're different, that we're beautiful or smart or cool. But we all end up the same way—as a little pile of ashes."

"That's a pretty bleak outlook."

She shrugged. "Par for the course for a nihilist."

"You need a boyfriend," Jack said.

"Someone to tell me what to do and how to do it, someone to leave me at night to go out with the guys, someone to roll over in bed and snore his way to morning? You're right. I need that."

"How about someone to love you, protect you, take care of you?"

She tossed her head. "I do that myself."

"I see how that's working out for you."

Through her armor, she gave him a wry smile.

"Come on, Leelee, you need to believe in something," Jack said.

"Oh, I do. I believe in courage and discipline."

"Admirable." Jack nodded. "But I mean something outside of yourself. We're all connected to a universe more mysterious than what we see around us."

"Think so? Here's the truest thing I know: Don't for a moment let religion or art or patriotism persuade you that you mean more than you do." She took another deep drag, gave him a challenging, alpha-dog look. "That comes from a play called Secret Life.