Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [44]
As I got farther and farther up the New Jersey Turnpike things got uglier. Meadows and fields gave way to factories and swamps. There was more traffic than I’d ever seen in my life and the sky was filled with stinking smoke. Crow didn’t seem to like it. He’d curled up in a tight ball and had long stopped looking out the window.
Eventually, we were in a line of traffic waiting to go through the Lincoln Tunnel and I could see the skyline. It looked like nothing I’d ever seen, even though I had seen it in pictures.
Once we were in the city, I didn’t really know what to do. There was traffic and noise everywhere and people kept getting in the way of the car. Crow was sitting up again now, looking out, and he seemed as baffled as me.
We ended up sleeping in the car, in an outdoor lot. You weren’t supposed to sleep in your car but I paid the guy an extra ten bucks and he let me stay there. I didn’t sleep much though. Woke up before dawn with my teeth feeling mossy and my stomach rumbling. I locked Crow in and went around trying to find a working pay phone. I needed to call Belmont to get directions. Originally I’d thought I’d wander around Manhattan a little but now that I was here, I just wanted to get out to the track. Only I didn’t know where it was.
All the phones I tried were broken. Some of them had no dial tone, others didn’t even have a phone, just a silver cable with wires dangling like veins from a severed neck. I finally found a working phone inside a tiny grocery store. I dialed the number I had for Belmont but there wasn’t any answer. I tried three or four times and I could feel the guy at the counter staring holes in my back. I turned around and looked at him. He was a round, dark-skinned man drinking a beer even though it was barely past dawn.
“You know the address of Belmont Racetrack?” I asked him.
He looked at me like I was insane and told me to get out of his store.
The sun had come now, streaking the sky violent pink against the cold gray of the city. I went into a bagel store and bought bagels for Crow and me. Cream cheese on his, jelly on mine.
I went back to the car and the dog and I ate in silence, staring out at the weird world beyond the car windows. A pack of dark-skinned kids wandered into the parking lot and started looking at the cars. They were mostly boys but there was one girl who seemed like the leader. She was wearing a red down vest and skintight red pants that barely contained her body. She had a black slinky ponytail down to her ass and huge gold hoop earrings that danced when she walked. She shimmered toward my Chevy. I could see her skinny eyebrows knitting together, wondering what I was doing sitting in my car in a parking lot like that. She came to stand right in front of the car and leaned her forearms on the hood and grinned at me. Crow was growling low in his throat. The girl and I stared at each other like that and then she came around to my door and motioned for me to roll down the window.
“Whatchudoin’ in there?” she said, jumbling her words together so fast it took me a minute to figure out what she’d said.
“I was sleeping. Now I just ate. Me and the dog,” I said, motioning at Crow.
Crow had stopped his low growl and was just staring at her.
“Whereyoufrom?” she said with the words all mashed together.
“Oklahoma,” I said and then wanted to kick myself because I’d decided I was never going to tell anyone where I was from lest it lead me to trouble.
“Gethefuckouttahere,” the girl said.
She turned around, facing the half-dozen boys she had with her. “My man here’s from Oklahomahhh,” she said in a mocking drawl.
None of the boys said anything. They were restless, jiggling change in their pockets, punching numbers into their cell phones.
“Come on, Denise,” one of them said.
“Suck my dick, Razor,