Hick - Andrea Portes [31]
“Seven lonely days makes one lonely week . . .”
She is singing at the top of her lungs, speeding along, smiling like she just won the Pillsbury Bake-Off.
“Seven lonely days makes one lonely—”
“Ha ha! Hey kid, we made it. We made it! C’mere, kid. I wanna give you a kiss.”
I lean forward and she grabs me by the arm and kisses my hand, clumsy.
“Nice work, kid. You deserve an Academy Award from all those jack-offs in Hollywood. Now, I know it’s not much, not an Oscar, mind you, but here’s your cut. One thousand smackers. Don’t spend it all in one place.”
She winks and I look up at her, rumpled and speechless.
“That’s right kid, for only $9.95 you, too, can flop all over the ground, have an ol geezer go black on top of you and still make out like a bandit! For not one, not two, but one thousand smackers you, too, can be the pride of your hometown and flip the Joneses the bird.”
She’s floating above me now, cackling, smiling, singing, smoking. She starts rubbing off on me, too. She was right. We’re safe now.
We’re in Wyoming.
“There you go, kid.” She hands me a wad of cash in a rubber band.
I look down at my cut like someone just dropped a cockroach in the middle of my palm. This is not what I was expecting. I thought I was just the bait. Not the sidekick.
“One thousand even. Count it. Exactly half. Down the line. You and me. Half and half. The actress and the thief. That sounds like the name of a movie. The actress and the thief. One of us would have to be a boy, though. So we could make out. Nobody wants to see a movie where people don’t make out. Anyway, you did good, kid. I’m proud of you. Next stop, we’ll get something to eat. Maybe drink, too. I could use a drink. Shit. You like whiskey?”
“No.”
“Holy shit! How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Thirteen!”
“Yup.”
“Don’t like whiskey?”
“Nope.”
“What are you, some kinda communist?”
“Nope.”
“This country’s going to hell in a handbasket.”
“Sorry.”
“I mean, that’s downright un-American.”
I nod my agreement and stash the wad of cash in my fancy stole bag.
“Tell you what, first things first. We’ll stop. We’ll have one drink and then we’ll go get something to eat. I think it’s appropriate that we celebrate first, don’t you? I mean, we can’t have you pulling heists without a whiskey and Coke toast.”
“Whiskey and Coke?” Great. I get to be a drunk now, too.
“Oh, by the way, you’ve got money now. So you’re gonna have people on your ass, hounding you, trying to get it outta you. A fool and his money are easy to part. So you gotta learn. You gotta learn how to read people. You gotta figure out their angle. Cause everybody’s got an angle. Everybody. So from now on I don’t wanna see anymore bending and shuffling and hemming and hawing. Unless it’s an act. Then that’s okay. But otherwise, you gotta stand up straight and look people in the eye. You gotta see what they’re hiding. Lesson four.”
I nod back at her, taking it in, imagining myself outwitting grifters.
“You scared?”
“Nope.”
“You wanna go back?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Who knows? You may be some kinda disguised blessing.”
We pull into a truck stop that’s got a bowling alley shooting out the back, attached to a bar. it’s got white chip paint with a red stripe going horizontal, all the way around. There’s a neon sign above flashing, “Blane’s Lanes,” with the B flickering on and off from “Blane’s Lanes” to “lane’s Lanes” and then back again.
I take the circus animal barrettes out of my hair and try to look sophisticated. I am no sucker. Not anymore. I’m a sidekick. You can’t fool me no more. Glenda hands me her lipstick, ruby red. I put it on, smack my lips and tossle up my hair, like that girl on Remington Steele.
Glenda powders her nose, lights a cigarette and looks my way.
“Welcome to Lusk, kid.”
FIFTEEN
We walk in and they look at us like we’ve got rabies. It looks like the Fifties in here, orange and white with gold sprucing up the place for good measure. The bartender looks up, sees