Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [124]
“Your chariot awaits,” I said to her, and I bowed.
“I’m bringing Chara with me. Okay?”
That was her girlfriend obviously, and I was naturally a little disappointed. “Okay.”
Chara got in the backseat. “Ooeee. What’s in there? It smells.”
“It does not,” I said.
“You’re not sitting right next to it. It’s like Clorox or something. Nasty.” She pushed it away from her.
“It’s fragile, so be careful.”
My girl sat up front. She turned toward me and smiled and her brown eyes were big and happy. They were beautiful eyes with black lashes so long and thick they looked like the bristles in my hairbrush. I wanted to feel them against my cheek; butterfly kisses, my mother called them.
“Where we going?” she asked.
“Ballona Wetlands.”
“What for?” Chara in the backseat was a complainer, I could tell. “I need to get home.”
“Won’t take long,” I said. “I’m just giving that suitcase to someone. My friend’s in the importing business. Stuff from all over the world.” I looked at the clock on the dash. It had been quite awhile since I left Marcus. I knew the guy would be there waiting. I hoped he wouldn’t be too pissed that I was late.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Terrell,” she said. “I was named for my dad, Terry, and my aunt, Ellie.”
“It’s pretty.”
“What do they call you?” Chara asked from the back-seat.
“Gabe, short for Gabriel.”
“A real angel,” Terrell said.
“He sure is white,” said Chara.
“Nothin’ wrong with that.”
Right away, Terrell and I were together in the car, a duo. Immediately we were joined and Chara was on her own. I don’t know how long they’d been friends. I don’t know if they even really liked each other, but I knew Terrell was mine. She was falling toward me. I could feel the pull, like she was the iron shavings in my old science kit and I was the magnet.
She couldn’t help turning to me. I was happy. “You’re awfully skinny,” she said. “You need to eat more.”
“After this, I’ll take you for a burger or some french fries.”
“I’m starving,” Chara said.
I wanted to make her get out of the car. I should have, but of course I didn’t. We’re all so nice to each other, nice and polite, until we’re not. Maybe if we were rude in little ways at the very moment we got annoyed, we wouldn’t kill each other later. I drove down the hill past LMU and turned left off Lincoln into the Ballona Wetlands Preserve. I saw the wildflowers blooming and the bog smell was pleasant, earthy, and wet, like a mud puddle in the backyard. We bumped along. The road wasn’t well paved. Terrell squealed when we bottomed out in a particularly large pothole, and I laughed at her.
“How are you gonna be a stewardess if the bumps bother you so much?”
“Flight attendant.” Chara corrected me like a school-teacher.
Terrell just giggled. “I sure don’t like the bumps,” she said to me, and me alone.
She had told me a secret. I felt bigger then, like I’d grown six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier and I had hands and feet like a big man. I wanted to touch her shiny shoulder, but I didn’t because of Chara.
“There,” I said. “There’s the parking lot.”
My piece of paper said parking lot 4 and I saw the little wooden sign with the yellow number 4. The sky was like a baby store—pink and blue. The lot was empty. Marcus would kill me.
“There’s no one here,” Chara said.
“Will you shut up?” I couldn’t hold back.
“I’m getting out of this car.”
“Don’t.”
“I refuse to be spoken to like that. I’m gonna call my brother to come get me.”
“Stay in the car.” This from Terrell. “Please?”
“I don’t want to stay with that smelly old thing.” She pushed the case hard and it made a thump against the other door.
“Don’t touch it!” I shouted.
“What’s in it?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Money. Drugs. You know, Terrell, how they make it smell so the dogs can’t sniff it?”
“Chara.” Terrell frowned, but her friend was getting hysterical.
“It’s not good. It