Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [18]
I thought about Spider asleep inside. He was prone to silent jealous rages when it came to ex-lovers—and he didn’t much like unexpected guests. Anyway, I hoped he’d slept through my midnight escape. “Did you already knock on my door?” I asked Mustang.
She shook her head, narrowed her eyes. Her thin lips quivered a little. “C’mon, Ruby. We’re family, aren’t we? Even after all these years?”
I remembered that accusatory pout. I sighed, already defeated, and I wished I’d had another drink back at Dots. “Let me go inside first; give me ten minutes, then knock, all right?”
When I heard her at the door a few minutes later, I pretended to be awakened from deep sleep, I pretended to be groggy, I crawled out of bed real slow, but my charade was all for the night. Spider snored like an emphysemic sailor after a night at port.
As I led Mustang through the dark of the living room, floor boards creaking, she breathed hard. I pointed her down to the guest bed in the half-finished basement. “It’s all yours, babe.”
She squeezed my hand, whispered, “Thank you.” I felt that tightening across my chest again, shook it off.
Spider got up at the crack of dawn, a perverse rod of morning energy even on Sundays. He took his cold shower, headed off to work in his new Prius, none the wiser. Or so I thought.
I lay in bed, just looking at the ceiling. I wondered, fleetingly, if Mustang’s appearance in the night had been a dream.
When she staggered upstairs a few hours later, I was making coffee in my pajamas. I offered her a hot cup.
She still looked bedraggled. “It’s fuckin’ cold in your basement,” she mumbled. “Where’s Spider?”
“Are you gonna tell me what all the drama’s about?”
She sipped her Stumptown brew, took a crumpled pack of American Spirit yellows from her hoodie pocket, lit one up. She held the pack in my direction. How long has it been since I’ve had a cigarette? I remembered the hot pulse of the nicotine patches I wore for a year. But what the hell? I reached out.
Mustang looked down at her scuffed Converse. “I need to talk to Spider,” she said.
“Spider?” The round of the cigarette felt strangely familiar in my mouth.
Mustang offered me a flame.
I leaned in, inhaled.
Her big brown eyes brimmed with tears again as she dragged on her cigarette. The smoke she exhaled looked musty and brown. “I need a lawyer, Ruby. I might be in pretty big trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Spider was a weed lawyer. And somehow I couldn’t quite picture it—Mustang in trouble for weed? Booze had always been our drug of choice. The smoke from my cigarette burned my throat. I pretended not to feel light-headed. “You been running pot?” I raised an eyebrow. It had been itching since I’d gotten it repierced.
Mustang gave me that accusatory pout again. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She hunched her shoulders a little. “A lawyer’s a lawyer. You can get Spider to help me. We’re family, Ruby. Aren’t we?”
It grated on my last nerve that she kept saying that—family. But she didn’t want to talk to Spider. He’s a weed lawyer. And I knew he’d never take her on—not even for weed. My cell phone beeped from the counter. A text message from Spider: get that bitch out of my basement by the time i get home. I flashed Mustang the screen, shrugged. “Sorry, babe, you better go.”
“Ruby—” she pleaded with me now.
I kept smoking, silent.
“I’ll go,” she finally said, shaking her head like she had any right to be disappointed in me. “But meet me later? When does Spider get home, anyway? Why’s he working on a Sunday?”
He worked every day. “No telling when he’ll be back,” I admitted. “Probably not before 8.”
“Meet me at that Italian place kitty-corner from Clinton Theater at 6,” Mustang said, straightening her back and running her fingers through her hair,