Spider - Michael Morley [27]
‘Next left,’ says Lu, pointing through the windshield. ‘See the electronics store on the corner?’
‘Yes, yes, I see it,’ he says, leaning forward and squinting.
‘Left there, then the next ATM’s’bout a hundred yards down on the right.’
Ebanat! she says to herself as he indicates way too early, slows almost to a stop in order to round the corner and then takes an eternity to park at the kerb. She’s seen grandmas drive faster than this jerk.
‘I’ll only be a minute,’ he tells her, flapping the door shut as he heads to the cash machine.
Within seconds, Lu has the glove locker open and is scanning it for anything stealable. Shit, man, the guy doesn’t even have a CD worth taking! Just car documents and a squeegee for the windows. Lu clicks the compartment shut as she watches him turn around from the machine, put his wallet away in his jacket and return to the car. ‘Thank you,’ he says, politely. Very boringly, he puts his seat belt on again, checks the handbrake and starts the engine.
‘Okay, mister,’ says Lu, her patience about to snap. ‘Now you’re all cashed-up, let’s go some place and spend some of it on me. You got a hotel nearby?’
‘N-no,’ he says, his nerves showing again. ‘I’ve got a rental, off Fillmore, other side of the Marine Park. Maybe you c-could come back there?’
‘Maybe I c-could,’ she says cheekily. ‘You know the way?’ she adds, not certain this guy knows the route to his own shoelaces, let alone how to get home.
‘I th-think so,’ he stutters.
‘Good, then let’s get rollin’!’ she says, trying to whip up some urgency. ‘It’s not too late to give you a night you’ll never forget.’ She shoots him her sexiest smile, the one that melts even Oleg, but she doesn’t detect even a flicker of warmth on his face as he coldly clunks the column gear-shift into Drive and pulls away.
Lu stares out of the side window and neither of them speaks much as the bright lights of the Beach fade behind them. After about ten minutes she sees signs for Fillmore and Gerritsen and in the yellow headlight beams she spots houseboats tottering on stilts and dozens of shabby moorings in need of paint and varnish. Somewhere between Gerritsen and East 38th her last punter of the night turns the car into a rundown driveway cut through overgrown bushes and overhanging trees and comes to a stop.
‘We here?’ Lu says, surprised that he’s completed the task without any further checks, delays or complications.
‘Yes, please wait a minute,’ says the driver, pressing some automatic key fob that opens a big up-and-over metal door to a double garage. He slips the car into Drive again, nudges it slowly in and automatically lowers the door.
Lu’s out of her seat and out of the car before the garage door’s even come down. She wants to get this over with as quickly as possible and then catch a cab out of here. More than anything though, right now she wants the washroom. He flicks on a light and she blinks at the brightness.
‘I have a key, I just have to find it,’ he says, slowly inspecting several brass and steel keys on some kind of ring.
‘Here it is,’ he finally announces, then negotiates a route around the front of the car to a connecting door from the garage to the kitchen of the old house.
More lights come on and Lu looks around. Not much to the place: a tacky old kitchen dog-legs into a crummy living area with an old three-piece suite, a fireplace and dirty white rug but no TV. Lu has never been in a house that doesn’t have a TV; in fact, she didn’t think such places existed. ‘Hey, can I use your john?’ she shouts to him as he locks the back door linking to the garage.
‘By the front entrance, or there’s one upstairs,’ he says, nodding to the open wooden stairs that climb from the far corner of the lounge.
Lu goes for the downstairs john. While she’s in there,