“I said it was none of her business.”
“Wrong thing to say.”
“Oh, boy, was it! Off she went in a huff. How’d you know?”
“I said the same thing to her and got the same reaction.”
“Well, what should I have said? I mean, I think we’ve made the right decision about keeping this from her for a while...”
“Yes.”
“But at the same time I don’t want to lie...”
“No.”
“I guess I could have said I was meeting Peter downtown...”
“But he normally picks you up at the house, doesn’t he?”
“Well, yes.”
“And suppose he’d called while you were out?”
“Listen to the expert,” Susan said.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the table went silent.
The silence lengthened.
She looked into her drink, eyes lowered.
“You hurt me very much, you know,” she said.
This was the first time she’d ever said anything about it. After that night of discovery there’d been no talk except through lawyers. And after the divorce all the conversation was about arrangements for Joanna, more often than not ending in one screaming contest or another. Now, meeting in secret so that Joanna would not know they were seeing each other — God, this was peculiar! — they seemed about to discuss it at last.
“Because I loved you very much,” she said.
Loved. Past tense.
“I loved you, too,” he said.
“But not very much, did you?” she said, and looked up and smiled wanly. “Otherwise there wouldn’t have been another woman.”
“I don’t know how that happened,” he said honestly.
“Was she the first one?”
Her eyes lowered again. Hand idly turning the stirrer in her drink.
“Yes.”
His eyes studying her face.
“I knew the marriage was in trouble,” Susan said, “but—”
“Even so, I shouldn’t have—”
“So many arguments—”
“Yes, but—”
“All the fun gone. We used to have such fun together, Matthew. Then, all at once...”
She looked up suddenly.
“What came first, Matthew? Did the fun stop before you met her? Or did the fun stop because you met her?”
“I remember only the pain,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows, surprised.
He did not know how he could explain that he could no longer remember the pleasure. Only mindless passion and pointless pain leading inexorably to more passion and more pain.
“I was dumb,” he said flatly.
Her eyes were steady on his face. She did not nod even minutely, there was nothing in her expression to indicate she’d been seeking this confession, this admission in public in a crowded dining room smelling faintly of wet garments while the rain lashed the windows and the white tablecloths turned sodden and gray, she had not led him to this point, this was not vindication time. She merely kept watching him.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
“I guess we’ll have to see,” Susan said.
What Ernesto and Domingo figured was that they would have to see.
They were thinking there couldn’t be too many young girls in this city — she’d sounded young on the phone — who were in possession of four keys of cocaine, could there? That would have to be a remarkable coincidence, more than one girl with four keys of coke in her pocket? In a Mickey Mouse town like Calusa?
The trouble was, the girl didn’t want to meet them until it was buy time.
So how could they know for sure this was the girl El Armadillo wanted to hang from the ceiling until they showed up this Saturday with the money she wanted?
As they saw it, there were a lot of problems.
The first problem was that suppose this wasn’t the girl they were looking for?
They had agreed to pay her sixty-five a key for four keys, which came to $260,000. That was not a terrific bargain. It came nowhere near the excellence of the deal they had made with Jimmy Legs and Charlie Nubbs, whom they had agreed to pay only sixty a key for ten keys. That came to $600,000. But for ten keys, remember. Whereas for almost half that amount, they would be getting only four keys from the girl if she didn’t happen to be the girl they were looking for.
In which case—
If they took a look at her and she wasn’t the girl with the long blonde hair and the blue eyes—
Well, then, who needed her or her expensive coke? It would have to be Goodbye, hermana, it was nice knowing you but you can shove your coke up your ass.
In which case, there might be nastiness.
Because suppose the girl was just a telephone talker for some very heavy people who if you didn’t buy the coke you said you were going to buy would feed you to the sharks?
This was a possibility.
It was Domingo who mentioned this possibility, alert as he always was to the ways and means of staying alive in this profession.
The second problem was that they had agreed to pay the Englishman his seven-and-a-half-percent finder’s fee before the buy went down. He wanted his money in advance, didn’t want to be anywhere near where the transaction took place because that was his way of staying alive in this business.
Which was unheard of.
Giving the man his money in advance, before they even knew whether they were buying real coke or just sugar or chalk or whatever the fuck.
They would have to talk to the Englishman about that, work out some way to keep his nineteen-five in escrow till they had a chance to test the shit they were buying.
But that was the third problem.
Because if the girl on the phone really turned out to be Cenicienta then what they would do was grab her and grab the coke, too, without giving her a fucking nickel because this wasn’t her coke, it belonged to Amaros. And if that turned out to be the case, they certainly didn’t want to pay no fucking Englishman $19,500 for what was their own coke.
There were several other problems.
They had agreed to meet the girl and make the buy from her at twelve noon this Saturday.
They had also agreed to make the buy from Jimmy Legs and Charlie Nubbs at one-thirty that same day.
But if the girl turned out to be the girl they wanted then they had no real need to buy the Jimmy Legs/Charlie Nubbs bargain-price coke that was intended only as a consolation prize to calm down Amaros if they couldn’t find the girl.
In which case, there might also be nastiness.
Because both Jimmy Legs and Charlie Nubbs did not look like people who would take kindly to other people backing out of a deal.
Which was just what Ernesto and Domingo were planning to do if the girl turned out to be the one they were looking for. Grab her, throw both her and the stolen coke in the car, and drive straight to Miami, leaving the wops waiting with their dicks in their hands.
Although maybe, even if she was the girl, they should buy the ten keys from the wops, anyway.
Ten keys at sixty a key was truly a bargain.
And what was the big hurry? Once the girl was in their hands, they could take their good sweet time getting back to Miami.
It really was a bargain, sixty a key.
Ernesto told Domingo he wished they didn’t have so many problems.
Also this was already Thursday night, and Amaros hadn’t yet called to say when they could expect the money.
In this business nothing moved without money.
It was Domingo’s opinion that tomorrow was another day.