“Have you even read Mrs. Dalloway?” Herta demanded.
The Azure Lounge was cool but close, like mentholated smoke. Heavy drapes the color of a bruise shut out the world. Through slits where the curtains failed to overlap, yellow blades pierced the room. Tariq stationed Cole and Herta near the entrance, where the drapes parted a sliver.
“Incoming,” said Cole, and Herta moved into position.
The group arrived boisterously, Madelyn leading, with three boys trailing. Herta, who’d situated herself perfectly, dropped her leather wristlet between the passing of the first lug and the arrival of Pork Chop, permitting only him to see the length of her legs as she bent. Then she jumped up and into him, as if he’d goosed her.
Pork Chop uttered a series of wha, wha, wha sounds, as if suddenly transformed into a helicopter.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, patting his chest and dropping her purse again. “I’m such a klutz!” She started to bend once more, but stopped herself and crouched demurely, offering an exaggerated frowning-smile for Pork Chop alone.
Simultaneously shocked and smitten, the fat boy could manage neither expression nor locomotion until the trailing boy of their group prodded his shoulder, and Pork Chop reluctantly hoofed it to their table.
Herta handed Cole a copy of the Houston Press, taken from the stand by the door — the presumptive reason for her stroll. Wrapped within the tabloid’s pages was Pork Chop’s wallet.
Cole went into action, aiming himself at Madelyn’s group. He paused on his way to swoop down, pretending to snag the wallet from the floor. The periphery of his vision flashed red, as if a trigger in his head were half-depressed — a sensation he understood as pleasure. “Hi there.” He copped a pose and smiled, eyeing Pork Chop. The group circled a table but were not yet sitting. “When my sister inadvertently tackled you—” he paused to laugh and roll his eyes; he hated eye-rolling, but rich people loved it, “you dropped your billfold.”
The three males self-frisked, dogs with fleas. This was their greatest worry, and they had to lay hands on their money.
Cole handed the wallet to Pork Chop, who riffled through his cards and cash, saying, “She’s your sister?”
Cole and Herta did not look anything like siblings except that each had a cunning nature that lent a cast to their eyes and set their heads at an angle, and these shared traits were easy to mistake for familial bond.
“Thank the man,” Madelyn Glancy told her portly pal. Her eyes never left Cole’s. “Can he buy you a drink? Your whatever — sibling — too. Have I seen you here before?” To Pork Chop, she said, “Put your money away. Where are your manners?” She rolled her eyes for Cole’s benefit.
Cole had rolled his first. He couldn’t hold it against her. He said, “You guys have room for two more?”
Tariq’s First Words to Cole:
“This is supposed to be funny, right?” They’d exited a classroom at the U of Houston, Tariq brandishing The Importance of Being Earnest. “Funny ha-ha?”
“It’s funny,” Cole assured him. “I can tell. Want to help me boost a car?”
“I don’t know ’bout that.”
“From the faculty lot.”
“All right then.”
What Cole Speculated about Tariq:
That he never thought twice about anything, and this was his greatest asset.
Herta’s First Words to Cole:
“Oh, is this yours?” Her hand was on his wallet. His hand held her wrist. Anvil was happy-hour crowded.
He leaned close. “How many billfolds in that purse of yours?”
“I don’t have a bookkeeper,” she replied.
He led her to a booth where, after a few drinks, he discovered that her skills were hard-earned. Her résumé included a six-month stint in Shakopee Women’s Prison in Minnesota, but she’d never been arrested in Texas, and never anywhere under the name Herta Oberheuser.
Cole had no criminal record. His ID was legit, if odd — his whole name was simply Cole. His mother insisted it was all he needed.
“What about your dad?” Herta asked.
“He was in Kuwait when I was born.”
“They still alive?”
“They were the last time I saw them.”
“Which was?”
“Five years ago,” he said. “Maybe six.”
“Where’d they move?”
“Nowhere.” He named the address of his childhood home.
“That’s like a five-minute drive.”
“Without traffic. It can back up there because of the off-ramp.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” she said.
To which he replied, “Let’s steal something together.”
She counted it as the most romantic moment of her life.
“What’s your actual name?” Cole asked before they left Anvil. “Nobody is really named Herta Oberheuser.”
“It rhymes with something found in nature,” she said.
“Belephant?” was his only guess.
What Cole Speculated about Herta:
That she must have attended college — you couldn’t do anything without a degree these days — but not in Houston, which was the only place he knew.
And that she loved him, which meant she’d be loyal. Up to a point.
What Cole Speculated about Himself:
That his only gifts were his looks and charm. And his ruthlessness, he supposed, but this acknowledgment made him feel immodest.
“Vodka tonic,” said Cole. “Stoli.” To impersonate the wealthy, one had to be picky, but when Tariq returned to say they were out of Stoli, Cole couldn’t think of another brand. “Whatever your house vodka is, I guess.”
“It’s absolutely barbaric,” Madelyn interjected. “From reject potatoes grown in Oklahoma or Kansas. Without the best potatoes, you get inferior vodka. Russia has the best. Or Idaho. Which is why the capital of Idaho is Moscow. Oh, don’t just stand there, Tark, get the man a Cirôc and tonic — and use your best tonic, Fentimans, if you’ve got it, or Schweppes from a bottle. A small bottle, freshly opened, not from that abominable squirter.”
She continued her monologue after Tariq departed, extolling the virtues of several liquors, many of which Cole knew for a fact were indistinguishable from one another, but he listened and nodded, feigning interest.
Well, he was interested, so he was feigning something else.
“This is just what I need,” he told her when she finally paused, “someone to give me a clue.” He showed as many of his teeth as he thought she could handle, then asked if she knew the way to a person’s heart.
“I don’t know the way to anyone’s heart,” she said, as if it were an unattractive organ like the bladder or rectum. “Most people I know aim a little lower.”
Did that mean they aimed for simple affection? Or the groin? She was hard to read. In any case, she kept talking. Across the table, Herta already had her hand in Pork Chop’s hair. A priest sat in the next booth, drinking whiskey, talking to a woman in a dark dress. She might be a nun. Cole wondered if she wore a thong.
“Get me another of these,” Madelyn told Cole. Tariq was working both the bar and the tables, which made him slow. “And don’t let him forget the lemon peel. I like a good peel, and these guys, you have to watch them or they cheat you.”
By these guys, Cole wondered as he walked to the bar, did she mean workingmen in general or Pakistanis in particular? Whatever else one might say about Cole, he was not racist. He disapproved of all humanity equally.