“This fat bastard is heavy as a horse.” Cole’s arms were wrapped around Pork Chop’s chest. He had to waddle to carry the lump. Cole did not like waddling. “There aren’t any countries without horses.”
“Ethiopia, maybe. The Sudan,” she said. “Do they have a conversion to wildebeest power?”
“I don’t think wildebeests are found that far north,” said Cole. “More likely to encounter a horse than a wildebeest in the Sudan.”
“You’re being intentionally pedantic to squelch my conversational gambit,” she said.
“Tariq will want to drag Pork Chop across the yard to your bed,” said Cole. “Don’t let him do it. Make him lift. Mr. Chop’s got to think he walked into your bedroom on his own. He can’t have gravel in his sneakers.” Pork Chop’s sneakers looked to be made from the pelts of endangered animals.
“I can handle Tariq,” she said. “Don’t you fret.”
Headlights appeared up the boulevard, a couple of cars approaching slowly. Cole and Herta ducked beneath the hedge. Sour sweat from Pork Chop’s underarms reminded Cole that humans were merely stinking animals, which led him to think about meat. “She really should have provided snacks.”
“Tacky,” Herta agreed. The headlights of the first car swept past. “I think we enjoy this — even though it involves tasks like toting this human tuba — because our shady intentions darken the things we do, and that darkness lends them weight. Which is to say—”
“Here we go,” said Cole.
“Our objectives mascara the activities.”
“Too girly,” said Cole.
“You wear mascara.”
“Only when I’m working.”
“I’m talking about work,” she said. “I’d like to hear you do better.”
Cole sighed. “Each of the stupid things we do with these rich turds is bearable because the promise of money cuts through the odor of shit.”
“That’s bad in so many ways, I can’t count them all,” she said. “It’s vulgar without being funny. And you can’t literally smell money.”
With gentleness, Cole set Pork Chop’s head on the ground. He took a quarter from his pocket, rubbed it vigorously between his palms, and offered a palm to Herta, saying, “Smells like blood.”
It did smell like blood, and something about this made her happy. The effort he made, she supposed. “You’re not the perfect boyfriend,” she said. “For instance, I know sooner or later you’ll decide to kill me.” She raised her hands to still his protest. “I’m not perfect either.”
The second car turned onto San Felipe and Cole said, “Lift.”
“We were going to, obviously,” said Cole with a soft laugh, “but you were just too drunk. It didn’t feel right. Then we passed out.”
Madelyn, who’d wakened naked with her head on the Cole’s chest, said, “I don’t remember... Well, I do, of course I do, just not every detail.”
“You recall what you said to me?” His full smile was a chasm few heterosexual women could safely navigate.
“Oh god, was I crude?” Madelyn asked, delighted. “Sometimes I can be crude. Crude, crude, crude. Oh, my head, opening my mouth to talk is all I need to send a shuddering pain right through my temples. Here.” She touched a temple. “And here.” She touched the other temple. “It really hurts and my stomach... ”
“Let me see your head.” Cole massaged her temples.
“Oh my,” she said of his touch. “Where was I? My stomach... ” She prattled on.
As it happened, her stomach impressed Cole. The plan called for her to vomit on his chest, putting her in his debt, but she managed to rouse herself and make it to the toilet. The hangers-on — they might still be on the cow-couch downstairs — got knockout drops, but Madelyn and Pork Chop were given extra doses to make them toss. Cole wondered about Herta, confident Pork Chop upchucked on her. She was good with a plan.
“Your hands are so yummy,” Madelyn said. “Where was I? Oh, yes... ” The blather renewed. So far, Madelyn’s stomach was the only thing about her he found impressive. “Okay then,” she said, monologue running down, “what’s this terribly clever thing I said?”
“You said, I covet you.”
“I said that? I love it! I just adore it! And it worked, ’cause here you are.”
“Here I am.” His fingers worked her skull.
“I hate it when people are always worrying about money,” Madelyn said, brushing her hair, attired now in a peignoir that hazed her body like smog. “Money is overrated.”
The brush, he noted, was gold-plated.
He and Madelyn had sex the first time in the shower — a tiled stall the size of a car wash. Afterward, he massaged her back and butt and legs, her head and legs and soles. The second go was on the bed, and — for almost a minute — she lost herself in the act, he could tell. It was noon now, and Cole needed to see his partners. “Can I borrow your Volvo for an hour?”
“It’s not a Volvo,” she said. “Do I look like a mother of snot-nosed toddlers? It’s an Audi RS 7 — not a TT or an S5, but an RS 7 — a car built for the autobahn. Have you ever driven the autobahn? Texas thinks it knows something about speed, but the autobahn, my god, would you believe I cruised at two hundred miles an hour? And it felt like fifty? Smooth as silk.”
He did not believe two hundred miles an hour, and smooth as silk was a cliché. “Smooth as thirty-year-old Scotch,” he appended, teething at her still.
“My dad has fifty-year-old Ardbeg, the peaty stuff, which is what he likes. If you like it smooth, we can go to Richard’s Liquors on Kirby... ”
“Dick’s Liqs?” began Cole, but she talked over him.
“... a two-minute commute, tops. I’ve timed it. Why don’t you wear a watch, anyway? As for car privileges—”
“I just want to get clean clothes,” he interrupted. “I’ll be right back.”
The driver’s seat of the Audi was softer than his bed, but what difference did a car make, really? Cole was not materialistic. He just liked money.
“How’s Miss Bend-n-Squat?” Herta asked before Cole shut the front door. “Off contorting at the gym? Paying to crook her expensive thighs?”
“You’re too sedentary,” said Cole. “You don’t like to think of people exercising.”
“Exercise is for people who don’t read,” she said. “They do nothing of consequence, so they lend meaning to planking. The term pretty much sums them up.”
“You’re formidably sedentary.”
“I’ve never seen you in a gym.”
“There’s no money in them,” said Cole.
“What you guys talking about?” Tariq entered from the kitchen, dressed for the afternoon shift at the Azure Lounge: white shirt, dark pants, thin black tie.
“Work,” Herta said. “Madelyn.”
“She performs in bed like a porn star,” said Cole. It was not a compliment. “Makes stupid faces, ridiculous sounds, speaks absurd banalities.”
“Pound me down like ground round?” Herta suggested.
“It was the boringest sex I can recall.”
“I hate when you say things like that,” Tariq said.
“At least she performed,” Herta said. “Pork Chop came in my hands. Not that I’m complaining.”
Cole produced a single, folded page, and they moved to the desk. Herta scanned the page. She had a talent for forging documents, imitating signatures, pickpocketing, disguising herself, adopting accents. Cole was just good at taking things — like the statement page from Madelyn’s bank account, which held $73,987. They would use its corporate logo and page layout in the letter they sent Madelyn, and include her account number, phone number, address, and Social Security number. The letter would announce a security breach. Do not change your password online. Do not access your account online at all until you have changed your password. Call the automated system to make the change. Speak clearly and follow the prompts. Calls must be made from the number associated with the account. Cole had already attached a recording device to the phone in question — the pink number in Madelyn’s room.