He glanced up from the girl’s shagged head. “What’s a quip?”
So stupid, Zyra concluded. All men were. Her pretty bare feet left scarlet footprints to the bathroom. She showered quickly, turning her face and breasts into the cool spray. “Blub, blub, blub—bye,” she gestured, and watched the redneck’s blood swirl down the crusty drain.
She put her clothes back on as Lemi inspected the girl, who he’d lain out on the bed. He appraised her meticulously, like a housewife fussing over which melon was the ripest at the Safeway. “Hmm,” he considered. He rubbed some of her mousy lank blond hair between his fingers. “What a rat’s nest. We’re gonna have to do something with this.” Then he patted her buttocks. “And I’ve seen better asses, that’s for damn sure.”
“Quit complaining,” Zyra scolded, buttoning her fancy inlaid blouse. “We’re lucky to have her at all.”
“And look how skinny she is—Christ!” Lemi turned her over, frowning. “Practically just skin and bones.”
“We’ll get some meat on her.”
“Hope so.” He gave one of her breasts a squeeze, and seemed more satisfied. “Decent pair of tits, though, for such a lightweight. Firm” He patted her pubis. “Nice bush, too.”
“She’ll do just fine, Lemi,” Zyra exasperated. “How was she? You tried her out, didn’t you?”
“’Course I tried her out. Not bad. Tight.”
Zyra rolled her eyes. “Shit, Lemi, an elephant’d be tight, as hung as you are.”
Lemi chuckled. “She was pretty fiesty at first. But once old Lemi boy got in there with the rig—that took the fight out of her and fast. Not a half-bad tumble, as far as girls around here go.”
Zyra shook her head again. Men could be such pompous assholes, like having a big dick made them special. Zyra figured Lemi had more brains in his glans than his skull. She took a moment to look down at the girl. Zyra tried to feel sorry for her, but why should she? It wasn’t her fault it was a cruel world, was it?
The girl’s eyes bulged in terror, her thin chest heaved. She whined beneath the duct-tape gag as Lemi lashed her ankles and rolled her up in the sheets. “Get the stiff,” he said. “We gotta…blow…this…pop stand.” He scratched his head. “What a dumb quip.”
He carried the girl out to the van. Zyra went back into the living room. That was pretty dumb too. Living room? Dying room, she thought, smiling. She could still feel a tingle between her long, firm legs.
The redneck looked pallid as jack cheese, now that most of his blood had drained out of him. Zyra picked him up by his ankles, and dragged him like a big bag of leaves out of the bungalow.
The air had some nip to it; winter grew close. An errant breeze braced her, whistling through the trees. Zyra rolled the corpse into the back of the van alongside the girl. Then she slammed the doors shut.
“Start her up.” Lemi shivered in his flannel shirt. “I’ll take care of the joint.”
Hurry up! It’s cold! She gunned the van’s engine, cranked on some heat. A few minutes later, the secluded little bungalow burst quietly into flames, flooding the grove with wavering orange light and heat. Lemi jogged back out and climbed in. “Let’s googie, Zy.”
“Boogie, Lemi. Let’s boogie—”
“Googie, boogie, I don’t give a shit. Let’s go home.”
Zyra wheeled the van down the long gravel drive. The flaming house shrank in the rearview, crackling.
Yeah, let’s go home. The main road took them toward the mountainside, into darkness, while the darkness took Zyra’s thoughts away into a silent, inexplicable joy. Every end is a new beginning, she pondered. It made her feel ageless.
“You know,” Lemi remarked, “I really like your hair that way. Glazed.”
“Not glazed, you idiot. Frosted. ” All she could do was shake her head and smile. It was hard to believe that men, however uniformly stupid, ruled the world.
“I can’t wait till things get started again,” he said, and relaxed back in the van seat.
Neither can I. The gagged girl in back shrieked in her throat. Zyra paid it no mind. It was a sound, among many others, that she’d long grown accustomed to. As she drove on, she got lost in more personal wonderings. It was a beautiful night. Crisp. Clear as crystal. The stars looked like a smear of luminous, cosmic spillage. There was beauty everywhere, if one looked closely enough…
Every end is a new beginning.
Indeed, this was their lot. They were always ending, and always beginning again.
The moon disappeared beyond the ridge when she turned up the narrow mountain road, toward home.
— | — | —
THE OFFER
CHAPTER ONE
The kitchen was a madhouse.
Busboys fought with waitresses over racks of hot silverware. The hostess double-timed, coming in for water glasses and bottles of Evian, while full garbage cans were quickly dragged away and replaced with empty ones. “Get me some clean broil pans sometime this year!” one prep cook yelled. “Eat me!” the beer-bellied dishwasher yelled back. Cute waitresses bustled in and out, lost in the deep concentration of wine-list memory, the specials of the day, and the perpetual balancing act of carrying six entrees on one tray one-handed. “These salads have been up for five minutes!” the cold-line cook yelled. “Get ’em out of here before I start throwing them!” More preps shucked oysters, made hollandaise from scratch, and butchered lettuce heads to bits simultaneously. The swingdoors banged open and closed with equal simultaneousness, flushing the kitchen’s hot confines with periodic wafts of cool, reviving air.
It’s a madhouse, all right, Vera Abbot thought. She stood at the end of the hot line in a three hundred dollar vermilion evening dress. But it’s my madhouse.
In a sense it was. The Emerald Room was the best restaurant in town, and Vera Abbot was its queen. A year ago they were lucky to do twenty dinners on a weeknight, now they were doing a hundred plus. It was more than good fortune—Vera had used her foresight, her management skills, and good hiring sense to turn the place inside out. She’d also worked her ass off. The kitchen was like a multipart machine where the failure of one component would shut down the entire works. It was Vera who kept the machine properly tuned. If you wanted the best restaurant in town, you had to find the best people, bring in the best food, and offer the best facility. Vera had done all of that, and had transformed The Emerald Room from a glorified steakhouse to a state-of-the-art dining room.
She walked down the hot line, minding her high heels over the black slipmats. “Ready for the good news?” she asked the bulky figure at their dual Jenn-Aire ranges.
Dan B. jerked his gaze up from a pan of sautéed soft crabs, his tall white chef’s hat jiggling. He had every burner going with a different entree, not to mention the prime rib and the duck in the ovens. He smirked at her with a look that said Maybe it hasn’t occurred to you, but I’m kind of busy right now.
“The governor’s liaison just called,” Vera announced. “He’s bringing in a party of ten in twenty minutes.”
“Tell him to go to Burger King!” Dan B. close to yelled. “I’m running eighteen dinners per half hour since seven o’clock, and now he’s bringing in his stuck-up cronies? Christ, those guys eat like pigs! Last time they ordered two entrees each!”
“You can handle it, Dan B.,” Vera assured him. “You have my absolute and unhesitant faith.”