I imagined that slick red mouth opened wide in a scream of terror, and I shuddered. So Jackal didn’t mind that his workplace paramours had a shelf life. For all his assurances this morning, none of it had been as important as whatever shiny object had distracted him. The chills started in the pit of my stomach and moved up my spine to my scalp. “What do I do?”
“I’ll talk to her,” she said. “I’ll beg her. But it has to be this week, Jo. The money this week or”—she licked her lips and her eyes were pleading—“you’ll have to leave Los Angeles. For your own good.”
I gripped the edge of the table, trying to think. The ancient mariner of a waitress popped her head over Lou’s shoulder to check on our drinks. Neither of us said anything. Eventually she got the memo and moved on.
Once we were alone, I promised Lou: “By the end of the week.” She nodded and grabbed both my hands in hers, squeezing tight.
I didn’t tell Lou the thing I’d noticed in Ellen, that Klein was more than a job to her now. It was our one unbreakable rule for the girls: don’t get attached; never lose yourself in someone else. Once you developed feelings for the mark, you couldn’t do your job. You couldn’t see clearly, once you were attached. I should’ve told Lou then, but I had bigger concerns. So I was worried about Ellen, but not the way I should’ve been. I’d find a way to handle it, I told myself.
“I hope so,” Lou said. “For both our sakes—I hope so.”
The thing I wanted to say then, but didn’t, was: Lou, what we did all those years ago—we did together. I took the fall and I owe the Lady and it’s my ass on the line, but it was as much you as it was me. But I didn’t say it. I wasn’t even sure I believed it—that what had happened was as much Lou’s fault as mine.
The glow of the evening had been ruined, and no matter how many of the Bombs Away I gulped, it couldn’t quite lose its tarnish. By the time we decided to go home, get some rest, we were chattering about the usual things, both of us working hard to pretend nothing important had happened.
Lou leaned in to give me a hug as we reached her ride, and I could smell the lemon scent of her hair, her neck. I let go as soon as I could, but Lou clutched me tight. But when she broke the hug, her face was wiped clean of fear like it had never even existed.
“Headed home?” I asked, trying to ignore the feel of her still lingering in my arms.
Lou winked at me and turned away. “Tell Jackal I said hello,” Lou called over her shoulder, her flinty grin a little cut beneath my breastbone.
“I don’t think we’ll have time to talk about you at all,” I managed, feeling glad to see her go so I could process the Lady’s threat on my own—even if it meant losing the plugged-in zip of her presence, of watching her face as I made her laugh.
At the last possible moment, I reached for her hand but caught only air and told myself it was for the best.
* * *
Jackal kept a key taped to the back of the fire extinguisher outside his apartment door, snuggled against the dry and gummy cobwebs that crisscrossed the back of the box. He trusted too much in the laziness of other people; it was a hiding place that would stop a determined thief for all of thirty seconds.
The apartment was still hot from the day, clammy almost, if walls can be clammy. I could hear the whirr-buzz of Jackal’s air unit propped inside his bedroom window. I knew his place almost as well as my own. But I didn’t want it to feel like mine. I didn’t want anything of his to feel like mine.
I crept through his house on unsteady feet shucked of shoes. A small but tidy apartment. No stacks of books. Carpet always freshly vacuumed. He hired a maid to come in and clean everything twice a week, but that was never enough; he couldn’t go to sleep unless he’d wiped down the counters and cleaned every dish. But the ceiling was pocked with asbestos and the tiles beneath the sink were mushy. Jackal was all freshly closed seams and tight corners, as though that could hide the rot underneath.
Robert Jackal: inveterate gambler, enforcer, and photog for the Lady, sometime paramour to me and any other disposable dark-haired vixen who strolled through the office.
I slipped through his foyer, past his kitchen, which smelled of lemons, like Lou’s hair, and into his bedroom. Jackal’s bedspread was tugged down to his waist. Wiry black chest hair rose and sank with each breath. I wondered how far down his body that naked went. I stood in the doorway for a moment, carpet swaying beneath me like a choppy sea.
It disarmed me to watch him sleep. Those shoulders I knew so well, pocked with glowing half-moon reminders of me, his dark lashes fluttering as he dreamt. Staring at him, I thought there weren’t enough words in the dictionary for the things we were—not friends, lovers certainly, but something and nothing more, too. And then he stirred and frowned, a dark lock of hair falling over his perfect face, and the anger took root.
I wanted to slap him awake. I leaned down and pressed a kiss lightly to the corner of his mouth. He grunted and twitched but didn’t wake up. I slipped my pantyhose down but left the dress on. In the dark, the gray-green of his sheets looked like swamp water. I eased back his covers and sat on top of him. Jackal’s eyelids fluttered. He started to sit up and I pressed him back down, moving a knee over his most sensitive part as I dragged my nails around the edges of his jaw. I wanted to scrape him raw and eat the leftover bits.
He looked at me, groggy still, and opened his mouth to say something, but I leaned down and cupped my hands over his eyes, pressing gently at first and then harder when I could feel his eyelashes flickering back and forth. I kissed my way down his chest, stopping to tease his nipples first with my tongue and then my teeth, tugging until he yelped. I brought my mouth to his face and bit down on his lips. The mood I was in, I could rip one off and not notice. Farewell to that lovely face.
He tasted like night sweats and nicotine, and I could almost detect the tangy smell of well-handled cash, which gave me a clue where he’d been when he was supposed to be with me. I pressed down harder on his eyes. I imagined sliding my fingernails into his green circles. Jackal let out a strangled sigh. I wondered if he knew what I’d been dreaming of, but I slipped him into me so easily. One hand drifted up, reaching for me. I let his thumb hollow out in my collarbone, pressing hard enough to feel a sharp crack under my skin. He tried to bring his other hand to the back of my neck, bend me over him, but I wouldn’t let him. I didn’t want any sort of affection from him tonight.
I rocked on him, clamping my thighs against his ribs, until I could feel the old familiar sparks moving from my toes to my scalp. I didn’t want to see his face, so I pressed it away from me, cranking his head into the pillow until he grunted in pain. I liked the feel of him underneath my hands, and I wished they were larger, like a man’s, so I could really hurt him. I imagined him panicked and trying not to show me, wondering what I would do to him, how far I was going to take this, and it sent me over the edge.