It was still early when they’d arrived back at JoLayne’s place. The gray cop car was gone; they’d circled the block three times to make certain. Amber had backed the Ford up to the house, getaway style, and said: “Want me to do it?”
Shiner had said no, he wanted to be the one.
The way she’d looked at him, damn, he felt like an honest-to-God champ. When all he really was trying to do was make something right again.
She’d passed him the blue envelope and he’d trotted to JoLayne’s porch—Amber watching in the rearview, to make sure he didn’t get any cute ideas. Afterwards they’d gone to breakfast, and now home. Shiner wished it wouldn’t end.
She motioned him closer in the front seat. “Roll up your sleeve. Lemme see.”
His muscle was a marquee of contusions, the tattoo lettering crusty and unreadable.
“Not my best work,” Amber remarked, with a slight frown.
“It’s OK. Least I got my eagle.”
“For sure. It’s a beauty, too.” With a fingertip she lightly traced the wings of the bird. Shiner felt strangled with desire. He squeezed his eyes closed and heard the pulse pounding in his ears.
“Whoa,” Amber said.
A stranger was peering through the windshield—an odd fellow with fuzzy socks on his hands.
“Hey, it’s Dominick,” said Shiner, pulling himself together. He rolled down the window. “How’s it goin’, Dom?”
“You’re back!”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Who’s your friend? Geez, what happened to your thumbs?”
“That’s Amber. Amber, this here’s Dominick Amador.”
The stigmata man reached into the car for a handshake. Amber obliged politely, although her face registered stark alarm at the creamy glop that oozed from the stranger’s sock-mitten.
Shiner told her not to worry. “It’s only Crisco.”
“That would’ve been my second guess,” she said, wiping it brusquely on his sleeve.
Dominick Amador was unoffended. “You lookin’ for your ma, Shiner?” he asked. “She’s over at Demencio’s. They hooked up on some kinda co-op deal.”
“What for?”
“The state come in and paved her stain. Didn’t you hear?”
“Naw!”
“Yeah, so she’s over with the Turtle Boy.”
“Who?”
“Y’know, it was me that first give Demencio the idea for the cooters—a Noah-type deal. Now you should see what they done with JoLayne’s bunch! It’s a damn jackpot.”
Amber had heard enough. She whispered emphatically to Shiner that she had to leave. He acknowledged with a lugubrious nod.
“That’s where I’ll end up, too,” Dominick rambled, “workin’ for Demencio, I ‘xpect. He’s got a good setup, plus on-street parking for them pilgrim buses. Him and me got a ‘pointment tomorrow. We’re pretty close on the numbers.”
Amber was about to interrupt even more forcefully when the man flung himself on the grass and thrust both legs in the air. Proudly he displayed his bare soles. “Look, I finally got ’em done!”
“Nice work.” Shiner forced a smile.
Amber averted her eyes from the stranger’s punctured feet. Surely this could be explained—a radiation leak in the maternity ward; a toxin in the town’s water supply.
Dominick hopped up and gave each of them a pink flyer advertising his visitations. Then he limped away.
Shiner felt himself being nudged out of the car. Slump-shouldered, he circled to the driver’s side and rested his forearms on the door.
He said to Amber, “I guess this is it.”
“I hope things are OK between you and your mom.”
“Me, too.” He brightened at the sight of the three roses in the back seat. They were gray and dead, but Amber hadn’t discarded them. To this slender fact Shiner attached unwarranted significance.
Amber said, “If it doesn’t work out, remember what I told you.”
“But I never bused tables before.”
“Oh, I think you can handle it,” she said.
Certainly it was something to consider. Miami scared the living piss out of Shiner, but a gig at Hooters could be the answer to most, if not all, of his problems.
“Are they like you?” he asked. “The other waitresses, I mean. It’d be cool if they all was as nice as you.”
Amber reached up and lightly touched his cheek. “They’re all just like me. Every one of them,” she said.
Then, leaving him wobbly, she drove off.