“Please.” Desie touched his wrist.
“OK.”
He eased off the gas. The cobalt Lexus began to pull away, and as it did a can of Sprite flew out the window and bounced into the scrub. Desie sighed defeatedly. Twilly stomped the accelerator and the station wagon shot forward. He got tight on the bumper again, this time punching the horn.
“Jesus,” Desie gasped. “I can practically see her dandruff.”
“Well, I believe she finally knows we’re here.”
The woman in the Lexus anxiously fumbled with the rearview mirror, which had been angled downward for makeup application instead of traffic visibility.
“Moment of truth,” Twilly announced.
“I’m begging you,” Desie said. Ahead of them, the idiot driver was now frantically jerking the Lexus all over the road.
Twilly wore a wistful expression. “Admit it,” he said to Desie. “It would be a glorious sight, that car going up in flames—and her hopping around like a cricket in the firelight, screeching into that damn phone… ”
“Don’t do this,” Desie said.
“But you can see it, can’t you? How such an idea might take hold—after what she’s done?”
“Yes, I understand. I’m angry, too.” Which was true. And the scene Twilly described would not have been completely unsatisfying, Desie had to admit. But, God, it was nuts…
The Lexus began to slow down, and so did Twilly. The curly-haired woman clumsily veered onto the shoulder, gravel flying. Desie’s pulse pounded at her temples, and her mouth felt like dry clay. She could feel the car shudder when Twilly pumped the brakes. Groggily, McGuinn sat up, anticipating a walk.
The Roadmaster eased up alongside the Lexus. The driver cowered behind the wheel. She wore enormous rectangular sunglasses, which spared Desie from seeing the dread in her eyes.
Twilly glowered at the woman but abruptly turned away. Desie watched him draw a deep breath. She was holding hers.
Then, to her surprise, the station wagon began to roll. “Maybe some other time,” Twilly said quietly.
Desie leaned across and kissed him. “It’s all right.”
“Honey, where’s the Tom Petty CD?”
“Right here.”
She felt a rush as Twilly gunned the big car toward the interstate. He cranked up the music.
” ‘One foot in the grave,’ ” he sang.
” ‘And one foot on the pedal,’ ” sang Desirata Stoat. She was glad to be with a man who got the words right.
“This is all your fault,” said Robert Clapley.
“I beg your pardon.”
“You’re the one who gave me that shit.”
“In the first place,” said Palmer Stoat, “it was for you to use, not the girls. That’s my understanding of powdered rhinoceros horn, Bob. It’s a male stimulant. In the second place, only a certifiable moron would smoke the stuff—you mix it in your drink. You know, like NutraSweet?”
They were in the doorway of the master bedroom at Clapley’s Palm Beach condominium, which reeked of garlic and hashish and stale sweat. The place was a wreck. The mirror hung crooked and cracked, and the king-sized mattress lay half on the floor; the silk bed-sheets were knotted in a sticky-looking heap. Above the headboard, the walls were marked with greasy partial imprints of hands and feet and buttocks.
“Fucking olive oil,” Robert Clapley growled. “And I mean fucking olive oil.”
“What else they were taking,” Stoat asked, “besides the rhino powder?”
“Hash, ecstasy, God knows what—trust me, you’d need a moon suit to go in their bathroom.” Clapley laughed mirthlessly. “Some asshole they met at the spa sent up some Quaaludes. When’s the last time you ever saw an actual Quaalude, Palmer? You can’t find that shit in a pharmaceutical museum.”
The men moved to the bay window that overlooked the sundeck, where Katya and Tish floated toe-to-toe in the Jacuzzi, with their eyes closed. Today they did not look much like Barbie dolls. They looked like whored-up junkies. In fact they were so blotched and bloated and unappetizing that Palmer Stoat almost felt sorry for Robert Clapley—almost, but not quite. This was, after all, the same prick who’d called him a turd fondler; the same prick who’d threatened him and brought that psycho Porcupine Head into his home. Therefore it was impossible for Stoat to be wholly sympathetic to Clapley’s predicament.