“Can we shoot him?” I asked. That earlier feeling of wanting to press my face against the desk returned. I went with it. “Didn’t that whore—whatshername? We busted her last month. Said Gaines was her baby’s daddy,” I mumbled into the desktop.
“Are you making out with that desk?”
“Well, my boyfriend keeps refusing to.”
Luis stopped typing on his computer. A few seconds later he said, “Rhonda Pendergrass.”
“Think his name is Peter.”
“The whore?”
“My boyfriend.” Well, yes, the whore.
“Right,” Luis said, ignoring my statement. No one took me seriously. “Well the whore’s name is Rhonda Pendergrass. She rents a house on 27th and Gay—don’t say it—lord street.”
“I wasn’t going to say a word,” I lied, standing up and going to the break room to snatch a cup of coffee from the machine. It tasted like mud squeezed off a sweaty foot (my second foray into that food group today). I deliberated on if Peter had sweaty feet. At least I knew I could stand the taste if he did.
What was with me and feet all the sudden?
Peter had been right about one thing. There was something seriously wrong with me.
I followed Luis to the car and settled into the passenger seat, leaning my temple against the window. The car dipped as Luis climbed into the driver’s side, but I didn’t lift my head from the glass until the car got moving.
“You need a nap, kid?” Luis asked.
“I was thinking more along the lines of hibernation,” I said, taking a sip, or rather, chewing the coffee as it oozed into my mouth. Blessed caffeine. Who cared about the taste? Or texture, for that matter.
“Late night with Angelica?”
“A male prostitute.”
“Named Peter.”
“Why not Peter?”
“You should watch what you say. One day someone’s is going to take you seriously.”
I doubted it. They never had before. And this conversation wasn’t nearly as absurd as some of the others. Luis still didn’t believe I went to Paris that one night.
“I think I need to ask him on a date,” I said. I knew I was pushing it, but I was trying to gauge his response as clandestinely as possible while at the same time getting myself to say it—admit it.
“The prostitute?”
“He wouldn’t be one on the date.”
“Peter.”
“Unless you’ve come up with a better name?”
“Nah. A date with Peter the prostitute. Sounds like a plan. Be sure to bring flowers.”
“I was thinking condoms. But, your idea sounds more romantic.”
“Romance with the male prostitute, now?”
“It’s a little judgmental to assume they don’t like romance, Luis.”
“Is he jealous of the boyfriend?”
“He is the boyfriend.” I paused. “Maybe.”
“I’m going to change the subject now,” Luis said slowly. His careful glance at my hand told me that I was not imagining the uneasiness in his voice.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, echoing his earlier statement. The coffee cup shook in my unsteady fingers.
Luckily, we pulled up to Rhonda’s ranch style house a minute later, saving us from coming up with a pretense of conversation. The theme of the day was prostitutes.
We Tested Negative For Hepatitis
If I were casting a commercial on the dangers of methamphetamine use, Rhonda Pendergrass would star in it.
Before meth destroyed her teeth, skin and figure, Rhonda had been a willowy blonde with a come-hither smile; she used to flash it at me as if it could dazzle me enough to keep from arresting her. These days she was still blond, but her hair was greasy. I counted four teeth in various stages of decay, and the dull green of her eyes reminded me of rancid pond water. Her body, encased in a pair of too-tight shorts and tube top, made me worry about bones popping through her scab-smattered skin. She also had five mixed-age children ranging from two-to-nine years old, all of them staring through me with vacant eyes. Additionally unsettling was recalling from her rap sheet that she was only twenty-three.
Since entering her house my main objective had been to leave it, and not just because of the stench of unwashed flesh; I was calling social services the instant we left.
“He ain’t here. I don’t know where he is,” Rhonda stated when Luis asked about Gaines. “He don’t come round ‘til beginning of the month, when my check come in.” Her welfare check. The one she most likely used to buy more meth instead of feeding those kids.
We stood by the front door, at the far end of a brown carpeted living room. The kids sat or crawled on the floor and the holey sofa a few feet away. The pair of preschool-aged twins watched a fuzzy television while a girl about five or six, with a bushel of awesomely bouncy curls, was de-stuffing the cushions. The oldest boy, tall and olive-skinned with angry brown eyes, grabbed a drug pipe from one of the toddlers, who appeared to be using the bulbous end to soothe his gums. I couldn’t help myself; I walked a few steps inside the house, took the pipe, and slipped it into my coat pocket before returning to my position by the door at Luis’s side. I tried to avoid eye-contact of any kind with the kids after that.