“Peep’s? Yeah, I know somethin’ about the place,” Loretta said. Her response was heavy with disdain. “Might not look it now, but I used to dance there myself. Was a good-paying job, but I got fed up with the owner. Always trying to get me to do things I didn’t want to do. If you know what I mean.”
“Still the same owner?”
“Ray Tarvis,” Loretta said, a nod to Earl in the mirror. “Red-neck asshole from the word go. She dancin’ there, huh?”
“That’s what she tells me.”
“Your grandbaby got a name?”
“India,” Earl said.
“That her real name?”
“What she tells me.”
“You don’t know?”
“Actually, I didn’t even know I had a granddaughter until a few months back. I’ve never met her mother — my daughter. I went off to prison a month before she was born. After I got out, my wife and I just never reconnected. Somehow, little India ran my address down and started to write to me. Says her mother is probably dead or eaten up by the streets.”
“This town can do that,” Loretta said, grim eyes looking back at him in the mirror. “Either you claim it or it claims you.”
Earl considered the woman driver in the seat ahead of him. It appeared the town had claimed her. She may have, in fact, been pretty once. But she looked nothing short of used up these days. She was possibly only thirty-eight, thirty-nine, but could pass for fifty. She was painfully thin. Deep lines were etched in her forehead. Her eyes were darkly cratered.
“So, you were sayin’?” Loretta said.
“Well, I was getting letters from her almost every day. Exchanging pictures and the like. Then about four weeks ago they just stopped coming. Then I got one last letter asking for my help.”
“Help in what?”
“That’s just it. She didn’t say.”
“An’ you jumped on a bus and rode all the way out — what? three, four days? — just to see what she want? You gotta be grandpappy of the year, sugar. Have to hand it to you.”
“Well, I haven’t had anyone in my life for a good long time. ’Cept Melon.”
Melon lifted his head at the sound of his name. Earl gave the dog a stroke for reassurance.
“I was enjoying her letters,” Earl continued. “Made me feel connected a little. See, my life hasn’t been what you would call exemplary. You get to a certain age, you start adding up your markers. I added mine and found I didn’t have all that many. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left. Me or my dog.”
“I guess I see what you sayin’.”
“I’m guessing she needs money. I’ve got a little tucked away from my photography,” he said, lifting the camera for her to see in the mirror. “I figure maybe she wants help with her tuition and all.”
“You take pictures?”
“Photos of life on the streets. Things that just happen. Some of my work hangs in a gallery in Beverly Hills. It’s all on consignment, but now and then one of them brings a price.”
“Well, I hope financial support is all your grandbaby is asking for. ’Cause that joint, Bo Peep’s, is no place for a fine little African princess like your granddaughter. You find her, you tell her to get her ass over to Starbucks or someplace. Or” — Loretta caught his eye in the mirror to make sure he was paying attention —“she end up like me. This here’s Cabbagetown, you got an address?”
They had rolled into an aging area of the city known for the cotton mill that once turned out bags for the agricultural industry; Loretta told him all about it as she drove. There were remnants of shotgun houses along the streets — little box huts that looked like they might have housed dwarfs or something. They were intermingled with modern apartment buildings. The mill had been converted to lofts. “We becoming yuppies,” Loretta said. “That number again?”
“Six-six-two,” Earl said, consulting the envelope from his granddaughter’s last letter.
“Here you go,” Loretta said pulling the taxi to the curb.
Earl ran his eyes along the series of stores on the street; 662 was a glass-fronted building sitting right ahead of them. “That’s a postal service.”
“Yeah, it is,” Loretta said.
They sat with the engine idling. Earl double-checked the address on the envelope and compared it to the numbers along the street. He’d come all this way to find a PO box.
“You want to try the club where she works?”
“She says she works nights. I’ll have to wait until this evening,” Earl said. “You know of a hotel? Something cheap for the night?”