In to Her

She frowns, which makes her nose wrinkle a little.

“What?” I laugh. Because she’s a very cute girl. Not like one of those sophisticated high-society women or anything. Not the model type, either. Just… damn cute. And this costume makes her look like… I dunno. Like she was dressing for a sexy Renaissance fair or something.

“It is kind of a costume, I guess,” she finally says, once I’m unlacing her second boot.

“Yeah? What part were you playing?”

“Sad girl with nothing to live for. But she wants to look sexy when she dies.” And then she laughs.

But I don’t. I just stop what I’m doing and look at her for a second. “What?” I say.

Logan appears with the drinks, distracting her away from my question. She takes one, he sets the other down on the table next to me, and then retreats back to the bar to get his.

By the time I look back at Yvette, her grin is gone. She downs her drink in one gulp, then calls out to Logan, “Hell, just bring the bottle.”

But her comment—wants to look sexy when she dies—what the fuck was that? Does she know who we are? Why we’re here?

The lights flicker. Three or four times, but don’t go out.

“Shit,” Yvette says. Then she sighs. “This day, man. I fucking hate this day.” All her words run together and some of her vowels are missing.

I don’t know how things just went from sexy-great weird to dark-bizarre weird, but they did.

“The power will go out,” she tries to explain. “They flicker like that during a storm. Then… poof!” She laughs.

“Hmm,” I say.

“Another?” Logan asks, already tipping the bottle of Jack to her glass.

“Fuck yeah,” she slurs. She downs that in one gulp too.

“So the power,” Logan says, refilling her glass again, picking up on our conversation. “You got a generator or a wood stove or something?”

Leave it to him to be practical.

“I do have a generator. But it’s in the building out back.” She looks over her shoulder to what I can only assume is where the back door is hiding behind hallways and walls, then says, with some difficulty, “But I’ve never run it. I don’t even know how to turn it on. I have a wood stove upstairs too. We can just use that.”

The lights flicker again.

“Fuck that,” Logan says. “If we’re gonna be stuck here for the night, we’re gonna do it in style. AJ can start the generator. He’s handy like that. Right, Aje?”

Aje. Damn. He hasn’t called me that in years. Not since we first met. Before all this life-of-crime bullshit changed us into these two guys we are now.

I grin at him just as I start tugging on Yvette’s second boot.

Why was I so insistent on getting her boots off again?

Oh, yeah. Sex. Her tits are still popping out over the underwire of her bra, her shirt ripped open, her pants halfway down her thighs.

The whole thing is something out of a bad Seventies porn flick.

I stand up, pull Yvette to her feet—which she does reluctantly—twirl her around so she’s in my lap, and say, “Take her pants off, Logan. I want her naked.”

He grabs her pants at the ankles and pulls. Would’ve been a smooth move if he got them off in one swoop, but he doesn’t. They’re skinny jeans. So he chuckles a little and then goes about working them over her ankles, finishing big as he tosses her pants over his shoulder.

We just stare at her.

She’s oblivious. Too busy pouring herself another drink, because somehow she has downed that last one too.

“Anyone else think this has gotten weird?” I ask.

Logan huffs some air.

Yvette says, “Who cares?” and tips the glass back to down it in one go.

But I grab it from her hand before she gets more than a sip. “How about we take it easy on the Jack, huh?”

She looks at Logan to see if he agrees. “Whatever,” he says, noncommittal.

“OK, geniuses,” Yvette says. “How am I supposed to show AJ the generator if I have no pants on?”

I look at Logan and shrug. “Lights aren’t out yet.”

He grins back. “How about we take a break and get something in Yvette’s stomach first?”

“Kitchen’s closed,” she slurs. “I’m not opening it up. It’s closed for good.”

“Huh?” I ask. “Are you… going out of business or something?”

“You could say that.”

Logan looks at her and frowns. Then he says, “Let’s go upstairs, shall we?”

I take her hand and pull her to her feet, but she wobbles. So Logan positions himself on one side of her, and I get on the other, and together lead her over to the doorway she points to.

“Up there,” she says.

It takes more effort than I figured to get her up the steps. And once inside the apartment, she doesn’t even flip the lights on, just stumbles forward into the darkness and collapses onto a couch, sighing. “I figured this day would be boring and uneventful until midnight. But I was wrong.”