“I’m sorry—” he apologized.
“You pay me in the room,” she told him, waving for him to follow her. “It’s just over here.”
He stood in place, his feet refusing to move. Christ, he felt like he was a pimply kid again trying to get to second base.
She finally sounded annoyed. “Come on, big boy. Time is money.”
“Let’s stay here,” he said, and when she started to protest, he talked over her. “No, not like that. Let’s just stand here and talk.”
“You wanna talk? Get a shrink.”
“I’ll pay you.”
“This some twist for you?” she asked. “I start talking and you jerk yourself off? No way.”
She was walking back toward the road and he scrambled to get the money out of his pocket. Some of the bills flew out of his hand and he dropped to the ground, picking them up. When he looked up, she was still moving away.
He said, “Fifty dollars!” and she froze.
She turned slowly, and he couldn’t tell if the offer had made her more annoyed or just plain angry.
“Here,” he said, standing up, walking over to her and putting the cash in her hand. There were a lot of ones, a couple of fives—all part of his take from the tip box back at the car wash.
He said, “I’ll keep my pants on, okay? No funny stuff.”
She tried to give him back the money. “Don’t fuck with me, okay?”
“I’m not,” he told her, hearing a tinge of desperation in his voice. He was going to scare her away again and this time no amount of money would get her back. “Just talk,” he said, pressing the money back on her. “Just tell me something.”
She rolled her eyes, but she kept the money. “Tell you what?”
“Anything,” he said. “Tell me…” Jesus, he couldn’t think of a damn thing. “Tell me…” He stared at her, willing her face to give him a clue—anything that would keep her here a little longer. He looked at her beautiful mouth, the way it was twisted with irritation and maybe something that looked like curiosity. “Your first kiss,” he decided. “Tell me about your first kiss.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not.” He took a couple of steps away from her, held his hands out to the side so she could see he wasn’t going to do himself. “Just tell me about your first kiss.”
“What, you want me to say it was with my sister? My father?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Please don’t lie.”
She crossed her arms, her eyes giving him the once-over. “You’re giving me fifty bucks to tell you about my first kiss?”
He nodded.
She looked behind her, then looked back at him. She counted the money out, crisp bills tugged from one hand to the other as her lips moved silently. “All right,” she finally said, tucking the wad of cash down the front of her shirt. “Stewie Campano.”
He laughed at the name.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling for the first time. She had perfect, straight teeth. “Real Romeo, our Stewie.”
“You went out with him?”
“Hell no,” she said, insulted. “He was two years younger than me, one of my little brother’s friends. We were playing around one day.”
“Playing what?” Her brow furrowed and he quickly said, “No, I’m not looking for that. I just want to know what you were doing.”
“Swimming in his pool,” she said, hesitant, obviously still trying to see what John’s angle was. “That was the only reason I’d go over there with my brother, because Stewie had a swimming pool.”
John felt his smile come back.
She had decided to continue the story. “So, like I said, it was late one night, full moon and all that, and we were playing in the pool, just horsing around, and he looked at me and I looked at him and then he just leaned over and kissed me.”
“Real kiss or a kid kiss?”
“Kid kiss,” she said, a smile working its magic on her face. She was truly beautiful, the kind of dark-haired, olive-skinned woman that poets wrote about.
Her smile turned mischievous. “Then a real kiss.”
“Go, Stewie,” John said, creating the image in his mind—the backyard, the moon, the various floats and flotsam in a family pool. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen,” she admitted.
“So Stewie was—”
“Ten. I know.” She held up her hands. “Cradle robber. Guilty.”
John was amazed at the kid’s bravado. “God, I don’t even think I knew what a tongue kiss was when I was ten.”
“Yeah, well I was thirteen and I didn’t know,” she told him. Then she laughed, maybe at the memory or maybe at the absurdity of the situation. John laughed, too, and it was such a sweet release that for the first time in twenty-five years he honest to God felt like he was okay.
“Jesus,” Robin said. “I haven’t thought about that kid in years.”
“What’s he doing now, you think?”
“Doctor, probably.” She laughed again, a short, sharp sound of pleasure. “Gynecologist.”
John was still smiling. He said, “Thank you.”
“Yeah.” She pressed her lips together. “Hey, what’s your name?”
“John.”
She laughed like he was joking.
“No, really. John Shelley.” He made to offer his hand, and she took a step back from him. “Sorry,” he said, dropping his hand. What had he done? How had he ruined this?
“It’s okay. I just need to get back.” She checked over her shoulder. “My minder’s gonna be looking for me soon and I—”
“It’s okay,” he told her. He had put his hands in his pockets because he didn’t know what else to do with them. “I’m sorry if I—”
“No problem,” she interrupted.
“I can walk you back.”
“I know the way,” she said, practically bolting back toward the road.
All he could do was watch her go, wonder what he had said wrong that made her run. Fifty bucks. He could buy a lot with fifty bucks. Food. Rent. Clothes. Laughter. The way her eyes sparkled when she really smiled. That wasn’t something you could buy. Yeah, she had taken the money, but that laugh—that had been a real moment between them. She had talked to him, really talked to him, because she wanted to, not because of the fifty bucks.
John stood in the forest, rooted to the spot, eyes closed as he summoned up the memory of her voice, her laugh. She had a brother somewhere. She’d grown up in a neighborhood with a pool. Her parents had spent some money on orthodontics, maybe taken her to ballet lessons so she’d have that lean dancer’s body or perhaps she’d been like Joyce, the kind of girl who metabolized food so quickly all she needed to do was walk around the block to keep her figure.
From the road, a car horn sounded and John opened his eyes.
Why hadn’t he gone into that hotel room with her? Fifty bucks. That was a good day’s work for him. A full day of wiping cars, cleaning up people’s shit, waiting for Art to come out and inspect his work, point to some nonexistent smudge on a windshield so the customer thought he was getting his money’s worth.