| Joe finished his grilled cheese and pushed the plate away. “That,” he told the waitress, “was as good as it gets. My faith is restored.” “I’ll tell Duncan Hines,” she said. “Maybe we’ll finally get that fourth star.” She looked up over Joe’s head. “You got company.” Joe turned around; it was Jane, standing behind him, smiling. She was clutching a shiny black purse in both hands. “Hey there,” she said. “I hoped you’d be here. Let’s get a booth?” She said it matter-of-factly, but it still sounded intimate and conspiratorial. A booth. Of course, there wasn’t an open stool on either side of him, which explained it. But still. Jane slid into a booth by the window and tucked her legs under her. She clicked open her purse as Joe walked over; she smiled up at him, took out an envelope, put it on the table and patted it twice. “There you go. As promised. My friend says you’re the tops.” Joe put the envelope in his pocket and sat down. Forty dollars, he presumed. “Glad she’s doing okay. If she’s okay, I mean.” “She’ll figure it out.” Jane lit a cigarette with some green matches – the same hue of the dress she wore last week? No. Darker. “All she needed was some traveling money. Bad boyfriend, a genuine brute, just one of those guys who ought to wear a spiky dog collar and walk around on all fours, woof woof. She likes them that way, and I keep telling her to find a nice guy." “Uh huh.” “But you don’t want to hear this, do you.” “Sure I do.” “Really? Most guys are bored to tears by this stuff unless they think listening is going to get them somewhere. Where’s it going to get you?” She gave him a bemused look he hadn’t seen before. Not from her, anyway. “I suppose it’ll get me the chance to lend her some more money, which she’ll pay off promptly. And then I’ll lend her some more. And then one day she won’t pay it back and I’ll have to drive all the way to Des Plaines to get it.” Jane blinked. “Look, let's stop dancing here," he said. "I’ll give you the money, Jane. I don’t have a lot, but I can spare a hundred. You can have it right now and go away and I’ll never see you again, and all it means for me is I’ll wait until next year to replace the windows.” She stared at him. “They’re drafty. You should see my heat bills.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t what.” “Don’t go. Look, I don’t know you at all. I know myself well enough to know I could be stupid for you if I wanted, but I'd have to work at it a little. And I know the way things are.” “Fill me in,” she said, looking at the table. “Well, look at you. You’re a lovely woman.” He felt himself blush. “I don’t crack any mirrors but I’m not movie-star material. You have style. You know how to do the whole thing with the nails and the eyes and the shoes and the hair, and you’re sitting with a guy with three ties and two pairs of shoes and one belt.” She looked up. “It’s reversible,” he said. "Brown one side, black the other." “So that’s what you think? I’m running some grift?” Not a word he expected to hear from her, and it made his heart sink. “Yeah. And I don’t care. I like talking to you. And I like sitting next to you. There you go. I’m between starlets, you know?” She pursed her lips and looked out the window for a minute. Then she picked up the matchbook. “And if I told you to call this place and ask for Marianne Thompson, Room 47, and if you asked her whether her friend Jane had lent her some money to leave town, and how she’d said all these sweet things about the nice guy who made it possible, would you believe me or think that was part of the set-up?” Joe picked up the matchbook. “I think we’ve established that neither of us is all that stupid,” he said. “Where do we go from here?” Jane leaned forward, eyes wide. Her breath smelled like cinnamon and cigarettes. “I have a car,” she whispered. “Let’s find out.” |
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