I shifted on my sore bottom.
What the hell kind of wacko comes in to watch a girl strip, spanks her,doesn’tscrew her, and then just leaves, leaving ten thousand dollars on the table?
I had no idea, and I had even less of an idea why I would be having the physical reaction to him that I did. Or why I would be thinking about him as anything other than a twisted fuck I had been lucky to get away from.
“What the hell,” I muttered. I opened my bag to take stock of my situation. Focus was what I needed.
A quick leaf-through of the money revealed that, unless it was counterfeit, it was, in fact, ten thousand dollars.
But I was no dummy. That money would have to be... I didn’t know... laundered somehow. I didn’t know much about the mob or the FBI or how it all intersected at Kitty Bang Bang—these were things I had decided not to think about and were coming back to bite me in the ass, almost literally. But if this guy was mob, I was in trouble, and if the guy was some sort of wacko Fed, I needed some unmarked bills.
I had watched my fair share of movies.
Okay, I thought.Okay, okay, okay...
I had some lipstick, socks for some reason, which I put on, Kleenex, and a pack of cigarettes from like six months before, when a girl named Janine had told me to hold onto them.
I peered inside, as if there would be something in there that would give me an answer. There was a lighter inside the cigarette pack.
I didn’t smoke, because I couldn’t afford it, but I decided that if ever there was a time, it was then. What the hell else was I going to do? I had no phone, it was three in the morning, the suburbanite shops wouldn’t open until nine, I was probably going to get mugged with this wad of cash, and I had a sneaking suspicion that heading back to my own part of town was a dumb idea.
I lit the cigarette and looked disdainfully at the bushes on the other side of the parking lot.
I guessed I could hide in there until dawn.
And then what?
Common sense told me to just blow this Popsicle stand. But what would I do? Where would I go?
For a moment, I had a pleasant daydream about disappearing into the country somewhere. With ten thousand dollars, I’d have enough to rent something, chill out, and figure out what to do next.
But there was school, and hell if I was ditching that now.
And then, descending on me like a black cloud, the real reason I couldn’t do that: Lucy.
I leaned my head back against the cinderblock.
What thefuckwas I going to do? Who the hell was this guy?
My thoughts felt like they were moving through mud.
“Look,” I said, to no one in particular, not even myself. “You can see the stars.”
Bright, pink, green, and neon blue stars...
