She put her hand on my cheek and turned my face toward hers. She kissed me. I took this as confirmation that we actually had made love that night. I felt incredibly left out at not remembering.
“Guinness,” she said, tasting her lips as she pulled away.
“And some vodka.”
“Good combination. You’ll be hurting in the morning.”
“It’s so early I’ll be hurting tonight. Tell you what, why don’t we go get dinner at Dan Tana’s? Craig’s on the door now and—”
“No, Mick. I have to go home to Hayley and you have to go to sleep.”
I made a gesture of surrender.
“Okay, okay.”
“Call me in the morning. I want to talk to you when you’re sober.”
“Okay.”
“You want to get undressed and get under the covers?”
“No, I’m all right. I’ll just…”
I leaned back on the bed and kicked my shoes off. I then rolled over to the edge and opened a drawer in the night table. I took out a bottle of Tylenol and a CD that had been given to me by a client named Demetrius Folks. He was a banger from Norwalk known on the street as Lil’ Demon. He had told me once that he’d had avision one night and that he knew he was destined to die young and violently. He gave me the CD and told me to play it when he was dead. And I did. Demetrius’s prophecy came true. He was killed in a drive-by shooting about six months after he had given me the disc. In Magic Marker he had writtenWreckrium for Lil’ Demonon it. It was a collection of ballads he had burned off of Tupac CDs.
I loaded the CD into the Bose player on the night table and soon the rhythmic beat of “God Bless the Dead” started to play. The song was a salute to fallen comrades.
“You listen to this stuff?” Maggie asked, her eyes squinting at me in disbelief.
I shrugged as best I could while leaning on an elbow.
“Sometimes. It helps me understand a lot of my clients better.”
“These are the people who should be in jail.”
“Maybe some of them. But a lot of them have something to say. Some are true poets and this guy was the best of them.”
“Was? Who is it, the one that got shot outside the car museum on Wilshire?”
“No, you’re talking about Biggie Smalls. This is the late great Tupac Shakur.”
“I can’t believe you listen to this stuff.”
“I told you. It helps me.”
“Do me a favor. Do not listen to this around Hayley.”
“Don’t worry about it, I won’t.”
“I’ve gotta go.”
“Just stay a little bit.”
She complied but she sat stiffly on the edge of the bed. I could tell she was trying to pick up the lyrics. You needed an ear for it and it took some time. The next song was “Life Goes On,” and I watched her neck and shoulders tighten as she caught some of the words.
“Can I please go now?” she asked.
“Maggie, just stay a few minutes.”
