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  To take his mind off the aching, he pulled back onto the road and dialed his boss, who should probably be asleep. Lafitte would leave a voicemail, no biggie. Surprised the hell out of him when the man answered on the second ring. “The fuck are you? I’m this close to calling the cops.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll leave the truck somewhere for you. Give me two more days.”

  “I didn’t give you any fucking days. You stole my goddamned truck.”

  Another wave of pain. He clenched his teeth. “If I was really stealing your truck, I wouldn’t be calling you. I had something to take care of.”

  “Take your own fucking car. Jesus, I can’t afford this.”

  “Two days. I’ll be back on the third, or I’ll make sure the truck gets back to you. Something I need to take care of.”

  Quiet on the other end. His boss, a mid-level guy at the warehouse who probably made more off the roids than his salary, was pretty pumped himself, but in a glossier way. His was stage-quality muscles. Lafitte couldn’t tell if the man had ever even been in a good fight. A real one.

  Finally, the boss said, “Who the fuck are you, anyway? I thought I could trust you.”

  Made Lafitte grin. Lafitte had given him at least three fake names. The boss had never asked for ID. “I don’t know what gave you that idea.”

  “Just...just...give the truck back and I’ll keep the law out of it. Okay? I mean, you’re so fucking fired, but let’s keep it civil.”

  “I get it. I really do.” Lafitte hadn’t really planned on delivering the stash currently squirreled away in the back. It was a severance package, yeah. “I’m sorry about this. You’ve been a good boss, and it’s been a good job. But I’m not a good job type of guy.”

  He hung up and chucked the phone out the window onto the highway. The only reason he’d called the man was to hold off on the cops—the boss wouldn’t want them poking around the truck anyway, and Lafitte wasn’t in the mood to steal another car right now. Two more days was really all he wanted, so he could do what he had to do, what her letters had asked him to do.

  Ginny. The road sign ahead looked like it said “Ginny.” His ex-wife’s name. Last he had heard, she was in a facility in Mobile, Alabama, locked inside her own head. She could still talk, but only a little, still walk, still enjoy the breeze on her face and her toes when she sat outside, but otherwise she was in a mental bunker of her own design, cut off from the outside world. But the road sign didn’t say “Ginny.” It said “Gulfport.” He wasn’t far now from the crossroads where I-10 ran east-west. Lafitte needed to go east. Mobile was another two hours. But not tonight. Not with this sort of pain. He needed his sleeping bag, his Oxy, his locked truck. As he pulled into the glow of the streetlamps at the cloverleaf exit, he had to blink and blink again. Last he’d seen his hometown, it was only a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina. It had been a corpse. It had been knocked back to the goddamned Stone Age. But look at this. Look at it! Must be three, four times as much stuff here as there had been before. It was massive—giant shopping center on the left, another on the right, a line of fast food and fast casual joints, signs still blazing.

  Gulfport had always been a decent-sized Coast town, but nothing like New Orleans to the west or Mobile to the east. The casinos had started to change the landscape back in the nineties. Lafitte had been sure things would get quieter after a fucking apocalyptic hurricane. Who would want to live through that shit again, right? But he was dead wrong. Not only were they up for another round, but they’d found a whole bunch of idiots willing to move here and take their chances, too. Gambling could do that to people. First it was their paychecks, and before long it was their lives.

  Even this early in the morning, hours before dawn, it was still busier than expected, as if the town never slept. The bigger the influence of the casinos, the lesser the pull of the fishing industry, old-fashioned neighborhoods and a good eight hours sleep. Lafitte looked at the dashboard clock. Maybe he could get four. Maybe he could take an extra pill and get six, but the longer he stayed in one place, the better chance someone would notice him. This whole trip was supposed to be about not being noticed, but based on tonight’s goddamned shit message, he’d already blown it. Somebody had been watching, waiting. Somebody who wanted him so bad they weren’t willing to call the cops. If whoever it was tried to take him alone, or even with a handful of guys, Lafitte would kill them all right quick.

  Still, he wasn’t the same man he was in prison. He was weaker. He was in pain. He could barely keep his eyes open. So the Wal Mart Supercenter, open twenty-four hours and bright as shit, was perfect. There were already a few semis scattered there. His truck wouldn’t stand out. He pulled in after sitting through a couple of cycles of the red-yellow-green, pretty sure he fell asleep during the first green but with no one behind him to honk. The florescent brightness helped him stay awake so he could circle until he found a spot two spaces away from an employee’s truck and nose to nose with some college student’s bland Corolla.

  He turned off the engine and sat still for a moment, searching for leftover pain from the last wave. It was getting better. He didn’t know when it would come back. He never did anymore. It was coming more often, every couple of days on its own, or sooner when he forced it—loading and unloading the truck, lifting weights, jacking off. He smiled. He could only guess what caused it, didn’t have time to find out.. It had been months since he’d been online. He hadn’t bothered to read any newspapers, either.

  A few more deep breaths, a look around to see if anyone was paying him any attention, but would he really be able to tell? He’d stopped checking his tail barely ten minutes after leaving the truck stop in Hattiesburg, and he knew damned well someone had him on radar there. The pain, the sleep deprivation, the anxiety, shit, don’t expect the man to concentrate much.

  He hopped out and the humidity nearly dropped him. But there was a breeze, too, and the smell of salt water on the air was what really got to him. How many years had it been? Maybe he would drive on down to the beach in the morning to get a glimpse of the Gulf again. It wasn’t the fastest way, but there were some things that needed to be done. He knew he might not get a chance to see it again after this.

  Lafitte walked around to the back of the truck, slid the door up, hopped inside and dropped the door again. The lock clicked. No one would be getting inside unless they had badass bolt cutters or a welding iron. It was safe. There weren’t too many places Lafitte felt safe anymore, so his truck had given him plenty of good sleeps, regardless of the heat, the dark, and the smell of diesel. The heat hadn’t mattered when he was driving around the Midwest in the cold, but once the temps rose, he had rigged a car battery to run a handful of little fans. He slept on a puffy sleeping bag he’d scored through a garage sale. Not as nice as the prison mattress, but he slept much more soundly on it. The mound of fake boxes at his head hid a couple of pistols, his pain pills, his juice, and some cash. They also hid the trash can lid covering the hole he’d cut out on the bottom of the truck. From the bottom, any snoopers would see a reinforced square of plywood. It was barely attached, easy to kick off. His escape plan. He hadn’t had to use it so far.

  He turned on his flashlight and crawled across the floor to his makeshift bed. Flicked on the fans, cooled the sweat soaking into his clothes. He eased onto his side across the sour-smelling sleeping bag and bunched up one corner as a pillow as the pain started to throb in his jaw and arm again. So he reached into the nearest box, grabbed a bottle of painkillers and half a bottle of warm water, and swallowed five of them. Then he drank the rest of the water, knowing he needed it, but goddamn if the warm stuff didn’t turn his stomach.

  Tomorrow. One more day of driving and it would all be over by sundown. He yawned, tried to ease the pain by breathing through his nose, all the while praying for some peace. At the very least, right? Jesus, you can hate the fuck out of me if you want, but if I ask for peace, you still have to give me a little, right? Wasn’t that part of the deal?
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br />   No answer. It was okay. There was never an answer. He just talked to the Lord to make himself feel better these days. They understood each other—no one had come to help Jesus off the cross either. Wasn’t a damned thing to it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When Melissa woke up, she almost thought it was still part of a dream. She was on her stomach, cheek on a fluffy pillow, Egyptian cotton sheets on her skin. The chill of the A/C and the warmth of the bed and the slight but pleasant headache, the memories of the night before, made her grin and lift her feet until the sheets slid down her calves. She smelled coffee, but not the burnt heaviness of diner joe. It was clean and earthy. The TV was off, the shower running.

  It was coming back to her. Melissa turned towards the windows, a long row of them, showing her only a deep cloudless morning sky. Her hair was halfway down her back, and she liked the way it felt, not all bound up for work. The alarm clock on the bedside table said it was close to noon. The push button phone beside it reminded her this wasn’t DeVaughn’s actual bedroom. This was a hotel suite. And from the look of everything, a really nice one.

  It took her another few seconds to realize she had been sleeping in the wet spot.

  It made her giggle.

  She sat up and let the sheet fall and walked over to the windows, arms stretched wide, yawning, not at all ashamed of her naked body. Not like anyone could see her this high up, the windows facing the beach, but even if they could, she wouldn’t have minded. She might have even enjoyed the attention. Maybe eight guys out of ten would look at her and cringe—the fat rolls, the cellulite, the sweat rash here and there—but those last two guys, they’d been all over her. And she knew she was good enough to get another two of those eight assholes to give it up.

  Sexy was a state of mind. She’d learned a long time ago, watching how the black guys loved the curvy chicks, watching how the white guys would call her a pig, or a fucking whale, or make moped jokes, and she would sigh, shrug and tell them “Your loss.” And sure enough, a couple of them would find her later, in private, looking around nervously, wanting...something.

  Melissa was no slut, though. She didn’t give it up for every high school boy who had given her corner-of-the-eye glances because she dared to wear short dresses, flip-flops, and heavy lipstick, a bit of the old 50s pin-up style that worked so well on larger women. No, she shamed them. Shamed them for having mocked her. Shamed them for thinking she was a vending machine. Shamed for not owning up to what it was making their cocks hard. Once they had apologized and groveled a little, she’d let them kiss her. She might rub her palm across the bulge in their jeans. It never took long. They didn’t make fun of her anymore, even if they didn’t stop their friends from doing it.

  The one she lost her virginity to, he was the one who was not ashamed. Tall, truly and deeply black, with a French accent because he’d moved there from Haiti. All her rubbing did for him was make him grow larger, and larger, and she started to get worried. But what he did to her that afternoon, the second floor of the high school library while the final bell rang...yes, what she’d hoped it would be, not the disappointing stories of the skinny bitches with their jock boyfriends and the fumbling with the condom and the “I didn’t feel anything.” Fuck that. Melissa felt it. She felt it good.

  Since then, a couple of lackluster semesters at Southern Miss between jobs at Waffle House and Lane Bryant and Wal Mart and then the truck stop. She’d figured out she wasn’t college material. She’d told her mom, and Mom had shrugged and said, “Only thing college gets you is a job you can’t turn off at quitting time.”

  She’d dropped out of school, she’d partied some—booze, dope, but nothing harder. She took too much pride in her fat ass to turn into a meth zombie. And yeah, she’d hooked up with a couple of other black guys before, a few wiggers, and a couple of country boys, the current boyfriend one of those, stuck somewhere between kid and “great white hunter” or some shit. Constantly in a trucker cap with the word “ass” on it somewhere. Or worshipping those Duck guys with the beards. Playing video games. Spending too much money on a pick-up truck he never hauled anything in, especially not the deer he kept claiming he had almost bagged. Always almost. She should have known better. He was one of the ashamed ones. But Melissa was getting older, almost twenty-six, and she hadn’t found anything near enough to the way Phillipe had made her feel in high school.

  That’s why she took a chance hitting on DeVaughn Rose. He had been sweet to her last night at the diner. He looked older, maybe close to forty, but he had it together. Money, manners, and class. The tequila he’d been pouring into his coffee was top-shelf. She had liked how long his legs were. Liked how he sat easy in the chair, knees wide, slumping just so, and his voice was just right, too. Rough but smooth, right? Deep but not Barry White.

  Whatever. She’d made a play, expecting to be shot down because here she was in her diner clothes, stinking of grease and sweat, hair twisted up, and not a trace of make-up. Not even lipstick. Not even base. Zits on her chin, not to mention where else on her body. But even then, as she’d known since eighth grade, sexy was a state of mind. Instead of turning her down, he had handed her a twelve-dollar tip and asked, “You still want to give me that ride?”

  While standing at the hotel windows, goosebumps rising on her arms and legs, her nipples growing hard in the chill, Melissa let her hand fall to the hair between her legs, fluffed it out. Crusty from his cum. At some point she had decided DeVaughn wouldn’t need a condom with her. She was on the pill, yeah, but still made the cowboy use ribbed Trojans. Same as every other man since Phillipe. She’d gotten lucky with him, no baby, but it had been a moment of weakness. If she ever felt anything even close again, maybe she’d let the weakness wash over her, but not sooner.

  As soon as DeVaughn wrapped his arms around her, the decision was made.

  After calling her boyfriend and telling her she wasn’t coming right home—“What you doing then?” “Going out.” “Like fuck you are.” “Well, I am.”—she had driven DeVaughn’s Cadillac down to Gulfport, half-hour to the south. He’d kept drinking straight from the tequila bottle, and offered her some. It was bright, sweet stuff. He wasn’t like any man she’d been with. He could talk, really converse. He asked lots of questions about her, listened to the answers. He’d been around and could talk to her about Harry Potter and New Orleans history and eighties music, Prince and LL Cool J. But he wasn’t into rap. His CD changer was full of blues and r&b, and he tried his best to teach her about it. This was the only bad part. Blues was boring. It wasn’t Melissa’s jam.

  DeVaughn was all like, “You ain’t heard Black Joe Lewis before?” and “Robert Cray, Smokin’ Gun, baby. Listen to that,” and “This here’s Gary Clark, Jr., listen, listen.”

  Yawn. But, okay. Seriously, after a while the grooves actually made her feel relaxed, and the tequila kept her warm. She didn’t mind he was wearing a tracksuit worth, what, several hundred bucks while she was in her diner-stained t-shirt and black pants. He made her not mind. Once they got down to the Coast, he told her to head towards Biloxi, then told her to pull up right to the front door of the Beau Rivage Casino. Let the valets handle the car. And they did, knew his name and everything. He held out his arm for Melissa and held his chin high and said, “Want to play some slots?”

  The slots were fun, but not cause they won, cause they didn’t. He wasn’t worried about money. Fed in a couple of hundreds to last a while, then they kept on talking. She was telling him about the music that moved her, veering wildly between pop, hip-hop, and country, and about how she usually glammed up like a fifties rockabilly girl and how she really wanted to be a nurse or an x-ray tech because it was where all the money was. He laughed, said, “Girl, they just telling you that. Being happy is what makes you money, makes you want to go to work. Working for a paycheck, shit, there’s enough of that in the world already.”

  “Are you telling me I shouldn’t work? Let a man take care of me?”

  He squinted at her
sideways. “Shit, I’m not Beaver Cleaver. What I mean is you find what you want, and you show the people who do it that you’re as good at it as they are. Even if you’re not yet, you make them think you are.”

  She had no idea who Beaver Cleaver was. “How’s that?”

  He shrugged. “Before I became the man I am now, I was a mess, don’t you know? I was a dumbass banger, but then I saw Phil Ivey on TV playing cards. Boy all Tiger Woods-looking, except knowing math and statistics and shit. I looked around my place, pretending I was some sort of gangsta. Shit, my brother had already got himself killed by a cop. I wasn’t up for it no more.”

  “What, you play cards now?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Like, blackjack?”

  “Texas Hold ’Em. Poker, baby.”

  “And you’re actually good at it?”

  Big smile. Good teeth, no grill, no gold. “You just drove how good I am. You just gambled how good I am. And, baby, you want to, we can go upstairs and I’ll show you how good I am.”

  They had a few more drinks—Melissa loved daiquiris—and wasted away another hundred before she took him up on it, and they were all over each other in the elevator. But this wasn’t TV romance, no “fall into the room ripping each other’s clothes off” nonsense. He led her in, offered her some bottled water, showed her the view, and then sat on the edge of the bed. Told her, as he took off his own shirt, “Let’s take a good look at you.”

  Here she was the next morning, standing naked in a hotel suite overlooking the blue-green Gulf, miles and miles, thinking about how much she liked it last night. She came, what, three, four times. Wore her out. Then when he came, it made her eyes go wide and made her bite her lip and made her forget about Phillipe.

  Her fingers slipped a little lower, across her pussy, still wet. Getting wetter.