Lawrence Block - Eight Million Ways to Die

She sat down again. I asked her if she'd had the apartment before she hooked up with Chance. She said she'd been with Chance for two years and eight months and no, before that she shared a bigger place in Chelsea with three other girls. Chance had had this apartment all ready for her. All she'd had to do was move into it.

"I just moved my furniture in," she said. "Except the waterbed. That was already here. I had a single bed that I got rid of. And I bought the Magritte poster, and the masks were here." I hadn't noticed the masks and had to turn in my seat to see them, a grouping of three solemn ebony carvings on the wall behind me. "He knows about them," she said. "What tribe made them and everything. He knows things like that."

I said that the apartment was an unlikely one for the use being made of it. She frowned, puzzled.

"Most girls in the game live in doorman buildings," I said. "With elevators and all."

"Oh, right. I didn't know what you meant. Yes, that's true." She grinned brightly. "This is something different," she said. "The johns who come here, they don't think they're johns."

"How do you mean?"

"They think they're friends of mine," she explained. "They think I'm this spacey Village chick, which I am, and that they're my friends, which they are. I mean, they come here to get laid, let's face it, but they could get laid quicker and easier in a massage parlor, no muss no fuss no bother, dig? But they can come up here and take off their shoes and smoke a joint, and it's a sort of a raunchy Village pad, I mean you have to climb three flights of stairs and then you roll around in a waterbed. I mean, I'm not a hooker. I'm a girlfriend. I don't get paid. They give me money because I got rent to pay and, you know, I'm a poor little Village chick who wants to make it as an actress and she's never going to. Which I'm not, and I don't care much, but I still take dancing lessons a couple mornings a week and I have an acting class with Ed Kovens every Thursday night, and I was in a showcase last May for three weekends in Tribeca. We did Ibsen, When We Dead Awake, and do you believe that three of my johns came?"

She chatted about the play, then began telling me how her clients brought her presents in addition to the money they gave her. "I never have to buy any booze. In fact I have it to give away because I don't drink myself. And I haven't bought any grass in ages. You know who gets the best grass? Wall Street guys. They'll buy an ounce and we'll smoke a little and they'll leave me the ounce." She batted her long lashes at me. "I kind of like to smoke," she said.

"I guessed that."

"Why? Do I seem stoned?"

"The smell."

"Oh, right. I don't smell it because I'm here, but when I go out and then I come back in, whew! It's like a friend of mine has four cats and she swears they don't smell, but the smell could knock you down. It's just that she's used to it." She shifted in her seat. "Do you ever smoke, Matt?"

"No."

"You don't drink and you don't smoke, that's terrific. Can I get you another diet soda?"

"No thanks."

"Are you sure? Look, would it bother you if I smoked a quick joint? Just to unwind a little."

"Go ahead."

"Because I've got this fellow coming over and it'll help me be in the mood."

I told her it was fine with me. She fetched a plastic baggie of marijuana from a shelf over the stove and hand-rolled a cigarette with evident expertise. "He'll probably want to smoke," she said, and manufactured two more cigarettes. She lit one, put everything else away, and returned to the sling chair. She smoked the joint all the way down, chattering about her life between drags, finally stubbing the tiny roach and setting it aside for later. Her manner didn't change visibly for having smoked the thing. Perhaps she'd been smoking throughout the day and had been stoned when I arrived. Perhaps she just didn't show the effects of the drug, as some drinkers don't show their drinks.

I asked if Chance smoked when he came to see her and she laughed at the idea. "He never drinks, never smokes. Same as you. Hey, is that where you know him from? Do you both hang out in a nonbar together? Or maybe you both have the same undealer."

I managed to get the conversation back to Kim. If Chance didn't care for Kim, did Fran think she might have been seeing someone else?"

"He didn't care for her," she said. "You know something? I'm the only one he loves."

I could taste the grass in her speech now. Her voice was the same, but her mind made different connections, switching along paths of smoke.

"Do you think Kim had a boyfriend?"

"I have boyfriends. Kim had tricks. All of the others have tricks."

"If Kim had someone special-"

"Sure, I can dig it. Somebody who wasn't a john, and that's why she wanted to split with Chance. That what you mean?"

"It's possible."

"And then he killed her."

"Chance?"

"Are you crazy? Chance never cared enough about her to kill her. You know how long it'd take to replace her? Shit."

"You mean the boyfriend killed her."

"Sure."

"Why?"

" 'Cause he's on the spot. She leaves Chance, there she is, all ready for happily ever after, and what does he want with that? I mean he's got a wife, he's got a job, he's got a family, he's got a house in Scarsdale-"

"How do you know all this?"

She sighed. "I'm just speedballing, baby. I'm just throwing chalk at the blackboard. Can you dig it? He's a married guy, he digs Kim, it's kicky being in love with a hooker and having her in love with you, and that way you get it for free, but you don't want anybody turning your life around. She says, Hey, I'm free now, time to ditch your wife and we'll run into the sunset, and the sunset's something he watches from the terrace at the country club and he wants to keep it that way. Next thing you know, zip, she's dead and he's back in Larchmont."

"It was Scarsdale a minute ago."

"Whatever."

"Who would he be, Fran?"

"The boyfriend? I don't know. Anybody."

"A john?"

"You don't fall in love with a john."

"Where would she meet a guy? And what kind of guy would she meet?"

She struggled with the notion, shrugged and gave up. The conversation never got any further than that. I used her phone, talked for a moment, then wrote my name and number on a pad next to the phone.

"In case you think of anything," I said.

"I'll call you if I do. You going? You sure you don't want another soda?"

"No thanks."

"Well," she said. She came over to me, stifled a lazy yawn with the back of her hand, looked up at me through the long lashes. "Hey, I'm really glad you could come over," she said. "Anytime you feel like company, you know, give me a call, okay? Just to hang out and talk."

"Sure."

"I'd like that," she said softly, coming up onto her toes, planting an astonishing kiss on my cheek. "I'd really like that, Matt," she said.

Halfway down the stairs I started laughing. How automatically she'd slipped into her whore's manner, warm and earnest at parting, and how good she was at it. No wonder those stockbrokers didn't mind climbing all those stairs. No wonder they turned out to watch her try to be an actress. The hell, she was an actress, and not a bad one, either.

Two blocks away I could still feel the imprint of her kiss on my cheek.

Donna Campion's apartment was on the tenth floor of the white brick building on East Seventeenth Street. The living-room window faced west, and the sun was making one of its intermittent appearances when I got there. Sunlight flooded the room. There were plants everywhere, all of them vividly green and thriving, plants on the floor and the windowsills, plants hanging in the window, plants on ledges and tables throughout the room. The sunlight streamed through the curtain of plants and cast intricate patterns on the dark parquet flooring.