Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Dad’s like some sort of white Rastafarian without the dreadlocks or the religious convictions. Dad couldn’t findEthiopia on a map ofEthiopia; he just likes his herb. That part of it, he totally gets.

Mom’s over all that, and it’s the big reason they divorced. She outgrew her hippie phase with a vengeance, like hippie to yuppie, zero to sixty in five seconds flat. He’s stuck in the Birkenstocks like they’re clamped onto his feet, but she’s moving on.

In fact, she gets a real good job in Atlanta and wants Nora to go with her, but Nora is like, Nah, unless you can show me where the beach is in Atlanta I’m not going. Eventually it comes down to a judge asking Nora which parent she’d like to live with and she almost says, “Neither,” but what she actually says is, “My dad,” so by the time she’s fifteen she’s going to Atlanta for major holidays and one month in the summer.

Which is just bearable if, like, she has enough good weed.

The kids at school call her “Nora the Whora,” but she doesn’t care and neither, really, do they. It’s not really so much a term of contempt as it is an acknowledgment of reality. What do you say about a classmate who gets picked up from school in Porsches, Mercedeses and limos, none of which belong to her parents?

Nora is stoned one afternoon, filling out some stupid questionnaire for the guidance counselor, and under “After School Activities” she puts down “Blow Jobs.” Before she erases it, she shows the form to her friend Elizabeth and they both laugh.

And don’t be pulling that limo into the drive-thru at Mickey D's, either. Ditto Burger King, TacoBell and Jack in the Box. Nora has the face and the body to command Las Brisas, theInn at Laguna, El Adobe.

You want Nora, you provide her with good food, good wine, good dope.

Jerry the Doof always has good coke.

He wants her to go to Cabo with him.

Of course he does. He’s a forty-four-year-old coke dealer with more memories than possibilities; she’s sixteen with a body like springtime. Why shouldn’t he want to take her for a dirty weekend inMexico?

Nora’s cool with it.

She’s sixteen but not sweet.

She knows dude isn’t, like, in love with her. She sure as shit knows she isn’t in love with him. In fact, she thinks he’s more or less a doof, with his black silk jacket and his black ball cap to cover his thinning hair. His bleached jeans, his Nikes with no socks. No, Nora gets it-dude is just terrified of getting old.

No fear, dude, she thinks. Nothing to fret about.

You are old.

Jerry the Doof has only two things going for him.

But they’re two good things.

Money and coke.

The same thing, really. Because, Nora knows, if you have money, you have coke. And if you have coke, you have money.

She sucks him off.

It takes longer because of the coke, but she doesn’t mind, she’s got nothing better to do. And melting Jerry’s popsicle is better than having to talk to him, or worse, listen to him. She doesn’t want to hear any more about his ex-wives, his kids-shit, she knows two of his kids better than he does; she goes to school with them-or how he hit that game-winning triple in his league softball game.

When she’s finished he asks, “So, you want to go?”

“Go where?”

“Cabo.”

“Okay.”

“So when do you want to go?” Jerry the Doof asks.

She shrugs. “Whenever.”

She’s about out of the car when Jerry hands her a Baggie full of fine herb.

“Hey,” her dad says when she comes in. He’s stretched out on the couch watching a rerun of Eight Is Enough. “How was your day?”

“Fine.” She tosses the Baggie onto the coffee table. “Jerry sent this for you.”

“For me? Cool.”

So cool he actually sits up. All of a sudden he’s like Mr. Initiative, rolling himself a nice tight joint.

Nora goes into her room and closes the door.

Wonders what to think about a father who’ll pimp his own daughter for dope.

Nora has a life-changing experience in Cabo.

She meets Haley.

Nora’s lying by the pool next to Jerry the Doofus, and this chick on a chaise across the pool is clearly checking her out.

A very-cool-lady type of chick.

Late twenties, dark brown hair cut short under a black sun visor. Small, thin body cut in the gym, shown off under a next-to-nothing black two-piece. Nice jewelry-spare, gold, expensive. Every time Nora glances up, this chick is looking at her.

With this know-it-all smile, just shy of a smirk.

And she’s always there.

Nora looks up from her chaise-she’s there. Walking on the beach-she’s there.

Having dinner in the hotel dining room-she’s there. Nora shies from the eye contact; it’s always Nora who looks away first. Finally she can’t handle it anymore. She waits for Jerry to lapse into one of his postcoital siestas and goes out to the pool and sits on the chaise next to the woman and says, “You’ve been checking me out.”

“I have.”

“I’m not interested.”

The woman laughs. “You don’t even know what it is that you’re not interested in.”

“I’m not a lesbian,” Nora says.

Like, she’s not into guys, but she’s not into chicks, either. Which leaves cats and dogs, but she’s not that crazy about cats.

“Neither am I,” the woman says.

“So?”

“Let me ask you this,” the woman says. “Are you making any money?”

“Huh?”

“Being a coke bunny,” the woman says. “Are you making any money?”

“No.”

The woman shakes her head, says, “Kiddo, with your face and body, you could be an earner.”

An earner. Nora likes the sound of that.

“How?” she asks.

The woman reaches into her bag and hands Nora a business card.

Haley Saxon-with aSan Diego phone number.

“What are you in, like, sales?” Nora asks.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Huh?”

“ 'Huh?’ ” Haley mocks. “See, that’s what I mean. If you want to be an earner, you have to stop saying things like 'huh.’ ”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to be an earner.”

“In which case, have a nice weekend,” Haley says. She picks her magazine back up and goes back to reading. But Nora doesn’t go anywhere, just sits there feeling stupid. It’s like five full minutes before she finds the nerve to say, “Okay, maybe I want to be an earner.”

“Okay.”

“So what do you sell?”

“You. I sell you.”

Nora starts to say “Huh,” then checks herself and says, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Haley smiles. Lays an elegant hand on top of Nora’s hand and says, “It’s as simple as it sounds. I sell women to men. For money.”

Nora’s quick on the uptake. “So this is about sex,” she says.

“Kiddo,” Haley says, “everything is about sex.”

Haley gives her a whole speech, but basically it boils down to this: The whole world is-all the time-looking to get off.

She wraps up the spiel by saying, “You want to give it away, or sell it cheap, that’s your business. If you want to sell it for big bucks, that’s my business. How old are you, anyway?”

“Sixteen,” Nora says.

“Jesus,” Haley says. She shakes her head.

“What?”

Haley sighs. “The potential.”

First the voice.

“If you want to keep doing backseat blow jobs for trinkets you can talk like a beach girl,” Haley tells her a couple of weeks after they meet in Cabo. “If you want to move up in the world…”

Haley puts Nora to work with some alcoholic refugee from the Royal Shakespeare Company who drops Nora’s voice about an octave. (“That’s important,” Haley says. “A deep voice makes a dick sit up and listen.”) The dipso tutor rounds out Nora’s vowels, punches up her consonants. Makes her do monologues: Portia, Rosalind, Viola, Paulina