Sam Kelson met Genevieve Bower at Big Pie Pizza on North Avenue. She had pale skin and bleach-blond hair and, for the meeting, wore a little blue sweater and red leggings. She ordered a Coke and a side of garlic knots and said, ‘My boyfriend’s stealing my Jimmy Choos.’
‘Your whos?’ Kelson’s left eye twitched until he caressed his forehead.
‘Jimmy Choos. Designer sneakers, pumps, sandals, wedges. A hundred pairs. Mine are fakes. He’s stealing them.’
‘Counterfeit shoes?’
‘You’d never know. He also took two Rolexes.’
‘Fake too?’
‘Do I look like I’d buy real?’
He stared at her pale skin, her red leggings, her little blue sweater. ‘You look like an old-time stripper named Carol Doda. I saw a TV show. They called her the Topless Tiger.’
She gave him a long gaze. ‘Marty said you’ve got a problem keeping your mouth shut. Something about getting knocked in the head.’ She’d gotten his name from Marty LeCoeur, a one-armed man Kelson knew through his friend DeMarcus Rodman.
‘He’s right,’ Kelson said.
‘I want the shoes back,’ she said.
‘So you’re a crook and you want me to steal your counterfeits from another crook?’
‘I’m a businesswoman.’
‘You know, I used to be a cop.’
‘Yeah, Marty said. You got fired.’
‘No, I got shot.’ He touched a scar over his left eyebrow to show where. ‘On duty. Now I say things I shouldn’t. Do things. The doctors call it disinhibition. Frontal lobe damage. I’m better now, mostly. I’m a good guy. I love everyone. The state lets me carry a gun. I pay my bills. My eleven-year-old daughter stays with me on nights when her mom doesn’t have her. For Christ’s sake, I’ve got two kittens. I’m dependable. But the department retired me on disability.’
The waitress brought the Coke and garlic knots, a Sprite for Kelson.
Genevieve Bower tore off half a knot and nibbled at it.
Kelson said, ‘Point is, I think you want someone else for this job. I try to work on the right side of the law, and if I cross over I can’t help talking about it. The disinhibition. That’s bad for people like you.’
Chewing, she said, ‘Marty says if you see a chick you like, you tell her. Strangers, friends, it doesn’t matter. You can’t help yourself.’
‘It’s happened. But less lately.’
She swallowed.
He watched her swallow.
Something about her lips and the way her food disappeared inside her, all snug in her little sweater, switched a switch in his head, and his synapses seemed to spark like loose wires. ‘I should know better,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’ She sipped from her Coke. Swallowed.
‘What’s his name?’ he said.
‘Whose? My boyfriend’s?’
‘Unless someone else has been stealing your fakes.’
She curled her upper lip. ‘Jeremy Oliver. He’s a DJ. Eighties music. If you want to shake your bootie to Journey blasting “Don’t Stop Believin’” or Joan Jett belting “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll”, Jeremy’s your guy.’
‘Huh.’ At the mention of Joan Jett, an impulse tickled Kelson. ‘How long were you together?’
‘Nine days. We met four weeks ago at a party at my cousin’s. A whirlwind, you know? And then the wind died.’
‘Nine days counts as a boyfriend?’
‘It’s five days longer than Marty.’
‘You have a picture of him?’
She tapped her phone and showed Kelson a shot of an olive-skinned man with a shaved head. He was giving the camera a wicked smile full of gleaming white teeth. He looked in his early thirties.
‘Handsome guy. Text that to me, OK? Any idea where I can find him?’
‘That’s the thing,’ she said. ‘He posts his club and party dates on his website, but I went to the last three and he was a no-show. Once he had a stand-in. The other times there were just a bunch of angry partiers and an empty DJ booth.’ She wrote the website details and Jeremy Oliver’s phone number and home address on a paper napkin and gave it to Kelson. ‘No one’s seen him in two weeks.’
Kelson read the napkin. ‘JollyOllie.com?’
‘I know, but the things he could do with his tongue.’
‘Please don’t tell me.’ Kelson folded the napkin and slipped it into a pocket. ‘How much are the shoes and watches worth?’
‘The watches, maybe a hundred bucks. The shoes about sixty thousand.’
‘For sneakers?’
‘Designer sneakers. They start around five hundred a pair and go up. I want them back. If you get them, I have another job for you.’
‘I’ll ask around.’
As she wrote a check for a week’s work, Kelson found himself humming Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.’ She raised an eyebrow at him and said, ‘Brain candy?’
He said, ‘The first night I had sex with my ex, it was playing.’
‘I’d rather not know,’ she said.
‘We went back to my apartment, turned on the radio, and Nancy did a striptease. I always hated the song, but now it gets me.’
‘I see.’
‘I mean, really gets me.’
Genevieve Bower got up. ‘Let me know when you find Jeremy.’
‘What about the rest of your garlic knots?’
‘You eat them,’ she said. ‘Delicate tummy.’
When she reached to shake his hand, her sweater stretched tight over her all of her, and he said, ‘Sorry about the Carol Doda thing.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘you’re human. You don’t need to apologize for that.’
‘I like you,’ he said.
‘You only need to be sorry if you use your screwed-upness to hurt someone.’
‘Screwed-upness?’
‘Yeah, you seem to have a bad case of it.’
‘Really, I just got shot in the head.’
She left then, and he sat at the table alone, dipping dough into marinara, listening to the conversations of other diners and talking out loud to himself about how crazy he was to let a woman’s sexy swallowing of a garlic knot persuade him to take a job that sounded as if it would only aggravate him and, if he succeeded, force him to convey counterfeit goods.
The waitress refilled his Sprite and he complimented her on her hair and her neck and, because he couldn’t help himself, her knees. After that, the manager kept an eye on him.
All would have been well if the conversation at the other tables hadn’t experienced one of those lulls just as the ceiling speakers started playing a new song – Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.’
‘Oh, no,’ Kelson said out loud.
Oh, yes, his brain answered.
‘Don’t do it,’ he said.
Do it till you’re satisfied, his brain said.
Do it all night long.
Do the hoochie coochie.
Do the Watusi.
Kelson stood up at his table. His eye twitched. His arms twitched. His legs twitched. He fumbled with the zipper on his pants. He said, ‘No, no, no.’ His brain said Yes, yes, yes. He stripped off his pants and danced with his chair. Two months had passed since he’d done something like this, and his head buzzed with the pleasure of a long-denied joy.
‘Freedom,’ he said to the waitress.
As ‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll’ pumped from the ceiling speakers, he climbed on to his table and sang along. Then the table legs blew out, and he landed butt-naked in the deep-dish pie of a lady in a nearby booth.
‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘your pepperoni just poked me in the ass.’
The police arrived and shot him with a Taser. He shook on the floor to the bass beat until they jolted him a third time.