THE CLOUDS HAD CLEARED BY THE TIME PETTY GOT BACK TO the Sands, and the sky arched overhead like a flawless blue dome, at the apex of which hung the weak winter sun, doing its best to burn away the previous night’s snow. Petty didn’t even bother to zip his coat for the walk across the parking lot. He dodged all the puddles rippling in the breeze, little mirrors that showed the cars, the casino, even a passing flock of birds.
Tinafey, freshly showered and in full makeup, was sitting on the edge of the bed watching QVC when he came in. She wore her blond wig, a pair of skintight jeans, and a sleeveless Rihanna concert T-shirt. The room smelled of soap and perfume and, again, pungent weed.
“Welcome, Barb from Kentucky,” the saleswoman on TV crowed.
Tinafey stood to greet Petty. He noticed that her bags were already packed.
“Time for breakfast,” he said.
“Scrambled eggs,” she said. “Burnt bacon, biscuits, and gravy.”
“You are from Memphis,” he said.
Watching her put on her high heels turned him on all over again. In fact, every move she made got his blood going. He had to reach down and adjust his hard-on so it didn’t show. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been that fired up by a woman.
They went down to the diner and took a booth that looked out onto the parking lot. Their waitress, a sixty-year-old dressed as a carhop, chewed her gum in time to the Buddy Holly song playing on the sound system.
“And what about you, handsome?” she said to Petty after taking Tinafey’s order. He usually went light on breakfast—coffee and toast—but today he was ravenous. He asked for the Wolfman Jack, a coronary on a plate: pancakes, eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, and hash browns.
He caught Tinafey smiling at a little girl in a high chair pulled up to a booth near the entrance, a little black girl with her hair in braids. The girl’s mother spooned oatmeal into her mouth while her father made gobble-gobble noises to encourage her to eat.
“She’s cute,” Petty said.
“Sure is,” Tinafey said. She reached across the table and tickled the back of Petty’s hand with a long red fingernail. “You got kids?”
“A daughter,” Petty said. “She just turned twenty-one.”
“You guys close?”
Nah, I managed to fuck that up, too, was the first answer that came to mind, but “Not really” is what Petty ended up saying. “I haven’t talked to her in years. She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Well, you’re the daddy, so you got to make the first move to fix that,” Tinafey said.
“Is that right?”
“Of course it is. Children don’t bear the blame for anything. They didn’t ask to be born.”
“What about you?” Petty said.
“Me what?” Tinafey said.
“Do you have kids?”
“I can’t,” Tinafey said. “Something with my ovaries. But it’s just as well. I don’t think I’d have the patience.” She sorted through the condiment bottles corralled at the end of the table. “They must have Tabasco,” she said. “Everybody’s got Tabasco.”
Petty turned his coffee cup around so he could get at the handle. The last time he saw Sam she was fourteen. She’d been living with his mother for five years at that point. Their weekly phone calls had degenerated into him asking questions and her mumbling one-word answers, so he detoured through Tampa on his way to Miami and paid her a surprise visit. He did all the talking over burgers and cherry slushes at Sonic while she picked at her flip-flops and made faces into the mirror of a hot-pink compact. Every year since Carrie had run off, the two of them had taken a summer trip together, and that year he was looking at Cancún. What did she think of that? he asked her.
“Actually,” she said, “I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Petty said.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “And I don’t even know why you’re here now. Does it make you feel better about yourself or something?”
“You’re my daughter,” Petty said. “I want to see you as much as possible.”
“Please,” Sam said. “Pretending we’re any kind of family, that we ever were, is such a lie, and I’m not gonna do that. I’m not gonna be a liar like you and like my mom.”
So no Cancún. In fact, no trips at all after that. And the phone calls ended, too. Sam stopped taking them, so Petty stopped making them. He got by on updates from his mom and continued to send money to Sam through her until she told him that Sam wanted him to donate the cash to a cat rescue organization instead. Over the years he’d managed to convince himself he’d done the best he could by her—better than her mother, anyway. He’d never considered forcing the relationship, didn’t feel he had the right, but he’d always hoped she’d reconsider things someday and at least give him a call.
“Is there a Jacuzzi at this new hotel?” Tinafey asked him.
“Probably,” Petty said. “It’s a nice place.”
“I like a Jacuzzi,” Tinafey said.
She started to say something else but froze, open-mouthed, and stared out the window.
“What’s wrong?” Petty said, turning to see what had caused her to stall out.
“Bo,” she said and slid low in the booth.
And there he was, hurrying down the sidewalk like he had somewhere to be. Petty watched him until he passed from sight, then said, “Okay, he’s gone.”
“I got to get out of here,” Tinafey said.
“We’ll leave right after we eat,” Petty said.
“I mean out of here, farther than that hotel.”
“You have any place in mind?”
“I’m gonna go back to Memphis for a while. I got family there, places to stay.”
Petty guessed this was probably the smart thing for her to do, but he wasn’t looking forward to saying good-bye. He hadn’t met a woman like her in a long time. She was funny and sexy and knew what was what. He could relax around her, didn’t have to lie about what he did and the circles he ran in. And she was nice. Genuinely nice. That was rare in his world. An idea came to him, a crazy idea, and he found himself sharing it with her before he’d thought it all the way through.
“Look,” he said. “I’m leaving for L.A. this morning, driving down. Why don’t you come along and keep me company? We’ll get a hotel when we hit town, do some sightseeing, and you can fly to Memphis from there.”
Tinafey closed one eye and looked at him askance.
“L.A.?” she said. “To do some sightseein’?”
“Yeah. Sure. Why not?” he said.
“You’ve known me not even a day, and you already want to take me on vacation?”
“It’s not a vacation. I’m trying to help you put some distance between you and Bo. If you don’t feel comfortable, all you have to say is no thanks.”
“Does it seem like I can’t take care of myself?”
“Not at all. I saw what you did to that asshole last night.”
“That’s right, and you best remember that.”
They paused the conversation while the waitress delivered their food. She called them honey and darlin’, and Petty wondered if her drawl was for real or a put-on for the customers.
“Are you sweet on me?” Tinafey said as soon as the waitress left. She stared at Petty while scraping grape jelly onto her toast.
“Maybe some,” Petty said. “You’re so cute it’s hard not to be.”
Tinafey scoffed at this. “That’s a motherfuckin’ hustler talkin’ right there,” she said. “How long’s it take to drive to L.A.?”
“I’ll get us there in eight hours.”
“Your car ain’t gonna break down in the middle of the desert, is it?”
“I just got it checked out. Everything’s good.”
“’Cause I don’t want to be stuck out there with all those serial killers and shit.”
Petty smiled and dug into his pancakes.
He called Avi from the car as he and Tinafey were on their way out of town, put the phone on speaker, and told him he could shove the fishing job up his ass. Avi started in with “You ungrateful fuck” and “After all I’ve done for you,” but Petty cut him off, saying, “Hey! Hey! Remember Jersey? You’d still be living in that Corolla if it wasn’t for me.”
“Bullshit!” Avi said. “What I have I got through my own initiative, and you’ll be calling back in a week, begging to shine my shoes.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Petty said. “I’ll eat rocks and shit sand first.”
Tinafey laughed out loud at this and bounced in her seat.
“Is someone listening in?” Avi roared. “Take me off speaker!”
“Fuck you,” Petty said.
“You’re a loser, Rowan. Nobody says it to your face, but they’re all thinking it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Petty ended the call and tossed the phone onto the dash.
“A grown man actin’ like that,” Tinafey said.
“Avi?” Petty said. “He’s not a man.”
“I was talkin’ about you,” Tinafey said, then slapped his thigh to let him know she was joking.
Petty sat back and grinned at the high desert scrub rolling past outside. The tufts of yellow grass that poked through the melting snow looked like flickering flames. He always got excited when he hit the road. It signaled that something was about to happen. Maybe good, maybe bad, but something. And that rush of possibility took the sting out of any disappointments that had preceded it.
He was so busy enjoying the feeling that he didn’t notice the truck, the mud-streaked Ford Explorer that had been following them ever since they’d left the Sands, the one that had been keeping a careful two cars between itself and the Mercedes as both vehicles sped down the highway.