“Getting people to buy things?”
“Playing the dumb Hollywood guy.”
“Wiseass.”
I smiled. “I try.”
“Can I tell you something?” he said. “Just as an aside?”
“Yeah?”
“These past few days are the most time I’ve ever spent with you, clothes on. Just talking.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“But you know what?”
“What?”
“You’re actually, like…really fun to talk to.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I feel the same.”
“I mean, not that it wouldn’t be more fun naked.”
“Understood.”
“But since that isn’t a possibility. Unless, I don’t know. Is it?”
“You’re good, Tony. Quit while you’re ahead.”
He laughed. I laughed, too.
“You know I’m just kidding,” he said. “Unless—”
“Bye, Tony.”
I ended the call smiling. Tony Gault wasn’t that bad to work with.
Forty-five
The lights in the convenience store were exceptionally bright, even by convenience-store standards. I hadn’t noticed it earlier because I’d been here in the daytime. But now that it was dark out, I felt like this place could have doubled as a surgical theater, only with cigarettes and lotto tickets.
It was busier in the store than it had been when I bought the water, and Violet was no longer here. The new clerk was a teenage boy with half-closed eyes and a hairstyle that added four inches to his height. He was probably stoned. And so I had a feeling I wouldn’t have been able to talk to him the way I’d talked to Violet, but that was okay. A gill net can catch only so many fish in one day.
I grabbed a bottle of iced tea and a ham-and-cheese sandwichand got in the back of a lengthy cash register line. I was still waiting when Mimi called.
“Can you tell me that name again?” she said after I answered. “You asked if I thought it sounded familiar?”
The person in front of me finished paying. I walked up to the register and set my purchases in front of the clerk. “Edward Piro,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” Mimi said. “Edward.”
I noticed some large, homemade dog biscuits in a box at the counter and took one out to buy. It was the least I could do for Rosie after abandoning her for an entire day. “Why do you ask?”
“It might be nothing,” Mimi said. “But remember that rich boy I told you about? The one Leila stayed with when she first moved to New York?”
“Yes,” I said as I gave the clerk my credit card. “The Trekkie, right?”
