“Smile and wave,” I hissed. “They can’t know there’s something wrong.”
Layna plastered on a smile and waved dutifully.
I couldn’t make sense of it. Layna from my pole dancing class, here beside me in this parking lot. A dead man in my trunk. “What are you doing here?” I said.
“I was gonna grocery shop!” Layna said. “How. Did that guy. End up—?” She covered her face with her shaking hands, unable to go on.
“If I knew, you think I’d open it here? In the co-op parking lot?” My voice was coming out falsetto. Nothing made sense. “It’s him. The creep. From... from Huckleberry’s.” My fingernails had made the scratch marks across his face.
“Tilly,” she said, “this is in my no-fly zone.”
“What do you mean,yourno-fly zone? It’s in everyone’s no-fly zone,” I cried. “It’s a corpse!”
“But how did hegetthere?”
“I don’t know!” I said. “I don’t remember anything after like the third round of drinks.” An unsettling stretch of time, wiped from memory. Could I have been—? I didn’t want to let myself even think the terrible word.Roofied.
“Tilly,” Layna said. “Tilly, my friend. This is not good.”
“Do you think it could’ve been an accident?” I said.
“There’s... there’s blood. And bloody scissors. And it looks like someone maybe whacked him in the head,” she said.
I felt like I was crawling around in a pitch-black cave, searching and searching for a dropped flashlight. “My car. My car was parked behind Huckleberry’s. All night.” Emmylou had driven me and the girls there this morning to retrieve it. Then I’d come straight to the co-op to restock my bare cupboards. “My keys. I left them at the strip club. Today I had to use my spare set.”
“Keys?” Layna said. “Who cares about your keys?”
“Someone else could’ve opened my trunk. Stuffed him right in there.” A niggling fear had lodged under my skin like a gangrenous splinter. But I had too much adrenaline to really feel it. The back doors of the Impala swung open in unison.
“Mom! Mom! Mom! We’re booooored.” That was Alice.
Phoebe chimed in. “Mom! Mom! Mom! Let’s go!”
“Hang on!” I yelled. “I’m talking to my friend. Close those doors. You’ll freeze!”
“Oh, hon,” Layna said. “This is a lot. A lot. A lot. A lot. And with two little kids...” She looked at me with real pity. Something in her gaze reminded me of my mom, who’d always been there to provide solace and advice whenever life did me dirty. A tidal wave of sadness and overwhelm crashed over me.
“I was the one who chose to have kids on my own,” I said. “I wanted it so badly. But I had my mom to help me. With my mom, I could get through anything.” I took a hitching breath. “She died. Ten months ago.”
Hot tears cut down my cheeks. The inside of my skull hurt so badly.I would have given anything to climb back in bed, pull the covers over my head, and wake up yesterday morning. I wouldn’t go to pole class and none of this would have ever happened.
Layna drummed purple Gel-X talons on the top of the trunk. When she spoke, I knew she’d decided to believe me. “So what do you do now?”
My mom always taught me that when overwhelmed, it’s important to do the Next Right Thing, which is usually something small like taking a shower, making the bed, or chopping vegetables. Her theory was that if you take care of the little things, the big things will often take care of themselves. Suddenly I knew what my Next Right Thing was.
“That co-op cashier was carrying those scissors like a true crime fanatic,” I said. “I need to go inside and get them back. Right. Now.”
Four
The Day Before
“Grab your pole up high with your inside arm, keeping your elbow straight. Now walk around the pole. You can point your toes and be sexy! You can stomp angrily. You can prance!” Salma Hayek cried.
I’d migrated to the pole studio with the others, staked out my bit of chrome, and participated in a series of warm-up exercises that’d reaffirmed my concerns about my basic lack of fitness. Now class had begun in earnest, and we were learning pole dancing’s most fundamental move—the pole walk.
Salma Hayek hadn’t gotten the memo that for most people, teaching a class half-naked would be a literal nightmare. Then again, if my buns looked like hers, I wouldn’t ever wear pants. While I didn’t have it in me to try to be sexy, I could definitely stomp angrily around my pole—which spun! Who knew poles spin?
I made eye contact with Layna, who pranced like a giggly reindeer. My usual friend type was “hipster artist from Westside LA who ferments her own pickles and has gallery shows.” Layna definitely didn’t fit that description. But we clearly had friend chemistry, which was more than I’d expected to find at pole dancing class.
