Page 8 of Liquids

“Please tell me you have not been doing the business with Angelo.”

Angelo’s family own a chain of Italian restaurants all over the state. I’d swear on my life that he’s got mafia connections.

“Big pot, too. Rumor is some guy’s coming down from Chicago,” Marni says, ignoring my question, which means she has been doing the business with Angelo. Fuck. She has no radar for keeping herself out of trouble.

“Yeah, that’ll never happen.”

Her mouth goes into a thin line, and I know why. Normally, I’m her partner in crime, not Miss Gloomy, but over the last few weeks, I haven’t been able to get my head straight on my shoulders. Like Rig was my only chance for something good in this town. Which is stupid, because it’s clear as crystal that he wasn’t.

She runs a long purple nail down the grain of the bar. “You’ve been off ever since that thing with Rig. And that Dave guy …” She rolls her eyes. “Babe.”

I can’t tell her that I don’t really like Dave, but he’s easy and keeps me company. Sex with him is physical contact, and I don’t have much of that. I take a sip of my beer and gaze around Callahan’s. Bottom of the heap, accept the life you’ve been dealt. Maybe this is the secret of happiness. Settling.

“I wish I hadn’t encouraged you to go and talk to Rig that night,” she grumbles.

I pat her hand. “I’m fine. You know me. I get in my head sometimes.”

When you started in a better life, the memories live rent-free. The time when you went out and bought things and it wasn’t a toss-up between that and making the rent. Food was hot and fresh, and you exercised with a dog. A life where men didn’t make suggestions to you all the time and were generally decent. At the bottom of the heap, men are not decent.

“Maybe I should get a dog.”

“Hon.”

“What?”

“You can’t even take care of yourself, that’s what.”

Oh, not you, too, I don’t say. My eyes smart, and she sighs, pursing her lips as she watches the bartender wash glasses in the sink behind the bar.

“You gotta come with me, Carl. I can’t go on my own.”

Damn right, she can’t. The fights are full of rough-and-ready guys, truckers and out-of-towners, small-time drug dealers who’d think nothing of forcing sex on a woman. Come to think of it, that’s probably why they don’t want women turning up. Adding women into the mix would be like pouring gasoline on a fire.

I gesture at her. “Why did you dress up like that? If you go there in that, it’s just drawing attention to …”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Men with money go to the fights! Men who like to gamble. I could find myself someone who could keep me in a style to which I am unaccustomed.”

My lips curl up. Marni’s one of life’s optimists. Life is one big barrel of fun to her, the next great break just around the corner. She never gets affected by the down moments, just shrugs it off with “their loss” and moves on to the next thing. Or, more accurately, the next guy.

I take in her blonde hair shining in the lights. What choice do I have? She needs a partner in crime. “Yeah, I’ll come with you.”

She claps her hands with a little squeal. “Midnight,” she says. “Apparently,” she adds with a wink.

In Marni’s car, we shoot through the green lights on Main Street and take a track to the east, winding up into the hills as the trees close in on either side, dark branches shaking their fists at us in the March wind. Not for the first time, I wonder about storms and Rig and whether he’s out somewhere in the elements … whether he’s safe. I’ve spent too long watching videos of guys on rigs recently, and most of it made my hair stand on end. I roll my eyes at myself. Give it up, Carly.

After a half hour, maybe more, the road gets steeper and the ruts get deeper, and the car lurches as the engine growls and chokes.

“Are you sure it’s up here?”

Her grin is sharklike in the dashboard lights. “Yeah. Angelo was very specific. I checked.”

She’s taken me on wild-goose chases before.

“He said the track was bad … Don’t look at me like that,” she adds.

“It’s gonna be cold standing out at this time of night. Shit, we’ve got no booze … or extra coats.”

“Will you quit worrying? I’ve got two flasks of vodka, and, sweetie, I put strawberry syrup in yours. Two extra coats in the trunk, too.”