When her ’link signaled, she walked back, checked the text.
From that semi-idiot and overeager rich bitch Janis, she noted.
Maybe it was a sign, urging her to hit Screw U for a couple hours.
She could get a brew and smother all the echoes.
Eve sat back in her chair, pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Cock and Balls,” she said.
Roarke glanced over from his station at the auxiliary. “Is that a request? As I’m nearly done here and happen to have those items handy.”
She lowered her hands. “Who’d think a woman who wears cock-and-balls earrings would come off as the least skanky and most sensible on the list so far?”
“I couldn’t say. How large were they, these particular accessories?”
“Big enough. And yet she says she’s only had sex with three on our list, though she ‘messed steamy’—her words—with two others.”
“Perhaps, though her jewelry choices belie, she’s being modest and/or discreet.”
“No. She’s too scared to lie about it, and is even now huddled up at her mother’s place in New Jersey. Sexy Bitch, on the other hand, claims to have had sex with all of them, and some at the same time. She might be lying.”
“Sexy Bitch.”
“Tattooed,” Eve said, swiping her fingers over her chest.
“I suppose no one ever pointed out to her that if you have to announce you are, you simply aren’t. But you do meet the most fascinating people in the course of your day, Lieutenant.”
“I’m going to meet more tomorrow because I’m going to have to track down and talk to all the male skanks. I’m not through my list yet and there’s not one of the rockers who hasn’t been done by multiples on my list. It’s not the sex.”
“Well now,” Roarke began.
“No, it’s the score. The act, sure, the literal bang, but it’s the racking them up. And racking them up fills a void. I get sex just for the bang, and what’s wrong with that?”
“I can think of literally nothing as long as it’s consensual.”
“These women, Cock and Balls, the Sexy Bitch? They might hook with one of those for a short amount of time, sometimes a short and intense amount, but they’ll still look for the bang with someone else. None of it’s real. A few of them—Loxie, Yola, that level? It’s more a roller coaster. They’re hooked longer, tighter. There might actually be something there. Not necessarily a good something or a healthy something, but something. Still, they guzzle illegals and booze—another void to fill. And, like the character of Bliss Cather in the book, live in deliberate disregard for others. Fight with their chosen counterpart in public because that gets them off, too. Playing for the crowd, reading about it later, seeing vids on the gossip channels.”
“And Strongbow observes.”
“Yeah, she observes, and most likely concludes the women are—because they come off that way—interchangeable. All of them offer the wrong things, destructive things, to the man she’s selected as above, as better, as one worthy of her—of the character she’s living in, of the writer she believes herself to be. Remove one—one she judges as influential—and he has the chance to reach that worthy potential.
“And I’m circling,” Eve admitted. “Because none of this points me at her.”
“Circling maybe, but you’re thinking like her.”
“I’m thinking like I think she thinks,” Eve amended, “but she’s slippery. Because she’s crazy.”
“You’ve bagged the crazy before, Lieutenant. You’ll bag her.”
“Penguin coats and blue dreads, a personality so malleable it absorbs itself into fictional characters. But I damn well will bag her. Give me what you’ve got so far on the rockers.”
“It’s a subjective and unscientific sort of ranking.”
“I’ll take what you’ve got. Top pick.”
“At this stage, that would be Glaze, aka Adam Glazier, lead guitar and vocals for the Glaze.”
“Loxie Flash’s ex.” Swiveling toward the board, his photo, she frowned. “I’d have slotted him in loser territory.”