“I have to drive all the way to Connecticut with you?”
“I’m happy to pay you for your time,” I said. “I have cash at home. Will three hundred dollars do the trick?”
She didn’t look happy about this new development. But considering how she earned her money most days, I figured she had to be relieved to make a few bucks sitting upright in a car instead of lying supine on a bed.
“Is that on top of the four hundred and two you already gave me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll drive you to Connecticut. Which way?”
“Take the FDR to I-95,” I said. “I’ll give you directions from there.”
CHAPTER 5
Clara
The way this jackass was acting, you’d think he was accepting a ride home from a hooker. Sure, my car was a third-world country on wheels, but at least it had unlocked doors and a functional ignition, so I didn’t see what the big problem was. At any rate, he’d already made me feel plenty stupid and worthless, and sitting here acting like he was being forced to drive home in a public toilet wasn’t making me feel any better.
“Can you please grab my spare key?” I said without looking at him. “I think it’s in the glove compartment.”
He reached for the glove box. And then suddenly stopped. “Holy crap, is that a—” He inserted his finger into the hole in my dashboard. “Is that a bullet hole?”
“No!” I said. “Of course not! It’s a...” I shuffled through my bag until I found the ninety-nine-cent lipstick I’d bought from the dollar store. “It’s a lipstick holder,” I said. “All the old cars were made with them. See?” I stuck my lipstick in the bullet hole. A moment later we heard a clunk as it hit the hollow inner pit of my dashboard. “Lipstick cases were fatter when this car was manufactured,” I explained.
“Whatever,” he said.
“Fine, I’m lying, it’s not a lipstick holder. It’s—”
“Please don’t explain,” he said as he opened the glove box. “The less I know, the better.”
He handed me the key and I turned it in the ignition. With the regular clunks, bangs, booms, and grunts, my car started up, and I pulled out of the parking space and headed out.
Even on a Saturday morning, New York City traffic was hell. By eight o’clock, we were only just crossing the border from Manhattan into the Bronx. I really had to pee.
I miraculously spotted an empty parking space and pulled in.
“Why are we stopping?” Ian said, as if I needed his written permission to take a rest stop.
“There’s a grocery store at the end of the block,” I said, pointing. “I need to use the bathroom.”
He looked out the window at the splendor that was the South Bronx. “Here?” he said, horrified.
Clearly this was a man who’d never laid eyes on a housing project before. “No,” I said. “In the grocery store. I’m thinking the produce aisle.”
“Can’t it wait until we get to a better neighborhood?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “No one in their right mind would steal a car with an asshole like you inside it.” I grabbed my bag. “Would you like me to get you a ham sandwich or is it beneath your dignity to have anything but caviar and Bichon Frise for breakfast?”
He looked at me like I was the dumbest person on earth. “I’m not hungry,” he said. “And Bichon Frise is a dog breed.”
“I knew that,” I said, then made sure to slam the door behind me.
Dammit. I could have sworn Bichon Frise was a French cheese.
“Bathroom?” I said to a guy stacking apples by the entrance.
“Back left,” he said without looking at me.