Skylar smiled again. He’d know, all right.
12
Going up in the private elevator, Cathy Higgins—once the barmaid from the cocktail lounge, and now Skylar’s girlfriend of five weeks—told Sherry that she needed some money. Sherry, files clutched flat against her chest, smiled as she stood there in the back corner of the gold-walled car.
‘Ask your boyfriend,’ Sherry said. ‘He’s got it all.’
Cathy said, ‘I did ask him.’
Sherry watched Cathy, who was no taller than five-five, with dyed blond hair, milky-blue eyes and sulky lips. When she said she grew up in Brooklyn and then moved to Queens and that she found gangsters sexy, all in a voice that sounded pleading and tough, somebody said, No shit. She arrived at the hotel with forged references, but the bar manager liked her and gave her the job.
‘You know, I wish I still had my career,’ Cathy said, standing there in a plunging white lace suit, gold bangles and no make-up. ‘But he doesn’t want that.’
Sherry studied her face without the make-up. People said she was twenty-three; but Sherry recalled some of the grim details of her life, and saw the features of someone who in less than ten years would look middle-aged.
‘I’m taking about ten bucks,’ Cathy said. ‘Ten, or twenty. Get myself a couple things from the store.’
Sherry was frowning. ‘Doesn’t he... You know, the allowance,’ she said, lowering her voice on that word, even though they were alone in here.
‘I already used that up,’ Cathy said. ‘What else am I going to do around here? I’d say he was getting a bargain, the shit I have to put up with. Cooped up in here all day waiting for the night, when he’ll expect me to be there.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t be saying this,’ Sherry said.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Cathy said. ‘Don’t you ever want to get back at him? I don’t like the way he treats you.’
Sherry looked away, was shaking her head. She laid the folders on the floor and opened her wallet. ‘There’s two tens. It’s our secret.’
‘How kind.’ Cathy folded them into her pocket. ‘But don’t you, though? Don’t you want to hurt him?’
Sherry collected the folders from the ground and turned her gaze to the number display above the door. You goddamn bet I do.
But she killed the thought, just as she killed all the others. A new thought flickered through her mind; Skylar saying something about Cathy’s stepdad. How the guy was a drunk, how he invaded their home when she wasn’t quite twelve. How, when she wasn’t quite sixteen, he put a shotgun to her head and told her to undress. The way Skylar told it, Cathy fled the house when his gun jammed.
The elevator stopped, on level twelve, but no one got on. Cathy stood there, examining messages on her phone. A new message arrived just before the elevator bell chimed, and Sherry saw a name flash up on the display before Cathy covered it with her hand. Sherry was thinking that she knew that name from somewhere when the door slid open again and Cathy smiled back at her, and got off.
The name was Tony Duncan.
Cathy walked down past some unleased condos, through an office area, and out to a gift shop, where she bought cigarettes, soda, and the National Enquirer. She was reading that—lips mouthing those words she knew, and even those she didn’t—about a TV star who was eating herself to death—as she wandered back through.
She sat at some empty tables near a conference room, drinking the soda. Then she hurried back to the elevators, rode up to a penthouse, and scanned the key card, wandering inside. Warm air was blowing through the rooms, the French windows open, curtains flowing towards Cathy as she peered outside to the terrace. Tony Duncan was waiting for her there, in nothing but a towel and a football hat. At least he had been waiting, until he’d fallen asleep in the lounge chair.
Cathy stood, one hand above her eyes, gazing out into all that sunshine.
Tony Duncan, she thought, in his cheap shades, didn’t seem like an important man. He wasn’t well-built, and his face was always slightly broken-out with a rash. The way he was slouched there, arms hanging loose, and almost helpless-looking, no one would’ve guessed how many guys he’d whacked out over in Jersey, and here in Pennsylvania. She’d known him before she arrived, but they hadn’t hooked up since she got with Skylar. It was the same thing with another tough guy staying this week in the hotel, Harry Ziker. She smiled at the thought of those two men living here so close to the owner.
Cathy was about to wake him up when her cellphone vibrated. Skylar. Cathy retreated, back through the room, slipping out into the corridor. She walked down towards a café. Moving a few fast steps, the phone still vibrating in her hand, she answered. Then she saw him, Skylar, standing just ahead. She walked right up as he glared at her.
‘Where the hell were you?’ he said.
Cathy shook her head, the cigarette pack in her hand. ‘I was nowhere.’
‘Where the hell did you get those?’ Skylar said. ‘You remember that smoking is bad for your health?’
‘This again?’ she said.
Skylar looked her over. ‘You know you got some dark roots coming through?’
‘What? Oh... I’ll sort that.’
‘You need me to think of everything?’
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘You’re not my boss, you’re my boyfriend.’
Cathy heard her voice drop when she said it, boyfriend.
‘When you came here, I gave you a job. I made you into somebody,’ Skylar said. ‘Where did you get the cigarettes?’
Cathy glanced at the café, where a few of the staff were looking over. She stepped closer to Skylar, and touched his face. ‘Baby, don’t, huh? You’re making a scene.’
Skylar clubbed her hand away with his fist. He clasped her other hand, fingers squeezing like it was a stress ball. He said low, tight-lipped, ‘You know what happens to people who irritate me? Do you know?’
‘Baby, will you please stop?’
Skylar smiled as he closed his grip on her hand until he heard a crack.
‘And she didn’t even scream,’ he said, letting go, stepping away.
Cathy bit her lip as she rubbed her hand. ‘I want you to know that hurt.’
‘You think I don’t?’ Skylar said. ‘Less than ten minutes ago I actually wanted to hang out with you. What the hell is wrong with me?’
She could still hear his laughter as he was stepping into the elevator.
Cathy noticed she’d dropped the cigarette pack, and that she’d stepped on it. She snatched it up and pulled out a crooked cigarette and put it in her mouth. Walked away, past a NO SMOKING sign, the crooked cigarette quivering in her hand.
Down in the lobby she saw Kirk Masher on the edge of her vision, and turned the other way. She headed out through the main doors, to the shade of the entranceway, where cabs lined up. Cathy stood there among the bellboys and doormen and cabbies and guests. The crooked cigarette still in her hand, she was looking out at the sunlight flooding the lot, the water jumping from the fountains.
‘Miss Higgins?’
It was the voice of an overweight black man in a suit, the guy holding the door for an elderly couple.