Listening to Tiffany go over everything that had happened, Hope Logan piping in now and then, Gwen felt more certain there’d been a tray of Kool-Aid - tainted with something – something that made you believe – and the tray had gone around, once, twice, and Gwen had missed it somehow.
The best part was the Romeo and Juliet bit, a Connie and a Millie, the Romeo an heir to some sort of crime family, a chef in the interim for fuck’s sake?, and he was somewhere in town now, evading the cops, or he was with the homicidal Juliet, running through the woods, just barely staying out of the cop’s reach. Gwen placed him. The gangly guy, the one Henry had lent his phone, Ichabod Crane in the flesh. After seeing him, Mr. Uncoordinated, it was hard to imagine the cops not capturing him, sheer numbers encircling a daddy long-legs.
Gwen wanted to tell Hope to rearrange her shirt for God’s sake, the stretched out collar, at least. They’d all seen her cleavage, thank you very much. Henry could endure an erection for only so long before the lack of blood going to his young brain did permanent damage.
Bug kept chewing his nails. It was his house, she was a guest, admittedly, but he chewed with such a wet, persistent industriousness. She couldn’t snipe at him though. They were of a kind, outsiders, even in a town this small. She was glad to see he did in fact have a full head of hair. Most men that wore ball caps 99% of the time were hiding a boiled egg.
And this other guy, Sipe, wouldn’t sit down, he just stood next to the table, faced the front door, looked around the room in a continuous circuit like a robot, damaged, C-3PO with the shiner to end all shiners, staring at the windows, looking left-left front-other front-then right, like he was the chosen vigilant, keeper of the peace, this ineffable sixth sense would kick in when the cops got close or whoever it might be that wanted the money Hope had stolen from the whorehouse. Of course it was a whorehouse, the second Butcher’s Camp Massage opened everyone knew what it really was. Truthfully, Hope looked the part. Throw a bulky sweater on her, fuck, jam her into a burka, she still radiated sex. The pair on her. Her beepers, Gwen labeled them, and nearly lost it. Gwen knew she ought to have some empathy here, Hope wasn’t an adult, not legal, but a lot of Gwen’s problems, most of the big ones, they’d been served up by human beings the same age as Hope. Soon as you started growing pubic hair (or beepers), soon as the words that came out of your mouth could cause seismic alterations in the life course of others, you were done being cute, done needing to be protected like some sort of fucking Ewok.