I Know How to Pick 'Em

by Lawrence Block

  I Know How To Pick ’Em

  Lawrence Block

  * * *

  Copyright © 2014, Lawrence Block

  All Rights Reserved

  Interior Design: JW Manus

  A Lawrence Block Production

  I Know How To Pick ’Em

  I sure know how to pick ’em.

  Except I don’t know as I’ve got any credit coming for this one, because it’s hard to make the case that it was me that picked her. She walked into that edge-of-town roadhouse with the script all worked out in her mind, and all that was left to do was cast the lead.

  The male lead, that is. Far as the true leading role was concerned, well, that belonged to her. That much went without saying. Woman like her, she’d have to be the star in all of her productions.

  They had a juke box, of course. Loud one. Be nice if I recalled what was playing when she crossed the threshold, but I wasn’t paying attention—to the music, or to who came through the door. I had a beer in front of me, surprise surprise, and I was looking into it like any minute now it would tell me a secret.

  Yeah, right. All any beer ever said to me was Drink me down, horse. I might make things better and I sure can’t make ’em worse.

  It was a country juke box, which you could have guessed from the parking lot, where the pickups outnumbered the Harleys by four or five to one. So if I can’t say what was playing when she came in, or even when I looked up from my PBR and got a look at her, I can tell you what wasn’t playing. “I Only Have Eyes For You.”

  That wasn’t coming out of that juke box. But it should have been.

  She was the beauty. Her face was all high cheekbones and sharp angles, and a girl who was just plain pretty would get all washed out standing next to her. She wasn’t pretty herself, and a quick first glance might lead you to think that she wasn’t attractive at all, but you’d look again and that first thought would get so far lost you’d forget you ever had it. There are fashion models with that kind of face. Film actresses, too, and they’re the ones who keep on getting the good parts in their forties and fifties, when the pretty girls start looking like soccer moms and nosy neighbors.

  And she only had eyes for me. Large well-spaced eyes, a rich brown in color, and I swear I felt them on me before I was otherwise aware of her presence. Looked up, caught her looking at me, and she saw me looking and didn’t look away.

  I suppose I was lost right there.

  She was a blonde, with her hair cut to frame and flatter her face. She was tall, say five-ten, five-eleven. Slender but curvy. Her blouse was silk, with a bold geometric print. It was buttoned too high to show a lot of cleavage, but when she moved it would cling to her and let you know what it wasn’t showing.

  The way her jeans fit, well, you all at once understood why people paid big money for designer jeans.

  The joint wasn’t crowded, it was early, but there were people between her and me. She flowed through them and they melted away. The bartender, a hard-faced old girl with snake tattoos, came over to take a drink order.

  The blonde had to think it over. “I don’t know,” she said to me. “What should I have?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  She put her hand on my arm. I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, so her skin and mine never touched, but they might as well.

  “Pick a drink for me,” she said.

  I was looking down at her hand, resting there on my forearm. Her fingernails were medium-long, their polish the bright color of arterial bleeding.

  Pick a drink for her? The ones that came quickest to mind were too fancy for the surroundings. Be insulting to order her a shot and a beer. Had to be a cocktail, but one that the snake lady would know how to make.

  I said, “Lady’ll have a Cuervo Margarita.” Her hand was on my right arm, so rather than move it I used my left hand to poke the change I’d left on the bar top, indicating that the Margarita was on me.

  “And the same for you? Or another Blue Ribbon?”

  I shook my head. “But you could give me a Joey C. twice to keep it company.”

  “Thank you,” my blonde said, while the bartender went to work. “That’s a perfect choice, a Margarita.”

  The drinks came, hers in a glass with a salted rim, my double Cuervo in an oversize shot glass. She let go of my arm and picked up her drink, raised the glass in a wordless toast. I left my Cuervo where it was and returned the toast with my beer.

  She didn’t throw her drink back like a sailor, but didn’t take a little Baby Bird sip, either. She drank some and put the glass on the bar and her hand on my arm.

  Nice.

  No wedding ring. I’d noticed that right away, and hadn’t needed a second glance to see that there’d been a ring on that finger, that it had come off recently enough to show not only the untanned band where the ring had been but the depression it had caused in the flesh. It said a lot, that finger. That she was married, and that she’d deliberately taken off her ring before entering the bar.

  Hey, didn’t I say? I know how to pick ’em.

  But didn’t I also say she picked me?

  And picked that lowdown roadhouse for the same reason. If my type was what she was looking for, that was the place to find it.

  My type: Well, big. Built like a middle linebacker, or maybe a tight end. Six-five, 230, big in the shoulders, narrow in the waist. More muscles than a man needs, unless he’s planning to lift a car out of a rut.

  Which I don’t make a habit of. Not that good at lifting my poor self out of a rut, let alone an automobile.

  Clean-shaven, when I shave; I was a day away from a razor when she came in and put her hand on my arm. But no beard, no mustache. Hair’s dark and straight, and I haven’t lost any of it yet. But I haven’t hit forty yet, either, so who’s to say I’ll get to keep it?

  My type: a big outdoorsy galoot, more brawn than brains, more street smarts than book smarts. Someone who probably won’t notice you were wearing a wedding ring until a few minutes ago.

  Or, if he does, won’t likely care.

  “Like to dance, little lady?”

  I’d spotted him earlier out of the corner of my eye, a cowboy type, my height or an inch or two more, but packing less weight. Long and lean, built to play wide receiver to my tight end.

  And no, I never played football myself. Only watch it when a TV’s showing it in a room I’m in. Never cared about sports, even as a boy. Had the size, had the quickness, and I got tired of hearing I should go out for this team, go out for that one.

  It was a game. Why waste my time on a game?

  And here was this wide receiver, hitting on a woman who’d declared herself to be mine. She tightened her grip on my arm, and I guessed she was liking the way this was shaping up. Two studs taking it to the lot out back, squaring off, then doing their best to kill each other. And she’d stand there watching, the blood singing in her veins, until it was settled and she went home with the winner.

  No question he was ready to play. He’d sized me up half an hour ago, before she was in the picture. There’s a type of guy who’ll do that, check out a room, work out who he might wind up fighting and how he’d handle it. Could be I’d done some of that myself, getting the measure of him, guessing what moves he’d make, guessing what would work against him.

  Or I could walk away from it. Turn my back on both of ’em, head out of the bar, take my act on down the road. Not that hard to find a place that’d sell you a shot of Cuervo and a beer to back it up.

  Except, you know, I never do walk away from things. Just knowing I could don’t mean I can.

  “Oh, that’s very kind of you,” she said. “But we were just leaving. Perhaps another time.”

  Getting to her feet as she said it, u
sing just the right tone of voice, so as to leave no doubt that she meant it. Not cold, not putting him down, but nowhere near warm enough to encourage the son of a bitch.

  Handled it just right, really.

  I left my beer where it was, left my change there to keep it company. She took hold of my arm on the way out. There were some eyes on us as we left, but I guess we were both used to that.

  When we hit the parking lot I was still planning the fight. It wasn’t going to happen, but my mind was working it out just the same.

  Funny how you’ll do that.

  You want to win that kind of a fight, what you want to do is get the first punch in. Before he sees it coming. First you bomb Pearl Harbor, then you declare war.

  Let him think you’re backing out of it, even. Hey, I don’t want to fight you! And, when he’s afraid you’re gonna chicken out, you give him your best shot. Time it right, take him by surprise, and one punch is all you need.

  Wouldn’t have done that with old Lash LaRue, though. Oh, not because it wouldn’t have done the job. Would have worked just fine, put him face-down on the gravel, Wranglers and snap-fastened dude shirt and silly pompadour and all.

  But that’d cheat her out of the fight she was hoping to see.

  So what I’d have done, once we’re outside and good to go, was spread my hands in a can’t-we-work-this-out gesture, leaving it for him to sucker-punch me. But I’d be ready, even though I wouldn’t look ready, and I’d duck when he swung. They’re always headhunters, dudes like him, and I’d be ducking almost before he was swinging, and I’d bury a fist midway between his navel and his nuts.

  I’d do the whole deal with body shots. Why hurt your hands bouncing ’em off jawbone? Tall as he was, there was a whole lot of middle to him, and that’s where I’d hammer him, and the first shot would take the fight out of him, and the starch out of his punches, if he even got to throw a second one.

  I’d be aiming lefts at his liver. That’s on the right, pretty much on the belt line. It’s a legal punch in a boxing ring, never mind a parking lot, and if you find the spot it’s a one-punch finisher. I haven’t done it, or seen it done, but I believe it would be possible to kill a man with a liver shot.

  But I was running the script for a fight that wasn’t gonna happen, because my blonde had already written her own script and it turned out there wasn’t a fight scene in it. Sort of a pity, in a way, because there’d have been a certain satisfaction in taking that cowboy apart, but his liver would live to fight another day. Any damage it sustained would be from the shots and beers he threw at it, not from any fists of mine.

  And, you know, that would have been too easy, if all she was after was getting two roughnecks to duke it out over her. She had something a lot worse in mind.

  “I hope I wasn’t out of line,” she said. “Getting us out of there. But I was afraid.”

  She hadn’t seemed afraid.

  “That you’d hurt him,” she explained. “Kill him, even.”

  Her car was a Ford, the model the rental outfits were apt to give you. It was tucked between a pair of pickups, both of them showing dinged fenders and a lot of rust. She pressed a button to unlock the doors, and the headlights winked.

  I played the gentleman, tagging along at her side, reaching to open the driver’s side door for her. She hesitated, turned toward me, and it would have been a hard cue to miss.

  I took hold of her and kissed her.

  And yes, it was there, the chemistry, the biology, whatever you want to call it. She kissed back, and started to push her hips forward, then stopped herself, then couldn’t stop herself. I felt the warmth of her through her jeans and mine, and I thought of doing her right there, just throwing her down and doing her on the gravel, with the two pickups screening us from view. Throw her a fast hard one, pull out and stand up while she’s still quivering, and be out of there before she can get her game up and running.

  Goodbye, little lady, because we just did what we came here to do, so whatever you’ve got to say, well, why do I have to listen to it?

  I let go of her. She slipped behind the wheel, and I walked around the car and got in next to her. She started the engine but paused before putting the Ford in gear.

  She said, “My name’s Claudia.”

  Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.

  “Gary,” I said.

  “I don’t live around here.”

  Neither did I. Don’t live anywhere, really. Or, looking at it from another way, I live everywhere.

  “My motel is just up the road. Maybe half a mile.”

  She waited for me to say something. What? Are the sheets clean? Do they get HBO?

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Should we pick up something to drink? Because I don’t have anything in the room.”

  I said I was fine. She nodded, waited for a break in the traffic, pulled onto the road.

  I paid attention to the passing scenery, so I’d be able to come back for my car. A quarter mile down the road she took her right hand off the wheel and put it on my crotch. Her eyes never left the road. Another quarter mile and her hand returned to the wheel.

  Had to wonder what was the point of that. Making sure I had something for her? Keeping me from forgetting why we were going to he motel?

  Maybe just trying to show me she was every inch a lady.

  I suppose I just keep on getting what I keep on looking for.

  Because, face it, you don’t go prospecting for Susie Homemaker in a lowdown joint with a lot full of pickups and hogs. Walk into a room where you hear Kitty Wells singing how it wasn’t God who made honky tonk angels, well, what are you gonna find but a honky tonk angel yourself?

  You want a one-man woman, you want someone who’ll keep house and buy into the whole white-picket-fence trip, there’s other places you can go hunting.

  And I wasn’t showing up at Methodist socials, or meetings of Parents Without Partners, or taking poetry workshops at a continuing education program. I was—another song—looking for love in all the wrong places, so why blame fate for sending me a woman like Claudia?

  Or whatever her name was.

  The motel was a one-story non-chain number, presentable enough, but not where a woman like her would stay if all she wanted was a place to sleep. She’d pick a Ramada or a Hampton Inn, but what we had here was your basic no-tell motel. Clean enough, and reasonably well maintained, and set back from the road for privacy. Her unit was around the back, where the little Ford couldn’t be seen from the road. If it wasn’t a rental, if it was her own car, well, no one driving by could spot the plate.

  Like it mattered.

  Inside, with the door shut and the lock set, she turned to me and for the first time looked the least bit uncertain. Like she was trying to think what to say, or waiting for me to say something.

  Well, the hell with that. She’d already groped my crotch in the car, and that ought to be enough to break the ice. I reached for her and kissed her, and I got one hand on her ass and drew her in close.

  I could have peeled those jeans off of her, could have ripped that fine silk blouse. I had the impulse.

  More, I wanted to do some damage. Soften her up with a fist in her belly, see what a liver shot would do to her.

  Fact: I have thoughts like that. They’ll come to me, and when they do I always get a quick flash of my mother’s face. Just the quickest flash, like the flash of green you’ll sometimes get when you watch the sun go down over water. It’s gone almost before it registers, and afterward you can’t quite swear that you really saw it.

  Like that.

  I was gentle with her. Well, gentle enough. She didn’t pick me out of the crowd because she wanted tender words and butterfly kisses. I gave her what I sensed she wanted, but I didn’t take her any further than she wanted to go. It wasn’t hard to find her rhythm, wasn’t hard to build her up and hold her back and then let it all happen for her, staying with her all the way, coaxing the last little quiver out of the sweet machinery
of her body.

  Nothing to it, really. I’d been taught young. I knew what to do and how to do it.

  “I knew it would be good.”

  I was lying there, eyes closed. I don’t know what I’d been thinking about. Sometimes my mind just wanders, goes off by itself somewhere and thinks its own thoughts, and then a car backfires or something changes the energy in the room, and I’m back where I was, and whatever I was thinking about is gone without a trace.

  Must be like that for everybody, I suppose. Can’t be that I’m that special, me and my private thoughts.

  This time it was her voice, bringing the present back as sure as a thunderclap. I rolled over and saw she was half-sitting in the bed beside me. She’d taken the pillow from under her ass and had it supporting her head and shoulders.

  She had the air of a woman smoking a cigarette, but she wasn’t a smoker and there weren’t any cigarettes around. But it was like that, the cigarette afterwards, whether or not there was a cigarette in the picture.

  “All I wanted,” she said, “was to come in here and close a door and shut the world out, and then make everything in the world go away.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Like magic,” she said. “You didn’t come.”

  “No.”

  “Was there something—”

  “Sometimes I hold back.”

  “Oh.”

  “It makes the second time better. More intense.”

  “I can see how it would. But doesn’t it take remarkable control?”

  I hadn’t been trying to hold back. I’d been trying to throw her a fuck she wouldn’t quickly forget, that’s all. But I didn’t need to tell her all that.

  “We’ll be able to have a second time, won’t we? You don’t have to leave?”

  “I’ll be here all night,” she said. “We can even have breakfast in the morning, if you’d like.”

  “I thought you might have to get home to your husband.”