Shimmy Bang Sparkle(56)

All that mattered was that he would be all right. I patted Mr. Bozeman’s hand and told him, “One sec!” Still carrying Priscilla, I went to the bathroom, where I found his hearing aids in a small bowl by the sink. I brought them out to him, and he placed them in his ears.

As his hearing returned, so did his normal voice. “Do you think you could look after her?” Mr. Bozeman asked, giving Priscilla’s tummy a little tickle.

She looked at me, almost worried. She didn’t actually have eyebrows, but she kind of did. Or a ridge and whiskers where eyebrows would have been. “We’ll have a wonderful time, won’t we?” I said, rubbing her tiny paw between my thumb and first finger. “And you tell your dad that Stella isn’t gonna let him pay her this time either, OK?” I said to Priscilla.

Which she answered with a bite of the air to say, OK!

Mr. Bozeman’s cool hand patted my arm. “You’re a treasure, Stella,” he said as the EMTs wheeled him away. “You really are.”

I stayed with him until they closed the ambulance doors, and I watched it disappear down the street. Priscilla and I stood alone on the sidewalk under the bright, clear moonlight. I gave her paw a kiss, and only then did it occur to me that everything Nick and I had talked about had just gotten a little more complicated. Because Priscilla was definitely coming along.





26

NICK

I was awake enough to know that it definitely wasn’t Stella kissing me, not unless she’d been eating bacon and had grown a mustache overnight. Two hot paws bounced on my chest, and a tongue wiggled up my nostril. The bright light in the bedroom stung my eyes. When I got my bearings, I was met with a very small brown face, a dangling pink tongue, and a shrill, “Marf!”

It was the dog I’d met when I was wrestling with that oxygen compressor. Priscilla. What she was doing here, I had no clue. But there were a lot worse ways to wake up than a dog in your face. “Heyyyy there, little one,” I said, and gave her nose a rub.

And she flopped over happily on my chest.

“Where did you . . . Priscilla! Cookie!” I heard Stella whisper, followed by the pitter-patter of her feet on the carpet. “Priscilla! Just let him . . . Oh!” she gasped, when she dashed into the room and found Priscilla standing on top of me, on all fours on my chest. “Well, look at you two.”

Very slowly I walked my fingers up my abs toward Priscilla. She dropped to her front paws and lifted her rear end. She was, of course, precariously close to stepping on my balls. But goddamn was she cute.

Stella reached out for the dog. “You go back to sleep. Don’t mind us.”

Priscilla tumbled off my chest and dove into the covers, her little ass wagging and her tail whapping the sheets. She high-centered herself on my thigh, her warm, furless stomach sliding along my skin, and tumbled into the V between my legs. She tried to dig into the mattress, furiously and briefly, before flopping down, exhausted, with her bony jaw on my knee. Her tail kept wiggling under the covers, and her breath was hot against my calf. “What exactly is she doing here?” I asked, rubbing my eyes with my thumb and forefinger.

“Well, OK. So here’s the thing. There’s been a bit of a . . .” Stella looked up at the fan, slowly spinning on the ceiling. The end of the chain spun in a regular circle. “. . . a complication. In our plan.”

Priscilla inhaled so hard I felt my briefs move, and then she sneezed. I picked up the sheets. Priscilla shoved her face under my leg, her cold, wet nose against my inner thigh and her big black eyes looking innocently at me like, Oh no, I didn’t sneeze on your man parts. Promise! I closed her back inside her sheet fort.

“Spill it, cutie.” I tapped my chest. “Hit me. I can take it.”

Stella sat down on the edge of the bed. “Mr. Bozeman, Priscilla’s dad, the one with the oxygen compressor . . . remember?”

Remember? I’m still having twinges. “I’m with you so far.”

“He had to go to the hospital for a hernia this morning. He’s fine!” she said quickly, and pressed her hand to her chest. “Thank God, but he just called to tell me he’s going to need to stay for a few nights. Until Thursday.” Stella grimaced and waited for me to respond.

Thursday. The heist was planned for Wednesday. Complication indeed. “So what you’re saying is, the dog is coming with us.”

“Yeah. That’s the size of it.” Stella sighed like she was frustrated, but then her face softened when she rubbed Priscilla through the quilt. In response, she rolled onto her back, and her legs poked at the cotton like she was swimming the backstroke. “She won’t fit on the bike. We tried a backpack while you were sleeping.” Stella shook her head. “Disaster.”

Gone were the good old days of me, the open road, and a solo heist with no trace behind me. Now there was a woman I wanted to take care of, and there was a dog who needed to come with. The whole thing was feeling pretty fucking adult . . .

And I liked how it felt. A whole hell of a lot.

Stella slid off the bed into a crouch and started playing peekaboo with Priscilla, who answered every drop of the sheets with a wiggle and a sniff of my shorts. Stella snort-giggled against the mattress. “We can rent a car. But the problem is, there aren’t that many places that take dogs. And even if there were . . .” She trailed off.