Shimmy Bang Sparkle(90)

Playing on the concrete steps was a chubby little boy I’d passed on the way up. He was making a toy car drive up the metal railing. Next to him, sitting on the concrete, was a pair of small, bright-blue glasses. The Texan waddled down the steps and hip-checked the sweet little boy.

And then it happened.

That cheese puff–eating son of a bitch stepped on the little boy’s glasses.

It was Gus all over again. It was the injustice, the anger, the unfairness of life itself. A torrent of emotion overtook me—I felt like one of those Icelandic lava fields I’d seen on the Discovery Channel. One second I was strong and solid. The next second I was churning and bubbling and boiling.

The magenta mist was gone. And all I saw was red.

I was sick to death of all of this. Of the worry, of the loss, of the anger, the uncertainty, and the heartbreak. Of a life that had to be lived in secret. I was sick of pretending I was fine. Because it wasn’t fine. None of this was fine. And I wasn’t going to do it anymore.

I wasn’t just going to bite the stars. I was going to rip those sparkly little suckers right out of the sky.





45

STELLA

The Shimmy Shimmy Bangs were back in business. And miracle of miracles, so was my beloved Jeep. It now had a black hood and a blue side panel, but it ran, it had heat, and with the stereo roaring, Ruth, Roxie, and I headed east on Lomas.

We did a blow-by of the strip club that the Texan owned to get the lay of the land. Ruth was in the back, so she could keep her still-booted foot up on the bench seat. Roxie rode shotgun. She smelled like the perfume counter at Macy’s and had her hair pulled back in a tight, neat bun.

Pony Up wasn’t open for business yet. Aside from a small cluster of raccoons tearing apart a garbage bag, there was only one thing in the parking lot: the Texan’s Cadillac, now with a slightly larger and more obnoxious pair of horns.

“Guys like that give men a bad rap,” Roxie said to her reflection in the visor mirror, with a smack of her matte fuchsia lips.

“Guys like that give everything they touch a bad rap,” I said, and took a left into a mostly for-lease strip mall just down the street. So as not to appear suspicious, I pulled up in front of the nail salon in the corner space.

A little Asian lady appeared at the door. “You want a mani-pedi?” she hollered at absolutely the top of her lungs. We could hear it crystal clear over the heater on full blast.

“Oooooh!” cooed Roxie. “Now there’s an idea.” She wiggled her already perfectly manicured fingers. I assumed she wiggled her toes too, but they were impossible to see in her black suede stiletto boots. From my purse, I pulled a pair of elbow-length black satin gloves, and Roxie slid them on like she’d been doing it every day of her life.

“The mani-pedi can wait. Carrot second,” I told Roxie as I killed the engine.

“Stick first,” Ruth chimed in.

“Copy that,” said Roxie, and swatted at her own knee. With a riding crop.



About ten minutes later, I got a text from Roxie. I stared at it for a second, but it made no sense whatsoever. It was like a hieroglyph. So I showed it to Ruth. In another time, another place, she’d have been hired to crack codes in some top secret location. Surely she could figure out Roxie’s emoji salad.

“The pig face has been shirt and tie,” Ruth read aloud.

“A simple Done would’ve been fine,” I said, trying to piece together the pictogram. “Or a kissy face. Or the A-OK fingers. Or even confetti! I’d have gotten that one right off the bat! But no, instead we get a pig and a shirt.” Whatever it meant, though, it certainly seemed like it was good news. It wasn’t like a cop car and a frown or something. So I put my Jeep in reverse and waved to the little lady at the nail salon. I headed across the empty side street and around to the back entrance of Pony Up. The back door was emblazoned with a PRIVATE ONLY stencil in spray paint, and the door was wedged open with the riding crop.

“The pig has been dressed?” Ruth said, cocking her head at the text.

But when I looked at it again, I had it. “The pig has been tied.”

Which Ruth answered with a sudden, never-before-heard laugh-snort. I turned to her with my mouth slightly open. “Did you just . . . laugh? Out loud?”

She looked at the text again, and it happened again. “What, is that funny?” she said through a wonderful giggle.

“I have no idea,” I said, marveling at her. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard her laugh. “But it’s really nice to see you look so . . . happy.”

Still smiling, she handed the phone back to me, reassumed her cucumber-calm exterior, and slid out of the back seat with all the grace of a dancer, in spite of the boot.

The back hallway was quiet and only lit by the dismal green of the exit sign above. I dislodged the riding crop from the hinges of the door and ran the wrapped leather cane end through my mittened palm. We went down the hallway toward the next patch of light. And there, inside the office, we found Roxie and the Texan.

He was shirtless and tied with a few different silk scarves to the office chair. His chest hair formed sparse tufts in very random places, like a badly cared for Chia Pet. His ankles were bound together with the robe tie from the naughty kimono and cuffed to the leg of his desk. He was blindfolded and had a bright-red ball gag in his mouth, and his belt was undone. But not his pants. Thank you, sweet baby Jesus. Also, in his ears were a pair of earbuds that we’d picked up at the gas station—none of us had been willing to put our earbuds in the Texan’s surely dandruffy ears, thank you very much. They were bright pink and attached to one of the burner phones we’d bought for the job.