Million Dollar Road (6 page)

So turn up the Obi-Wan Factor, Con thought with renewed determination.

“Summer job, huh? Home from college?”

“I'm not in college,” Lireinne Hooten said, her voice flat and bordering on antagonistic. “I've been working at the farm, like, six months. You just never saw me 'cause you're front office, but I'm there most of the freaking day, five days a week.”

“Well, I sure wouldn't have forgotten if I
had
seen you.” Heavy as a chunk of firewood, Con's attempt at flattery fell into the conversation with a dead thud. And did he sound creepy? He must have, because now she looked uncomfortable. One long-fingered hand tightened on the door handle.

“There! It's just up ahead, there on the right,” she said suddenly, pointing. Reluctant to let the girl out of his sight, Con nonetheless pulled the Lexus onto a potholed, weedy shell drive.

“Thanks for the ride.” The hoser—Lireinne, her name was Lireinne, it could almost be “Lorraine,” but wasn't—opened the door and collected her plastic bags. She swung those incredible legs out of the car, her red flip-flops coming to rest on the white shells as she glanced back at him. “And thanks for, like, not killing me back there, I guess.”

“You're welcome, Lireinne.” She seemed awfully young to Con, now that he thought about it. “Say, uh . . . how old are you, anyway?”

There was an unfamiliar, previously unimaginable note in his voice that sounded an awful lot like pleading for crumbs, but Con was on fire. He had to know more about her; he couldn't wait until he got to the office today to pull up her employment forms.

“Eighteen.” She got out of the car.

Only eighteen.

Jesus.

“See you around the alligator farm, then,” Con said, feeling ineffectual, and worse,
old
.

With a toss of her hair over her shoulder, Lireinne looked him straight in the eye with a wry-mouthed assurance.

“No, you won't. Nobody does.” She shut the car door in a
thunk
of finality.

And then she was swaying up the shell road with her Dollar General bags and Con still had to go buy a damned trampoline for his wife. He'd gotten nowhere with this girl, worse than nowhere, and that was more humiliating than a glass of champagne in the kisser. He hadn't struck out so thoroughly in a very, very long time. Obi-Wan sure needed to put more effort into this girl.

But he'd see her again. By God, he would. She worked at the farm, didn't she? Hell, a girl like this one must hate being a hoser.

Maybe . . . Con mused as the car idled. Maybe if he brought Lireinne out of the barns and into the office? He could give her a promotion. What position he could promote her to was a good question, but that way he'd see her every day. That might work.

It was definitely worth a shot, Con decided, watching Lireinne's graceful back receding into the trees. In fact, it might be the only shot he was going to get: he couldn't very well try to make time with this girl while she was hosing the barns.

Lireinne disappeared, hidden by the dense brush and live oaks around the bend in the road. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobe, Con thought.

You're my only hope.

G
reat
. After Mr. Costello had dropped her off, Lireinne opened the door to the trailer, stopped dead in the entrance, and was instantly aggravated by the scene inside the front room.

How freaking great.

Her younger brother, Wolf, was hanging out with his lame-ass friend Bolt. Both of them were camped in front of the TV, wired like idiots into that lame-ass EverQuest video game they were always playing on Wolf's lame-ass Xbox.

Disgusted, Lireinne dropped the Dollar General bags of toilet tissue, laundry detergent, and paper towels on the worn sectional sofa and planted her hands on her hips. When Wolf and Bolt were hooked into that stupid sword-and-sorcery crap, it was like they were buried alive, deep underground in a plywood box with only an air hose connecting them to the world above. With an aggrieved sigh, Lireinne crossed into the kitchen area, heading to the refrigerator to look for something cold to drink.

And could this crap get any greater? The fridge was empty except for a lone bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a half-empty jug containing orange juice of a dubious age. Wolf and Bolt had drunk up all the Coke. The empty liter bottle was on the floor next to them, as well as a crumpled bag formerly containing chili-flavored Fritos.

The rest of the results of their foraging expedition lay on the sticky countertop in a debris-field of dirty Tupperware, lunch-meat packages, an empty bag of bread, and an open jar of mayonnaise with a fly in it.

“You're a freaking
slob,
Larry.”

Lireinne's half brother's given name was Larry Duane Hooten, but he wouldn't answer to anything but “Wolf” anymore, not since he'd been a freshman. That was when he'd started hanging with the Goth kids at Covington High and had gone all black clothes, Doc Martens, and death-obsessed. Lireinne called him Larry whenever she was pissed off at him and wanted to get his attention.

Well, she was getting pissed now. With rising indignation, Lireinne began to clean up the mess. Looks like somebody's gotta be the girl in the house, she thought. That's me.

“Did you remember to check on Mose?” she snapped, gathering up the trash and stuffing it in the garbage can.

The Xbox thundered in response. On a mountaintop somewhere in the land of Norrath, an army of orcs fell upon Wolf's sword-waving avatar and arms and legs flew. Wolf grunted. Whether that was a reply to her question or a reaction to being vastly outnumbered, Lireinne couldn't tell.

“So be that way,
Larry
. Hey, Bolt,” she said, feeling snide. “I can see your ass-crack.”

Without looking away from the TV, greasy-haired Bolt yanked his black T-shirt down to cover his Crisco-white buttocks.

“Bite me, Scar-face,” Bolt sniggered, his hands busy on the control pad. “I can see your tits.”

What a loser. At least he couldn't call her fat anymore. Whenever he wanted to mess with his big sister, Wolf swore Bolt had a huge crush on Lireinne. Some freaking crush.

“Leave her alone,” Wolf muttered, fingers flying on his own control pad. Orc body-parts scattered across the TV screen like wood chips from a giant buzz saw.

Lireinne shrugged. She'd risk a glass of OJ since the Coke was finished, but when she looked in the cupboard she discovered all the glasses were used and dirty. “You two make me sick.” Piling everything into the sink, she squirted dish detergent on the mess and ran the faucet to cover it.

“Hey, Wolf?” Without much expectation, Lireinne tried again. “Hey—like, Mose's
water
? Hello?”

Purple lightning erupted in answer. Lireinne gave up. Be fair, she thought. It's not like it's Wolf's job anyway. She stomped back outside into the heat and humidity to go check on Mose. Sure enough, the old horse's buckets were dry and dusty. She filled them from the swimming pool, wishing for the thousandth time she had a hose long enough to reach.

“Still haven't gotten your fly spray yet. Sorry, boy.”

By the time Bud got home this afternoon from work, the feed store would be closed, probably. Poor Mose. The flies were like a disease this time of year, a buzzing summer head cold. Lireinne slapped at a big horsefly biting the old Thoroughbred's shoulder while Mose sucked the water down in big gulps. The bug was reduced to a smear, her palm coming away bloody. Hah! she thought. Take
that
.

“One down, a zillion to go. See you later, Mose.”

Back inside the trailer, Lireinne gathered her own bag of shopping—some more dog biscuits for Snowball, cotton balls, and nail polish. She stalked past the two boys without speaking and headed to her room to put a door between her and all that monster slaying and treasure collecting.

Getting to shut the door was the only advantage to being the girl in the house: her stepfather got the other bedroom while Wolf slept on the sofa, something he'd done once Lireinne and her brother had gotten too big to share a room. This summer, that had seemed to suit Wolf just fine. He'd stayed up practically all night, every night, playing EverQuest like a skinny, black-clad bat with an Xbox.

Lireinne worried about Wolf's being alone so much, except for that creep Bolt. Why couldn't her brother have some normal friends? It would be September soon. When was he going back to school? Lireinne hoped he'd meet a nice girl this year, maybe one who was into band, played the clarinet or whatever. Someone who didn't have multiple piercings or a shaved head. Like, did Goth girls
try
to be ugly?

On her single bed beneath the faded travel posters of Paris and Oslo Scotch-taped to the wall, Lireinne settled herself to paint her toenails. She'd rescued the posters from the Dumpster behind the school a couple of years ago when the World History teacher had thrown them out.

For years, Lireinne's big, secret dream had been to go to Paris. The posters were supposed to be a reminder that sometimes people were so freaking lucky—or rich—that they got to get on a plane and go wherever they wanted. The taped-up pages from
Vogue,
the ones of cool, superthin models hanging out on the Champs-Élysées and at the Eiffel Tower, were like an invitation to a party she knew she'd probably never get to attend, but Lireinne harbored a secret hope that someday, somehow, she'd find herself there. It was a stupid hope, though: unlike her, those hyper-elegant, racehorse girls were, like, so totally in charge of their own lives. They'd never find themselves hosing at an alligator farm, not them. They wouldn't be caught dead in shrimp boots instead of Jimmy Choos.

“Bien sûr, chérie.”
Lireinne had taken French her sophomore year and still tried to remember the little she'd learned, just in case she made it to Paris before she died.

She'd just finished painting her toenails with a new neon-pink polish when through her closed and locked door she heard her stepfather come home. The walls in the trailer were so thin that even over the racket of the Xbox, Bud might as well be talking in her room.

“Hey, Wolf. Yo, Bolt. What y'all up to?” Bud sounded worn-out.

His Saturday job with the well-diggers over at the Pentecostal church was a bitch and a half. Poor Bud never got a day off. He worked all week for the Walmart distribution center in Hammond unloading freight on the dock, and then he'd spend his nights and weekends doing part-time work with the well-drilling outfit. Oh, once in a while he'd get a Sunday free, but then he went all comatose in his room like he was a freaking turnip.

Bud had always said that if you worked hard you got ahead. Lireinne had her doubts about the truth of that. Bud Hooten worked harder than anyone Lireinne had known in her whole life and he was always, always behind.

Outside in the hall, his heavy footsteps set the trailer floor to shivering on its cement blocks. The footsteps stopped outside her door when Bud knocked gently. “Lireinne? You in there, honey?” Bud had always been really great about her locked-door policy.

Lireinne screwed the top back on the bottle of pink lacquer. “Coming.” Careful not to smear the wet polish, she walked on her heels across the matted shag carpet over to the door and opened it to her stepfather. “Hey, Bud. How's it going?”

“It's going.” A heavily muscled, bald-headed man, his hairy arms covered in faded merchant marine tattoos, Bud Hooten leaned against the door frame and smiled. “I got off early, for once. You need to run into town today?”

“Hell, yes!” Elated, Lireinne threw her arms around her stepfather, breathing in the not-unpleasant, familiar smells of clean sweat, Red Man chewing tobacco, and motor oil. “I really, really need to get to the feed store before it closes, but can we go to Walmart, too? I'm out of my shampoo, conditioner—like, girl stuff, you know? My hair always gets frizzy if I don't have the right conditioner for it, and I want to buy this month's
Vogue,
too.”

Rubbing his stubbled jaw with a grease-stained hand, Bud said, “Hold up there, sugar. I got to get clean first. Can't take my little girl to town smelling like a goat.” He opened the door to the cramped, shared bathroom off the hall. “Just give me a minute and we'll go. Swear.”

“Whatever. Get clean,” Lireinne said with a wave. “My polish needs to dry anyway.”

Twenty minutes later, after Bud had reamed Wolf a new one for leaving the kitchen a wreck, giving him strict orders to wash up the dishes in the sink and put away the paper goods Lireinne had bought, they walked out to the truck in the hot, oblique sunlight of the late August afternoon.

“Don't you be worrying 'bout the feed store. We got plenty of time,” Bud said, throwing up the truck's rusted tailgate. “Ol' Ricky never closes much before six on Saturdays, waiting on all the farmers to drag their asses into town, and Walmart never closes anymore.”

He opened the passenger door for Lireinne the way he'd done since she was a little girl, just as though she were someone special, a lady or something. She climbed inside the truck, shifting a pipe wrench and a jumbo roll of duct tape from the bench seat onto the floor with the other crap, taking care to avoid the plastic spit cup riding on the hump of the gearshift.

“Weird,” Lireinne mused out loud as Bud got in behind the steering wheel.

She was remembering Mr. Costello. He'd opened the door for her, too. He'd even done that out-there, embarrassing bowing thing. She tried to imagine Bud with a Lexus and just couldn't see it, but his opening the door for her was always nice. Bud did stuff like that without making a big deal out of it, but Mr. Costello had been just sort of, well,
weird
. Maybe not weird in a scary way, but weird all the same.

“What's weird?” Bud asked, backing down the drive.

“Nothing.”

Lireinne didn't want to talk about her near-death experience. Bud wasn't all that cool with her walking to the Dollar General as it was: the last thing he needed to hear was how she'd almost wound up smushed like an armadillo and gotten a ride with the weirdo who'd almost hit her, a weirdo who was her boss. She probably should've been nicer to Mr. Costello, but she'd never even met the guy before. It had been taking a chance she only rarely risked, catching a ride with a man, but Lireinne had already walked three miles to the Dollar General and two more on the way home. The bags had been so heavy that she'd decided that taking the chance was worth it. Besides, it wasn't like she'd been
rude
to him.

There hadn't been any trouble, not really. Everything had turned out okay, Lireinne decided.

“How's the well going?” She rolled down her window. The truck's air-conditioning had quit earlier that summer and chances were it wouldn't be coming back. The air tangled her long black hair around her face, the warm rush of wind making it hard to be heard in the cab.

“That job's a cluster-fuck, pardon my French,” Bud shouted. “We got down another thousand feet, the drill shaft sheared off, and then that dumb-ass Ottis tried to back it out but . . .”

Bud's update on the ill-starred Pentecostal well went on for nearly the whole ride into Covington. Lireinne tried to act as though she was really listening while she ran down her Walmart list in her head. A copy of
Vogue,
shampoo, conditioner, razor blades, a box of Tampax.

Don't forget deodorant, she reminded herself. At least the old guy this afternoon had smelled good—hell, Mr. Costello had smelled
rich,
him and his Lexus both. And for sure he'd barely been able to keep his eyes on the road, she thought, uncomfortable at the memory of his sidelong, hungry glances. Maybe accepting a ride from him hadn't been such a hot idea after all, now that she thought about it.

Once, Lireinne had sort of dated a guy who'd looked at her just like that. Lanky, chinless Brett Schenker had eyed her that same way the afternoon he'd asked her to go with him to the basketball game.

Like she was a piece of meat, and he was a starving dog.

 

In high school Lireinne had been a shy, plump bird on the outermost edge of the vast flock of other students, never called on in class and wanting it that way, sitting by herself at lunch while everyone else seemed to have a crowd.

Maybe it was because she'd grown up so far from town that making friends seemed impossible, perhaps it was because she had no mother at home to teach her the ways of making friends. But whatever the reason, by the time Lireinne was in high school by herself was just the way it was going to be. By herself and practically invisible.

When the older boy had asked her out, though, Lireinne couldn't believe her luck. She hadn't understood that all Brett had wanted from her was one thing. Television sitcoms and chick-flick videos hadn't prepared her for that particular trap. She'd been stupidly thrilled, assuming this date might be the beginning of something special. Again, if she'd had a mother, an older woman in her life, maybe someone would have warned her how single-minded, how determined some boys could be when in pursuit of that one thing.