The Shake
arrived. I got in the car and closed the door. “Good evening, Karla.”She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, tennis shoes and her black leather jacket. “Good evening, Shake.”
I handed her a manila envelope. “It’s payday.”
She smiled and took the envelope. “Are we going somewhere?”
“Not tonight. I just wanted to pay you for November.”
She opened the envelope and looked inside, then at me. “It looks like a lot.”
“Twelve thousand dollars. Five thousand is your base salary for November. There’s five hundred for driving me to Richardson’s on the first, five hundred for taking me to the movie on the sixteenth, a thousand for talking to Hamilton on the twenty-first. That’s seven thousand. The other five thousand is for that little episode out in Sloughhouse on the sixth. Is that acceptable?”
She held the envelope open in her lap, staring at the money inside. “You’re paying me an extra five thousand dollars for fucking up? I was afraid you were going to fire me.”
“It’s not for fucking up,” I said. “It’s for coping with a difficult situation.”
“I don’t think I coped all that well,” she said, with obvious sincerity. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d probably still be there, in the bushes somewhere, dead.”
“You were only there in the first place because I had you take me there. The thought of firing you never crossed my mind. In fact, I was worried you might quit.”
She was still staring into the envelope.
“You thought about quitting, didn’t you?” I asked.
“I thought about it,” she admitted. “I think if you would have let that guy walk away, I would have quit. I know there are lots of guys like him in the world. I mean, I know they’re out there. I’m not naive. But if he’d walked away, there wouldn’t have been anything to balance out the fear. Does that make any sense?”
“I think I understand. And that’s why I want to pay you. For your courage. Not so much the courage you showed facing some vicious shit who got pleasure out of hurting people. That wasn’t the main thing.”
She looked at me questioningly. “It wasn’t?”
“No, the main thing was the courage you showed in coping with what I did to him. That may sound odd to you, but I appreciate the fact that you didn’t lose your grip, or come back later and ask me to justify what I’d done. For that, I have no problem paying you.”
Karla folded the envelope and stuck it in her jacket pocket.
“By the way,” I said, “do you remember when you picked up the car from Tony’s garage and he mentioned a friend of mine named Mio?”
“Yeah, I remember asking you if she was your wife and you didn’t answer.”
“She’s not my wife. Just a friend. She’s going to be in Sacramento for a few days, sometime in the next week or so. I was wondering if you like to dance?”
“Yes,” she said, tentatively. “I love dancing.”
“That’s good. So does Mio. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to go out with us one night. We’ll probably drive down to San Francisco.”
“Okay. I take it I’m not going just as the driver?”
“Correct. I’m not much of a dancer. I was hoping you could provide some company for Mio. She may invite Tony, too. If so, he’ll also be glad you came. He’s rather shy and he gets a lot of startled attention on a dance floor, surrounded by regular-sized people.”
Karla laughed. “Isn’t Tony married?”
“Yes, happily. His relationship with Mio is strictly business.”
“I thought he was a mechanic.”
I wasn’t sure how much of Tony’s relationship with Mio I wanted to discuss. There wasn’t anything secret about it. I simply preferred to let them both do their own PR work. “He is a mechanic. You can ask them about it yourself, if you’re interested.”
I also wasn’t sure if I should try to somehow prepare Karla for meeting Mio. Of course, there wasn’t any way to do that. With Mio, it was always trial by fire. I decided there wasn’t any point.
“I’m not sure yet what Mio’s plans are, but I’ll be in touch.”
Chapter 16
Mio arrived the following Thursday, about an hour before dawn. I was in the shoebox reading Extinction, a novel by Thomas Bernhard, when I heard a noise coming from my office. I’d been surfing some history sites earlier and my computer was still on, so I woke it up and clicked the icon that opened the office surveillance camera. Mio was standing next to the desk, removing her earrings. The lights in the office had been off earlier, but now the desk lamp was on. This provided enough light for the camera, which, as the next couple of minutes left no doubt, was the reason she’d turned on the lamp. She knew I would be watching.
She dropped her earrings into her handbag lying on the desk, then proceeded to remove several long pointed needles, about the size of chopsticks, from the mass of hair collected in a bun at the back of her head. With each needle the bun became less compact, finally falling in a thick black wave that reached below mid-thigh. She unbuttoned her blouse, took it off, folded it neatly and laid it on the desk, then did the same with her skirt. I had never known Mio to wear a bra. She paused briefly, as if considering, then lowered her panties until they fell to the floor. Her pubic hair was thick, luxurious and black as night. She scratched it vigorously, fluffing up the matted hair, then stepped gracefully out of her shoes and walked toward the secret panel leading to the shoebox.
At this point, I was as beside myself as a vampire is likely to get. I dashed back to my lounge chair and picked up the novel, pretending to be absorbed. When the panel slid open and Mio stepped through, I looked up in mock surprise, using the book to conceal the bulge in my pants. No matter how