A Better Goodbye Read Free

sound that registered on Suki was a low grinding noise. When she looked around, she saw other drivers staring and two Asian guys in a jacked-up Honda Civic pointing at her and laughing, like this was what she got for hanging out with a rice chaser old enough to be her father. Her first impulse was to flip them off.
    Then Barry said “shit” one more time, and she turned her attention back to him. “What should we do?” she asked.
    He had both hands on the wheel now and he was moving into the right lane, hunting for a parking place. He didn’t look at her when he said, “You should get me a brain transplant.”
    â€œNo, don’t say that.”
    â€œI was fucking stupid enough to try putting it down when we were moving. Should have parked.”
    â€œIt’ll be all right.”
    â€œNot if I fucked up the goddamn car.”
    He hit the brake when he saw a Lincoln Navigator pulling out of a parking space. But it stopped halfway onto the street because the woman behind the wheel was busy yakking on her cell phone. “Fucking bitch,” he said.
    Suki flinched. She didn’t like the side of Barry that was emerging any more than Barry liked sitting here knowing that everybody who saw his Rolls’s convertible top waving in the breeze thought he was a rich idiot. She would have thought the same thing if she’d been driving down the street. And she had to stifle a giggle when she realized she couldn’t wait to tell someone about what had happened. Not Contessa, but maybe Brooke. No, not Brooke either, because she’d turn around and tell Contessa. Then they’d both dis Barry the way they dissed most clients, and Suki felt too protective of him for that. But she had to find someone. This was just too good, you know?

    Stepping into the apartment, she didn’t hear anything except the icemaker in the fridge. There was no sign of Contessa and Brooke—they were probably still in session. She walked toward the living room and saw that the coffee table’s glass top had been knocked sideways. A closer look told her it was cracked. One of the cushions had been pulled away from the sofa, too. Suki, starting to feel strange, off-balance, moved to straighten things up, the way she always did, and almost stepped on one of the phones. It was lying on the floor, smashed, as though someone had jumped on it.
    She glanced around the room, the sun sinking in the west, its light streaming through the vertical blinds. There was a dark slash on one of the walls that hadn’t been there when she left. Below it lay what she guessed had put it there: the other phone, now cracked and useless.
    Suki’s breath caught in her chest. The cops must have busted Contessa and Brooke. Alarms were going off in her head as she wondered if there had been anything with her name on it lying around. And were the cops waiting for her to come back? This was all new to her. The only other time she’d thought she was going to get busted, she was working in a musician’s guesthouse on Beverly Glen and another masseuse got all cocaine paranoid and started playing head games. Suki had forgotten her purse in her rush to get out of there, and when she went back to get it she was so scared she almost wet herself. That wouldn’t happen now.
    Purse in hand, she was starting to leave when she heard something besides the fridge and the hum of traffic out on Sepulveda. Crying, maybe. Or a moan. Wait, there it was again, coming from behind the master bedroom’s closed door: “Motherfuckers.” Definitely Contessa. But she didn’t sound nasty, the way she usually did. There were tears in her voice. And pain.
    Suki reached for the doorknob as if it were a coiled snake. When she finally made herself turn it, she opened the door an inch at a time. Six inches in, she was greeted by a scream and Brooke shouting, “No, go away! Leave us alone!”
    â€œWhat are you talking