Dark Places Read Free Page B

town?”
    The man—or boy, he sounded young—yelled something at someone back behind him that included the phrase, “I already did them,” and then groaned into my ear.
    “You in Kansas City? You live in Kansas City, right? Libby?”
    I was about to hang up, but the guy started yelling
hel-ooo-o? hel-ooo-o?
into the line, like I was some dazed kid not paying attention in class, so I told him I did live in Kansas City and what did he want. He gave one of those
heheheh
laughs, those
you-won’t-believe-this-but
laughs.
    “Well, like I said, I wanted to talk to you about an appearance. Maybe.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Well, I’m in a special club … there’s a special club meeting here next week, and …”
    “What kind of club?”
    “Well, it’s kind of different. It’s sort of an underground thing …”
    I said nothing, let him twist. After the initial bravura, I could feel him get uneasy. Good.
    “Oh crap, it’s impossible to explain over the phone. Can I, uh, buy you a coffee?”
    “It’s too late for coffee,” I said, and then realized he probably didn’t even mean tonight, probably meant sometime this week, and then I wondered again how I’d kill the next four or five hours.
    “A beer? Wine?” he asked.
    “When?”
    Pause. “Tonight?”
    Pause. “Fine.”
    LYLE WIRTH LOOKED like a serial killer. Which meant he probably wasn’t one. If you were chopping up hookers or eating runaways,you’d try to look normal. He was sitting at a grimy card table in the middle of Tim-Clark’s Grille, a humid dive attached to a flea market. Tim-Clark’s had become famed for its barbeque and was now being gentrified, an uneasy mix of grizzled old-timers and flop-haired dudes in skinny jeans. Lyle was neither: He was somewhere in his very early twenties, with wavy, mousy hair he’d tried to tame with too much gel in all the wrong places, so that it was half fuzzy, half shiny points. He wore wireless glasses, a tight Members Only windbreaker, and jeans that were skinny, but not in a cool way, just in a tight way. He had features that were too delicate to be attractive on a man. Men shouldn’t have rosebud lips.
    He caught my eye as I walked toward him. He wasn’t recognizing me at first, just assessing me, this lady-stranger. When I’d almost reached the table, it clicked for him: the freckles, the baby-bird skeleton, the pug nose that got pugger the longer someone held eye contact.
    “Libby!” he started, realized it was too familiar, and added, “Day!” He stood up, pulled out one of the folding chairs, looked like he regretted the chivalry, and sat back down. “Your hair’s blond.”
    “Yup,” I said. I hate people who start conversations with facts— what are you supposed to do with that?
Sure is hot today. Yes, it is
. I peered around to signal for a drink. A miniskirted waitress with voluptuous black hair had her pretty backside to us. I table-tapped my fingers til she turned around, gave me a face that had to have been at least seventy years old, her pancake makeup pooling in the crepe of her cheeks, purple veins marbling her hands. Some part of her creaked as she bent down for my order, snuffing when I asked for just a PBR.
    “The brisket is really good here,” Lyle said. But he wasn’t having it either, just sipping on the dregs of something milky.
    I don’t eat meat, really, not since seeing my family sliced open— I was still trying to get Jim Jeffreys and his sinewy steak out of my head. I shrugged no, waited for my beer, looking around like a tourist. Lyle’s fingernails were dirty, first thing I noticed. The old waitress’s black wig was ajar: Strands of sweaty white hair stuck to her neck. She tucked a few back under as she grabbed a packet of fries sizzling beneath the heat lamp. A fat man sat by himself at the next table, eating short ribs and examining his flea-market purchase:a kitschy old vase with a mermaid on it. His fingers left grease marks on the mermaid’s breasts.
    The