Crescent City Connection

gaping open, showing the tops of her breasts, but she didn’t mind, at the moment didn’t feel the least bit modest. She felt light-headed and a little bit in love. The flaps of her robe could fall where they wanted. She felt like running through a field of flowers with Troy, or maybe down a nice beach.
    “Well. You’d have to help me help you.” He had a come-hither grin on his face, real flirtatious.
    Dorise took his hand and started licking his fingers. “What you want me to help you with, baby?”
    “Well, you know. You don’t have to do anything. Not a damn thing. All you do, you look at where everything is, and you tell me. Tell me what you want, specially. Then you tell me about all the doors and windows, when the family comes and goes, how the alarm system works …”
    Shocked, Dorise jerked his fingers away from her lips. Still holding his hand, she stared at him, trying to read his face, to figure out if she’d heard him right. Up till the word “alarm,” she hadn’t got his drift at all. She thought he meant he’d buy her something she wanted. The “help me” part was something about getting in the mood, the way she heard it.
    It occurred to her now that she was sitting across the table from a burglar. She, Dorise, who’d been married to a big-time drug dealer and hadn’t even known it. She was a Christian now. She’d found a lot of comfort in the church. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her.
    “Dear God,” she said. “Dear God, what have you sent me?”
    Troy took it the wrong way. He said, “Your salvation, honey,” and chuckled. “Your salvation.”
    “I don’t need no salvation and I don’t need no criminal in my life, Troy Chauvin. You better go.”
    He grabbed her cheek and a little bit of her hair. “Aww, honey, you didn’t think I meant it, did you?”
    Slick as shit
, she thought.
Just slick as shit.
    He lit a cigarette and leaned back. “I almost had
me
fooled.”
    She gave him her evilest look, mean little eyes like racists have—old guys out in the country who hate everybody they aren’t related to and everybody they are as well.
    “Oh, come on, baby, don’t tell me you never think about it. I know different ’cause you already told me you do.” He shrugged. “So I was just doin’ it, too. Just playin’ the same game you already told me you like to play yourself. What if I was lord of the manor? What if all this was mine? What if I could give it all to the sweetest woman on the face of the Earth? With the most beautiful ass I ever saw in my life?”
    God, he was good-looking. She thought about it. Troy had a good job and no dependents. Why should he be a burglar, and when would he have time anyway?
    “Well, it would be kind of fun to just pretend Cammie’s house was like a supermarket. To just go shoppin’ for anything you want.”
    “Tha’s what I mean.”
    “She got silver! Whoa. Silver coffee things and silver tea things and—you know what? She keep her hairbrushes in some old silver vase-lookin’ thing.”
    “She got jewelry?”
    “Yeah, but I don’ like it much—mostly little bitty pearls and shit. Too dainty—you know?—for somebody like me. She got nice earrings though. Rubies that hang down. Think her mother left ’em to her—can’t imagine her wearin’ anything like that.”
    “Know what I’d like? A real nice stereo. She got anything like that?”
    “Oh, man, a whole room full. They got this great big room on the second floor they call the music room—got a piano in it and everything. But mostly stereo stuff. And a TV. Great big screen.”
    “VCR?”
    “You kiddin’? They got three kids. They probably got three VCRs.” She giggled. “Adult movies, too. I seen those.”
    “Wish she’d sell tickets to her house. You and me could have a bunch of fun in there, just for one afternoon, maybe.”
    “Too bad she so little. No fun to try on all her clothes.”
    “She got furs? Bet those’d fit.”
    “Wooo, I bet they would.” She leaned back and laughed, at peace again. Enjoying the game. He was right, it was her game. She played it all the time, she just didn’t approach it quite the same way he did—like it was halfway real.

Eight
    SKIP PLANTED HER foot hard and nasty on Nolan Bazemore’s spine as she cuffed him. She put her weight on the foot and almost enjoyed watching him wince, though in the end her own cruelty gave her the creeps.
    Internally, she shuddered at herself, but she said calmly, “Okay,