Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

exactly where that was, but she knew it sure as hell wasn’t here.
    Even dressed in a frayed leopard-patterned tunic over tights and ballet slippers, Miranda Seton was adept at fading into whatever room Cherelle wasn’t occupying. Bit by bit, a few moments at a time, Miranda had managed to do two things since the men left. The first was to put the living room back together. The second was to sip at a teapot full of vodka until the world took on its customary reassuring haze.
    Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough vodka in all of Las Vegas for Tim’s mother to feel good about sharing space with her son’s grim, hard-bitten girlfriend, so Miranda just did her best to be invisible. After a lifetime of practice, she was good at it.
    But it annoyed the hell out of her the way Cherelle scattered her things around like some kind of princess born to be waited on. Car keys, lipstick, a comb, a scarf, shoes, mascara brush, crumpled paper towels she had used for napkins, and God knows what else. It was a wonder the silly bitch ever found anything again unless someone followed her around picking up after her.
    Finding herself back in the kitchen, Miranda took a healthy hit directly from the teapot spout. As she put the chicken-shaped pot down, she spotted yet another piece of Cherelle’s life scattered on the counter just behind the place where the teapot’s “nest” usually was. There was a wad of tissues there, too, as though Cherelle had been pawing through her huge new backpack/purse looking for something, throwing things right and left in her hurry to get to the bottom of the soft leather bag.
    With the vodka streaking courage through her veins, Miranda grabbed the plastic room key and tissues and hurried out to the living room. She nearly ran into Cherelle when the girl turned around with a cat-quickness that startled Miranda. She was used to life lived at a slow and dreamy pace.
    “What,” Cherelle snapped, a demand rather than a question.
    “I’m tired of picking up your stuff, that’s what.” Miranda held out the evidence. “Look what I found in the kitchen.”
    A swipe of Cherelle’s hand sent the electronically coded plastic rectangle and the crushed tissues flying over the back of the couch. The wadded tissues wedged between the wall and the top of the couch. The key kept going to the floor.
    “That was dumb,” Miranda said. “How you going to get into your fancy hotel room now? You damn well aren’t staying here.”
    “I’ll get there just like I did before, in the employee door by the east parking lot, turn left, employee elevator, fourteenth floor, turn right, six doors down on the right.”
    The biting singsong mockery of Cherelle’s voice etched itself on Miranda’s brain. Just like that other voice, the sneering insults that even vodka couldn’t dim, Tim’s father telling her just how worthless she was. Now there would be more words to remember, more echoes of her own uselessness.
    “Oh, aren’t we just soooo smart,” Miranda said with false awe. “Too bad it won’t do you any good without the key.”
    Before Cherelle had a chance to tell Miranda just where she could shove the key she was so worried about, both women heard the bubbling, farting exhaust of Socks’s purple car pulling up along the curb in front of the house. As one, the two women rushed to the front door. Because Cherelle was bigger and quicker, she got there first and flung the door open.
    Socks levered himself out of his low-slung car and swaggered up the walkway to the small house.
    Tim was nowhere in sight.
    “Chickenshit is probably hiding behind the front seat,” Cherelle muttered.
    “What?” Miranda asked.
    Cherelle didn’t answer. She was watching Socks approach, seeing all the small changes in him that warned of an unholy cocktail of drugs, testosterone, and adrenaline. Face both tight and flushed, eyes jumping around like spit in a hot skillet, dark splotches of sweat under his armpits.
    She hadn’t spent a whole lot of months trading sex for cash, but she had spent long enough to learn how to judge men. Right now Socks was bad news. The worst kind.
    Without a word she spun away from the door, grabbed her oversized purse, and headed for the door that led to the garage from the kitchen.
    Socks pushed past Miranda so hard she staggered against the couch and went to her knees. He ignored her and lunged after Cherelle. His grasping fingers latched on to her backpack strap. She spun toward him before he