You Suck: A Love Story

away.”
    “Hey,” said the broken clown girl. “You guys cops?”
    Cavuto hit the window button on his door but the ignition was off, so the window didn’t budge. “Go away, kid. Why aren’t you in school? Do we need to take you in?”
    “Winter break, brain trust,” said the kid.
    Rivera couldn’t hold the laugh in and he snorted a little trying to.
    “Move along, kid. Go wash that shit off your face. You look like you fell asleep with a Magic Marker in your mouth.”
    “Yeah,” said the kid, examining a black fingernail, “well, you look like someone pumped about three hundred pounds of cat barf into a cheap suit and gave it a bad haircut.”
    Rivera slid down in his seat and turned his face toward the door. He couldn’t look at his partner. He was sure that if it was possible for steam to come out of someone’s ears, that might be happening to
    Cavuto, and if he looked, he’d lose it.
    “If you were a guy,” Cavuto said, “I’d have you in handcuffs already, kid.”
    “Oh God,” Rivera said under his breath.
    “If I were a guy, I’ll bet you would. And I’ll bet I’d have to send you to the S and M ATM, because the kinky shit is extra.” The kid leaned down so she was eye level with Cavuto, and winked.
    That was it. Rivera started giggling like a little girl-tears were creeping out the corners of his eyes.
    “You’re a big fucking help,” Cavuto said. He reached over, flipped the ignition key to “accessory,” then rolled up his window.
    The kid came over to Rivera’s side of the car.
    “So, have you seen Flood?” she asked. “Cop?” She added “cop” with a high pop on the p, like it was punctuation mark, not a profession.
    “You just came out of his apartment,” Rivera said, trying to shake off the giggles. “You tell me.”
    “Place is empty. The douche nozzle owes me money,” said the kid.
    “For what?”
    “Stuff I did for him.”
    “Be specific, sweetheart. Unlike my partner, I don’t threaten.” It was a threat, of course, but he thought he might have hit pay dirt, the kid’s eyes opened wide enough to see light.
    “I helped him and that redheaded hag load their stuff into a truck.”
    Rivera looked her up and down. She couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds. “He hired you to help him move?”
    “Just little crap. Lamps and stuff. They were like, in a hurry. I was walking by, he flagged me down. Said he’d give me a hundred bucks.”
    “But he didn’t?”
    “He gave me eighty. He said it was all he had on him. To come back this morning for the rest.”
    “Did either of them say where they were going?”
    “Just that they were going to leave the City this morning, as soon as they paid me.”
    “You notice anything unusual about either of them-Flood or the redhead?”
    “Just day dwellers, like you. Bourgeois four-oh-fours.”
    “Four-oh-Fours?”
    “Clueless-Pottery Barn fucktards.”
    “Of course,” Rivera said. He could hear his partner snickering now.
    “So you haven’t seen them?” the kid said.
    “They’re not coming, kid.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I know that. You’re out twenty dollars. Cheap lesson. Go away and don’t come back here, and if either of them contact you, or you see them, call me.”
    Rivera handed the kid a business card. “What’s your name?”
    “My day-slave name?”
    “Sure, let’s try that one.”
    “Allison. Allison Green. But on the street I’m known as Abby Normal.”
    “On the street?”
    “Shut up, I have street cred.” Then she added, “Cop!” like the chirp of a car alarm arming.
    “Good. Take your street cred and run along, Allison.”
    She shuffled off, trying to swivel nearly non ex is tent hips as she went.
    “You think they left the City?” Cavuto asked.
    “I want to own a bookstore, Nick. I want to sell old books and learn to golf.”
    “So that would be no?”
    “Let’s go talk to the born-again Safeway guy.”
    F our robots and one statue guy worked the Embarcadero by the Ferry Building. Not every day. Some days, when it was slow, there were only two robots and a statue guy, or on rainy days, none of them worked, because the silver or gold makeup they used to color their skin didn’t hold up well in the rain, but as a rule, it was four robots and one statue guy. Monet was the statue guy-the ONLY statue guy.
    He’d staked his territory three years ago, and if some poseur ever showed up, he had to meet Monet on the field of stillness, where they would clash in the