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“Patricia! Baby! Why don’t you pick up your phone?” he cries. “I called you eight hundred times. Listen, I’m telling you, baby, I never cheated on you . . .”
“I know that,” Patricia says calmly.
“You know . . .” He stares at her. “If you know that . . . then why . . . in the fuck . . . did you key my CAR!?” he shouts.
“BECAUSE YOU LEFT MY GRANDMOTHER AT THE AIRPORT!” Patricia bellows back at him. “You said you were going to pick her up while I was at work! She waited THREE HOURS, MASON! That woman is eighty-seven years old! She saw the Hindenburg explode. Actually, she heard it—BECAUSE THERE WAS NO FUCKING TV!”
Mason is standing there frozen, with a guilty grimace on his face. He definitely forgot all about Patricia’s grandma until right this very moment.
“Okay, okay,” he says, holding up his hands. “I might have fallen asleep—”
“ASLEEP?”
“But you didn’t have to key my car, baby! It’s a classic!”
“Nana’s a classic, Mason! NANA!”
This is so much better than a drag race. A large circle of people has formed around us, and I swear to god, somebody is taking bets on whether Patricia is going to smack Mason or go for his car again.
“She had to eat airport Wendy’s, Mason! That is so much worse than normal Wendy’s!”
At that moment, I see Levi Cargill standing over on the opposite side of the circle. He’s wearing a hot pink tracksuit and a diamond the size of my pinky nail in his right ear. I cannot comprehend why Officer Schultz needs my help tracking Levi, when you can probably see him from outer space.
I sidle over toward him, wanting to speak to him alone.
He’s talking to a couple of thuggish-looking guys. When I make eye contact, he peels off from the pack and ambles over.
“You wanna buy something?” he asks me.
“No,” I say.
He lets his eyes roam down my body, grinning suggestively. “You want something for free, then? It’s big, and thick, and I can—”
“Actually, it’s about my brother.”
“Who?”
“Victor.”
“Oh.” He stops smiling. “You dragged him out of my party last night.”
“Right. He’s not coming to those anymore. And he’s not selling for you anymore, either.”
Levi’s lips thin out into a long, straight line. He sucks in air through his nostrils.
“That’s not up to you,” he says. “It’s between me and Vic.”
“Victor is seventeen,” I say, quietly. “He’s a minor, and he’s not selling drugs for you.”
Levi grabs my upper arm between fingers that feel like steel pincers. He drags me away from the circle of headlights, behind a cement pillar.
“Here’s the problem,” he hisses. “Your brother owes me for a hundred and fifty tabs. And he also owes me a new dealer, if he’s planning to quit.”
“It was a hundred and ten,” I say.
“He’s paying me for one fifty or that’s how many strokes I’m gonna practice with my nine-iron on the back of his skull,” Levi spits into my face, digging his fingers into my arm.
“What does that cost?” I mutter, trying not to show how much it hurts.
