Page 27 of Angels Fall

“I’m telling you everything I know, chief.” (Somehow it doesn’t bother me when Raven says it.) “None of what’s going on with Scarlett—”

I start to correct her again, but she puts her hand up.

“—Maddie, is any of my business. And nothing that’s going on with YOU and Maddie is my business. But… She’s a smart girl. And despite being kind of an asshole, I think she’s probably a pretty good girl. And what I know for sure is that she’s all alone. And from how it looks, you’re also all the hell alone. And you also evidently give a huge number of fucks about her—no pun intended—and I don’t wanna see a smart, nice girl like that end up dead. Or maybe even worse…”

She laughs out a tiny, soundless laugh, and shakes her head.

“…managing a strip club when she’s thirty-seven years old.”

Shit. That’s a sad fucking moment of honesty.

“So,” she continues, “I’m just letting you know that even though she left you this?” She hands the note out to me. I take it. “Maybe right now isn’t actually the best time for her to be without backup.”

Taking life advice from a stripper with a heart of gold at three in the morning, in the parking lot of a titty-bar in Las Vegas. This is what my life is.

“So do you think I should go to her now? Her place? Find her? Get her to tell me what’s going on?” I ask.

Raven sighs, seemingly exasperated. “No, you dumb-dick dummy. That’s like…that’s like getting what you want. That’s taking. I think you need to just be there for her. Not the other way around. Seems to me, based on what I know from you, and what Pete told me, that you owe her that. Not about you right now, bud.”

“Yeah.” I sigh. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Whatever she’s got going on with Carlos Castillo isn’t likely to end soon, or well. Trust me.” She puts a little extra English on that, like she knows of what she speaks. “So I’m saying… Just keep an eye on her. She needs someone to. You get me?” She raises her eyebrows at me.

“Yeah. Yeah. I get you. Thanks.”

She winks at me, turns to leave, then stops and turns back.

“Your car? It’s a Defender, right?” she calls.

“Yeah,” I say.

She nods, gets a tiny grin, then says, “OK then.” And then she spins on her heel and walks back inside the strip club, kimono swaying in the night breeze.

The next couple of weeks are a blur. But not a blur like they have been for the past few months. Not the kind of blur where I don’t remember what I’ve done or who I’ve done it with. Where days go by and I don’t remember them. Where I take Ecstasy (which, after spending some time on the internet and discovering Raven was right, I’m realizing means I’m probably funding this Carlos Castillo character’s drug empire every time I drop a tab in this town) and fuck a bunch of questionably fuck-worthy pussies. No. More like a blur of activity. Which feels amazing.

I don’t know if I truly, truly realized how adrift I’d been until I had something to focus my attention on. But now, every morning, I wake up bright and early (actually, I usually just don’t go to bed—Red Bull is a lifesaver) and I park just out of the way from Pete’s, so that I can see who’s coming and going, but so they can’t see me, and I wait and watch for Maddie.

I’ll have coffee and doughnuts and pretend I’m on a stakeout. It’s fun! Evan caught me leaving one morning last week as he was getting back from pulling an all-nighter on third watch, and asked me what I was doing, and I must say I was pretty smooth in the way that I avoided having to get into a conversation about it.

“Where are you going so early?”

“Gym.”

“Okay. See ya.”

Fucking. Masterful.

I’ll wait until I see Maddie go in for work, then I’ll sit there for a few hours and make sure that no one shows up who looks suspicious. (I can’t actually imagine if anyone is going to try anything that they’d do it at a strip club at, like, eight in the morning, but then again that’s when someone would be least expecting it, so it might be the perfect time to try some shit. You gotta cover all your bases when you’re attempting to guess what the next guy is gonna do. Think three moves ahead at all times. As Denzel Washington says in Training Day, “The shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers!” And Tyler Morgan is the motherfucking Grand Master. Everybody says so.)

Then when she gets off work, I’ll follow her back to her place to make sure that no one comes by who seems like they’re up to no good, and at that point, I’ll swing back to Evan and Robert’s for a couple of hours to grab some sleep, and then I start again.

She’s still working at Pete’s on the weekend evenings too, and that’s been my favorite part of my new purposeful existence. Because it’s typically pretty crowded and I can kind of sneak in the back of the club and sit there in the corner mostly unnoticed and watch her dance.

It does make me a little crazy to see her giving lap dances and shit, but the look of disgust on her face that I see when I can peek at her lets me know that she’s not having a particularly good time. Which I hate for her. But I’d probably hate it more if she looked like she was getting off on it. Just being honest. Honesty is probably my second-best quality after my amazingly awesome dick.

A couple of times Raven has walked by while I’ve been running into the bathroom to avoid Maddie seeing me and looked at me like she was about to say something, but then I’ll give her a sign to ward her off and she’ll shake her head and roll her eyes, and keep walking.

The thing I’ve yet to figure out is what exactly this Carlos Castillo/Logan asshole drama is all about. She doesn’t seem to be doing much else besides working at the strip club and going home. Occasionally she’ll, like, go to dinner with her prostitute roommates or swing by a real estate office and come out looking dejected, but that’s it.