Free The Glass Highway by Loren D. Estleman Page A

get married and be alone together.”
    She smiled archly at our reflections in the mirror behind the bar. “You better watch it, brown eyes. I got rice in my bloodstream.”
    “We’d last about a week.” I put down what was in my glass and whistled through my teeth at the bartender. It irritated the hell out of him, which pleased Fern. “But it would be an interesting week.”
    “It couldn’t be any worse than the two tries I made. But I shouldn’t fault them. I’m still collecting reparations from one husband.”
    “What about the other?”
    “He’s in Jackson. We were together six weeks when he got himself busted for stealing a car. It wasn’t his first beef and he’s doing three to five.”
    The bartender wet my glass. I paid him and he turned his back on us and went over to listen in on a conversation between two basketball fans three stools down. The good news from the bandstand was the pianist had finished his solo. The bad news was the horn player had started his. Fern watched me out the corner of her eye.
    “I’ve moved out of the house,” she said.
    “Oh?”
    “I’ve got an apartment off East Jeff, a little place. Four rooms, one and a half baths, and something called a kitchenette, but you wouldn’t want to try to cook two eggs in it at the same time.”
    “Little place,” I echoed. “What’s Ford Auditorium, an efficiency apartment?”
    “The husband I’m getting alimony from is on the board at GM. When he gets a raise, I get a raise.”
    “You said something about starving if you left home.”
    “I lied. Fact is I was too lazy to make the move. But there’s no living with Sharon since she started blaming me for bringing Bud and Paula together.”
    I drained my glass. “Let’s ditch the small talk and go straight to the seduction. My place or yours?”
    She hesitated, then: “For shame. ERA and all. A woman’s supposed to be able to call a man these days without him thinking she’s on the make. Don’t you ever watch TV?”
    “Only when Sandy Broderick’s on.”
    “That eunuch.” She drank.
    I wrinkled my brow. “Him too? You must have finished with the A’s already.”
    “Says you. I was being the proper little hostess that day Sharon told him about Bud. He acted like I had rabies. I think he’s afraid of sex.”
    “Who isn’t?” I reached across her to grind out my stub. Something stroked the inside of my thigh lightly. When I glanced down, her hand was back in her own lap. She was toasting herself in the mirror.
    The trio was jamming now, sleepwalking through something that sounded like “Lullaby of Birdland” if you closed your eyes, but only if you closed your ears too. Fern said, “I’m sick of this dump. Did you bring your car?”
    “I think I left it in the parking lot.”
    She topped off the pile in the ashtray and picked up her purse. “Let’s go riding somewhere.”
    “Somewhere like East Jeff?”
    She grinned and got up, swaying a little, not too much.

10
    I  HELPED HER into a fur coat that would have kept me in gas and oil for a year and we left. Leaning on my arm, she slouched a bit to appear shorter than I in her two-inch heels. She was leaning a little too heavily for anyone within a yard of sober. There wasn’t room for her between my lap and the steering wheel, so she just huddled close and rested her head on my shoulder. Female musk filled the car. I tooled north on Livernois and swung east onto Vernor, hydroplaning a little on the water standing on the pavement. Without a buzz on I’d probably have lost it right there. The rain had paused for breath, and in the glow of my headlamps the street shone as smooth and treacherous as a glass highway.
    “Nice muscles.” She was stroking my right arm. “How is it someone who pumps as much smoke and anesthetic into his system as you do feels like the Mighty Thor?”
    “I get out and throw the hammer around every Ragnarok.”
    “You’re full of surprises. Maybe we really should get