Free VC03 - Mortal Grace by Edward Stewart Page A

almost gagged when she stepped through the door of the Sea Shell. The air had a choking smell of cigarettes and hamburgers and whiskey and beer. The L-shaped interior was dimly lit. Smoke drifted through cones of light from imitation Tiffany lamps.
    Bonnie took a table. A heavily built man with no hair came from behind the bar and asked what she’d like. She ordered a ginger ale.
    An old Frank Sinatra record was playing on the jukebox. She glanced around her.
    Men who looked like truck drivers sat in threes and fours. She saw two or three blowsy, heavyset women. Male laughter came in bursts that were almost cruel. In a corner, a man in a plaid work shirt dueled with a pinball machine, driving it into conniptions of bells and lights.
    He saw Bonnie watching his triumph and came sauntering over. “Hi. Buy you a drink?”
    “Thanks—I’m waiting for someone.”
    “Have it your way.” He shrugged and went back to the pinball machine.
    Bonnie noticed a girl sitting in shadow at a corner table. She had pale blond hair and anorectic arms poking out from a loose green tank top. Her hands were playing nervously with a can of Diet Slice. She was observing everything Bonnie did and quietly taking it in.
    Bonnie felt something tense in her chest. That’s Nell. That has to be Nell. She risked a smile. See, I don’t bite.
    The girl’s eyelids lifted slightly. Her head was pulled down into her shoulders, as though she was afraid someone might strike her. There was a long moment when she glanced directly at Bonnie. The glance stretched out, became a questioning look. Slowly, the teeth pushed down on the strained, pale lips. A smile crept out across the face.
    Bonnie nodded.
    The girl got up from her table. She moved with the fragility of a little animal made of glass.
    “I couldn’t let you wait here alone.” It was Ben, dropping into the chair beside her. “The cabbie says this is a terrible place. They had a shooting last month.”
    The girl stopped two tables away. Her eyes flicked guardedly to Ben and then back to Bonnie. For a moment she stood wondering and staring. Her irises were green, just a shade darker than mint. Abruptly, she turned and ran to the door.
    “We’ve scared her away,” Bonnie said.
    Ben looked confused. “Who?”
    “The girl I was supposed to meet. I’m sorry, Ben—I have a feeling I’d better do this alone.”
    She hurried outside, hoping he wouldn’t follow.
    Six lanes of traffic blurred past on West Street, but the sidewalk was eerily unpeopled. She scanned the curb, looking for movement.
    How far could she have gone in ten seconds?
    Most of the parked cars were missing hubcaps, license plates, headlights—anything and everything recyclable and resalable. Several had been set afire and burned out. A Mazda hatchback was still burning.
    Out in the traffic, brakes yelped and angry voices shouted, “Whatsamatta? Wanna get killed?”
    A girl in a tank top was weaving jerkily through the cars. Bonnie waited for the red light to change to green, then plunged after her.
    The river side of the highway looked like an abandoned car lot. The girl was threading her way through the wrecks. Half of them had been pressed into service for sex, shooting drugs, puking.
    A blue-and-white police car slowed to aim its searchlight at a man urinating in the gas tank of a green Chevy. “Hey, you,” a cop shouted. “Keep moving!”
    Bonnie was afraid she’d lost the girl. Her eye explored beyond the wrecked cars. A dock jutted dark black into the rippling gunmetal-blue of the Hudson. Boom boxes blasted rap. Shadows moved along the dock, and as Bonnie approached, she caught glinting outlines of druggies hungry to score, voguing wannabes in high drag, and gay and straight males and females cruising for sex.
    The girl was sitting on the low cement wall, her arms crossed over the tank top that barely covered her adolescent breasts.
    “Excuse me. Are you Nell?”
    Weary young eyes stared at Bonnie. The expression