Free Swag by Elmore Leonard Page A

“Your friend coming over tonight?”
    â€œHe’s tied up,” Arlene said. “Had to go to Lansing.” She began drying her wiry hair, rubbing it hard, and Stick couldn’t see her face for a while. He watched her little boobs jiggling up and down. They were small but well shaped, perky. She had freckles on her chest. Stick figured she was a redhead all the way.
    â€œWhat’re you supposed to do when he doesn’t show,” Stick said, “sit around, be a good little girl?”
    She answered him, but he couldn’t hear what she said under the heavy towel.
    â€œDo what?”
    She peeked out at him through the purple folds. “I said he never told me I had to sit and twiddle my thumbs.”
    Stick gave her a little grin. “Don’t you like to twiddle?”
    Arlene grinned back and giggled. “I don’t know as I ever have, tell you the truth. Is it fun?”
    â€œYou’re from somewhere, aren’t you?” Stick said. “Let me guess. Not Louisville. No, little more this way. Columbus, Ohio.”
    â€œUh-unh, Indianapolis,” Arlene said.
    â€œClose,” Stick said. “You take Interstate 70 right on over to Indianapolis from Columbus. Used to be old U.S. 40.” He wasn’t going to let go of Columbus that easy.
    â€œI was Miss NHRA Nationals last year,” Arlene said. “You know, the drag races? I was going to go out to California—a friend of mine lives in Bakersfield—but I was asked to come here instead, to do special promotions for Hi-Performance Products Incorporated. You know them?”
    â€œI think I’ve heard the name.”
    â€œThey make Hi-Speed Cams. That’s their main thing. Also Hi-Performance Shifters. Pretty soon they’re going into mag wheels and headers.”
    â€œIt must be interesting work,” Stick said.
    â€œYou’d think so. But what it is,” Arlene said, “it’s a pain in the ass. Those drag strips are so dirty. I mean the dust and grease and all. The noise, God. The first thing I do I get back to the motel is dive in the pool. I love to swim.”
    â€œI noticed, I was out on the balcony there,” Stick said, glancing up at the apartment. “You’re like a fish in the water.”
    â€œI love it, the feeling, like I don’t even have a body.”
    â€œI guarantee you got a body,” Stick said.
    Arlene laughed, raised closed eyes to the dull sky, and shook her wiry hair. It barely moved.
    Stick was looking at her mouth, slightly open, her slender little nose and the trace of something greenish on her eyelids.
    â€œI was thinking,” he said, “after all that swimming how’d you like a nice cool drink now to wet your insides?”
    Arlene loved the apartment. She said it was cool, it looked like it would be in California. Stick thought Arlene looked pretty cool, too, on the bamboo barstool in her little swimming suit, bare feet hooked on the rung and her legs sloping apart. He fixed her Salty Dogs, once she told him how, kept the vodka bottle handy, and sipped a bourbon over ice while she told him what it was like to put on a little metallic silver outfit with white boots and pose for camshaft promotion shots, with the hot lights and all. She said it wasn’t any picnic and Stick said he bet it wasn’t. He watched her rubbing her eyes and blinking, but didn’t say anything about it until she’d put away three Salty Dogs and was working on number four.
    He said, “It’s that chlorine in the pool. What you ought to do is go in and take a shower.”
    â€œYou mean here?”
    â€œWhat’s the matter with here?”
    â€œBut I don’t have anything to put on after,” Arlene said, “except this wet swimming suit.”
    If that was all she was worried about, Stick knew he was home. He said, “I’ll get you a robe or something. How’ll that be?”
    That was how he