Free Waitress Wanted (Kit Tolliver #5) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block Page B

sigh and leaned back against the counter.
    “Tomorrow,” she said. “Tonight, it, uh, it wouldn’t be good. God, you’re exciting. I can’t wait until tomorrow, Steve.”
    “So why wait?” He looked at her, then shrugged. “Never mind. I guess you got your reasons.”

    He’d need her working noon to eight, he told her. He opened at 6:30 for breakfast, but his sister helped him out mornings. Maybe she might like to get there a little earlier tomorrow, he suggested. So they could go over some things together before the lunch crowd showed up. Say eleven?
    Back at the hotel, she didn’t shower right away. Her room had two beds, and she stripped and got in one of them and pulled the covers all the way up, trapping his smell. She breathed it in while she touched herself, giving her fantasies free rein, holding herself back from the edge, then finally allowing herself the release of orgasm.
    She’d have showered afterward, but sleep took her by surprise, and she slept deeply until dawn and woke up ravenous. She’d made herself a sandwich midway through her shift, but had gone to bed without supper. First, though, she needed that shower.
    But was there any point? In a matter of hours she’d be smelling of him all over again.
    She took the shower anyway. Nothing lasted, so why expect a shower to endure?

    In a sense, the effects of the shower were gone by the time she got dressed. She put on the same skirt and blouse she’d worn the day before, not wanting to get his scent on a second outfit. She’d wear the same clothes, even if it meant walking around all morning with that musky odor on her, and after it was over she’d throw everything out.
    Should she check out now? Take her bag to the bus station, stash it in a locker? That would get her out of town faster, but you couldn’t always find those coin-operated lockers. They’d been disappearing for awhile now, to thwart dope dealers. And, she supposed, terrorists.
    So should she take the suitcase to the diner? Or would that be suspicious? He might see it and think she was leaving town.
    And if he did? Like, so what? It’s not as though the prospect of her imminent departure would make him any less eager to fuck her.
    So that would work. She’d bring the bag along, stash it in the kitchen. And during the slow time before the lunch crowd showed up, she’d go in back and let him do what he wanted. And then she’d do what she wanted, and she’d retrieve her bag and be out the door with the CLOSED sign hanging in the window.
    With his smell all over her.
    She’d need the room so she could shower and change. And she could afford to pay for a second night, but it went against the grain. She picked up the phone, rang the front desk, asked about a late checkout.
    No problem, Ms. Perkins. Two o’clock all right?
    Perfect, she said, and went out for breakfast.

    She knew she didn’t want to eat at the diner, but she had to walk past it to get to the other nearby restaurants, and that gave her a chance for a look at Steve’s putative sister. The woman she saw through the window, carrying plates of eggs and bacon as if she’d been doing this since childhood, was short and stocky and dark-complected, with black hair and thick eyebrows. So she certainly might have been a sister, but she hadn’t believed it when he said it and was no more inclined to believe it now. She’d bet anything this beauty queen was Steve’s wife.
    She walked on, found a place to eat with better lighting and a reassuring commitment to hygiene. She settled into a booth with a copy of the morning paper, ate a big breakfast, and drank two cups of coffee.
    And smelled him on her clothes.

    “Right on time,” he said.
    There were two customers in the place, and one of them was the same man he’d run off the night before. Did the old fart live here? He looked to be wearing the same clothes, too—a forest-green work shirt worn through at one elbow, with a pair of baggy trousers that must have