Free Hangman's Game by Bill Syken Page B

Stark’s.
    I remember how I gave her my number on that champagne bottle, and my need to upstage a twenty-one-year-old in front of a waitress on what turned out to be his last night on earth. I feel guilty, and small.
    I am about to tell Melody, as I told Jessica, that I need to be alone. But of course that’s not what I need at all.
    I call her from the parking lot.
    â€œPlease tell me this isn’t all my fault,” Melody says, her voice less assured than it was last night. “If I had been quicker with the Cristal…”
    â€œThat has nothing to do with it,” I say. “I guarantee it.”
    Is Melody assuming Jai is guilty, too? I wonder if she or one of the other waitresses heard Jai say anything absolutely damning.
    â€œI hope you’re right,” Melody says, not sounding all that assured. “Do you think JC did it, though? I saw the police had him in for questioning.”
    â€œI don’t think he did it,” I say. “I don’t think so at all.”
    â€œI hope not,” Melody says. “But who do you think did it then?”
    â€œNo idea,” I say, already weary of the topic. I had hoped that she would be an escape. “Probably some crackhead.”
    â€œHmm,” Melody says. I have left her nowhere to go with that. “Anyway, I’m calling because I am wondering if you wanted to get together. Drink that champagne you gave me.”
    â€œChampagne?” I rarely drink, almost never during the day, and I try to keep my systems especially clean before I have to perform. Minicamp is five days off. “What are we celebrating?”
    â€œI don’t know,” she says. “Being alive. Another glorious day on God’s cement-covered earth. Come on. I feel like I need to be with someone right now, and I was just Samuel’s waitress. I can only imagine what it’s like on your end.”
    â€œFine,” I say. “Let’s do it.” Sitting in my car, in the dank gray of the parking lot, I feel like I need to do something.
    *   *   *
    Melody asks me to meet at Thirteenth and Locust, near a club called Voyeur—which won’t be open, she says, but it doesn’t matter because that’s not where we’re going. “There’s this place that I know how to get to from there,” she says, “but I don’t know the address.”
    Melody arrives wearing big movie-star sunglasses, jean shorts, and a curve-accentuating tight black T-shirt with the words BUSTIN’ LOOSE written across her bountiful chest in fluorescent green script. She is fully clothed, and yet mildly obscene. She grips the bottle of Cristal by the neck.
    â€œWe’re going this way,” she says, pointing south. “And then that way.” Pointing east.
    We walk south on Thirteenth Street for a couple of blocks, and then we stop at a corner and she points her finger around as if it is a divining rod. “This is it,” she says, and we turn east, down Pine Street.
    â€œWhere are we headed exactly?” I ask.
    â€œOh, you’ll see,” Melody says. “It’s a neat spot.”
    We walk on until Melody slows and then stops in front of a coffee shop whose front window is papered with reviews from newspapers and Web sites.
    â€œIs this the where we’re going?” I ask dubiously. This coffee shop is more crowded than I would prefer.
    â€œActually … no,” Melody says, distracted. “I’m just remembering something. Let me pop in here for a second.” She opens the door and I move to follow but she places her hand on my wrist, stopping me. “Better if you wait outside,” she says. I release an involuntarily sigh of impatience. “I’m getting you a little treat,” she says, with a reassuring smile. “I’ll just be a second.”
    I wonder if she is in fact lost and is going inside to ask for directions. I watch through the