Think About It - First Chapter

                                       THINK ABOUT IT

                                            by Pat Tobin

                              I’ve got you under my skin
                              where the rain can’t get in.
                              But if the sweat pours out, just shout.
                              I’ll try to swim and pull you out.
                                                      - The The, Uncertain Smile

















ONE

                 I was just about finished with my third cigarette when Dawn finally showed. I had never actually laid eyes on her until now, but I knew it had to be her because women seldom frequented Scola’s Restaurant. She had apparently gotten my card from a friend and had called me earlier that afternoon to arrange an informational meeting.
                   I’m usually partial to blondes, but her shoulder-length, dark brown hair changed my mind on that note real quick. She wore an off-white cotton shirt with some frilly business sticking out of the sleeves of the leather jacket she had on over it. I estimated that she must clock in at about five-eight, the majority of it legs, nice-looking legs, wrapped up in a dark red skirt. The balance of her weighed in pretty nicely, too. I held up an arm and signaled to her. 

       “I was beginning to wonder if you were gonna show at all,” I said to her as she neared my table. “Thought maybe you found someone better since this afternoon.”

        She smiled and let out a nice little laugh, “From what I hear, you’re the best, Mr. Cooper.”
        “I’m flattered. And my dad was Mr. Cooper. Dale’s fine.” I said.
        “Okay. Dale,” she repeated.
        “You want any coffee or anything?” I asked.
        “Sure, black.”
        I waved toward the counter, “Hey, John! Two cups, black!”
John nodded his head. He was the diner’s Owner/Proprietor, the second John Scola to hold that title. 
       “So, are you new to the modeling game?” I asked Dawn.
       “Relatively. I’d just like to have some headshots or something to submit to different places. That’s what you call them, isn’t it? Headshots?”
       “Yes, there is such a thing as headshots, Miss Folsom.” It was my turn to laugh. “I guess you are new to this.”
        She nodded and blushed a little. She wasn’t wearing much makeup, a quality I’ve always appreciated in women. There’s no better sign that a woman’s trashy than makeup that looks like it was applied with a paint roller. This woman wasn’t trashy.
        “So, how long have you lived in New York?” I asked.
        “About five years.”
        “Where you from originally?”
        “Detroit.”
        I whistled. “I hear that place is a war zone,” I said, “Gotta look both ways for tanks when you cross the street?”
        She laughed. “You always insult potential clients?”
        “Usually, yeah.”
        “Well, to answer your question, yes, parts of Detroit are like that. My home town isn’t, on the other hand.” She looked down at the table and fiddled with her silverware, aligning the spoon with the knife. “I’m not actually from the city. I’m from a suburb, but I say I’m from Detroit because it’s easier. Like people who are from the suburbs of Boston say they’re from Boston. Where are you from?”
        “Boston.”
        She laughed, and so did I.
        Just then, John hovered over to our table. “Two cups, black as tar,” he said as he plunked down the mugs, without spilling a drop. He looked Dawn. “So, what’s a kitten like you doing with a mongrel like this?” he asked, jerking a thumb at me. “Don’t you see the fleas hoppin’ around on him?” he laughed.
        “If I have fleas, I got them from you, John,” I shot back with a laugh.
        “Ehhh,” he trailed off as he returned to the counter after a dismissive wave of his hand.
        “Seems like an abusive relationship. You always talk to each other like that?” Dawn asked.
        “Yeah, we go back a long time. John knew my father. My dad used to live in the apartment upstairs in the old days. Now I live up there.”
        “Uh-huh,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
        “I have a studio upstairs. Darkroom, too.”
        I had been spinning my Zippo lighter around in my hands, unconsciously tracing the raised silhouette of the buffalo with my thumb. I decided I could use another smoke. I offered her one and she accepted.
        “So, you’re a Boston boy,” she said.
        I leaned over to light her cigarette. “Ever been there?”
        “No, but I’ve heard it’s a beautiful city.”
        “Oh, yeah. It’s like a baby New York. My friends back home would probably kill me for saying that; they’re all Red Sox fans. Anyway, you should try to get there sometime.”
        “Maybe I will,” she said, blowing out a stream of smoke. She took a sip of her coffee, “Are you a Red Sox fan?”

        “Of course. Dewey Evans is my man.”
        “So, were you crushed when the Mets took the series last fall?
        “Shit, don’t remind me. I’m beginning to give up hope for the Sox.”
        She smirked and took another sip of coffee, then inhaled some smoke and flicked some ash into the ash tray on the table.
        “What brought you here?” she asked.
        “This is where the work is.” I took a drag and exhaled. “So what do you do? For work, I mean.”
        “Actually, I’m currently unemployed. But I’m looking.”
         So how are you gonna pay me? I thought.
        “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but I worked in a salon for a few years and I have money saved up.”
        “So now you’re riding the wave, huh? Playing it cool?”
        “Mmmhmmm,” She leaned back in her seat and gave me that old head-tilt-smile that knocks all men onto their asses and keeps them there.  I decided to just throw this out there:
        “Do you want to come upstairs for a drink? We can talk about the direction we want to go in with your photos,” I said.
        “Umm…okay, sure.”
        That was too easy.
        “Good deal,” I said.
          She stubbed out her cigarette and slid out of the booth.  I tossed some cash onto the table and gave a goodbye salute to John behind the counter.  He grinned and winked at me, and when I was sure Dawn had her back to me, I grinned and shrugged back.
           We walked out of Scola’s and up the three steps to the door leading to my apartment upstairs.  I unlocked the outer door and bowed, waving Dawn ahead of me. I watched the smooth sway of her hips in the skirt as I followed. When we had climbed the flight to my apartment door, I let her in and closed the door behind us.  She walked across the hardwood floor to the throw rug where my sorry excuse for a coffee table was and threw her jacket onto a chair.
          “What do you want to drink?” I asked.
          “How about a rum and Coke?” she said.
          “You got it.”
           I walked into my kitchen and took the rum and a bottle of bourbon from a cabinet, then made my way to the fridge for the Coke. My cat leaped onto the counter in front of me, purring. “Hey, shithead,” I said, scratching the scruff on his neck.
           After mixing Dawn’s drink and pouring mine, I went into the living room to find her looking at some of my photos I had mounted on the walls. My cat came padding along behind me.
          “Cute cat, what’s its name?” she asked.
          “Zoot.”
          “I like that. Did you name him after the jazz musician Zoot Sims?”
          “Actually, I named him after the Muppet that plays the saxophone.”
          She laughed. “Hey, Zoot,” she said, as she ran her small hands down the length of his body. I watched her fingers glide through his fur, and imagined those same fingers gliding through my hair. I got lost in my thoughts for a second, but she snapped me out of my reverie.
           “I like this one,” she said, pointing out one of the mounted photos, a shot of a large koi and a sting ray silhouetted from below.
          “Thanks. That one was taken at the Schonbrunn Zoo in Vienna. A tunnel ran underneath the tank and there was enough light from above that I didn’t have to use a flash.”
          “Nice,” she pointed to another, “Tell me about this one.”
          “I took that one in Koln, Germany. Our hotel wasn’t far from the town square, where there’s this huge, unbelievably beautiful cathedral that looks like you could fit all of Manhattan inside it. Anyway, you could see the cathedral from my hotel room. The window was closed and it was raining. I took that though the glass, so the spires look almost like a watercolor painting.”
          “You’re very creative,” she said.
          “Eh,” I said, with a shrug.
          “Every picture tells a story, right?”
          She smiled and sipped from her drink.  I downed half of mine and went for my camera, an old Nikon FM2. I left the flash bar. Despite its being night time, there was enough light coming through the huge windows facing the street for me not to need it.
          I returned to find her leaning against the trim of one of the windows, looking down at the street as if she was a kid again, in her own house in the neighborhood of her youth, watching squirrels chase each other around the backyard.  Before she could turn around and ruin that beautiful moment I snapped a shot of her.
          “You don’t mind, right?” I asked.
          She turned from the window, a bit startled.  When I had left the room a minute before, she had been smiling, but she wasn’t smiling now.
          “I’m sorry, Mr. Cooper,” she said.
          “You can call me Dale, remember?”
          “Oh. Right.”
          This was not the same girl I had mixed the rum and Coke for.
          “What’s the matter? What are you sorry about?” I asked her.
          “Well, I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
         Uh-oh. Here’s where she drops trou and has a bigger dick than me, I thought. What I actually said was slightly more PG-rated:
          “What about?”
          “I’m not really interested in modeling. At all,” she said.
          “Okay…I’m a bit confused.”
          “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”
          “All right, what is it?”
          “I want you to follow my husband.”
          “You’re married?” I hoped I had hidden my disappointment well.
           “Yes,” she said.
           “Oh. Okay, I just…”
           “I’m sorry if I led you on at all.”
           “No, no, you didn’t. Don’t worry about it,” This new development did slightly alter the agenda I had constructed in my head for the night, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. Then, what she had said finally registered. “Wait a minute, did you say you want me to follow him?”
           “Yes, I think he’s in some kind of trouble,” she said.
           “And how exactly do I fit in?”
           “I need someone who can follow him and photograph him.”
           “So why not go to the police?”
           “My husband is a parole officer. That’s why I don’t want to involve the police. I’m not sure what he’s caught up in. I’ll pay you, of course.”
           This came flying at me from out of nowhere. Here I was, thinking I was wining and dining this girl (if you consider coffee and cigarettes dining), and she unloads the fact that she’s got a husband. Not only that, but this chump is shrouded in some kind of shady trouble with God knows who. Oh, also, he’s a cop.
           “Whoa, whoa. This is too much,” I said, “Who do you think I am?”
           “Your business seems to be pretty low-profile. My husband doesn’t know you. I figured you could more easily follow him than a private investigator or someone like that. He has friends on all levels of the police force in this city. I thought maybe you’d be able to stay fairly invisible. Plus, I don’t want his friends knowing, if he is, in fact, wrapped up in something he shouldn’t be.”
           “What got you started on all this, Mrs. Folsom?”
           She sat down on the arm of my sofa and took a few seconds before answering, breathing deeply and staring down into her tumbler of rum and coke.
           “Well, my husband has always been wonderful to me, but lately he’s been very distant.  He’s hardly around at all, and when he is, it’s a chore to get more than two sentences out of him. He snaps at me for nothing. He’s constantly drunk. I’ve noticed that things have started disappearing from our apartment. Nice things, valuable things.”
           “Well, did you ask him about it?” I asked.
           “Of course.”
           “And?”
           “And of course he told me nothing. I started giving him a hard time about not being around and being drunk all the time, and he came close to hitting me. But he just stormed out. I don’t know what to do.”
           “Okay, relax. So I assume we can rule out his messing around with another woman?”
           “I suppose so. I don’t think he’d do that.”
           “Could it be gambling?”
           “Maybe.”
           “What about drugs?”
           “Also maybe. If anything, I think it’s drugs.”