little t&a

to a fly

 It wasn't a long ride over to that dingy apartment complex.

Gene didn't know what he was expecting. The place didn't look any better in the daylight, and when he got out of the car, he saw his driver reach over his seat and start locking all the car doors. He stepped inside alone, walking the craggy flights of steps up to her old apartment number, knocking on the door in what he knew had to be a useless endeavor.

He was a little hopeful when a different girl answered. A pretty thing, really, with curly black hair and sad eyes. A really pretty thing, he could tell that even from the scant few inches she opened the door.

"Yes?"

"Hey." Gene paused. "I was here a few nights ago. I was wondering if you had a forwarding address for someone who used to live here, Carol—"

"Carol left a couple weeks ago."

"I know. I'm just trying to find where she went after that."

"She didn't pay her share of the rent." The girl looked Gene up and down, from the baggy sweatpants to the old floral shirt. "We had to kick her out."

"I know, I—"

"Did something bad happen? Are you with the police or something?"

"I'm not with the police." Gene tried to think. If the roommates had kicked her out, then that meant she hadn't been on the lease, right? The apartment manager would've had to have her forwarding address if she had been. Wasn't that how it worked? "She got into some trouble with a rockstar."

"Trouble?" The girl repeated, with more innocence than Gene could readily believe, at first. "She kept trying to hex one. Kathy got pissed when she spilled some offering on the carpet..."

"Yeah, trouble." Gene tried to infuse the word with its usual meaning. Babies and under the table payoffs. He couldn't tell if she took the bait or not. "Can you help me?"

"Her mom lives in Virginia," she offered. "She's not from there, though, I think she's from... I don't know, Minnesota or Michigan... somewhere that starts with an M..."

That was barely better than no help at all. He tried to pay attention as the girl kept trailing off.

"Her mom's got scads of money from her dad dying. She helps her out a lot. Carol said if we'd just give her a couple more days, then she'd be good for the next three months. Swore it. Kathy and Bunny wouldn't have it, though, 'cause between the rent and the occult stuff, she was too wild for us, and—"

"Do you have her mother's address?"

"No. Well..." She pursed her lips, thinking, and then held a finger up. "Let me look around, maybe there's an envelope..."

And she scurried back from the door, still leaving it open those few inches as she rummaged around, the door chain keeping him from seeing much of the place at all. He waited, listening to her scuffle across the apartment, rustling through papers, until finally that dark cloud of hair peeked back into existence at the door.

"No. I'm sorry. Oh, but she used to go to discos! You might wanna check CBGB, or the Ice Pa—"

"I've done it already," Gene said, and walked away.

–

No good. It had been stupid to hope for any new insight. If he really wanted to push it, there was the possibility of finding Carol at 54 again tonight, but Gene doubted she'd be there, and he doubted Paul would want to go there again. He wouldn't leave Paul at home by himself for a venture like that, either.