VACANCY & ARIEL

A shorthaired peroxide blond in a bikini, her black roots showing in such profusion, the look must be by design, hops up onto a stool nearby and asks for a large Pepsi. She has some age on her, late thirties, but does good things for the bikini. Ashford cuts his eyes toward her breasts; his gaze lingers.

“Ain’t got no Pepsi,” Kerman says in a sluggish, country drawl. “Just Coke.”

“This morning around five-thirty, one of your neighbors found a suitcase full of Stacey Gerone’s clothes in the dunes out front of your house.” Ashford emits a small belch, covering his mouth. “Any idea how it got there?”

Alarmed, Cliff says, “I didn’t put it there!”

“I didn’t say you put it there. You’re not that stupid.”

“I haven’t been to the house for three days. I just drove by to see if everything was all right.”

The blond, after pondering the Pepsi problem, asks if she can have some fries.

“You want a large Coke with that?” asks Kerman.

Again the blond ponders. “Small diet Coke.”

Kerman, apparently the genius of the arcade, switches on the piped-in music, and metal-ish rock overwhelms the noises of man and nature. Ashford, with a pained expression, tells him to turn it off.

“Got to have the music on after nine o’clock,” says Kerman.

“Well, turn it fucking down!”

“You got no call to be using bad language.” Kerman sulks, but lowers the volume; following Ashford’s direction, he lowers it until the music is all but inaudible.

Ashford rubs his stomach, scowls, and then gets to his feet. “I have to hit the john. Don’t go away.”

As he walks off, the blond leans the intervening stool and taps Cliff on the arm. “Do I know you? I believe I do.”

Cliff mentions that he was once an actor, movies and commercials, and the blond says, “No, that’s not it. At least, I don’t think.” She taps her chin and then snaps her fingers. “The Shark! You used to come in. You were seeing Janice for a while last year. I’m Mary Beth.”

All the women at the Shark Lounge, waitresses and dancers alike, are working girls and, after hearing about how Janice has been doing, Cliff has an idea.

“Have you got time for a date this morning?” he asks.

That puts a hitch in Mary Beth’s grin, but she says coolly, “Anything for you, sweetie.”

“It’s not for me, it’s for my friend. He needs to get laid. He’s a cop and the job’s beating him up.”

“You want me to ball a cop?”

“He’ll welcome it, I swear. Make out you’re a police groupie and you saw his gun or something. And don’t let on I had anything to do with it.”

“Whatever. It’s two hundred for a shave and a haircut. You know, the basics.”

“Shit! I don’t have two hundred in cash.”

“What about a credit card? I do Visa and Master.”

She hauls up a voluminous purse from the floor beside her stool and digs out a manual imprinter.

“Hurry!” he says, looking toward the bathroom door as she imprints his card.

Once they’ve completed their transaction, he says, “I didn’t mean to go all business on you. It was…”

“It’s no thing. I do a lot of business with older guys this time of day. It beats night work. They’re usually not freaks, so it’s easy money.”

“I know, but you were being friendly and I…”

“Oh, was I?” The blond shoulders her purse and smiles frostily. “You must have me confused for somebody else. I was working the room, Clifford.”

“Cliff,” he says in reflex.

“Okay. Cliff. I’m going to move to another stool so I can make eye contact with your buddy. But I’m down here most every morning, so if you need me for anything else, you just sing out.”

Cliff doesn’t know why he does this type of thing, plays pranks for no reason and without any point. He wonders if had it mind to compromise Ashford, to get something on him; but he doesn’t believe it’s about manipulating people. He figures it’s like with the sea turtle—he’s showing off, only for himself alone, his audience reduced to one. Another instance, he thinks, of his nonchalance.

Ashford returns and tells Kerman to bring him a glass of water. He swallows some pills, wipes his mouth, and says, “They should blow up that john. It’s a fucking disaster area.”

“I can help you with that.”

“Huh?”

“I was in a demolition unit during Vietnam.”

Ashford’s eye snags on something—Mary Beth is sitting across from him, eating her French fries, giving each one a blowjob, licking off the salt and sucking them in. He tears himself away from this vision and says to Cliff, “We haven’t been able to locate Miz Gerone, so officially you’re a person of interest. If that blood on your house matches DNA the lab extracted from her hair brush, I’m going to have to bring you in.”

Cliff offers emphatic denials of any involvement with her disappearance. “We fucked occasionally,” he says, “but that was it. We didn’t have much of an emotional connection.”

“I know this is a frame. But the way you’ve handled everything, telling that story, lying about your girlfriend, it…”

“That wasn’t a lie. I couldn’t get back into my house because you were processing it. So I went over to Marley’s after you released me, and things got deep. I swear to God that’s the truth.”