Nine

I was still stewing later that evening when there was a tap on my door. I pulled the curtain back. Lisa waved to me, there was no sign of Mike. I pointed to the garage and she nodded.

I ducked through the kitchen and into the garage and opened the roll-a-door.

'Hey,' I said, wondering why she was here.

'I brought beer,' she said holding up a six pack.

If she thought the bribe of alcohol would overcome any misgivings about her turning up alone on my door step, she was right. It's not that I mind people dropping in on me - it's happened a few times now. But swaying hips like hers were a passport to trouble and I had just stamped her visa by waving her in; Dumbledore wouldn't have approved.

She handed me the six pack and we parked on opposite ends of my threadbare couch. I opened a bottle and handed it to her. A red mark burnt on her cheek.

'What happened to you?

She shrugged. There was a lack of something, about her. It took me a while to finger it: sleaze. 'You don't wanna know.'

Why do people say that about something potentially interesting? There's never any hesitation to tell boring holiday tales...

'Nina likes you,' she said, her eyebrow arching and her cheeky grin returning. She had a way of sitting kind of forty five degrees and proud that always showed her chest to maximum advantage.

When I stopped thinking about her chest her words registered in my mind. So that was it. A reconnaissance mission. I pulled a second beer from the carton and laid the rest on the floor. 'Sure she does. We didn't swap three words the last hour we sat at the clubhouse.'

'You intimidate her,' said Lisa.

'Huh?'

'That semi-intellectual anti-authority make-your-own-rules kind of thing you've got going on. It's intimidating.'

I never thought of myself like that before. 'You think?'

Lisa took a swig from her bottle and somehow made it a sexual experience.

It made me swallow.

'Sure,' she said, taking her time wiping a dribble of condensation from her chin. 'It's kinda powerful.' She edged a little closer. 'Especially if you're young, like Nina.'

I nodded. Nina... the polar chick. 'Since you mention it, how old is she?'

Lisa smiled, and spelt wicked with her eyes. 'Old enough.'

I had a sudden need for a cool breeze when the phone rang. I leapt up to answer it.

'Hey.'

'Des. Um, I don't s'pose you have, just wondering if you've seen Lisa?'

'Lisa?' The impulse to lie almost overwhelmed me. I felt like I'd been busted, but remembered I wasn't actually doing anything wrong. Well, unless thoughts counted. 'Er, yeah. She dropped in actually.'

'She did?' There was a hint of suspicion in his voice. Mike was a relaxed guy, but he was still a guy - and he knew what other guys were like.

'Yeah, you know - doing the girl thing and finding info out for Nina.'

'Oh, right.'

'I'll get her for you.'

Lisa was right there at my shoulder. She took the phone. 'It's your dreamgirl,' she said into the receiver, but her eyes smouldered at me. I extricated myself from the corner, her heat radiated over me as our bodies brushed.

I went and sculled the rest of my beer.

Ten