Rainey Royal by Dylan Landis Read Free Book Online

reclaiming it.
    “What’s that supposed to mean, about my grandmother?” Tina lights a cigarette and drops the pack back in the bag.
    Rainey wonders if she should be reeling Tina in right now, since they are playing robber girls. Besides, the grandmother is sacred territory. Rainey knows that without being told. Tina is tougher than Rainey, but she is also easier to hurt. Rainey knows
that
without being told. She listens to the slow, steady hoofbeat of the Frye boots, satisfying as a pulse. Can you rob someone of her boots and cape? It’s okay to think these things, because they are just playing. They will veer off any minute. The woman looks back, appraises them with a glance, and dismisses them.
    “I asked you what it means about my grandmother,” says Tina.
    “It means your cup runneth over.” Rainey uses her musical voice. “If you’re getting twenty dollars a week.”
    “I don’t have a cup.” Tina’s voice is low. “I have a savings account. I’m not supposed to touch it.”
    “You must be rolling.” Now Rainey, too, reaches for the cigarettes, which they jointly own, and lets her knuckles bump the gun. “What bank?” She’s ultracasual. The gun is cold and could shoot off her foot, but the weight of it feelsgood. Already she knows she will stash it at the bottom of her school backpack, with her picture of Saint Cath.
    “What
bank
? What is this, a fucking quiz? You don’t believe me.” Reflexively Tina passes over her cigarette so Rainey can light hers.
    “I want that cape, Teen.”
    The couple turns left on Greenwich, walks a block, and crosses Barrow. Then they turn right on Morton. Rainey and Tina pick up their pace and fall back again, spooling out distance like kite string. It’s perfect; they’re all headed closer to the Hudson, where only true Villagers live and tourists rarely stray. Even from a half block back, Rainey knows the man is handsome, his hair dark and thick, the shape of his head suggesting broad cheekbones that ride high. Rainey wants this man to desire her even as he looks at the gun and fears her. If she can make him desire her, she’ll erase the feeling of Gordy’s fingers where they don’t belong. Right now the feeling is a dent at the far edge of her left breast. It’s a pressure along her neck where he starts stroking her long hair. She wants the cape, and she wants some other things that the man and the woman have. The money doesn’t interest her.
    “I have over a thousand dollars in Marine Midland Bank,” says Tina.
    “I’m going to take her cape. You can have all their bread.”
    “If you don’t believe me,” says Tina, “I’m not taking another step.”
    “Oh?” says Rainey in the dangerously charming voice shesaves for the final minutes with a victim in the girls’ room. “Do you really live with your grandmother? Or do you just not want me to meet your family?”
    Tina stops. Let her, thinks Rainey, she won’t stop long. She keeps walking. By the time she makes half of Morton Street by herself, she is trying not to trudge; she is missing Tina acutely, missing the way she bumps into Rainey sometimes, the slight brushing of her jacket sleeve. Tina doesn’t go in for hugging, but she finds other ways to make contact, the affectionate shove, the French braiding of each other’s hair, touching the hand that holds the match—anything that can’t be called lezzie, which suits Rainey fine. When she finally hears Tina approaching at a scuffing trot, she stops and waits, happy and faintly ashamed.
    Tina says, “Gimme the goddamn bag, Rain.”
    Rainey passes it over. She waits to see if Tina is going to detonate and what that will look like. She waits to see if Tina can take a joke.
    “I’m sorry, Teen.”
    Tina looks into the bag as she cradles it in front of her, and Rainey knows she is looking at the darkly radiant gun, a gun Rainey stole from her father’s filing cabinet days earlier after one of his obnoxious sex talks. She’s spent a lot