Rainey Royal by Dylan Landis Read Free Book Online Page B

think her mother left her. The moment hurtles toward them. She has to decide fast. Tina faces the woman as if she were going to ask her directions. Her two hands shake around the gun, which is abruptly half out of the bag.
    “This is a stickup,” she says, trembling, her voice hoarse, and Rainey is far from the treetops, she is right there, feeling the concrete through her shoes.
    The woman claps a hand over her mouth, stopping a laugh. “Central casting,” she whispers from under her hand.
    “The gun’s real,” says the man. “Shut up, Estelle.” Rainey has no idea what
wuthering
means, but she thinks he must have that kind of face: brooding and gorgeous, from some dreamy old novel.
    “Yeah, shut up, Estelle.” Tina sounds like she does in the girls’ room but with an undertow of fear. She says, “You guys live here or what?” Rainey feels the approaching moment thundering right up to her. She feels like someone who cantake any kind of joke, now. She can’t wait to find out what her job will be.
    The man and the woman say no and yes at the exact same moment. “Take our wallets,” says the man. “You don’t have to hurt anyone.”
    “Be nice,” says Tina. “Invite us up.”
    “If you’re going to do anything, do it here,” says the man. Estelle’s hand remains plastered to her mouth.
    Rainey feels ravenous for what is about to happen. The sidewalk is pushing through her shoes now. “I’m feeling kind of antsy down here,” she says in a voice that sounds like smoke and jazz. She has it down. “Take us upstairs, baby,” she tells the man.
    Tina walks up to the stoop and jabs the gun against Estelle’s knee. Saint Tina of the Girls’ Room—are they really in the same place, doing the same thing? Is it possible that Tina feels purification as she does this bad act? Rainey’s father’s words unspool from her body as if she is expelling a magician’s silk scarf:
They talk about this at school, don’t they? How girls your age are growing into their sexual powers?
She feels the nape of her neck sealing itself against Gordy’s hand, and she looks at Estelle’s neck with rising irritation.
    “Okay okay okay okay okay,” says Estelle, and gets up fast from the stoop.
    “Hey, listen,” says Rainey, batting Tina on the arm. She almost says her name but catches herself. “I totally believe you. I do. I had one crazy moment of doubt, but it’s over. I’msorry.” She waits while Tina closely scans her face as if she’s not sure she’s seen it before.
    “You still think I’m bullshitting,” says Tina, locking her gaze back onto the boyfriend and Estelle. “And you’re still mad from what I said about Gordy.”
    Rainey is not afraid of Tina. She might be afraid of hurting Tina, though.
    “I believe you to death,” says Rainey. “And it’s okay about Gordy. Come on. I’ll prove it. Let’s do something crazy.”
    “Oh my God,” says Estelle. “Oh God oh God oh God.”
    T HE BRICK BUILDING ’ S ENTRY hall is lit with bare bulbs, and its stairs are thickly carpeted. Glossy black doors, greenish walls—Rainey feels like she is at the bottom of a fish tank. “Go,” says Tina harshly, and the man looks at her jamming her purse, with the gun half in it, into Estelle’s back. “Don’t touch her,” he says, and immediately starts up the stairs. Rainey listens for sounds from other tenants and hears none. “I’m aiming right at Estelle’s spine,” says Tina, and while it seems to Rainey that the man could lunge back down the stairs at them, it also seems that the word
spine
sounds menacingly like bone porcelain, and she is not afraid.
    They climb, first him, then Estelle and Tina in a kind of lockstep, then Rainey, the shag carpeting hushing their progress, till the man stops at a door on the third floor and Estelle sags against it. She says, “You don’t have to come in. You could turn around. We’ll give you everything.”
    Tina holds the gun close to her own side, aimed at