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a nerve.
    She’d instilled doubt.
    She’d shaken my little ring-tailed lemur world.
    Selwyn didn’t say anything. But she followed me, and we headed back towards her apartment. The day had turned cloudy and windy, and somehow that sudden change in the weather, it feltominous.

CHAPTER TWO
    THE WHORES HUSTLE AND THE HUSTLERS WHORE
    T he next day passed uneventfully. If Selwyn was still thinking how maybe B or Drusneth or even, I don’t know, the fucking Bride of Quiet herself had gone out looking for a stooge and found me, and I’d been too dumb to ever catch on—if Selwyn still had that going through her head, she wisely kept it to herself. Me, I tried my best not to let it gnaw at me, but gnaw at me it did. Anyway, yeah, more or less uneventful. She was busy with a couple of customers, and I knew one was this Isaac Snow fucker. I read from her dad’s books and slept too much.
    On that second uneventful night, the third day Ispent in the company of Selwyn—which I remember was a Wednesday—that night was the first time she let me drink from her. We’d been watching television. She had this huge stack of VHS tapes that had also been her father’s, and we’d watched a movie. All I can remember is that it was something black-and-white. Might have had Humphrey Bogart in it, but I’m not sure on that point. When the movie was over, I finished my beer, then got up and pulled on my duster.
    “Where are you going?” she asked. She was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, sipping at a Rolling Rock.
    “I’m hungry,” I said.
    She tapped at the end of her nose. It was a habit she had, tapping her nose, and I never did ask her why the hell she did it, or even if she realized she did it, or if anyone had ever told her it was sort of annoying.
    “I thought we had a deal. Like you and the CPA.”
    Thing was, I liked Selwyn. Since that night at the club, I’d come to realize just how much I’d loathed Barbara O’Bryan. I was having trouble thinking of Selwyn as my new sippy cup.
    “Maybe later on,” I said. “I feel like getting some air, anyway.”
    She looked hurt and tugged at a strand of that very black hair of hers. “Fine,” she said, sounding not even the least bit fine. In fact, she was pouting. I don’t do well with pouting, especially when I suspect it’s a put-on and I’m being played. “If that’s what you want.”
    “You don’t have any idea—”
    “So, you’re having second thoughts.”
    I stood there, drumming my fingers hard against thedoorframe. “Stop fucking pouting. I can’t fucking stand pouting.”
    “I don’t pout,” she said, still pouting. “I’m good enough to fuck, and good enough to let you hide out here, but I’m not good enough to drink from.”
    I was hungry, and I was in no mood for my first lover’s quarrel in—shit, maybe forever, since I don’t think Lily and I ever
had
quarreled.
    “No,” I said. “We are
not
going to have this argument. Not tonight and not ever.”
    “Fine,” she said again.
    I sighed and sat down on the floor between the cigar box with the pistol and steel bar brace.
    “Selwyn, I could fucking hurt you, right. It could happen. Have you thought of that?”
    “You never hurt her.”
    There was a difference—a big damn difference, but I didn’t feel like trying to explain it.
    “I won’t break,” she said.
    “Everybody breaks,” I replied. “Even I break.”
    She shrugged, took a swallow of beer, and then very deliberately shattered the empty bottle against the edge a table. Before I could stop her, before I could even protest, she sliced her left palm open. She held it up, smiling.
    “Oh, you bitch,” I said. There was so much saliva in my mouth, all at once, I probably drooled when I said it. The smell of her blood was so strong and my senses had kicked so far into overdrive I was getting dizzy. And no point denying the fact that I was horny as hell.
    “Take it or leave it,” she said, all self-satisfied and shit. “No