It pisses me the hell off, actually, that all the well-raised liars and cheats will go to their regular beds tonight, with no greater worry than what they can screw out of their folks tomorrow. Me, I'm stuck in Surinam with a bunch of criminal charges forming an orderly line back home. Anger fuels me back to the store, up to the agent's desk. Nobody else is around right now. The clerk looks up.

'I can't find the password,' I tell him.

'What's your name?'

' Vernon Little.' I wait for his eyebrows to blow off his fucken head. They don't. He just studies me for a moment.

'How much you expecting?'

'Six hundred dollars.'

The guy taps at his keyboard, checks his screen. Then shakes his head. 'Sorry, nothing here.' I pause for a moment, to calculate the depth of my fuckedness. Then the agent's eyes rivet to something over my shoulder.

I'm suddenly grabbed around the waist. 'Freeze!' says a voice.

eighteen

My ass jumps into my throat. I break the grip around my waist and spin toward the entrance, legs coiled like springs. Shoppers stop and stare.

'Happy Birthday!' It's fucken Taylor.

I spin a full circle, looking for the heavies who must be here to get me. But it's only Taylor. The clerk at the wire agent's counter smiles as she wraps an arm around my waist, and leads me shaking from the store.

'You didn't wait for the wire details, like the password, dummy,' she says.

'Uh-huh, so you hopped a fucken plane.'

'Language, killer!'

'Sorry.'

'Well I couldn't leave you stranded. Anyway, I'm bummed back home, and this is my vacation money – I hope you don't mind sharing. Here's three hundred, and we'll work the math out later…'

'I'll try to cope. How'd you know it's my birthday?'

'Hell-o? The whole world knows it's your birthday.'

The reality of what's happening starts to tingle in my brain. Taylor 's here. I found a beach-house, and Taylor 's here, with money. One thing to be proud of: I don't respond to the flood of joy-hormones, the one that makes you want to sniff flowers, or say I love you. I contain myself like a man.

'Wait'll you see where we're staying,' says Taylor, dragging me along the street. 'If they'll let you in – you look like an Indian.'

'You got a hotel?'

'Twin room, so you better behave – serial killer you.'

I become heavier for her to pull. 'Wait up – I found somewhere to stay you won't believe – on a beach, with jungle…'

'Eew! With, like, spiders and bugs? Eew!'

'You never saw Against All Odds?

'I already paid for the room, Vern, like, God.'

Whatever. As we walk, I remember I have to keep enough trouble around me to not give a shit how I act with her. You can only really be yourself when you have nothing left to lose, see? That's a learning I made. It may sound dumb, but it ain't easy when your dreams roll up. Take note, you can feel jerksville lurking in back. And as we know, just by thinking it, you suffer it worse. The learning: potential assholeness when a dream comes true is relative to the amount of time you spent working up the dream. A=DT². It means I could even fucken puke.

She's wearing white shorts, I can't tell yet if there's a visible panty-line because they're kind of crinkled. Maybe one of the crinkles has formed over the topography of her panty-line. She also has a peach-colored T-shirt with a little Scorpio logo on it, and a stiff kind of jacket that she wears over the top. Her long brown limbs are perfectly attached to her body. I kind of frown at the jacket, though. She sees me and smiles.

'The plane was like a refrigerator.'

It's almost dark when we reach her hotel, one of the bigger ones. She pulls me into the lobby, where all these folk start looking at us. My shoulders hunch. Everything suddenly looks alien, like some kind of store display, with me the only one moving. Except I ain't even moving, not at all. I just become silent.

Taylor collects her key, then her voice goes into overdrive, or underdrive, more like it. 'C'mon upstairs – you'll like it – c'mon.'

I look at her perfect nose and skin and hair. She smiles a crooked little smile, a horn smile, and takes my hand. Actually, she takes my fingers first, just the ends of them, and caresses them all the way up to my palm. I get electric fucken shocks to my boy. We climb into an elevator car and ride up to her room. Nice room she has, with a view over the whole bay. Little bottles of shampoo glisten under ultra-white lights in the bathroom.

'Welcome home,' she says. She pulls some tequila miniatures out of the mini-bar, while I just stand here like a spare prick, then she curls up on the bed closest to the window. Somewhere in the composition of the air-conditioning is a licked-skin smell that brings a plague of fruity tangs to mind, damp edges of elastic crusted by sand and sea; salt lips pouting musk and vinegar. I scatter them, and move to the bed. Her sunny-smelling hair makes it seem like a regular day on vacation; fluffy, normal and free – I guess like your sixteenth birthday should feel. But my ole lady will be home, thinking it's my birthday, and trying to shut things out of her mind. She probably bought my cake while I was still there, just to start looking forward to it. I picture a lonely cake on the table, with my mom sobbing over it. 'Lord, you'll make it soggy!' Pam would say. Even the truth of things, like that she'd probably be at the Barn with Pam, even that makes me sad. Taylor must pick up some of this backwash, because she throws a tequila at me.

'Snap out of it.'

I fumble the catch. ' Tay – you're here to see I ain't committing any murders. You're a witness – right?'

'Whoa, back up. I don't want to even, like – you know? I'm just here for whatever.'

'But if a court, I mean if…'

'You ain't quitting, are ya, killer? She pats the bedclothes by her thigh. Come to Tay-Tay, you bad boy.'

Taylor raises her bottle, and we slug our tequilas down. I lie back on the bed like I'm wearing guns. She crawls half off the bed to grab some beers, and as she does it, her ass strains into the air. Panty-line. Bikinis. I'm fucken slain. In my dreams we're always alone, stuck tight together, somewhere secluded and safe, but never anywhere fancy like furnished rooms. Always just in a gap in some bushes, or in a field, where she absorbs me like an ameba, all kiss-smell, and thighs, and lips blow-drying the sweat on my skin. Part of the dream includes a kind of yearning to be in a room, all locked up with her, but I never am. Until now.

After four drinks, I'm laid back on one elbow feeling like it's my birthday. Drinks are wonderful that way. Taylor kicks off her leather sandals, one of them flies behind the TV. She runs a finger around the lip of her bottle, and studies me through vixen eyes.

' Vernon, tell me all those things you did.' Her voice is like a little girl's.

What did I say about trouble? She rolls closer until there's an inch of breath between us, alcohol haze with a far-away hint of cheese. We don't touch at all, but hang suspended, sucking chemical data like trembling dogs. Then comes a shock from the tip of her nose, wire touching wire. We melt into each other's mouths, my hand finds the round of her ass, surfs it, a finger charts an edge of panty – doesn't pick, or lift – just teases and glides, moving higher, feeling the climate change around her rudest rebellion, all for Vern.

'Violent, nasty boy,' she says. 'Tell me you killed for Tayla.'

Her whisper becomes a thread in the lace, fibrous and baking with desperate heat. She squirms out of her shorts, kicking them onto the floor by the mini-bar. Panties – The Final Frontier. I lower my face as the creases on her mound disappear, taut glory unfurling, pressing into my touch, forcing my hand flat to squeeze nectar through the silk, lagoons that trickle over the elastic and run down her thigh.