“I asked Holly Starr to meet me at midnight because she may have an extra pill she can loan me,” he explained.
Shane looked up from unrolling the new string from its package. “Holly Starr has a Mentafixol pill?”
Elijah nodded. “She has MAD like I do.” Next Shane would ask how Elijah knew this, and Elijah wouldn’t know what to say. He’d probably overheard her talking about it to a friend sometime in the past seven years and subconsciously filed it away, but he couldn’t know for sure. And he didn’t want to admit that the way he perceived things, he’d read her mind when she came to their house with Rob last night. He hated to lie, especially to Shane, but he wasn’t sure how the whole I have a delusion that I can read minds thing would go over.
Shane only watched him intently.
“And . . . girls like girly bars,” Elijah ventured. “I chose a place she might go on her own, so it won’t seem strange to her parents.”
“Why do you care what her parents think?” Shane asked. “Why don’t you just go up to her here at the casino and ask to borrow a pill, instead of sneaking around like this? In ninth grade, if her dad and Mr. Diamond told me to stay away from her, I would have shit my pants. But now?” He raised one eyebrow. He was thinking that Elijah was even more of a pu**y than he’d previously assumed.
Elijah glared at Shane as if he’d only seen the raised eyebrow. He did not kick over the chair and throttle Shane. That would give away that he’d sensed the pu**y accusation because he could read minds, hello!
“Holly’s dad had enough clout even back then to order me around while threatening my mom’s job, with the owner of the casino in the room,” Elijah explained. “Mr. Starr has even more sway now. I have to be careful not to get my mom fired.” Res Res Res blah blah blah.
“But even if you meet Holly and get your pill without her parents knowing, she won’t be able to go to Glitterati without the casino tagging along,” Shane said. Kaylee jumped into his mind.
Elijah’s pulse picked up to match Shane’s excitement about Kaylee. “Exactly,” Elijah said. “The beautiful, blond, five-foot-four casino.”
“The beautiful, blond casino who packs a subcompact Beretta,” Shane said.
“You pack a Glock,” Elijah pointed out. In fact, he’d never understood Shane’s paranoia about the dangers of Vegas. But it was an attitude Shane seemed to share with the rest of his well-armed family. After a year, Elijah had begun to grow used to the idea of guns in his house—until Rob shot a hole in the ceiling last night.
“I need you to go with me and distract Kaylee,” Elijah explained. “It’s easy to get lost in Glitterati. All I need is five minutes to convince Holly to give me one pill.”
Shane drew the new string all the way up the neck of the guitar and threaded it into the tuning peg. He’d tried to ask Kaylee out dozens of times in the past year, but for some reason, just as he was about to open his mouth, he changed his mind. It wasn’t like him to freeze around the ladies. He should probably give up and stay away from her.
“I would do it for you,” Elijah said.
Shane knew this. Then Shane was thinking something very complicated about Elijah being a better brother to him than his own brother. He recalled the last time he and his brother had beaten the shit out of each other.
Elijah grabbed the guitar out of Shane’s hands to snap Shane out of it. Elijah had enough problems. He couldn’t handle Shane’s too. Not now.
“All right!” Shane said. “I’ll go with you to Glitterati and do my best to keep you out of trouble.” He took the guitar carefully out of Elijah’s hands and plucked the new string. “But you’re playing with fire.” His voice switched to a spot-on imitation of his dad impersonating Ol’ Blue Eyes. “Thank you very much. Here’s another one for my good friend Elijah Brown, who’s in a world of hurt.” He strummed the opening of “Someone to Watch Over Me.”
6
“Do you feel okay, kiddo?” Holly’s dad asked her. “You missed a cue or two. You never miss a cue.”
Holly shrank back against the velvet couch that had seen the rise and fall of more than one Vegas showbiz career. She’d spent so much time in this dressing room that the couch seemed like her second home—until her dad questioned her about the night’s performance. She didn’t want to get Elijah in trouble.
Before she could think of an excuse for zoning out during the act, her mom swept in from behind a battered Japanese screen in her billowing silk dressing gown. “Elijah Brown,” she said.
“What?” Holly and her dad both exclaimed.
“Elijah Brown was in the audience,” her mom told her dad, “shining a mirror in Holly’s eyes to distract her.” She turned to Holly. “I can see out of that box, you know.”
Looming closer over Holly on the couch, her dad flexed his fingers and said through his teeth, “I’ll kill that little shit.”
“Dad!” Holly protested.
“Peter.” Holly’s mom rebuffed him without taking her eyes off Holly. Sliding onto the couch, she squeezed Holly’s shoulders. “We told you a long time ago to stay away from that boy, for your own good. His mother is a dealer. My God. I’ve seen him hanging around the casino, doing menial labor.”
“It’s called carpentry, Mom.” Holly was leery of defending him when she was trying to stay on her parents’ good side. But their distaste for him made zero sense. After they’d gotten so upset when he’d asked her to the ninth-grade prom, she’d expected them to turn snobby about her other friends too, but they hadn’t. Their snobbery was reserved for Elijah only. And she couldn’t stand to hear them talk about him like that. “He just graduated from UNLV like m—”
“What if you made a mistake one night and got stuck with him?” her mom wailed, as if Holly had just revealed a grand plan to seduce Elijah and bear his children. “You have to look out for yourself better than that. Your father and I won’t be around to take care of you forever. What was wrong with that nice policeman you went out with?”
Holly straightened on the couch, pulling her shoulders away from her mom’s hands. She half understood her mom’s antifeminist perspective. Rob was gainfully employed in a hunky man-job. And Holly had a mental disease that required ongoing treatment. Behind her mom’s words lurked the specter of Holly in middle age, off her meds, unkempt and ugly, stumbling down the Strip in a ripped spangled bikini, skipping her appointment for a manicure. Only a strong man would stand by her when times got bad.