– Clean your plate.

The burn has crept up behind my right eyeball. I look down at the half line left on the toilet tank. I do the remainder into my left nostril and it feels like scrubbing ground glass into an acid burn.

– Jesus! Jesus fuck!

T runs his finger over the specks of crank left on the tank, licks it clean, and does the same with the residue on the inside of his twenty.

– C’mon. Let’s go see my friend.

He leads me out of the bathroom, and I’m already starting to think he was right about the crank because things are really starting to fall into place and make sense to me, who I am, why I’m here, what I’m doing, how, in an amazing way the shit I’m in has given my life purpose and meaning; I mean, here I am, a man with a mission, a real mission, how many people can say the same, I mean, for the first time I can remember, I know exactly who I am, where I am, and what I’m doing.

I’m Henry Thompson.

I’m in a strip club.

And I’m trying to save my parents’ lives.

SHE’S A big girl, probably five ten in her bare feet, but well over that with her fuck-me stripper heels on. She’s all tits and ass and pale white skin, her black hair clipped in a Betty Page. There are Vargas-style pinups tattooed on both of her shoulders and a row of emerald-green, quarter-sized stars trace the edge of her collarbone above the bustline of her black vinyl minidress.

– This is Sandy Candy. Give her three hundred dollars.

The Champagne Lounge is a small, very dark room set off from the main club. I’m half-blind in here, what with the sunglasses still on my face, but I make out big padded chairs, small cocktail tables, and a handful of cowboys getting some serious full-contact lap dances from their strippers.

– Why?

– Because it costs three hundred dollars to be in the Champagne Lounge.

I peel three bills off my depleted bankroll and hand them to Sandy.

– Sandy, what do I get for three hundred?

She tucks the bills into a miniature Hello Kitty! lunch box she’s carrying.

– Tonight, you get to talk to me while I get off my feet.

– That’s some expensive talk.

– I’m known for my conversation.

T takes the little plastic pot box from his pocket and puts it on the table.

– We’re looking for a guy.

She picks up the box and shakes her head.

– Fucking Timmy.

I lean forward.

– Yeah, fucking Timmy, that’s the guy.

SHE WORKS for the same guy as Timmy.

– What the hell is your name anyway?

My name? I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

– Wade.

I look at T. He keeps his eyes on Sandy.

– His name is Wade.

Sandy nods.

– OK, Wade, here’s the deal. Like I told you, I work for the same guy as Timmy, guy named Terry. What we do, the delivery guys, we show up at work, which is this small warehouse over in Paradise. We don’t all come in together, we have different times. Staggered. Like, I used to see this therapist because I used to be bulimic because I had all these food issues because when I was a baby my mom didn’t want to mess with feeding me so she tied my bottle to the side of the crib like a hamster bottle so I could feed myself, so because of that I saw this therapist and she would stagger the patients so you didn’t have to run into anyone if you didn’t want anyone to know that you were coming to see her. I didn’t care myself, but some of them were freaky about it. Like, I came in early once and this lady was coming out of the office and saw me in the waiting room and the therapist had to come out and ask me to turn my back while this woman left. Weird. So, Terry, the boss, he does the same thing so that not all the delivery guys know each other, which is the way some of them want it in case someone gets busted. But me, I’m pretty mellow, and so is Tim. So we run into each other over there a couple times and find out that we’re both cool. So sometimes if I came up short on my stash, I might call Timmy and he’d front me so I could take care of my customers. He’s cool like that. So, the point is, we never all come in at once to get our stuff. But!

She holds her hands up like she’s about to deliver a dual karate chop. She’s a big hand-talker, Sandy is.

– But! This one day I show up and everybody is there. All the delivery guys are in there, the ones I know and the ones I don’t know. Terry, the boss, he’s not even really a boss, he’s just a dealer who pays us a commission to make these deliveries, but we call him a boss. But Terry, he’s been making us all stay until everybody is there, except Tim. And that’s when he asks if anyone has seen him around. And it looked to me like Terry did it that way so he could watch everyone all together when he asked, to see if anyone looked at each other, like they maybe knew something they weren’t telling. But no one did. And that’s pretty much it.

She peels her lips away from her teeth and grinds her molars.

– Shit, T, this is serious stuff.

I shake my head.

– So, wait, but where’s Tim?

– Hell if I know.

– That’s, that’s all you?

– For now. I tried to get ahold of Terry, you know, see if anything had popped up, but he ain’t around. I can try him in the morning, I mean after the sun comes up. But.

She shrugs.

– But, what was the last time someone saw him?

She slaps her forehead.

– Oh, shit. Right. Well, maybe Saturday because Tim always takes Sunday off and Monday was when he was missing, but that’s not what I was gonna. This other guy! I forgot to tell you.

– What other?

– Hang ooooon. OK, this other guy was in there, in the office I guess, this morning, when I went in for my pickup, and I heard him talking to Terry a little, and I think I heard him say Tim’s name, and then he left.

– Who was he?

– Well! At first, I thought the guy was a cop collecting a payoff because he was in a suit, but then when the guy left I heard him say good-bye and he can’t have been a cop, because of he had a Russian accent.

My heart jackhammers. I could say it’s just the speed. But I’d be lying.

I WALK out of the stall. At the sink, I splash water on my face and inhale, sucking it into my nose to ease the chemical burn from the bump I just did. I look in the mirror and there I am: Stetson pulled low, sunglasses still on, skin waxy and drawn under my Mexico tan, jaw muscles flexing as I grind my teeth. I turn off the sink and walk out of the bathroom, water still dripping from my moustache.

Coming out of the tiled calm of the bathroom, I am hit by the ceaseless wave of slots racket. Gding-gding-gding, punctuated by the occasional mechanical cry, “Wheel of Fortune!” or the chang-chang of a nickel machine paying out. My heart leaps arhythmically in my chest, trying to match time with the din. I freeze.

Where am I? I stand in place and turn in a slow circle and look around the Western-themed casino. I see a sign. Sam’s Town Gambling Hall. Oh, right. Sam’s Town. This is the place Sandy wanted to hang while… While? We’re waiting for something. For…

– Where have you been, baby?

Sandy grabs me from behind and wraps her arms around me, I rotate within her grasp, feeling our bodies slide against each other, and put my hands on her hips.

– Got me.

She smiles, puts a finger on the bridge of my sunglasses and pushes them down. She looks at my eyes.

– Oh, baby, you are tweaked aren’t you?

– Got me.

She laughs.

– Well, hand it over, it’s mama’s turn.

I dig in my pocket for the bindle T gave me and pass it to her. She points at the tables.

– T’s right over there.

And she walks toward the bathrooms. I turn and find T at a ten-dollar craps table.

– T, what are we doing here, man?

He tosses a chip onto the table.