Skinflick by Joseph Hansen Page B

“Maybe she didn’t call herself Sims. Maybe it was Dawson. For what my advice is worth—I doubt that Odum belongs to any guilds. I doubt that he belongs to the Motion Picture Academy.”
    “I don’t doubt that he drives a car,” Delgado said.
    “Two hundred a day and expenses,” Dave said.
    “No way.” Delgado gulped the last of his coffee. “Twenty bucks for gas and lunch. And I wouldn’t take that if I wasn’t broke.” He set the mug on the plate and stood. “I’ll wash the dishes and get going.”
    “You’re locked out of your motel,” Dave reminded him.
    “That’s not your problem.” Delgado took Amanda’s mug and plate and started for the door. “Maybe I tried to make it your problem last night, but it’s not.”
    “Don’t worry about the dishes,” Dave said. “You cooked the breakfast. My wallet’s in the front building on the floor by the thing I slept on. Better take fifty. It gets expensive out there. You don’t want to run short.”
    “Let me have those.” Amanda took the plates out of Delgado’s hands and went out into the leaf-speckled sunlight with them. Halfway across the courtyard she called back, “And good luck.” She went into the cookhouse and water began splashing there.
    Dave sat and finished his breakfast. He heard the door of the front building close and the crunch of Delgado’s steps rounding the house and fading toward his car. But there was no noise of the car starting. Swallowing the last of his eggs, he got to his feet. He left the plate with Amanda at the sink and carried his coffee out to the front. Delgado leaned in under the raised hood of an old Pontiac with a smashed-out taillight. A pocketknife was in his hand. He was trying to make it serve as a screwdriver to fasten some wires. He saw Dave and straightened up, banging his head. He rubbed his head, wincing. But it didn’t hide the guilt in his eyes.
    “Relax,” Dave said. “You fixed it so you could stamp off mad at me, or go off rejected and dejected, or however the scene played itself, and you wouldn’t be able to get your car started. You’d have to stay. I’ve had it done to me before.”
    Delgado stared, making up his mind about whether or not to get sore. He bent back under the hood and worked with the wires again. “There’s something you don’t know about people,” he said. “There has to be. It stands to reason.” He grunted with the effort of what he was doing. “There.” He got out from under the hood and slammed it shut. He folded up the jackknife and dropped it into the pocket of the jeans Dave had lent him.
    Dave said, “When people run out of probable things to do, they do improbable things. That’s all. Nothing so wonderful about that.”
    Delgado opened the door on the driver’s side and got into the car. The door squeaked. Cotton wadding stuck out of a worn place in the seat. He started the engine and shut the door. “Only you don’t get surprised,” he said.
    “Once or twice,” Dave said. “It’s dangerous. I don’t like it. But I know it’s going to happen again. The odds are like that. I haven’t met everybody in the world, yet. It only feels that way.”
    Delgado had made a bundle of his dirty clothes. It lay on the seat beside him. He must have put it there when he got up. He said, “I know what you mean.”
    “The trick is to remember that they only seem the same,” Dave said. “They’re not the same. And one of them is waiting to surprise the hell out of me.”
    “I hope it isn’t me,” Delgado said.
    Dave slapped the window ledge and stepped back. “Good luck,” he said. “Call me when you locate Spence Odum. Wait, I didn’t give you my number.”
    Delgado grinned. “I swiped a card out of your wallet.” He backed the car. Dust huffed from under the worn tires. The old engine rattled a lot at the effort it had to make getting up the rutted drive to the trail. Delgado raised a hand and let the Pontiac roll down the potholed blacktop. It