Page 79

“Honey.” Madison shakes her head. “Dover is in prison. That’s his fault, not yours.”

“No,” Bristal says, handing my phone back to me. “But maybe like a bounty hunter, or a game warden. Something. Not a mom and a golden retriever owner.”

“There’s nothing wrong with golden retrievers,” I argue.

“They’re the MacKenzie Walters of the dog world,” Bristal shoots back. “Hey—she earned that,” Bristal warns me, a finger coming up as I’m about to mount a defense of my friend.

“Dogs,” I say instead. “Let’s talk about the next episode—assuming you’re still in?”

Bristal shares a glance with her mom over the table and taps her finger against her beer can, making hollow music. “Yeah,” she finally says. “I’m still in.”

“Great!” I say. “How is the Boggs episode coming? You’re up next.”

“It’s done,” she says. “Just need to upload it. I was told I was supposed to wait until Monday to publish stuff, and I’m a good golden retriever, so I listened.”

“You’re a horrible golden retriever,” I tell her. “And you can publish whenever you want.”

“Score,” she says, and belches. “Your tornado episode was shit.”

“Randall Boggs,” Madison says, leaning her head back and staring at the ceiling. “He was a piece of work. Dirty old man, that one.”

“Did you know him?” I ask.

“Same way anybody knows anybody else in Henley, on sight but not real well.” She taps the ash of her cigarette into an empty beer bottle. “He tried to get me to give him a blow job for a penny.”

“What?!” I say, and Bristal shouts, “Only a penny?!”

“He was a slick fart, that guy,” Madison says. “I used to work at the Fairlawn, in high school. You know that used to be a whorehouse back in the seventies, right?”

“What?” I say again, adding volume this time.

“Yep.” She laughs. “That’s not something you’ll find documented at the historical society, but those beds were rented by the hour, not nightly. Did a pretty brisk business, too. The Horvaths owned it at the time.”

“Horvath.” Bristal kicks me under the table, while she thumbs through her phone, finally pointing at the commenter from our first shared episode of On the Ground in Flyover Country who had identified themselves as whorevath1977.

“Oh yeah,” Madison goes on. “There’s all kind of great jokes there. The Horvaths owned it. It’s called Fairlawn. The girls that worked the front desk had a whole bit about it.”

“What were you saying about Randall Boggs?” I ask.

“He got skunked one night and came in, must have thought it was still 1972, or whatever. Tried to get me to go upstairs with him, but all he had on him was a penny. I wouldn’t’ve touched him if he had a five-hundred-dollar bill; he smelled like a distillery and looked like an outhouse.

“He got all irate, said used to be a man could buy a Jamison girl for a dollar, and I told him a penny ain’t a dollar and he said it wasn’t a penny, it was a nickel. So I told him he wasn’t getting near my nips for a nickel, either, and besides that I wasn’t stupid, the damn thing was clearly copper.

“And that’s when he really got mad and told me I was a dumb slut and he wasn’t wasting his treasure on me, and my pussy wasn’t worth a penny anyway. Then he threw the bell at me and went out the front door hollering—”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Bristal interrupts her mom, the hand holding her beer wavering side to side. “He said it was his treasure? You hearing this?” She turns to me.

“What did it look like?” I ask, whipping my phone out. “Do you remember? Are you sure it was a penny?”

“Yeah.” Madison nods. “It said one cent, right on it. Had a—”

“Indian princess on the other side,” Bristal interrupts, sliding her phone to me across the table. “Check it out.”

It’s an auction listing for an 1864 Indian Princess copper nickel, the crack on Bristal’s screen sending an eerie crevice across Lady Liberty’s face.

“Holy crap,” I say, looking up at Bristal. “He had an Indian Princess in the family after all. But . . .” I scroll down, looking at the asking price. “It’s hardly a treasure. This isn’t even pulling in two hundred dollars.”

Bristal waves for me to give her phone back, and I hand it over, picking up my own and tapping away. Madison looks between us.