“It’s another way to bring movement into your life. Okay, you’re on.”
They broke apart, and Slade felt a pang of regret for the fact that he no longer held Karma in his arms. Watching the way she moved as they traversed the area between the dance floor and the door was some compensation, however, and putting his arm around her once they were outside on the sidewalk was even more.
They had turned to walk down the street toward the beach when he caught a glimpse of red hair sprouting from a knot on top of a head. The woman under the hair was on her way into the club that they had recently left, and it wasn’t just any woman. It was, he realized with a sinking heart, the woman he’d met last night, the one who had accompanied the men he was with into the alley as they tried to rob him. The woman whose bikini top had ended up in his pocket.
There are certain moments in life that you can see coming from a distance away, and when that happens, the best thing to do is avoid them at all costs. And he didn’t want to meet up with this redhead, whose name, he recalled, was Brenda.
But it was too late. Brenda had already seen him. Not that he was all that inconspicuous, as tall as he was and with the flamboyant Karma O’Connor on his arm.
“You!” Brenda shouted. “Come back here!”
“Looks to me like we’d better get out of here,” he muttered close to Karma’s ear. Fortunately at that moment a bunch of men wearing red fezzes on their heads tumbled out of a charter bus between him and Brenda, who let out a squawk of outrage.
Karma craned her neck. He had no doubt that she could see over the heads of the men in the red hats.
“That woman,” she said. “Is she trying to talk to you?” Brenda hollered something, the words indistinct.
“I think so,” Slade said. “We’d better run for it.”
He hadn’t anticipated the effect these words would have on Karma. Instead of agreeing with him, or better yet putting one foot in front of the other as fast as could be managed, she dug in her heels and said, “Why?”
“Because that woman and her companions tried to rob me last night. Because I decked the two guys, and she went off screaming down an alley.”
Karma narrowed her eyes. “What preceded this? I mean, why would you—”
Yesterday replayed itself in Slade’s memory. Plenty had happened, but there was no way he could explain it to Karma in the few moments remaining before Brenda clawed and climbed her way over the wedge of men who were still good-timing their way out of that bus.
“It was a matter of survival,” he said. “Let’s go!”
Karma was not to be hustled, however, and to his horror, he saw four of the men lifting Brenda up and passing her over their heads until she was gently set down on the other side of their still-moving line.
Brenda let out a little “Yow!” of triumph and bounced toward them. “Slade! Isn’t that your name?” she said, sparing a quick assessment of Karma, who stood mutely at his side.
Slade tried to edge away, but Karma was firmly rooted in place. She was staring at Brenda’s chest, which was a fine example of silicone art at its worst.
“You have my bikini top,” Brenda said without further preamble. “I want it back.”
“I don’t—”
“You do! You grabbed it up off the floor when I was dancing! I saw you!”
“But—”
“Hef gave it to me as a token of his esteem when I was Playmate of the Month!” Brenda was getting decidedly red in the face, almost as red as Slade remembered the disputed bikini top to be.
“Slade, is any of this true?” said Karma through tight lips.
“Some of it,” he admitted.
“Great. I’ve just signed up a pervert at Rent-a-Yenta,” Karma muttered under her breath, but at least his admission did what he hadn’t been able to do. It got Karma moving. She set off down the sidewalk at a pace that could only be described as rapid.
Slade turned to face Brenda, thinking that he might be able to talk her into being reasonable. “Your swimsuit top is at the houseboat. Stop by tomorrow and I’ll give it to you.”
“No,” said Brenda, stubbornness flaring in her eyes. “I want it now.”
“Tomorrow. No problem,” he said, backing away as placatingly as he could.
“Now! We’re going there right away! If you think I’m going to let you keep any article of my clothing for any length of time, you’re nuts. After what you did to my friends—”
“They deserved it,” he told her. “They tried to take my wallet.”
“I don’t care,” Brenda said, on the verge, he was sure, of another tirade or maybe hysterics from the look of her. But then fate intervened in the form of a very large woman walking a very large and very hairy dog, which began to sniff around Brenda’s feet in the way that dogs checked out fireplugs.
Uh-oh, thought Slade as the dog lifted its leg and Brenda curdled the air around them with a high-pitched scream. The dog panicked at the sound of Brenda’s ungodly shriek, and it began to run around in circles. The woman yanked on the leash and yelled, “Heel! Heel!” Brenda kept on screaming. And he, Slade, made tracks.
Fortunately there were a lot of strollers out indulging in South Beach ambiance and the brine-scented night air, and fortunately, he spotted Karma’s head about a block away. By the time he’d caught up with her, she had exceeded loping speed and was jogging along quite efficiently.
“Karma,” he said, grabbing her arm. “I can explain.”
“No explanation necessary. I saw you pull that red bra from your pocket this morning when you stopped to inquire about Rent-a-Yenta.”
“It’s not a bra. It’s a bikini top.”
“It serves the same function. Don’t worry, I’ll refund your registration fee.”
“I don’t want a refund,” he said, glancing over his shoulder as Brenda’s screams abruptly stopped. “I want a wife.”
“Fat chance,” Karma said.
He saw that red topknot flopping its way toward them. “I don’t want to talk to this woman. I can explain. Where can we hide?”
“Like they say, you can run but you can’t hide,” Karma said grimly.
“It was all a fluke. I grabbed her bikini top off the floor when she threw it off while she was dancing on the hood of a cut-down ’57 Chevy that was used as a couch in an apartment with some strange people I didn’t know. It’s true, I swear it.”
Karma stopped dead in her tracks in front of a yellow-stuccoed apartment house and stared at him. “That story sounds absolutely too bizarre to be made up,” she said.
“I didn’t make it up. I have no interest in Brenda. Isn’t there somewhere we can go?”
Karma’s eyes moved sideways and took in their pursuer, who was now only half a block away. They were standing in the slim shadow of a palm tree, so there was a chance that Brenda hadn’t actually seen them yet.
“In here,” said Karma, yanking him into the lobby of the yellow-stuccoed place. Slade had the impression of dusty potted ficus trees and tables piled high with dog-eared magazines. A bunch of elderly men sat around tables playing dominoes.
“Hello, Karma dear,” one of them said, his words punctuated by the sound of dominoes slapping on wood. “Your uncle Nate is out.”
“I think he went somewhere with Mrs. Rothstein. He borrowed my