'Hello?' The voice is liquid ass in panty elastic.

Taylor, hi - it's Vern.'

'Wait up, I'll get her,' says a girl. 'Tay! Taylor - it's Vern.'

'Who?' calls a voice in the background.

Then you hear giggles. I fucken hate that. Your chances with a girl fall sharply in the vicinity of giggles. Learning: never try to deal with more than one girl at a time.

She finally clatters onto the line. 'Tayla.'

'Uh - hi, it's Vern.'

'Vern?'

'Vern Little - remember me?'

'Vern Little? Like, gee …' As she speaks, you hear the other girl in quiet hysterics nearby.

'You might've seen me on the news, Vernon Gregory Little - from Martirio?'

'Like, I'm real sorry - I heard about the massacre and all, but I usually only, like, watch cable, you know?'

'Anal Intruder Channel,' squeals the other girl.

'Fuck off, Chrissie, God.'

'Uh - well, I'm the messy-haired dude, from outside the senior party that time - I kept back some stuff of yours …'

'Oh hey, Vern. I'm sorry - you took care of me that night, like, boy, did I overdo it or what!'

'Hell, no big deal,' I say. In the background you hear her kick the other girl out of the room. Pause for giggles while she does it.

'Well it was really, like - anything could've happened to me, you know?' I push some spit around my mouth, imagine some things that could've happened to her. 'So how'd you get my number?' she asks.

'It's a long story - thing is, I'm coming over to Houston, I thought maybe we could grab a coffee or something.'

'Gee, Vern, I'm like, wow, you know? Maybe next time?'

'But, what about lunchtime, or something?'

'See, my cousin's coming over, and it's just like, whatever, a girl thing, you know? Anyway, it's real sweet of you to call …'

She utters the winding-up words, just like that. Then comes an awkward gap as she waits for the corresponding ending from me. A spike of horror makes me gamble.

'Taylor, listen - I just got out of jail, I'm on the run. I wanted to tell you some stuff before I disappear, you know?'

'Holy shit, like - what happened?

'I can't really talk on the phone.'

'God, but you seemed like, wow, you know, such a quiet guy.'

'Maybe not so quiet, as it turns out. Not so damn quiet anymore.'

'God, but you're only, like - fourteen, no?'

'Uh, seventeen actually, now, these days. So yeah, I guess I must've just snapped, against the injustice and all.'

'Oh my God . . .'

I stand at the phones, flick my eyes around the terminal, and wait for the bait to drop. I wait in the name of all the conclusive knowledge, collected throughout the history of the world, that says girls just can't resist bad boys. You know it, I know it. Everybody knows it, even if you ain't allowed to say it anymore.

'Vern, maybe I could, like - whatever, you know? I mean it's like, God. D'you know the Galleria in Houston?'

'Not a whole lot.'

'See, I have to be at Victoria's Secret around two - I could, like, catch you out front, on Westheimer or whatever.'

'Victoria's Secret?' I trample my tongue.

She giggles. 'I know, it's so embarrassing - I'm supposed to be, like, underwear shopping, I can't believe I just invited you.'

'I'll wear shades.'

'Whatever,' she says, laughing. 'Are you, like - in a car?'

'I'll take a cab.'

'Whatever, look - there's like this inflatable octopus out front of the Galleria, some kind of promotion - I'll keep an eye out around quarter of two.'

See how things work? First I'm like a skidmark on her mouthpiece, and she wants to wind up the call. But see what happens now I'm in trouble. See the awesome power of trouble. Trouble fucken rocks.

The Houston bus costs twenty-two bucks. I'm hungry, but I only have forty-four bucks fifty left. Getting both of us to Mexico will cost more than that. When my bus pulls into Houston, just before one o'clock, I head to the phones and look up 'Cash' in the yellow pages. My music has to go. A cab drives me miles away, to a pawnbroker where I get offered twenty-five bucks for my two-hundred-dollar stereo, which I accept because the taxi meter is running, and already cost me ten bucks, which I had to pay up-front as soon as the driver knew we were going to a fucken pawnbroker. I also get offered twenty-five cents apiece for my discs. I sneer at the pawnbroker, and he gets mad. Real red ass on the pawnbroker, actually, as we say down here.

Then the cab drives me along this fancy set of highways, past big reflector buildings, to the Galleria. I try not to imagine what Taylor'll be wearing, or how she'll smell. Better not to get fixated on anything that leaves room to be bummed if it's not true. I might focus on those same shorts from before, then find her in jeans or something, and lose the wind out of my sails.

I distract myself by watching the driver. He's a career driver, whose body and ass are permanently molded into the shape of the seat. He seems okay, kind of big and whiskery, with a relaxed smile. Reminds you of Brian Dennehy, from those ole movies, like with the alien eggs in the pool. A bunch of us at school used to wish Brian Dennehy could be our dad, same way we wished Barbara Bush could be our granny. Not like my snotty ole nana. But my ole man was still alive when I saw those movies, and I felt I kind of betrayed him by wishing Brian Dennehy could be my dad. Maybe that percentage of negative energy contributed to his death. Who knows?

The cab turns onto Westheimer, which is like four Gurie Streets stapled together. I try not to be conscious of my pulse, but it goes up anyway. There's no fucken cure for that, by the way. In movies, your pulse goes up when you want it up - out here it just does its own thing. Your fucken pulse is the death of cool. I take some deep breaths as this humongous mall appears alongside us; a large blow-up octopus sways on some ropes by the sidewalk. My balls crawl up my throat.

'Right there, by the octopus,' I tell the driver.

The figure of a young woman stands by the road. I slouch low, hoping she doesn't see me yet. I hate it when you go to meet somebody, and they spot you twenty fucken miles away, and just stay staring at you. You feel like your steps bounce too much, or your shoulders are too dangly or something. You hold the same dumb smile.

It's Taylor Figueroa. She's in a short khaki skirt. Her legs and arms flow warm and careless under sparkling brown hair. Her eyebrows flash up when she sees the cab. I feel sick to my fucken stomach.

'That'll be seven-eighty,' says the driver.

The cool of her smell hits me as soon as the door opens, but the cab seat is so low and busted that I make it look like climbing Mount Everest to get out. Taylor freeze-frames her smile while I haul my pack across the eastern face of the fucken cab. Then I drop my wallet in the road. She folds her arms while I scramble for a banknote, and hand it to the guy.

'That's seven-eighty,' says the driver, 'and this is only five.' He holds the bill out the window like it's a turd.

Sprinklers of sweat pop up on my forehead. I fumble through my pocket for change, but the pocket's so tight I can hardly get my hand in at all. Van Damme would rip the back of his hand off rather than squirm like this, he'd punch the driver's fucken lights out. I finally just pass the guy a ten from my billfold.

'Keep the change,' I tell him, all nonchalant. Taylor leans over to kiss my cheek, but stops again, mid-air. The goddam driver waves a banknote out the window.

'Don't forget your five.'

'I said keep the change.'

'You sure? Thanks, thanks a lot …'

Fuck. Now Taylor's embarrassed. I'm embarrassed, and half fucken bankrupt, and at the end of it all, Taylor just scratches the kiss right out of the scene. I catch a closer blast of her perfume though, which has a hook in it, the barb of a real woman, in the sense of more complicated panties, probably silk, full cut, with lace panels and all. Maybe in a blue half-tone, or a kind of flesh tone. I'm slain by her.

'Hi,' she says, leading me past the octopus. 'You robbed a bank, huh?'

'Yeah - see this backpack?'

I just sound weary now, like a regular smeghead on a flat Houston day. Sweat drips from my nose. Taylor looks me over. Her deep brown eyes narrow.

'You okay?'

'I guess so.'

I just sound like I have no desire left to impress anybody, but in this new depression a curious thing happens. A life thing. What happens, I think, is that we establish a real kind of contact, like in a movie or something. She just saw me make a complete asshole of myself, and she knows I know it. And it's as if she relaxes some, and I relax along with her. Like the horse stopped having to do math on stage. It accidentally makes me genuine, I guess, and exposes me as an ole fuckaway dog, all beat up to hell. She leads me quietly into the mall, respecting the swirling ink of trouble, and other people's tears, around my soul.

'So what's up, you dirty boy?' she teases on the escalator.

'Shit, I don't know where to start.'

'I'll drag it out of you.' She slips her dry little hand into my bunch of wet finger-meats, and coaxes me through the crowd. 'We'll check for my cousin, then maybe grab a juice, get private.'

A juice. Grab a private juice. What a woman. I watch her neat little buttocks stretch the fabric of her skirt, left, right, left, without a panty-line in sight, not to the naked eye. I'm so fucken in love with her I can't even picture her panties.

We reach the lingerie store, where all this hard-core, shiny kind of underwear is displayed out front. I'm not so interested in all that burlesque kind of stuff, to be honest. Simple cotton bikinis for me, like a girl wears when she doesn't expect you to go there. I look around at the women in the store. You can tell they fucken pray for you to go there.

'I don't see her,' says Taylor, craning over the displays. 'Typical. You want to go talk? I'll understand if you don't …'

'Sure, but you'll have to keep some pretty heavy secrets. I'll understand if you can't.' Girls just love secrets.

'Whatever.' She wrinkles her bitty nose. 'Like, I don't need to know where the bodies are buried or anything.' She flashes her teeth, and walks me to a fancy-looking cafeteria across the concourse.

'Hell, there's no bodies or anything,' I say.

As she docks her ass onto a barstool, I notice she's not totally airbrushed after all - a couple of her teeth are crooked, and you can detect a recent zit under her make-up. I melt like a wad into Kleenex. She's so fucken real, so here.

'So, like - are you guilty?' she asks.

'Nah, I don't figure.'

'Is it, like, robbery or something?'

'Murder.'

'Eek,' her face crumples like she just stepped in puke. 'Don't you think it'd be better to, like, stay and fight it out?'

'Nah, the way things're stacked, I have to disappear awhile.'

Her eyebrows scrunch in sympathy. What I realize as I melt into her syrup is that I have to steer talk away from the slime, and start to build a platform of excitement to tempt her along. Order tequilas or something, kiss her on the mouth.

'Tay,' I frown, 'this might seem sudden, but - I have to ask you something real important.'

Her face stiffens, like faces do when there's an incoming choice of shit. Right away I know it's the wrong approach.

'Cash?' she goes. 'Like, if you need a loan …'

A waiter turns up. 'What can I get y'all?' Taylor and my eyes take a moment to separate.

'I'll have a guava licuado,' she says.

'Uh - make it two,' I say. Tequilas my fucken ass. After the waiter leaves, I try another angle. 'Heck, Tay, I'm being real selfish here - I didn't even ask how you're doing …'

She rattles both my hands. 'You're killing me, like, God. I'm just here, finishing this thing, I tried out for TV but didn't get casted yet - just like, whatever, you know?'

I smile, and suck warmth from the moment to mold into a platform of romance. Then she flicks back her hair and drops her eyes.

'And I'm seeing this doctor, can you believe it? He's an older guy, obviously, but I'm like sooo in love - he's the reason I'm shopping today, him and my cousin's new man are such panty-pooches.'

I start to hear her through a distant echo-tunnel, you know how you do. Then Mom's voice scurries fr............