Instead, she had to settle for Robby’s hiking shit—L.L. Bean or something, made for one-hour hikes in the fall, not for winter windstorms. Besides, she looked like shit in flannel.

And the goddamned penny loafers were killing her feet.

A thin recorded voice in the phone receiver said The number you have reached is not a working number. Please check your number and—

“Fuck you,” Velvet grumbled, and slammed the receiver down. She chewed her lip and fingered a quarter in her pocket. She’d lost Lenny Bradshaw’s number, of course; never had been able to hang onto things like that, not even when her life depended on it. And here she had things to tell him, too. Big things.

She needed to replace the money she’d lost, fast. What the hell was that rag he worked for? Weekly World— no—Dallas Met— no—Big D Gazette. That was it. Big D Gazette.

She dialed 1411 and demanded the number. A computer that sounded like the one she’d just told to fuck itself gave her a number that didn’t sound at all familiar. She scribbled it on the back of her hand with a ballpoint pen, and fed her last quarter into the phone.

The two teenagers were still staring, nudging each other. She gave them a shark smile and dialed the number, listened to the grinding blurry rings. Five. Ten. Jesus, didn’t they ever—

“BigDGazette. Holdonaminute.” Before she could tell him to fuck off, he’d jammed her on hold—silent hold, not Muzak hold—and she spent another minute rubbing her chilled hands together, smearing the phone number. Great. She’d have to get it again, if she needed to call back. “Yeah. Whatdoyouwant?”

“Lenny Bradshaw.” She had to say it slow, because her teeth were chattering. The plastic of the phone felt like a block of ice on her ear. “Hey, buddy, hurry it up, I’m dying out here.”

The guy grunted and put her back on hold. Silent hold. She danced uncomfortably from one foot to the other, thinking about central heating and peeing. She was on her left foot when a voice picked up and said, “Yeah, go ahead.”

Not right. Didn’t sound right.

“Hey, you got two seconds to start talking or I’m gone.” He breathed heavily into the phone, a wheeze at the end like a three-pack-a-day addict. This wasn’t Mr. College Boy Dimple-Chin. No way.

“Lenny Bradshaw?” she asked, like an idiot. He wheezed some more.

“Yeah, yeah, you got him. What?”

“Lenny Bradshaw, like, the reporter, with the Big D Gazette?”

“No, baby, Lenny Bradshaw with the fucking Peace Corps. What are you, crazy? You called me, right? So?”

So. She leaned heavily against the pay phone, almost rested her forehead on the cold metal, but realized it was covered with some mysterious white stuff that could have been snot.