Dope by Sara Gran

girl.”
    â€œHow about the guy?”
    Tony shrugged. “After a while, they all look alike.”
    I knew what he meant. I walked to the back, where the girls sat on stools by the bar. They were laughing and complaining over their half-price drinks, probably talking trash about Tony and the customers and the girls who were off that evening.
    I recognized one of the girls, a brunette in a bright red dress, and I walked over to her. “Daisy,” I said. She turned and looked at me. I could tell she didn’t recognize me. The laughter quieted down. “I worked here for a while, maybe eight years back. I’m not surprised you don’t remember me,” I told her. “I spent most of my time in the first stall in the ladies’ room.”
    That got a laugh from her and the rest of the girls. The first stall was bigger than the rest, and all the dope fiends preferred it for shooting. So now they knew I was telling the truth.
    â€œLooking for work again?” Daisy asked, a bit friendlier now.
    â€œNo, actually, I’m looking for them.”
    I gave her the picture of McFall and Nadine. She looked at it and then back up at me. “Did she work here?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I told her.
    â€œShe kinda looks familiar. . . . Gina, come here and look at this.” A tall slim girl in a pink dress came down from the end of the bar. She looked at the photo over Daisy’s shoulder.
    â€œI don’t know,” Gina said, with a rough Brooklyn accent. “Isn’t she the girl who left to go work at the Royale?”
    â€œMaybe,” Daisy said. “What was her name, anyway?”
    Gina shrugged. “Jeez, they come and go so fast. Roxy?”
    â€œNah,” Daisy said. “That ain’t it. That was the girl who moved to Alaska.”
    A dark Puerto Rican girl leaned over and looked at the photo. “No,” she said, with a Spanish accent. “That’s the girl who went to the Royale. I went there once with a girlfriend—don’t tell Tony, for Christ’s sake—and I saw her there.”
    â€œWhen was that?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “Over a month ago.”
    Gina pointed at McFall. “I dunno. But him, I think I’ve seen him before. Hey, Clara,” she called. “Clara, come take a look.” Clara was a pretty, curvy blonde in a fancy strapless white dress, like a girl might wear to a formal. She looked too young to be here. She hopped off her bar stool and came over to look. When she saw the photo she blinked and pursed her lips, just enough to see it if you were looking real close.
    â€œNo,” she said quietly. I imagined that she always talked like that, quiet and soft. “I’ve never seen either one of them.”
    Daisy passed the photo down the bar. The rest of the girls said they hadn’t seen either of them. I thanked them, and they went back to their drinks and their chatter. Except Clara, the blonde. She sat on her stool and looked at the floor.
    â€œHey,” I said to her, smiling. “Let’s have a drink.”
    She nodded. I took her by the arm and led her over to a table a few yards away from the bar, where we sat across from each other. She didn’t resist. Her arm was soft and practically limp and it sort of made you feel like crying to touch her.
    â€œHow do you know him?” I asked.
    She shrugged, defeated. Her pretty face looked young and tired. She looked down at the floor again. “We went out to dinner a few times, that was all.”
    â€œYou meet him here?”
    She nodded. “Yeah. We went out to dinner a few times, that was all.”
    But that wasn’t all. She was still looking down at the floor. “Why’d you only go out a few times?”
    â€œThat guy,” she said, sighing. “He seemed different, you know? Nice. He really seemed like somebody. ”
    â€œAnd then?”
    She kept her eyes down at the