Skinflick by Joseph Hansen

prescription,” his father said, and went back to bend his head over his work again.
    “They had his picture.” The boy worked the latch of a white gate that broke the counter and came out with the box. He set it on the floor, tore it open, began taking bottles out of it and arranging them on a low shelf. “It said he was a churchgoer, a pillar of his church, right?”
    “That’s the man,” Dave said.
    “Maybe,” the boy said. “But not his wife. No way.”
    “A woman about sixty,” Dave said. “Paralyzed on one side. Drags her foot.”
    “That’s what’s wrong,” the pharmacist’s son said. “She’s about fifteen years old. And I mean, she is wild. Did you see the ice-cream counter? Up front by the check stands? You know what she made him do while he waited to get the prescription, right here where you’re standing? She made him buy her three ice-cream cones. At once. And there’s a record counter over there.” He pointed. “There’s nothing to play them on. I mean, they’re junk. Boxcar-sale stuff. If you listened to them you wouldn’t buy them, okay? So what does she do? She goes to the kiddies’ toys. And there’s these little ten-dollar players, plastic, made to look like bugs and panda bears and that. And she takes and finds a floor plug in the lamps and she sits down and. plays the record. Loud? I mean, loud-loud! And the poor man is standing here turning redder and redder, right? And she’s sitting there on the floor in her little shorts and tank top and licking first one flavor ice-cream cone and then another flavor and then another one and dripping it all over the rug, right? I remember her.”
    “Who’s Doctor Encey?” Dave asked.
    “One of the happiness boys,” the pharmacist’s son said. “The tall glass building two blocks thataway.”
    “You mean he sells prescriptions,” Dave said.
    “They’re usually to put actors to sleep or to wake writers up or keep directors calm. Or people who call themselves those things. But they can be almost anything.”
    “You fill the prescriptions?” Dave asked.
    “That’s what we’re here for,” the boy said. He put the last bottle on the shelf, poked the flaps of the empty carton down into it, and stood up. “Encey’s still got his license. It’s no secret what he’s doing. Nobody in charge seems to want to stop him. What did Dawson get that night? Birth-control pills? That’s not such a big deal.”
    “You’re sure the girl was with him?” Dave said.
    “They were in together before. She points. ‘Buy me this, buy me that.’ He falls all over himself to buy it. She’s not very bright. I mean”—he edged past Dave with the empty carton, back behind the counter, clicking the lock shut on the white gate—“she used poor English. I think she’s a high-school dropout, one of those runaways. I’m going to be in the movies, I’m going to be on TV, you know? Come to Hollywood. I don’t know where a man like that found her. I mean—he looked like what they said he was on the news—somebody who passes the collection plate in church Sunday mornings. Typecasting.”
    “She impressed you,” Dave said. “Is she pretty?”
    “Too young. Flat-chested, hips like a Little League pitcher.” He frowned to himself, blinking. “I don’t know. There’s hundreds of them along this street. But, yeah—she was different. They’ve all got Farrah Fawcett hair, you know? Looks like they borrowed it?”
    “Blond and abundant,” Dave said.
    “Howard?” the gray-haired man called.
    “Have you seen her in the last week?” Dave asked.
    “I don’t think so,” the boy said. “Excuse me?”
    Outside in the heat, the black boy had got up off the curb and was acting. He was waving clenched fists, popping his eyes, and mouthing angry words without sound. Two sweat-shiny college boys jogged past in red track shorts. They didn’t even turn their heads. The black boy seemed to be looking at Dave but he wasn’t. What he saw was inside