Swag by Elmore Leonard

Somebody was paying Arlene’s rent, a guy in a silver Mark IV who came twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, at six, and was usually out by ten thirty. Arlene said he was a good friend.
    There were several Jewish career ladies. Frank was glad to see that. He told Stick he liked good-looking Jewish girls because they had a lot of hair, big tits, and usually pretty nice noses once they had them fixed. He told Stick he’d been out with plenty of Jewish girls, including the little starlet in LA. Stick said he wasn’t sure if he ever had. He asked Frank if it was all right to mention the word Jew in front of them or refer to them as being Jewish in any way. Frank said, “You dumb shit, that’s what they are . Don’t you think they know it?”
    There was a schoolteacher named Karen who didn’t talk or look like a schoolteacher. Stick didn’t think she looked Jewish either. Karen said some funny things about her sixth-graders being sex-crazed and how the little girls stuck out their training bras for the horny little boys. Frank started taking Karen out and sometimes he spent the night at her apartment. Stick didn’t think she seemed too impressed with Frank, though. She was off all summer with nothing to do.
    There was a dental hygienist by the name of Donna who had a boyfriend but wasn’t going to marry him until he made as much as she did. She told them how much a dentist with a good practice could make and referred to net and gross a lot. Donna was way down at the bottom of Frank’s list of things to do.
    Sonny, the photographer’s model, was the winner of the group. But she was unresponsive to drink offers. She seldom came up to their apartment with the others. She’d lie there behind her big sunglasses and hardly ever laugh when they said something funny. Frank said she was battery-operated. You pressed a little button on her can and she’d say, “Hi, I’m Sonny. I’m a model. So fuck off.”
    Stick noticed that Frank watched her, studied her, more than he did the others. Sonny was the only one Frank had trouble talking to.
    There was a girl in the next apartment—a career lady but not one of the group—who they found out was a pro. Stick called her Mona because sometimes, through the wall, he’d hear her in there with a guy, saying things to him and moaning like she was about to die it was so good. Frank called her what’s-her-name. He was polite to her but not interested. He said a guy would be out of his mind to pay for it at the Villa Monterey. Stick never mentioned it to Frank, but he liked her. He liked her straight dark hair parted in the middle. He liked the calm expression in her eyes and the quiet way she talked, though she never said very much. She was fragile-looking, a thin little thing with bony shoulders sticking out of her sleeveless blouse. When he’d see her outside he couldn’t believe she was the same girl he’d hear moaning and carrying on through the wall. Maybe sometime, when Frank wasn’t around, he’d get talking to her in private and find out which one was the real Mona.
    They both liked the cocktail waitress, Jackie, who worked at a place called The Ball Joint and wore a kitty outfit with little ears and a tail. Jackie wasn’t the smartest girl there, but she was very friendly. Also she had the biggest pair at the Villa Monterey, even when they weren’t pushed up by her kitty outfit. She showed the group one time, in her bikini, how she placed drinks on a table, bending her knees and keeping her body straight so they wouldn’t fall out. Frank said if they ever did and hit somebody, they’d kill him. Jackie worked nights and usually didn’t drink in the afternoon, but was liable to bang on their door when she got home, two thirty in the morning, if she saw a light on and heard the hi-fi playing. It wasn’t unusual.
    Their apartment had become a little social center, with