Chapter 8

“Right? Some Friday nights we’re so busy in the ambulance we don’t clear ten bucks a patient. Next year I’m gonna wrap out of the trunk of my car, eight bucks a package. What a racket. That’s Cora Faye, by the way,” I told him.

“Where?” He looked around, like maybe she was about to stroll past.

“On those mall posters.”

“Oh. Her?”

“Now do you recognize her?”

He pulled his lips into a frown of ‘fraid not.

“I mean, geeze, maybe she is here,” I said. “Her face is everywhere. Does her cousin own this mall?”

I noticed I was getting dirty looks dragging a dog through the mall at the end of my belt. And it’s not like I had a seventy-two-inch waist; while admittedly a couple inches longer than Jarek’s must have been, my belt wasn’t exactly giving Blitzen the freedom to run amok. Still, I figured maybe we’d attract less attention—and run a lower risk of getting booted from the mall—if I carried him. I was bent over scooping him into my arms when Jarek said, “Oh, look.”