SE Hinton owns the Outsiders.

Female Lead

Eleven-

Honey fiddles with the radio in Two-Bit's car. Some of the Tulsa stations have signed off for the evening, but there's an underground back-up transmitter from Kansas City coming in clear and playing The Strangeloves. Tim managed to get the gas tank filled to a little over a half. She figures she has half the night to drive around and think about the questions Tim said she ought to be asking about her dad and the stranger from the other night.

Instead, she drives around for a good twenty minutes thinking about Tim's mouth on her neck and hands on her thighs. She does this until the buzz wears off, and then she becomes irritated with him. He's playing a game with her, she thinks. He's enjoying razzing Two-Bit or he's using her to keep a line on Darry. Whatever he's doing, there's an angle, she's sure of that. She shakes off the thought of him and keeps driving.

She replays the evening Two-Bit had picked her up from the diner in her head, trying to imagine where the stranger saw them and began following her. The obvious answer seems to be the bar, but she doesn't remember seeing him there. There was the diner, Mohawk Park, the run-in with Corrine and her boyfriend, and then they dropped Corrine off at the Mayo. Honey racks her brain. She didn't see the man well enough to place him in any of those places, but the Mayo is the only one she wouldn't normally go to. Maybe he was staying in the hotel- or had some business there- and saw her by chance, and that's why he was only coming to her now.

She can't go into the lobby of the Mayo Hotel, she figures, wearing Sylvia's clothes and asking after a man twice her age who might be from Texas or Kansas. She can, however, take a look around the parking garage where the valets park the guest's cars. She wishes she had someone with her- even Tim would do. She wonders if she could save some time by cajoling one of the valets to let her look at the keys and the logbook for a late model Dodge. She turns Two-Bit's car around and drives back towards the center of town.


Honey parks on the street, around the corner from the garage, and out of the territory of the Mayo's valets. She grudgingly turns the ignition off and hopes that the car is sufficiently warmed up so that it will start on its own when she comes back. She hurries up the street to the garage entrance.

Inside the parking garage across from the Mayo Hotel, there is a little booth the size of Honey's sleeping porch. There is a window with a counter and the walls are lined with keys. She doesn't recognize the attendant. He seems to be only one of duty, and that would make sense given the time of night. He hears the sound of Honey's heels on the concrete and looks up before she gets to the window.

"'Evening," He says, looking her over. She's sure he already knows she doesn't have a car parked in the garage.

"Hi," she says. "I need some help. I need to find a car. Can you tell me if a particular car is parked here?"

The attendant smirks.

"Not your car, I'm guessing?"

Honey shakes her head and rolls her eyes, feigning embarrassment.

"I had a date with a guy from out of town," she tells him. "He took something of mine. I want it back."

"What'd he take?"

Christ, Honey thinks, how seriously could this guy possibly take his job? If it was her, she'd do anything to get out of that little booth and go for a walk.

"A cigarette case. It was my dad's. It's no big deal. It's ain't expensive, but my dad's gone now, and…"

"What's it got in it?"

"Cigarettes."

The valet smiles. Honey gets his meaning. He wants to know if she has weed, and if she's going to be willing to share.

She adds, "And…you know."

The valet is convinced by this. He takes the log book out from under the counter.

"Do you know his name?"

"Probably ain't his real name," Honey tells him. "The car was a Dodge. Made in the last couple of years."

The valet nods as he flips through pages. He isn't willing to just give up the book to Honey. She tells him:

"It was the night of the fifteenth that I was with him, if that helps."

The valet flips back another page. He stops, with his finger on a name, but he won't let Honey see it.

"Lucky you, babe. It was a slow night. Sixty-three Dodge Polara. Kansas plates. Sound about right?"

Honey nods. "Is it still here?"

The valet frowns at her.

"Yeah, it's still here, but I can't just let you go back there and rummage around in it."

"All's I want is that cigarette case. I ain't going to key it or anything." She says, and then, "you can come with me. You can watch me rummage around."

The valet smiles and looks her over a little longer than Honey is comfortable with.

"Yeah, I can do that. If someone wails on the horn and wants to come in, we got to come back though."

Honey thanks him and waits while he puts the logbook away and joins her outside of the booth. He nods in a forward direction, and she follows him. She's glad when he walks up the open ramps instead of taking the stairwell. She wants to stay out in the open with this guy.

She sees the car before the valet does. Her heart seizes in her chest a little. She was wrong about the color- it's pale, hospital green. She darts ahead of the valet, telling him: "It's this one."

The valet looks at the ticket in his hand and says, "Yeah, it is."

Honey peers through the windows of the car, like she's looking hard for something. She isn't. She waits for the valet to catch up with her, and then asks:

"Can you unlock it? Please? Maybe he put it in the glove box."

The attendant shifts on his feet. He grumbles, "Christ, baby, you'd better be holding," and then unlocks the door.

Honey gets in on the driver's side. She makes a show of looking between the seats, and then opens the glove box. She can see the registration in a clear plastic sleeve. She looks back to see if the valet is watching her.

"Don't see it?" He asks. He's about to say something else when the sound of a horn on the street level reverberates through the garage. He says, "I got to go, baby. You do too. Come on."

In the moment when his head is turned towards the sound of the horn, Honey pockets the registration card and shuts the glove compartment. She hops out of the car and frowns, attempting to look disappointed.

"Out of luck, I guess," she says.

"You need to pick better dates for yourself," the attendant says, hurrying along ahead of her. "You should give me your number."

Honey isn't paying attention. She mumbles, "uh huh," but she's reading the registration in the pale light. Edward Ryland Carter of Wichita, Kansas. When they reach the entrance to the garage, the attendant asks again for her number. Honey darts past him, calling out, "thanks," behind her.