We say our goodbyes to Miss Sally and head out the door. Sometime during the night, clouds rolled in, bringing with them a humidity that makes it feel like we’re walking through water, the air so thick it has a weight to it. The inside of the Buick is even worse. The dampness has seeped through the cracks in the windows and turned the upholstery clammy. We sink onto it, and it belches up a bouquet of scents I’ve not noticed before, none of them pleasant. Cigarettes and body odor and something sour and rotten, like spoiled milk. I start the engine and hit the buttons for the windows to air out the stink.
“Sweet ride,” Martina says, sliding her hand up and down the armrest, and I wonder if she’s messing with me. Either way, it doesn’t make me any more eager to ride in her car.
I pull up the map app on my phone, and Martina waves it away, directing me out of the neighborhood. She chatters as we wind our way through streets that are already crowded with the morning rush, people like us going to work and school, and I wonder how we look to them. Normal, probably. Like one of them.
Once we’re hurtling toward the highway—a route I recognize—she settles back into her seat, kicking off her sneakers and swinging her feet up onto the dash. Her toenails are painted a bright metallic blue. “So, what’s the deal with you, anyway?”
The question is broad enough that it could refer to any number of things. I glance over, trying to judge which one, but Martina’s profile doesn’t give anything away. She points at the light and says, “Green.”
I look both ways, then tentatively press on the gas. “What’s the deal with me, how?”
“Well, you insist on driving, even though—and no offense—you’re not very good at it. You have nightmares almost every night. Screaming nightmares, and yes, everybody at Morgan House hears you. They’re all talking about it. And any time anyone asks you anything even remotely personal, you mumble something vague and change the subject. You won’t even tell me where you’re from.”
“I’m from Oklahoma.” It’s a lie, but it matches the car’s plates so what the hell.
“Where in Oklahoma?”
“A town nobody’s ever heard of.” That, at least, is the truth. Except when it comes to crime rates, Pine Bluff isn’t exactly on anyone’s radar. “A town I’m trying really hard to forget,” I add, trying to shut down this line of questioning.
Martina shrugs. “We’re all running from something, but if we’re going to be friends, you’ve got to at least give me something. That’s how this works, you know. You tell me something about yourself, and I tell you something about me.”
She’s right, of course. That is how friendship works, though I’m not sure friendship is the goal here—for either of us. It certainly wasn’t Martina’s goal when she pocketed Jorge’s kickback without a word to me about it.
And yet...
God, what would it be like to make a friend in this place? In this city? Someone to laugh and share jokes with, a ride or die like the ones I used to have, before you drove a wedge into every single one of my friendships. I like Martina, and the truth is, I could really use a friend.
“I told you where I was from,” she reminds me. “I even told you about my crack-whore mom, and I never tell anybody about her. The least you can do is share a truth about yourself.”
Truth. The word strikes me as funny, and I bite down on a laugh, a big belly guffaw. What truth? So far, neither one of us has been willing to take that first leap and share something completely honest, and I’m sure as hell not going to be the first. This new life, for as long as it lasts, depends on me telling no one the details of my past.
I take a left up the ramp to I-75, which looks like a parking lot. A bumper-to-bumper sea of red brake lights. Exhaust shimmers in the air, undulating waves rising up like heat. I slow to a stop behind a souped-up truck and twist on my seat to face her.
“You told me you were born at Grady Hospital but in an accent that sounds like it came from Mexico. You basically admitted you were Jorge’s client, too. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I believe half the stuff that comes out of your mouth. What does an American-born citizen need from a guy like Jorge other than kickbacks?”
She frowns. “What does that mean, ‘kickback’?”
“Like when he paid you a commission for sending me to him. That’s a kickback. And speaking of kickbacks, a real friend would have told me about it, or maybe even shared it. Friends don’t use other friends to try to make a buck.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t earn a commission from Jorge. Who told you I did?”
The truck in front of us rolls a few feet forward, and so do I, nudging the nose into traffic. “Jorge told me. He said he’d pay fifty bucks for anyone I sent him.”
“What—? Fifty dollars...” Her cheeks flush and her eyes squeeze into a squint. “Per person?”
I nod.
“Oh no.” She shakes her head, hiking up on a hip. “Oh hell no.”
Spouting a steady stream of angry, staccato Spanish, she wriggles her phone from her back pocket and stabs at the screen with a finger. I pick up a few choice words—puta, cojones, mierda—while the speaker burps a rhythmic tone. A few seconds later, Jorge answers with a curt “Yeah?”
She switches to English, her words high and clipped. “Jorge, Martina. What’s this I hear about a commission?”
His voice bursts from the phone speaker. “Who tell you that?”
“Beth. You offered her one when I’ve sent you what, ten people at least? Don’t tell me, all those checks must have gotten lost in the mail. Is that right?”
Jorge’s pause is two seconds too long. “Commission is new. Just started.”
“Uh-huh.” Martina looks at me, rolls her eyes. The first wave of guilt rolls through me, nibbling its way across my stomach. “This is some serious bullshit, Jorge. You owe me like three hundred bucks.”
“Okay, okay. I pay you next time.”
“No, you listen to me. There won’t be a next time, not until I get that money you owe me. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Not one more person until you pay.”
There’s another long pause, then a sigh. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Martina barks back, then disconnects the call. She drops it on her lap with an angry squeal. “I can’t believe he did that to me. What a snake. What a dirty, disgusting snake.”
Guilt flares, heating me from the inside out. If anyone’s a snake here, it’s me. I wrap both hands around the wheel and wince. “I just assumed he offered you the same deal he did with me, Martina. I never even considered...” I shake my head, glancing over. “I feel like such a shit.”
She brushes away my apology with a wave of her hand. “You’re not the shit. Jorge is the shit. He’s the one I’m mad at, not you.”
“Still. I’m really, really sorry.”
At my apology, her anger vanishes as quickly as it appeared. She turns to me, and her smile is big and real. “See? This is what friends do. We apologize. We forgive, and then we do better the next time. If you have a problem, you come to me and we’ll talk about it, okay?”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Great. So now it’s my turn.” She inhales, long and deep through her nose, then blows it out in one giant huff. “Okay. Fine. I don’t like the way you look at me sometimes.”
“How do I look at you?”
“Like you think I’m about to tackle you. Like you think I’m after however much is in that thing hanging at your waist. But I wouldn’t do that to you.” She points a finger at my face, wags it in the air between us. “You and I, we are friends, and I wouldn’t hurt a friend that way, Beth. I wouldn’t.”
She says it just like that—like it’s decided, like it’s a fact. She is to be trusted. We are to be friends. She holds me in her brown stare for a few more seconds, and I can’t deny her message tugs at something inside me. The thing is, I like Martina. Even though I haven’t believed much of what she’s told me so far, I think this might be the nugget of truth I was searching for. I was wrong abou
t her dealings with Jorge. Maybe I was wrong to be suspicious of her, too.
“I believe you,” I say, and God help me, I mean it. I believe Martina when she says she wouldn’t take my money. I just pray it’s not a mistake.
The car behind me leans on the horn, and I press the gas and slide forward, smiling.
The truth is, it’s nice to have a friend.
Unexpected. But nice.
* * *
Martina tells me she’s twenty-eight as we work our way through the nave of the church later that morning, stacking Bibles and hymnals in the cubbies between the seats, dropping in bulletins for the evening service. Her family has either died or moved away, all except for a younger half brother, Carlos, a boy half her age about to start high school at Grady—which I gather is a different place than the hospital where she claims to have been born. The two share a father, a deadbeat drifter who last she heard was playing drums in dives up and down the West Coast. Carlos’s mother is kind of a bitch, but she doesn’t drink or forget to buy groceries, and in Martina’s mind, that more than makes up for any snarky remarks.
Martina talks and talks, a constant stream of words to plug the silence, and I don’t interrupt. As long as she’s the one talking, I don’t have to do anything but listen.
As we’re nearing the last row of a section, I step on something hard and lumpy. I reach down, pick up a baby’s pacifier. It’s grubby and cracked, the pink face missing its ring. “Should I throw this thing away?” I say, holding it up.
Martina takes it from my fingers, tosses it into an empty box. “We never throw away anything here, ever. We take it to lost and found. Not that anybody will ever come looking for an old piece of plastic, but it’s not up to us. You never know what you’ll find. Phones, keys, gum wrappers and Lord knows what else. Once I found a diamond earring. A real one, too.”
“How do you know it was real?”
“Have you seen the people who come in this place?” She snorts. “It was definitely real.”
I think of Charlene, the blonde receptionist I met my first day here, with her silky dress and sparkly jewelry, and I don’t argue.
“Anyway, wait’ll you see this place tomorrow morning, after the Reverend packs the house here tonight. There are eight thousand seats in this place, eight thousand bodies, and at least half of them drop crap out of their pockets for us to pick up.”
I reach inside a box for a fresh stack of bulletins. “This place is nothing like the church I used to go to.”
As soon as I say the words, I wish I could snatch them back. Not that Martina seems to notice my accidental sharing. She picks up a piece of trash from the floor, tosses it into the box and moves farther down the line.
“Have you ever gone to one of the Reverend’s services?”
She nods.
“What’s it like?”
“The services are cool. Very happy-clappy, if you know what I mean, but the music steals the show. It’s like going to a concert or something. It makes the hour fly by. We can stay tonight if you want to, but I say we wait until Wednesday.”
“Why, what happens on Wednesday?”
“The Reverend puts on a buffet dinner after the services. Fried chicken, lasagna, mashed potatoes, more food than you’ve ever seen. And you should see those hoity-toity types tear into that buffet like they haven’t eaten for days. They hover around the tables with their plates while the Reverend blesses the food, and his Amen is like the shot of a starting pistol. They dive into that food like...like what are those people in the Bible with the famine?”
“Canaanites?”
“Yeah, them. Anyway, if we stay for the service and then help clean up afterward, we get to eat as much as we want, and the Reverend pays overtime.”
Overtime and a free meal, the two magic words.
I nod, decision made. “Let’s wait till Wednesday then.”
I look to Martina for confirmation, but she’s looking over my shoulder. Her spine straightens, and her brows slam together. “What the hell are you doing here?”
I turn to see a woman—no, a girl—coming down the aisle toward us. She’s somewhere around sixteen or seventeen, though she’s helped along by her height, six feet and then some. Her skin is bronze and her hair is natural, a wild crown of curly ringlets over high cheekbones and big green eyes. She’s dressed like us, in the same khaki pants and God Works Here T-shirt, only hers are skintight, her shirt knotted on the side to reveal a seductive slice of coppery skin. She moves closer, and I see that she’s biting back a smirk.
“I work here. What’re you doing here?”
Martina shakes her head, and her hands tighten into fists. “You can’t work here. I work here.”
“Well I do.” The girl says it short and matter-of-fact. “Here I am.”
“Where’s the Reverend?” Martina pushes past, almost mowing me over in her hurry into the opposite aisle. “I need to find the Reverend.”
The girl rolls her eyes. “What are you going to tell him, that you stole my money?”
At the accusation, Martina does an about-face, arms slinging in fury. I press myself to the chairs and get out of her way.
“I already told you,” she shouts, “I didn’t take your goddamn money. I didn’t even know you had any until you accused me of taking it. And it’s not like it was your cash to begin with. That hooker you stole it from probably just came back to claim what was hers.”
They’re making a lot of noise, too much. I check behind us, scanning the rows of empty chairs, but as far as I can tell, there’s nobody else here. Still. I wish they would stop yelling and cussing.
The girl purses her lips. “That hooker did come back, and so did her pimp. Do you know what they do to people who take their money? You’re lucky they didn’t kill me.”
“What is that, some kind of threat? Because I didn’t take your stupid money, and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t make me say it again.” Martina’s accent is full-on south of the border now, all rolling Rs and short, staccato spurts.
The girl lifts a brow. “Your Mexican is showing.”
With a squeal, Martina rears back an arm, her hand squeezed into a hard fist, and I hook my hand in her elbow right before she punches the girl in the face. The move is not entirely unselfish. I like to stay out of catfights as a general rule, but seeing as Martina is the one who got me this gig, I’m thinking it’s better to stop this one before any blood is spilled. I’m too new to have established a good reputation yet. What reflects badly on Martina reflects badly on me, too.
I plant my body between the two women, holding up a hand in both directions. “Both of you, see that cross up there? Either shut up or take it outside.” Martina opens her mouth to protest, but I beat her to it. “This isn’t the time or the place.”
She shuts up. The tall girl, too. They glare over my head at each other while Martina does a deep-breathing technique, less meditation and more trying not to explode. I open my mouth to speak, but it’s the Reverend’s voice that rings out.
“There you are,” he says, and the three of us freeze. Footsteps sound to my left, and I turn to see him walking across the stage. He stops under a stage light, the skin of his forehead shining like wet glass. Particles of dust dance in the air above him, suspended in the beam of light. “Oh good, I see you’ve already met Ayana.”
Martina tosses me a panicked glance. How much did he hear?
But the Reverend’s a good fifty feet away, and he has to raise his voice to be heard. He watches us with a benevolent smile.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to work upstairs today, in the administrative offices,” he says, and I don’t know which one of us he’s talking to.
I nod, but Martina frowns. “What happened to Oscar?”
Oscar is the unofficial head of the cleaning crew, an ancient, gnome-like man who, according to his hunched back and knobby, arthritic fingers, is somewhere between eighty and a hundred and fifty. As far as I can tell, his sole responsibility
is pushing a rag over the desks in the administrative offices and shooting the shit with anybody who wanders through. Any other person could do it in half the time, but in this place, seniority comes with the benefit of a cushy job.
“Oscar had to go to Florida, to visit his ailing mother. He’s asked us to keep her in our prayers.”
I make a sound of sympathy, even though I’m thinking, Oscar’s mother is still alive?
“Do you think you could take over, just until Oscar returns from his trip?”
“Of course, Reverend,” Martina says, volunteering in her best Southern Belle accent. “Beth and I will be happy to help.”
The Reverend leans back on his heels, his gaze flitting to Ayana, looking at her like she’s a child who wasn’t chosen for the party. “Maybe you can take Ayana, too. Introduce her around. Show her the ropes.”
Martina falls silent, and an angry flush climbs up her neck.
I smile up the stage at the Reverend. “Not a problem. We’d be glad to.”
“Excellent. Well...see y’all upstairs, I guess. And thank you. I’m so happy that God brought the three of you to me. I am blessed beyond measure.” He drops his hands in his pockets and wanders off, leaving the three of us standing in the aisle.
As soon as he’s gone, Martina swirls to face Ayana. “Swear to God, if you so much as look at me wrong, I’m telling the Reverend what you did.”
“What did she do?” I say. I can’t help it. Now I want to know.
Ayana folds her arms across her chest, her gaze dipping to Martina’s collarbones. “Pretty necklaces. How’d you pay for them?”
Martina’s face blooms bright purple, two matching spots on each cheek. She sputters something that would make Jesus blush, then turns and stalks up the aisle.
I look at Ayana, and she’s smiling.
JEFFREY
PDK Workforce Solutions is housed in the center of a shabby strip mall on Sheridan Road, sandwiched between a consignment shop and a serve-yourself yogurt place on the brink of bankruptcy. The parking lot is mostly empty. I’m one of the first ones here, thanks to the early bird reporters who dragged me from a dead sleep, rumbling up in their noisy vans and calling out greetings like miners punching in at the quarry. So far, they haven’t followed me here, though I figure I’ve only got another day or two before they line up on the sidewalk outside. My boss, Eric, will lose his mind.
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