by Billie Letts
A slice of moonlight allowed him to see the scorpion he’d stepped on as it scurried away across the asphalt of the library parking lot.
He was unable to bear the searing pain without yelping in agony and hopping up and down on his one good foot. Minutes later, when he hobbled back to the car, his left foot was afire with fever and beginning to swell. He grabbed a bottle half-filled with Pepsi and poured it over the sole of his foot, but it only made the pain worse.
An hour later, worn down by pain and the circumstances of his life, Fate slumped onto one of Floy’s afghans and gave himself to sleep, a sleep so numbing and deep that he didn’t feel the hands that taped a roasted cockroach over the sting on his foot . . . nor did he feel the comforting gesture of a hand that softly patted his knee.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LUTIE COULD HEAR a voice calling to her, a female voice, but she couldn’t identify the speaker. At first, she thought it was her math teacher back in Spearfish, then she believed it was Floy. But when she tried to open her eyes, a blinding glare forced them closed.
“Come on, girl. We got to put straight this room before he show up. The time almost six-thirty.”
As someone vigorously shook her shoulders, Lutie tried to resist, flailing at whoever was bent over her, prodding her body to move. But her hands, curled loosely into fists, failed to connect with anything solid, letting her believe momentarily that she was dreaming.
“Wake up, Lutie. You better to wake up and help me.”
Finally, through the opened slit of one eye, Lutie saw Urbana’s face, out of focus, like looking at her underwater.
Lutie groaned, then turned her head away from the light coming through the window, her movement causing the bed beneath her to begin to spin. She opened her eyes against the pain building up behind them, to find herself in a room twirling like a Tilt-A-Whirl. With the bed and the space around it spinning faster and faster, she felt the bile surging inside her but was helpless to rise. And even if she could, her mind was so clouded that she didn’t recognize the room and couldn’t have located the bathroom, although she’d cleaned it and dozens of others exactly like it many times.
Finally, gagging, she managed to hang her head off the side of the bed, giving Urbana the warning she needed.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” she yelled as she dragged Lutie from the bed, stood her unsteadily on her feet, and, by grabbing her from behind in a bear hug, pushed her forward into the bathroom. She shoved her into the shower stall under a stream of icy water just as the first of last night’s liquor and food spewed from Lutie’s mouth.
“Nasty,” Urbana said as she jerked the shower curtain closed. “Nasty! Stay until you bring all up. You hear me?”
Twenty minutes later, Lutie stepped out of the shower, her body chilled and slightly blue in contrast with her face, which had taken on a greenish hue. With her teeth chattering, she gave herself up to the ministrations of Urbana, who dried Lutie’s hair with a towel, wrapped her in a clean sheet, and led her back to bed.
Urbana, in the most motherly tone she could muster, said, “Now. You will live.”
“What happened?” Lutie asked, her voice trembling and weak.
“You mean between time you danced salsa at Habana Heaven, show off your tits, and at two o’clock when Raul carried you from car to here?”
“Oh, God.” Lutie covered her eyes with both hands and shook her head.
“You not a good drunk. Don’t try again.” Then Urbana handed Lutie a pill and a glass of water. “Take this. Feel better soon. Then we straight the room and go before Pavel come.”
“Why are we here?” Lutie asked.
“Magda, night clerk at front desk, friend of mine. Gave me key to room.”
“But—”
“Couldn’t take you home. Don’t want you little brother to see you like drunk.”
“You look awful,” Fate said when Lutie crawled into Floy’s car. “And why aren’t you working today?”
“I’m sick.”
Fate was slumped in the backseat, his leg propped up on the front passenger seat.
“What’s wrong with your leg?” Lutie asked.
“I got stung by a scorpion.”
“God. I’ll bet that hurt.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s that on the bottom of your foot?”
“A roasted cockroach and a Band-Aid.”
“What?!”
“Guess I fell asleep an hour or two after it happened. When I woke up, this is what I found.” Fate bent his leg, twisting it so he could look at his foot. “It’s a lot better now.”
“You figure it was our guardian angel again?” Lutie asked.
“Who else.”
“Did you see him?”
Fate shook his head. “I didn’t even feel this happening.” He indicated the Band-Aid. “It hurt so bad, I think I sort of passed out.”
“Sorry I wasn’t here.”
“Why didn’t you come home last night?”
“Home?”
“Well, why didn’t you come back here?”
“Oh, after the movie me and Urbana went out to eat. She bought me a dinner at a Cuban restaurant, then we went to her house and watched TV until two or three. We both fell asleep on her couch.”
“So what made you sick?”
“The food, I think. It was real spicy.”
Fate didn’t believe her story but decided to let it go. He knew if he badgered her, they’d end up fighting, then she’d pout and give him the silent treatment for a couple of days. Instead, he grabbed his shoes and socks, getting ready to make his rounds of the golf courses.
“You think you can walk with your foot in that kind of shape?”
“Yeah. It’s not bad at all now. Guess this really works.” He pulled the Band-Aid loose and, with the dead cockroach stuck to it, tossed the mess out the window. “What are you going to do today?”
“Find a cool place and go to sleep.”
“Go up to the second floor in the library. They have a leather chair up there, real comfortable. If you can get it before someone else, you can grab a book, pretend to read, put your head back, and sleep. I see people do it all the time.”
“Okay. I think I will.”
When Fate had put on his socks, he picked up one of his shoes, then ran his fingers inside the toe and pulled out some folded bills.
“Here’s what I made yesterday. Nine dollars. Not a bad day, huh?”
“No. That’s good.”
“Let’s count it all.”
Like an eager banker, Fate looked forward to the time each day when they counted their money, watching their stash grow, even though it had been growing more slowly than he would have wanted.
“Not today,” Lutie said, her voice void of any enthusiasm.
“Why not? We do it every day, Lutie. Why not today?”
“I just don’t feel like it.”
“Then give it to me. I’ll count it.”
“No, let’s wait until—”
“What’s wrong? Huh? You come up short?” Fate’s suspicion about the money gave his voice an angry edge. “Did you buy something last night, something you don’t want me to know about?”
“Like what?”
“Maybe the cigarettes I smell on your clothes. Or the liquor on your breath?”
“Goddammit, Fate, I don’t have to answer to you.”
“Give me that.” Fate jerked Lutie’s purse away from her, leaned away as she tried to get it back. When he unzipped it and pulled out the plastic billfold where she kept their money, she snapped at him.
“You know, I earned as much of that money as you did, so I had every right to—”
“This is it?” Fate held up the bills he’d taken from the slim wallet. “Forty-two dollars?” He was yelling now. “You spent thirty dollars last night? For a movie, a free meal, and some TV, you spent thirty dollars?”
“Fate, I . . . I didn’t mean to. It just happened.”
“Oh, really. How d
id it ‘just happen,’ Lutie?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” Lutie said with all the sarcasm she could muster. “I don’t owe you anything. Just because you—”
“I hitched rides so I could get a free meal at the Salvation Army where, by the way, not that you’d care, there was a ceremony for Sam, who died yesterday morning.”
“Sam? The daddy of those girls?”
“And while I was eating stew and crackers, you were having a real night on the town, weren’t you? You get drunk?”
Lutie turned away, looked out her window without response.
“You did, didn’t you? You got drunk and . . . what? Had sex? Bought drugs?”
Fate got out of the car, shoved the money deep into his pocket, and walked away without a word or backward glance.
Two days later, Lutie took the night-shift job at Denny’s, and on her first night there, she made nearly thirty dollars in tips, the exact amount of money she’d spent from the “stash” she and Fate called their savings—which Fate had started keeping since Lutie’s night out. If she could make that kind of money regularly and keep both jobs, she figured that by the time Fate’s school started, they could be in an apartment.
Her optimism didn’t last long, though. On her second night, she brought in a disappointing total of eight bucks, and from that she had to pay nearly three for a porcelain platter she shattered when it slid off a tray she was carrying.
But the job at Denny’s offered a great advantage she hadn’t counted on when she started. She got all she wanted to eat while she was there by meals returned uneaten to the kitchen when the eggs were overcooked or a steak was too well-done. And she managed to feed Fate every morning when she returned to the car without paying a penny for the food.
Of course, her new schedule left her tired, always in need of sleep. Within a week of starting at the restaurant, she had dark circles under her eyes, and by the end of each day, her shoulders slumped as exhaustion set in.
She started her days at six-thrity with the aid of a small travel alarm she stole at a hardware store. She liked to arrive at the motel by seven on those days when she and Fate could have time for a shower before she started work at eight. Her shift there ended at five, which was her bedtime. The only problem was the heat. The car was so hot until the sun went down, sleeping in it was impossible, so Fate met her at the car every day after quitting time at the Palms, then she drove them to the Salvation Army complex, where she slept using her afghan as a sleeping mat, beneath the shade of a stand of old cedar elms. Fate went inside for supper, then watched over Lutie as she was sleeping while he read by the glare of a flashlight.
He woke her at ten so she could change into her Denny’s uniform, drive them back to the library parking lot, and get to the restaurant on time.
By then, Fate was ready for sleep, and though strange night sounds woke him in alarm, he was getting better at falling back asleep without too much trouble.
Once, when he was awakened by an unidentified noise near the car, he sat up in time to see a limping figure retreating into the tree line next to the library.
The next morning, he found two fresh apples left on the hood of the car.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AT FIRST FATE and Lutie hadn’t talked much following their confrontation, but as time passed, they were able to get back to their frequent conversations about money. Always about money.
Only days before the start of the fall semester at Paradise, they had $334.92 saved, hardly enough to cover all the costs involved in getting an apartment.
Fate had a stack of free magazines he picked up in stores and from street racks. They were called Apartment Finders, and he checked and rechecked them, circling possibilities of places within the Paradise zone.
Lutie had so little free time that they seldom found an opportunity to go look at his choices, but it didn’t take long for them to learn that the advertising in the magazines was almost always misleading.
If an ad included the phrase “Needs some TLC,” they discovered that was code for “This apartment is unlivable,” and “Cozy little nest” meant a place of comfort for mice, fleas, and bedbugs living in harmony in a one-room efficiency.
One flat they looked at was advertised as a “two-bedroom with loads of extras.” They were not surprised to find that the “extras” included a refrigerator without a door handle, a dried pile of dog manure in the corner of one bedroom, and a battalion of cockroaches that had seized the kitchen in what had apparently been a one-sided invasion.
They went to see a two-bedroom mobile home because the ad for it said, “You’ll find a warm welcome here.” After they looked at it, they assumed the word warm referred to a recent fire that had scorched the trailer, most especially in the kitchen, but had covered the dwelling from end to end in soot and the smell of smoke.
They even took a chance on looking at a shared apartment that they could rent for only three hundred fifty dollars a month and required no damage deposit. What they found was an eighty-two-year-old man who kept over thirty cats—he admitted he’d lost count after Puff died. He called himself Darth, he was in a wheelchair, and he needed someone to feed the cats; cook his meals; unstop the toilet; pluck the stiff dark whiskers from his chin, whiskers he likened to the uncontrolled growth of Bermuda grass; and do something about the roof, which—judging from the number of pots, buckets, cans, and pans placed at various spots around the apartment—leaked from two dozen cracks in the ceiling.
One afternoon after Fate had almost nothing to show for his efforts to sell his golf balls and cans, he said, “Lutie, are we getting anywhere?”
“What do you mean? Getting where?”
“Well, we’ve been here for . . . what? Six, seven weeks? We’re still living in the car, still eating at the shelter and whatever you manage to slip out of Denny’s. We’re not in school, and we don’t seem to have much chance to get a place of our own. At least not in time for—”
“I don’t see it that way, Fate. I know it’s slow going, but we’re getting there. And we’re doing it all on our own. Besides, what choice do we have?”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking about.”
“A choice? Like what?”
“Well, maybe we should’ve stayed in Spearfish after Floy died. Sure, we would’ve gone on to foster care, but maybe we would’ve been lucky. Both of us might’ve gone with a nice family. A mom and dad who wanted us, really wanted us. A couple who would treat us well, buy us school clothes, maybe have a computer and lots of books. Maybe even a dog or—”
“Fate, what world are you living in? Huh? You’re describing one of those sweet little TV series like Seventh Heaven or something. A make-believe life where everything works out, everyone is happy, everyone loves everyone. But life’s not like that, kid. And it sure as hell isn’t what foster care is like.”
“But if we—”
“You go back if that’s what you want. We’ve got enough money to buy you a bus ticket, but I’m not going with you. So you’d better think about this real hard. If you stay here, I’m going to get you in that fancy school and—”
“Paradise.”
“Whatever. But if you go back, you’ll be in Bernard Elementary again, you’ll be living with a family that probably won’t give a damn about you, and you’ll be doing it all without me. So make up your mind. And do it now.”
Fate chewed at an imaginary hangnail, an attempt to buy enough time to blink away tears, but when he finally turned to Lutie, one tear had broken free and was tracing a path down his cheek.
“I’m not going back without you, Lutie. No matter what happens.”
Lutie had forgotten about the cotton taped on the inside of the bend of her elbow, a dressing she’d been wearing since she left the blood center early while Fate was still asleep in the car. She’d decided to forgo their showers in order to be at the center when it opened at seven, figuring she could still make it to the motel by eight.
She knew if she wa
s late, she’d hear about it from Pavel, who kept a ledger, entering the times each of the girls came to work and the times they left work every day.
She was lucky this morning, arriving exactly at eight, just in time to join the girls circling Pavel as he called out their room numbers. As they went to the supply rooms to get their carts, she fell in beside Urbana, who had seemed cool toward her since the night they’d gone out with Raul and his roommate.
“How’s things?” Lutie asked.
“Fine,” Urbana replied. But something in her voice said she was not inviting conversation.
“Hey, Urbana, are you upset with me about anything?”
Urbana shook her head.
“You know, I’m sorry about getting plastered when we went out with Raul and Arturo, but I want you to know how much I appreciate you taking care of me, getting us a room, helping me sober up and all.”
“Okay.”
“How’s Raul?”
“I don’t see him much. He dating a girl he met at the Habana. He with her all time now.”
“Guess I didn’t make a very good impression, huh?”
Urbana shrugged.
“Come on, talk to me. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Okay, I tell you. Someone take money from my purse that night. Twenty dollars, lot of money to me. And the only times I leave my purse at table was with you.”
“Oh, Urbana. I didn’t take your money. I wouldn’t do that. You’re my friend.”
“What I think, too, but—”
“Maybe I left our purses at the table when I was dancing. As a matter of fact, I was missing thirty dollars myself and I don’t remember spending it for anything.”
“Yes, Raul and Arturo pay for drinks, give us zip, buy the—”
“What’s zip?”
“Crank. Crystal. You say you don’t remember? Hell to dammit, Lutie, you the worsest drunk I ever know. But look like you make friend with the needle now.” She touched the bandage on Lutie’s arm.
“Oh, no. I gave blood this morning.”