ELLIOT: Hey Scar. Got some friends who need a place to crash tonight. You know the drill. Is your place free?
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. The last thing I want is someone crashing in my tiny walk-up, but it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened. I owe Elliot big time after he helped with the court case. Without him, I’d be rotting in a jail cell somewhere. I slow my pace so I can tap a reply message into the screen.
Me: Sure thing. I’m off work at six. There’s a spare key in the plant next to my door if they arrive earlier.
I lock the phone and drop it into my bag, irritated that I won’t be alone tonight. It’s a lot harder to get drunk with strangers in the room. Which makes me think—I need a drink. The Victoria’s Secret perfume bottle in my bag weighs heavy on my shoulder, full of vodka instead of flowery scent—just a fifth, because I’m supposed to be stone-cold sober as part of my parole conditions—and my mouth practically waters at the thought of locking myself away in the bathroom and having just a little sip to make the day slightly less shitty. Booze and pills, the things that get me through the days, until I decide I don’t want to get through them anymore and jump off this express train through hell.
The diner is already busy when I arrive, morose and with the image of two little boys with blond hair and blue eyes stuck firmly in the front of my mind. One from this morning, and the other from nine months ago. It strikes me as strange that the sound of a kid’s voice sets me off. The boy nine months ago didn’t scream; I never even heard his voice. I saw him on the news once after I’d been arrested. It was a home video the reporters had somehow gotten their hands on when the media frenzy was at its peak. He liked Spiderman. He had this excited little voice when he spoke, a rasp in his throat, the tail end of a cold. In the video, he was showing his dad how he could climb a tree.
His name was Ryder. He was five years old, and then he was dead.
“You’re late, Scarlett,” Sylvia hisses as I pour coffee and take a sip, burning the entire roof of my mouth. My throat protests as the bitter liquid scalds on its way down, settling uneasily in my stomach where it will churn until Serge hands me a plate of leftovers and tries to slap my ass around ten-thirty, when the breakfast crowd slows.
Sylvia’s a bitch. I know she steals my tips when I’m with other customers. For some reason, I’m the highest-tipped waitress in Cabrezzi’s. Something about my shiny white teeth and my convincing smile? Or maybe it’s because they feel like they know me, like I’m familiar, a washed-out, slightly chubbier version of the actress who used to appear on their TV screens every Tuesday night and save the world. It’s the only reason she doesn’t fire my ass. Italian Sylvia owns the place with her Russian husband, Serge, and together they’re the oddest couple I’ve ever met. She wears the pants, bossing everyone around as she taps her taloned fingernails on her chipped coffee cup that says Cabrezzi’s down the side, black letters on a yellowed white mug. She talks a mile a minute, makes me serve her family every time they come in, even though I’m the only waitress who doesn’t speak Italian. And they don’t tip. Like, at all. And Serge, her husband, fifty, with a paunch and a hint of his Russian accent still lingering on after thirty years in the Big Apple. He cooks greasy breakfast plates for the hungry hordes and tries to shove his hand in my dress whenever I have the misfortune to pass through the kitchen.